Evaluation

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before we constructed our music video, we analysed existing music videos to identify conventions of the drum&bass genre. We then decided what ones we would use and challenge in our own music video. These are both very important because by using conventions the target audience is familiar with it and expects them. However, challenging conventions makes a music video unique and memorable. A convention we used is the use of alcohol and drugs. Stereotypically, our young target audience is associated with festivals and raving where alcohol and drugs are commonly involved in activities. Using this convention, enables the audience to relate to it. However, in our music video we did not promote the use of alcohol and drugs. We showed how the protaganist resorted to it out of desperation and despair. Our music video shows the bad side of alcohol and drugs, rather than the fun side. We found this convention when analysing 'Let you go' by Chase&Status. This picture to the left illustrates a clear use of drugs and alcohol in the music video. Another convention we used relating to drugs are the use of point of view shots. We used point of view shots because the skakiness of a hand held camera made it apparent that the protaganist was on drugs. It also enabled the audience to feel more involved and therefore sympathise with the character. Also the hecticness of a shaky shot created excitement and it was more interesting to watch. This was especially exciting when these shots were used with the fast part of the song. Our main influence on this convention was 'smack by bitch up' by prodigy which we analysed earlier. The whole song is a point of view shot because the twist at the end reveals who the actual character is. This music video is very interesting because the point of view shots allows the viewer to follow the character the whole way through and therefore keeps them engaged. I think point of view shots make a music video more modern and quirky. They're a lot more appealing to watch than still shots. Also, a lot of drum&bass music videos include a large amount of consecutive very short shots. Again this creates excitement and choas. It fits in with the fast pace of the song. We wanted to include these in our music video because we believe it will maintain the audience's attention. We made sure that at the slow parts of the song we included slow and long shots. When the paced fastened, we increased the speed of shots and included a lot of short shots in a short period of time. Aswell as being interesting, it made the music video flow more and be in time with the song. A very common convention for drum&bass music videos is to not have the actual band appear in the music video. We followed this convention as we used a story in our music video rather than the band performing. A lot of drum&bass bands do not appear in their music videos because a lot are not established and popular so people wouldn't recognise them. A lot of drum&bass bands are not mainstream and are passionate about their music so are more concerned about promoting their music rather than themselves. There are exceptions such as 'The Prodigy' (pictured right) who do appear in some of their music videos. However, they are a lot more well known and famous. The audience would expect to see them in their music videos. Also a lot of drum&bass songs do not have a lot of lyrics which is why they do not need the band to appear in it. A good example of this is 'Let you go' by Chase&Status. Chase&Status do not appear in the music video. However Plan B (pictured left) is featured in the song and plays the main character in the music video. This supports the reasoning above because Plan B is far more popular and in the public eye so people will recognise him and therefore be attracted to the music video. Another convention that we identified is that a drum&bass song that includes a sad message, usually has dull colours in their music video. We used dull colours in our music video because we wanted to represent depression, lonliness, despair. It would look strange if we used bright and jolly colours because it doesn't relate to the story or song. Another reason for this convention is because dark colours portray a cool, modern, quirky mood. This relates to the bands and the target audiences. An obvious convention we used is to include the song and band title at the start of the music video. All existing music videos include this so we used it to make our music video appear realistic and professional. We kept it very simple and small because we didn't want it to take emphasis away from the actual music video. We also challenged conventions in our music videos. One convention we challenged is that a lot of drum&bass music videos do not include a story. This is because the target audience are more concerned about the actual music so they do not need a story to sell the song to them. In the actual music video 'watercolour' by Pendulum, the majority of shots are wide shots where there is a crowd of people at a gig. They are in slow motion which makes it more effective. There is no story in the music video as pendulum are just performing to a crowd. Having a crowd of people is a common convention for drum&bass music videos. However, we knew this would be very hard to achieve as so many people would be involved. We also found that it would be hard to make the video interesting because we do not have the expensive technology that bands such as Pendulum do have. This is why we found including a story in our music video would be a lot easier and more appealing to watch. Our story is fairly simple to follow as we did not want to put the audience off and confuse them. Another form of challenging a convention that we briefly mentioned above is that in our music video we only include one main character which we follow in the entire music video. Apart from the protaganist, there are only 3 other characters in the music video which all have a less significant role. They do not appear a lot in the music video. Having a few characters contrasts to what I said above about a lot of drum&bass music videos including crowds. This also means that in these music videos they do not have any significant characters. We wanted to have one significant character so the audience could follow him throughout his hard times and therefore sympathise with him. Our protaganist is immediately introduced after a few seconds into the music video and the focus is maintained on him throughout. Again having one main character is far easier and accesible. A majority of drum&bass bands do not relate their music video to the lyrics of the song. For example the music video for 'smack my bitch up' by The Prodigy has nothing to do with that title and the lyrics. Therefore we challenged this convention by relating the lyrics to the music video. The most significant lyrics in the song is 'take me out of here' and it is repeated numerous times. This is highly important because the music video is about a character's despair of being dumped that makes him not want to live any longer. He has numerous near death experiences and then eventually does actually kill himself. This outlines another challenging convention because not a lot of drum&bass music videos include a love story. Our music video is focused around love but it has a quirky, modern twist to it. This makes it appeal to a larger audience. Relating lyrics to the music video could be seen as using a convention aswell. This is because 'Let you go' by Chase&Status also does this. Near the end of the music video where the body stops rising you expect that the character's life has come to and. This relates to the lyrics 'blood dries in my veins' and 'I'll be on my way to heaven's door'. However not all of the music video relates to the lyrics where ours does through the majority of the music video. In our music video we have a combination of common convention and forms of challenging conventions. We did this because we wanted the target audience to be familiar with common conventions and relate to it. However, by challenging conventions we believe our music video would be more memorable and original.

• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

It was very important for us to make a clear connection between the promotion pieces and our main product, our music video. We wanted to maintain a theme throughout to create a more professional appearance. One way we achieved this is by using dark blunt colours in our promotion pieces. The story in our music video represents lonliness and distraught. Our character resorts to things due to the idea of escapism. This dark story was reflected in the music video by darkening down the footage. To follow the theme, we used harsh dark colours in our promo pieces, mainly black. This follows the mood of depression. Also it is such a blunt colour which makes other colours vividly stand out on it. This will be eyecatching and bold to the audience. The colour black also represents youth and coolness. We wanted to create an edgy, quirky, modern magazine advertisement. We did this by rotating text and having a worn out patchy border around the main image. It is simple things like this that create a more modern and interesting thing to look at. We believe that this relates to our music video as we have point of view shots and effects that make it quirky. They are both aimed to appeal to a young audience. I think that our promotion pieces are effective in the way that it promotes the single 'watercolour' and the band and therefore the music video. The promo pieces are simple but effective. As I have stressed before the target audience are not concerned with big, over the top advertisements. They are passionate about the music and band so simplicity is more suited to them. However, simplicity does not reflect dullness. The promotion pieces are still eyecatching and memorable. Another thing that makes it effective is the use of reviews. Reviews make a product more appealing to buy as it has been approved by professionals. The highly respected repuation of critics gives you confidence in buying the product. I believe the combination of my main product and ancillary texts are effective in the way they are professional due to maintaining themes and in the way they appear realistic due to the use of conventions.

• What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We decided to make the majority of questions open ended in order to gather feedback in forms of opinions and possible improvements. It also let us know what different things people liked about our music video. It was rewarding to have praise. We gave our questionnaire to our target audience, late teenagers, both female and male. The majority of respondants were females. This was intended because we felt that females would sympathise more with the character and connect to the story. Our main worry with our music video was that we were concerned viewers wouldn't understand the story. We didn't want to put viewers off with a confusing story but it was very hard illustrating the story without making the twist obvious. Results from our questionnaire showed that the majority of people understood it. This reassured us that our story wasn't too confusing. However, responses suggested to us that it would be clearer if we included more footage of the ex boyfriend. One person said "when the girl and boy walk past the main character, it wasn't clear the boy and girl were a couple." Perhaps we should have put more emphasis on them and included shots of the couple being flirty. As the ex boyfriend is only featured for a few seconds, it doesn't portray him as a significant character, where in fact he is very important. If we had more time, we could have shot more scenes in which the ex boyfriend is in. In the questionnaire we asked 'what do you particularly like the most about the music video?' One person said "the music really went in time with the clips". This was a long and tedious task so we were glad people commented on it. When the music was slow we used a slow motion effect and when the music fastened up we increased the speed of the shot. People also commented on the transitions between the shots "which made the music video flow". A lot of people expressed how they liked the variation of shots as it maintained their attention and was very interesting to watch. Somebody said "the use of shakey and point of view shots really illustrated how the character was on drugs". This comment was very significant to us because we wanted to portray the use of drugs and alcohol in order to make the viewer feel engaged. The use of point of view shots enabled the audience to be more involved and sympathise with the character. In our questionnaire we did not recieve any negative comments. The only thing outlined to us was how the story is a bit confusing but we believe due to having a late teens target audience, the majority of them will understand it. Another thing that we learnt from audience feedback was that people found that the main characters death came around a bit too quickly. Obviously it was hard as we had to fit everything into a short time. We had to illustrate from the start of him being dumped which leads to his death at the end. Perhaps we should have made the death scene a bit longer so it wasn't abnormal to the viewers. However, we and other respondants believe that the events before his death led up to him killing himself so therefore wasn't 'out of the blue'. Our questionnaire also included questions about our promotion pieces including our CD digipak and magazine advertisement. The most important thing to us was that we wanted the promo pieces to relate to the music video. One person outlined that they like "the way the colours run through the two pieces and also to the music video". We darkened down a lot of the music video so the majority of colours were dull and blunt colours including black and greys. It is made apparent in the promo pieces that their colours are also very dark, mainly black. Another person mentioned "the pieces look very realistic and professional". We did this by using conventions such as barcodes, small print, logos, reviews etc. We asked "if you saw these promotion pieces, would it make you buy the single?" Out of 18 people, 15 people said yes which is a large pecentage over the amount of people. We had a lot of different responses to what would attract them including the band name 'Pendulum', the images, bold text and reviews. From the audience feedback we have learnt that we could make further improvements if there was a longer time period. However, the praise outweighed the comments about changes which reassured us and made us highly confident about our media products.

• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout our coursework, Blogger was a highly important media technology. This is where we recorded our stages of research, planning, construction and evaluation. The point of our blog is to show our work in a more modern, technical way rather than having a folder. It also allows access for teachers to track our progress. We were familiar with blogger due to using it for our AS coursework. Therefore it was easy and simple to use. Before constructing our media products we had to undertake research and planning. When doing this, Youtube was a significant technology. It was especially useful when we had to analyse existing music videos and carry out video research. Youtube allows you to watch a music video and even put it on your blog by copy and pasting the embedded code into a post. I found Youtube particuarly helpful when analysing music videos because I was able to stop the video at any point in order to take notes down. I also used google images to find pictures of existing CD digipaks. This allowed me to put these pictures on my blog and then analyse them. When filming our music video, we needed a tripod, camera and sometimes charger. A tripod was highly significant because a hand-held camera made the footage look all over the place and therefore unprofessional. We have never used these technologies before so we had a lesson where we learnt about how to use them. Our teacher showed us how to set up the tripod and taught us the basics of the camera. Even though we had never used them before it was fairly simple and straightforward when filming. We filmed several times which improved our filming skills as we were more familiar with it. Once we had completed filming we had to upload our footage onto a Mac. I have used Macs since GCSE so was completely comfortable on how they worked. We found that the Macs were quick and efficient when constructing our music video. In order to construct our music video we used Premiere Pro CS4. This was another technology we had not used before but our teacher supplied us with useful tips on how to use it. At first, the software seemed confusing and complex. However, it didn't take long to figure out how to use it. With practise it became far simpler. We found this a great piece of software because we could include interesting effects and transitions in our music video. We found that filming was a longer process than editing because once we had the footage we found it fairly simple and quick to edit. It is made apparent that media technologies were highly influencial in all stages of constructing my media products. Without some of these, it would be highly difficult to produce effective and successful media pieces.

Audience Feedback

Our questionnaire included open ended questions which is why we found it easier for the questions to be on paper, rather than on a blog. Questions were mainly based around opinions and improvements. We gave our questionnaire to 18 late teenagers, both female and male, our target audience. The majority of people were females. This was intended because we felt that females would sympathise more with the character and they would like the story more. Our main worry with our music video was that we were concerned viewers wouldn't understand the story. It was very hard illustrating the story without making the twist obvious. Results from our questionnaire showed that the majority of people understood it. This reassured us that our story wasn't too confusing. However, responses suggested to us that it would be clearer if we included more footage of the ex boyfriend. One person said "when the girl and boy walk past the main character, it wasn't clear the boy and girl were a couple." Perhaps we should have put more emphasis on them and included shots of the couple being flirty. As the ex boyfriend is only featured for a few seconds, it doesn't portray him as a significant character, where in fact he is very important. In the questionnaire we asked 'what do you particularly like the most about the music video?' Responses included the different effects, for example slow motion sequences and then the very fast paced sections. One person said "the music really went in time with the clips". This was a long and tedious task so we were glad people commented on it. When the music was slow we used a slow motion effect and when the music fastened up we increased the speed of the shot. People also commented on the transitions between the shots "which made the music video flow". A lot of people expressed how they liked the variation of shots as it maintained their attention and was very interesting to watch. Somebody said "the use of shakey and point of view shots really illustrated how the character was on drugs". This comment was very significant to us because we wanted to portray the use of drugs and alcohol in order to make the viewer feel engaged. The use of point of view shots enabled the audience to be more involved and sympathise with the character. In our questionnaire we did not recieve any negative comments. The only thing outlined was how the story is a bit confusing but we believe due to having a late teens target audience, the majority of them will understand it. Another person mentioned how the characters death comes around a bit too quickly. Obviously it was hard as we had to fit everything into a short time. We had to illustrate from the start of him being dumped which leads to his death at the end. Perhaps we should have made the death scene a bit longer so it wasn't abnormal to the viewers. Our questionnaire also included questions about promo things including our CD digipak and magazine advertisement. The most thing that was important to us was that we wanted the promo things to relate to the music video. One person outlined that they like "the way the colours run through the two pieces and also to the music video". We darkened down a lot of the music video so the majority of colours were dull and blunt colours including black and greys. It is made apparent in the promo pieces that their colours are also very dark, mainly black. Black is a very blunt colour that stands out and other colours on top of it contrasts. It is very important for promo pieces to stand out as they are advertising the prdocut and need to be eyecatching. Another person mentioned "the pieces look very realistic and professional". We did this by using conventions such as barcodes, small print, logos, reviews etc. We asked "if you saw these promo pieces, would it make you buy the single?" Out of 18 people, 15 people said yes which is a large pecentage over the amount of people. We had a lot of different responses to what would attract them including the band name 'Pendulum', the images, bold text and reviews.

Our final music video

The music video opens with a phone recieving a text. When the phone vibrates it is perfectly in time with the beat. The music starts when the text is opened. An extreme close-up shows 'sorry I can't do this anymore' by 'Alex'. Only after 5 seconds, we are immediately introduced to the main character with a pan upwards. It shows his upset and gutted emotions. The whole story is revolved around him as we follow him the whole way through. The next few shots show him resorting to alcohol. Alcohol is a convention of the drum and bass genre as the young target audience are associated with it. We used consecutive shots to show the amount of vodka decreasing in a short period of time. However, in between each we show the protaganist drinking which emphasises how much he is drinking. A point of view of looking at the vodka bottle and then dropping it again shows how much he has drank and has actually finished it. Wide shots show the protaganist messing up his room out of anger. These shows have a decreased speed because it relates to the slow pace of the song. There is a close up of him ripping a photo which is significant because the same photo is used later. Showing him leaving a house makes the clips flow because it shows how he gets to one place another. Also using a dip to black tranistion illustrates time moving on. The protaganist is still reading the text as he cannot take it in but is startled when seeing his ex with someone else in a street. The camera was following him but stops when seeing the couple as they are significant. When the couple look over their shoulders we put this in slow motion again to emphasise importance. The music starts to fasten up so the clips do aswell. Out of anger the protaganist hits signs and stands in a middle of a road due to desperation. A cross dissolve between these two continue the flow. A point of view shows his perspective of a car nearly hitting him but he moves out of the way at the last minute. The skakiness creates excitement and shows how scared the character is. Hand-held camera shots are used to following him which is like the audience are following him. These shots show emotions of paranoia and confusion. These lyrics relate to the sequence, 'take me out of here'. A pan dowwards of the protaganist shows his distraught and making a phonecall. A long shot shows the entrance of a new character, a drug dealer. We used a shot reverse shot to illustrate their angry conversation. A close up shows an exchange of drugs which flows into a point of view of lining up drugs by a cross dissolve. A zoom in creates a white blurr which relates to his state of mind due to drugs. An establishing shot introduces a new location. The next few shots of him throwing things are quickened up to show his anger and again make it look interesting. A close up of a bottle smashing shows graffiti on the wall 'Jay is gay'. Slow motion makes the shot longer. The audience will see the graffiti but not take notice of it. It will then relate to later in the story. Another point of view shot shows the protaganist on top of a bridge, illustrating another close to death experience. The watch illustrates time going past quickly as this music video contains a series of events in one day. Therefore clips from now on are in the dark. The point of view shots show bright lights mainly from cars which portrays confusion of the main character and not knowing where he is. This confusion is aided by the use of drugs. The large fire is prominent due to the dark. He burns presents and belongings from his ex. 'Feed the fire' lyrics relate to this sequence. The character falls infront of the character, again another near death moment. The blurriness zooming out to a clear point of view shot illustrates the start of the turning point. He then rubs away drugs and throwing alcohol into the bin. As the alcohol starts to be poured away the music starts to slow down again. There is a transition from the poured liquid to running taps in a bath. An over the shoulder shot of the character looking into the mirror shows him removing his clothes and looking distraught and fed up. A close up is used to show him sending the text he received earlier back to his ex. 'sorry I can't do this anymore..' which will make the audience curious. There is then a pan upwards showing blood on his wrists. The photo that he ripped earlier is dropped in slow motion. It is then revealed that in fact that 'Alex' was a boy and therefore they are a homosexual couple. We included a flashback of the street sequence in an extremely slow speed. The brightness emphasises it is a flashback. Again we show a short shot of the photo just to make it clear the boy walking in the street in the same person in the photo. The last shot is a slow zoom outwards showing the protaganist dead in the bath as the music gradually dissolves.

Magazine advertisement

We wanted to create a theme running through the CD digipak and magazine advertisement. This is why we used two of the images from the digipak in the advertisement. Our largest image is the one that is used as the frontcover of the CD. If a target audience sees this they will then relate it to the CD they see in the shop and therefore identify it is 'watercolour' by Pendulum. The other image is of Pendulum performing at one of their gigs. This also promotes their tour which is emphasised by the text, 'UK TOUR IN JUNE!'. We considered having this as our main image as it promotes the band. However, our main piece of coursework is the music video so it makes more sense to promote the song rather than the band's tour. Also we believe that the main image is more eyecatching as it involves a combination of colours including, golds, dark greens and dark blues. We wanted to maintain the colour scheme throughout so the main colour we used for the text was white. Another reason for this is because it stands out on the harsh black as it is a complete contrast. The title of the single, 'watercolour' is very important which is why we put it in a slightly gold colour. The release date is in the same colour because again it is very important and relates to the song title. Some of the text are slightly rotated as this creates a more quirky and edgey appearance. It is a lot more appealing and eyecatching than straight text. However, it would look strange if we rotated all of the text which is why some are straight. There is a balance between the two. We added conventions to our magazine advertisement including the name of the band, the name of the single and a website. Another convention is reviews and star ratings from a critics. This not only makes the magazine look realistic but also promotes the band and single. When the target audience reads that a professional is giving praise, it will give them the confidence to buy it. We included a combination of reviews praising the single and actual band. One review says 'definitely worth seeing live' which relates to the picture of the band with text illustrating their UK tour. We used a different text for the reviews to clearly seperate it from the other text. Another theme that follows the digipak is that this advert is again simple but effective. It outlines the most important things and gets the message across to the target audience. As we have emphasised before, the target audience are not very concerned with large advertising and marketing. They are very passionate about music so their main concern is the song and band. We put Pendulum in a very large font because the target audience are attracted the band's music itself. They are a popular band with many followers. A band's name works the same way as other products due to brand identity. For example when a young teenage girl buys makeup, most of them will look for a brand such as Maybelline or Rimmel as they are familiar with it and it signals quality due to a good reputation. In the same way, when a fan of drum&bass or Pendulum sees a Pendulum single they will solely buy it because of the name. However, the advertisment still needs to be eyecatching, professional looking and effective which we feel we have illustrated through our combination of colours and images. It is very simple but memorable.

CD didgipak for our music video

This is our final product for our CD digipak. This includes the front cover of the cd case, the left hand side of inside the case and a back cover. When pictured together there is clearly a colour theme running through all 3 parts. These are gloomy, dark colours, mainly black. Black is usually representive of the an indie genre and also drum&bass genre. This relates to the song 'watercolour' as it combines both, but mainly drum&bass. The colour black creates a very modern, edgy, blunt appearance. This relates to the target audience. The harshness makes other colours stand out vibrantly, especially white as it is such a contrast. You can see that we have used black and white together in the second and third image. It creates a classy and modern look. However, we didn't want to make everything black and white as it would be too boring and not eyecatching to customers. In the second image, the crowd has a yellow/gold colour and there is also bright lights. This adds vibrancy to the image and contrasts to the black. The target audience is known for socialising and raves. When you think of raves, you think of bright neon colours. This is why we found it important to include colour in our images. The loud, exciting colours reflect the target audiences personality. The second and third image both entail the majority colour of black. To make sure our digipak didn't look dull, we decided to use a different colour scheme for the front cover. The main colours for the front cover are dark greens, dark yellows, blue and white. It was important to create an eyecatching front cover as this is the first thing a customer will see of the CD in a shop. Even though the other images are classy and modern, they will not stand out amongst other CD's. Even though the colour scheme of the front cover is different to the other two, it was still important to create a dark appearance for it to relate to the other images and to the song. We also matched the colours in the front cover to the font used. We didn't want to include a lot of writing as it would take emphasis away from the image. The dark colour theme of our digipak represents the depression and distraught in our music video. Another noticable thing is the theme of simplicity. When analysing existing Pendulum digipak's, we discovered that the majority of them are very simple but still effective. This is made apparent in our digipak. The main reason for this is that advertising is not a major concern to the target audience. The most important thing to the target audience is solely the music they are so passionate about. The target audience would buy the CD because of the band and music, not necessarily whether a CD digipak is eyecatching. We wanted our digipak to look realistic and professional. Therefore we used common conventions including, reviews from music magazines, title of the song and band, a barcode, a list of the songs on the CD, company and production names, company logos and a spine.

Photos for our CD digipak

This will be used as our front cover of the CD digipak. When filming the tunnel scenes we decided to take the oppurtunity to take this photo. This way the front cover relates to the music video. On the top of the tunnel was a train rack but we made sure we was from far distance for our own safety. This is a reason why we only took a few. The idea behind this image is that we want it to portray desperation and loss of control. As this area is desserted we want it it to illustrate the character's aloneness and loss of control. We also found that it created a very attractive appeareance whilst staying simple, like existing Pendulum covers. On photoshop we slightly darkened down the image to create a more eery and mysterious appearance. We also added a roughened effect down the sides to make it look more authentic and rugged. It is quirky and modern, reflecting the target audience. All we need to add is Pendulum and Watercolour to make it obvious it is a CD cover. These will only be in a small font in order to not take emphasis away from the image.

This is one of the many images we took for the back cover of the CD digipak. Stereotypically, our target audience is associated with smoking and alcohol. This is why we thought having Pad (the main character in our music video) picture with a cigarette would be current and interesting. The problem with this photo is that it is portrait. We then realised, for a CD digipak it needs to be landscape. Also I do not like Pad's facial expression in this photo as he looks uncomfortable which is also shown by his awkward hand position. For this reason we will not be using this image.

I really like this image because the cigarette is prominent but there is still focus on Pad. Pad looks a lot more comfortable in this picture. His serious pose relates to the song and our music video as they are quite dramatic and angry. Also this photo is landscape which is ideal for a back cover. However, I think the cigarette could be even closer which would really exaggerate it.

This is my favourite image and therefore will be used as the back cover of the CD digipak. The cigarette is a lot more prominent in this picture than the above image which is very important. The main reason why we chose this image is because of the smoke. No other image shows the smoke this clearly. I think it creates a professional and classy appearance. Also it slightly covers Pad's face but there is still emphasis on him. The image is a low angle which makes Pad appear powerful. This is a contrast to his weak and vulnerable side shown in our music video. However the cigarette is larger than his actual face and is therefore the most dominant out of the two. This shows how cigarettes and harmful things have took control over him and eventually beats him. He has completely lost control over himself. In photoshop, we are going to decrease the saturation and make it a black and white image. This will make the smoke stand out even more. It will also create a classy and professional appearance. Then we will have to add conventions such as song titles, production company names, company logos and a barcode. This will make the back cover more realistic.

The band Pendulum is not featured in out music video, front cover or back cover of the CD case. This is a common convention of the drum&bass genre. However, it is still important to promote the band. We want to advertise in the digipak and advert how good Pendulum are at performing live. This therefore promotes gigs and tours aswell as CD's. A picture of them enables you to relate to them, especially in the picture above as it is taken at one of their gigs. The band are dominant in the picture as they are close up and the fans are so small that you can see hundreds. This shows how popular they and their music are. The middle band member is doing a powerful pose which again emphasises dominance and importance. It's a great perspective shot that gives you a real insight to their concerts. It illustrates vibrance and loudness which attracts you and makes you want to see them. We also really liked the signature in the bottom right hand corner as it portrays a professional appearance. It also emphasises the fact that they are famous. We will be using this picture in the inside of the CD case. It will be on a black background so it blends in and so the colour theme is maintained. Underneath will be a few short, blunt reviews from existing music magazines such as NME and Kerrang. This will attract the target audience as Pendulum are receiving good reviews by professionals. One review will relate to the picture by mentioning how good they are live. For example an idea is 'Great music.. even better live!'. We will use a white font to clearly stand out on the black background. It will also be in capital letters to make it bold and important.

Analysing existing CD covers

When brainstorming about ideas for our own CD digipak, we thought it would be a good to analyse the artist that made our song, 'Pendulum'. This is because it is important to follow conventions of the drum&bass genre. Also the target audience have actually bought these CD's so it important to recognise what attracts them to the product. Below is an example of one of Pendulum's CD digipak.

The first most noticable thing about this digipak is that it is fairly simple. On the front cover only one image is used and therefore is the main focus. It is even bolder than the actual bands name. The same image is used on the back cover but with a decreased opacity to make the song titles stand out. Bright colours, mainly blue and red are used on the front cover to create vibrant and attractive appearance. The combition if colours portrays a loud, techno appearance which relates to their music and live performances. Another significant thing to mention is that the actual band, Pendulum is not featured in the digipak. This is a common covention with the drum&bass genre. This digipak is fairly simple but still effective. The target audience is not attracted to large advertisments and a complex front cover. They are not interested if famous people are used to promote it. The target audience is very passionate about music so the reason they will be buying the CD will not be fully focused on the front cover, but because they are a fan of Pendulum and follow their music. The front cover is also very simple, just outlining the songs. Another important thing to notice is the information in small print, the company logos and the barcode. Conventions like this will make our back cover appear more realistic. The above images have show that there is a clear theme running through the digipak as the same image is used throughout. This creates a proffessional appearance.