Magazine Advert Ideas

For my magazine album advert I need to find a unique and eye-catching image that will attract the reader, it needs as most album adverts have, a photo of either the artist or the actual album cover, whether that be a symbol or some random shape. The use of font and bright colours is also clinical when trying to create a worthwhile magazine album advert.

In the example on the left Jessie J's new album 'Who are you', the use of the gold and stand out font makes this a very eye-catching magazine advert because of the use of the black background.

This Kings of Leon magazine album advert is also a very good example of a unique photo, the use of the four band members and then a photo of an eagle creates an interesting mix and a very intriguing photo which will make the reader want to look at it and read all the information that comes with it, the use of basic colours and then the occasional stand out red and yellow means all the writing is easy to see, once again the use of the black background helps the font stand out.

Colours for my Digipak and Album

For my digipak and magazine advert, colours will be essential when trying to create a unique and memorable cover, the use of bright and dark colours will mean that they work in contrast to make certain aspects stand out. Bright colours such as red and yellow will stand out more when having a black or grey background. My main idea is to use a black background then with a photo using white and then brown and yellow to make it stand out.

Album Font Design

Now that I've decided the name of my album, I have to now decide what font and colours I will use to make it a very independent and popular album cover.

These are my top four album fonts, they are all very stand out and 'indie' and I will do some tests on some coloured canvas's ones to see which one looks best as an album name cover.

Album name ideas and Album design inspiration

The original album name by the original song writers the 1975 was called 'The 1975' and the album cover looked like this:

I've had many different ideas for what I wanted to name the album since I have the band name with Buff Unicorn. The ideas I've had for album names are:

• Dimension (giving a different 'dimension' metaphorically to indie music)
• Infinity (endless playing music)
• Lemniscate (meaning infinity, more indie name)
• Generation (music for a generation)
• Fascination (extremely interesting music)

I got people from my target audience to give me a vote on which one they thought would be the best album name and why:

• Dimension - 3
• Infinity - 5
• Lemniscate - 11
• Generation - 3
• Fascination - 8

Why Lemniscate?

"Because it has another meaning and is very clever and it will attract audiences who are interesting it what it may mean."

Final Album Cover Name = Lemniscate

Album cover inspiration:

Justin Timberlake's 2013 album 'The 20/20 experience' is a very smart album cover

because he blurs out the image of himself and has two eye testers which are directed as if the audience could use them, also the use of black and white and then gold make the font stand out a lot more and make it much more appealing to someone when browsing albums.

Justin Bieber's 2012 album Believe won many different awards and topped the charts in over 50 countries, the reason this was such a good album cover was because of it's simplicity, it has nothing too flashy it's just an image of the artist ten the name of the artist and the album name, the use of black and white like with Justin Timberlake's means that any colour used makes it stand out, so in this album cover he uses a bright orange and yellow/gold to make it stand out.

Script

Band and Artist Names

The Original Band who sung 'Heart Out' were a band called 'the 1975', I had a few names that I wanted to use for the band name since it is once of the most important and fundamental things required for a band to be successful because the name is printed almost everywhere. 

Band Name Ideas: 

• Faint Airplane
• Owl Waste
• Buff Unicorn
• Hidden Radio
• Night Badger

I did a survey to find out what my target audience thought was the most appropriate name:

• Faint Airplane - 2
• Owl Waste - 1
• Buff Unicorn - 17
• Hidden Radio - 5
• Night Badger - 5

FINAL BAND NAME =  BUFF UNICORN

The original band member names were Adam Hann, George Daniel, Matthew Healy, Ross MacDonald and they look like this:

When changing these names I had a few different Ideas, these were:

• Cesar Newton, Joe Owens, Anthony Carter, Freddy Hindman
• Zachary Sims, Dominick Marsh, Ben Curtis, Gerald Shaw
• Matt Frazier, Toby Richards, Dale Freeman, Miles Cornell

I quite liked all three groups of names, so I did a small survey to find out what is the best name and I got these results:

• Cesar Newton, Joe Owens, Anthony Carter, Freddy Hindman - 12
• Zachary Sims, Dominick Marsh, Ben Curtis, Gerald Shaw - 11
• Matt Frazier, Toby Richards, Dale Freeman, Miles Cornell - 7

FINAL BAND MEMBER NAMES = 

Cesar Newton, Joe Owens, Anthony Carter, Freddy Hindman

Actress for my music video

For my music video I need a very stereotypical teenage girl, someone of average height, because she has to be smaller than the boy or else it may look comical or just a tad against the socially accepted normal couple. Also she needs to have long brown or blonde hair and dress fairly sensibly. She also has to have an outgoing personality, she needs to preferably be a dog lover because of the field scene and also must enjoy public events such as parties. 

My example of a stereotypical girl above, long hair and smart dress sense and very  pretty. 

Costumes and props for my music video

These pictures are some examples of the type of clothing I want my actor to wear, the top picture would be the attire the main male would wear when going to school, because he is in sixth form so he needs to look smart.

The other outfit is for a casual men's wear when the main male character is in the town centre, cinema and other locations, depending on the weather he will be in a short sleeve shirt and shorts/chinos or a long sleeve buttoned shirt and designer chinos or jeans.

This outfit would be for the main female character, she is also in sixth form so needs to look  smart as well, she'd wear this with a smart jacket and sensible shoes.

This other outfit would be for the other locations, so field, cinema and town shots, because of the timing of the year it will be fairly cold and it's also still very casual just like the main male characters outfit. They need to look like stereotypical teenage boys and girls.

Actor for my music video

My actor for my music video, it fits the music video because he is a young teen who is supposedly 'in love' like the video displays, the outfits he is wearing will not be the same as the picture below. He fits the part very well because during the video he can display different emotions and also he's a bit of 'eye candy' for the ladies in the video itself.

In the video itself you will not see the main actor that much,  besides his hands and feet because of the type of video.

When choosing my actor, he had to match what my target audience will want, so he had to match these credentials: 

Male: Aged 16-20
Personality: Laid back, but can be party animal, loving, caring
Fashion: Must dress to impress the ladies

After considering all these, this actor fits everything that I need for my main male character because of all his personality and fashions aspects.                    

Inspiration for my video

For my music video, I want to do a point of view video, this example below is really good to show you what a video using a Go Pro camera would look like when trying to film a point of view music video

This is a successful and clever video because even though you do not know who the character is in a personal sense, you do get a feel for a the persons life and it can be used to get a comical effect or an action/seriousness feel to it. 

Locations for my music video

For my music video I have lots of different locations that I would like to use, the main location I will want to use is at a huge party involving everyone at either a village hall or out in the town centre in a club of some sort, so the locations I want to use are:

• Village Hall
• Town Centre
• Cinema
• School site
• In a car
• Field(s)

These locations would all tell the story of the song, each location would have a different amount of cast used, depending on what point in the song.

The village hall idea would be for a party of some sort, large amount of people, with a DJ, big bright lights, with flashing and rotation, to create a party atmosphere for the audience.

The town centre location would have lots of different locations within that location, because the town centre could be one shot, but the next shot could be in a shop or at a bus stop in the town.

The cinema location would be used for the slower part of the song to sort of 'set the mood', it's a good way for the audience and the song to gain intimacy, a dark and sort of full cinema.

The school site will be used for the start of the song when the two characters first meet, use a variety of areas within the school, like the field, classroom, canteen etc....

Potential Problems: Weather - Because of the genre of the song, sunny with no clouds would be a perfect weather scenario. But due to the time of the year the more likely scenario is that it will either be raining, snowing or just a really grey, dull day...

Safety is another problem, filming in a moving car can distract the driver if there is a use of movement or loud music.

Filming in a cinema may cause many problems because of the piracy issue, the cinema may get suspicious because of a video camera.

Another problem is the ethical issue of filming in a school, certain parents would not want their children being filmed, so to do this location I would have to get permission to film.

Examples of two locations I would want to use for the video:

Treatmeant for 'Hearts Out' by The 1975

What’s the song about? – The song is about a boy who likes a girl and wants them to be together, it’s a very indie song with a 90’s feel. (Pop culture)

Video Type – Narrative, Story based

Camerawork ideas – One of the ideas I would like to use for this would be a Point of view (POV), so throughout the song it’s just a day in the life of a guy who wants to be with a girl. The majority of shots would be faded in and out and all point of view.

Another idea was to do a lot of over the shoulder shots and a few shot-reverse-shots so that you got the feeling you were part of the situation of the boy trying to get the girl, it would make the audience feel a little bit awkward, but at the same time engaged with the story.

Editing ideas – One idea that I’d like to use for editing would be using a lot of eye line matches throughout the video, so for example if the main boy in the video is looking at the girl but all you see is him, then there is a quick jump to her face, by doing this you show how he feels and what he is thinking about.

Another editing idea is using lots of jump cuts, in a sort of montage format where it shows the main boy and the main girl spending lots of time together doing lots of different activities, this gives of the impression that they are very close, which is the message I want to display, it also shows how he is sort of in that metaphorical ‘friend zone’ and is trying to get out of it.

Mise En Scene ideas – Lighting for my video will be very bright, because of the nature of the song, it is very 90’s song so I want it to be light and sunny which could cause of a problem due to the time of the year, but it can also be an advantage because if the weather is bad and the lighting is low it can help add the story for the video.

Costume ideas for my video: I would like my two main characters to be wearing very stereotypical clothing for the time of year and also for their age, so for the boy, either jeans/chinos with shoes such as converse or pumps, with a plain t-shirt and then for the girl, either trousers or a skirt with tights, then a designer shirt/vest with a jacket on top. If I do have other people in the video, I would like them to also wear stereotypical teenage clothing, but less vibrant colours so that they do not draw an extra attention of the main characters.

Location ideas for my video: For my video I would use lots of different locations, a few shots/clips would take place at a house party of some sort, another location would be in a built up town or city, another location would be a park, either big or small, but with hardly any people there. Another location would be in the back of a car either moving or not, another location would also be at school, this clip would be very important because it sets the story and also ends it, showing the main boy and girl completely separate at school.

Sound ideas – the majority of the video will just be the song at full volume, there will be a fade in at the start and maybe a little bit of background noise from the school grounds to sort of get a feel for the situation and the location, but besides that I don’t want any dialogue in the story and I just want the main song to be played over the top of the story.

Analysing Music Magazine Adverts

Bands and solo artists also get a lot of awareness out to the general public through magazine adverts, advertising their new albums on either a full A4 page or a half an A4 page. The adverts main intention is to catch the eye of the reader when they are flicking through a music magazine, such as Q and Kerrang. The typical conventions of a band/solo artists advert promoting a brand new album are: 

• Bright colours to attract people's attention
• Large writing of the album name and band 
• The date of when the album is being released
• The record label the band/solo artist are with
• A website link or iTunes link 

Another example below is Unimagine, their album Hands Like Houses has a very unique magazine advert, all their relevant information about the album, such as name, date, record label, is at the top of the advert, then the bottom half is a large bright photo which would attract the readers view because of it being unique and the colours used in it.

Types/Styles of music videos

Some people probably think that all music videos are the same, that they all involve the artist, singing and dancing like a maniac and telling some sort of soppy love story, but they are not all like that. In fact there are three types of music videos: Performance based, Narrative based & Concept based

This screen shot from Justin Bieber's - Beauty & The Beat video is a great example of an performance based music video, the whole video consists of the main artist singing or dancing directed towards the camera 

A narrative based video is one that tells a story. a good example of a narrative based video is: Justin Bieber - As Long As You Love Me

The video is about Justin Bieber and this girl he is in love with but her dad doesn't want them to be together, so he steals her away in the night and they run off together but the dad finds out and beats up Justin, this whole story is displayed the video itself.

A few screen shots of the video above to show you how it's a narrative based video.

This is an example of a concept based video: 

Ok Go - Here It Goes Again

These are creative Music videos. They have nothing to do with the actual story of the song. It is random and has humorous tones. They also seem to be more dependant on mise-en-scene and camera angles to create movement. The video for this song is completely random, its just 8 treadmills and 4 blokes, going up and down in

 

 

Analysing Digipaks

For popular music artists, the cover of an album is a very important thing, the success or failure of the digipak can impact the number sales overall for that artist when releasing songs or albums, a very common aspect of an solo artists digipak is them themselves, they usually fixate an album cover with a picture of them, either directly looking at the camera, or away like the example below. Another main aspect of a digipak album cover is the album name itself, everyone names their albums for different reason, the example below, Justin Bieber named his album believe because it's one of his sayings. Most artists name it because of certain reasons, like sayings, events or just at random.

This album cover shows the use of bright colours &
 the main picture is of Justin Bieber himself,
Bieber and his album name are the main focus of
the album cover, his name is it at the top in a small font

The typical album back cover usually displays the list of
songs and all the record labels, the bar codes and all the
sponsors etc... This example also has a picture of the 
artist

Another example of a album cover is the one of the left, Beyonce, I am Sasha Fierce, this is another stereotypical digipak  cover, the main focus of the cover is Beyonce herself and then her album name and her own name is at the top not really in view because the main aspect is Beyonce herself because her face sells the album covers because of how famous she is;