The Creation Of My Digipack Cover

The digipack is a CD cover that our group made for our pop video song 'This Little Kitty' by The Toy Hearts. This was all done collectively on photoshop. It consists of

• Front Page
• Back Page
• 2 insert sheets

The brand image that we were trying to convey for our digipack was that our band was funny, wacky, eccentric, wild and folky. We wanted to also portray the genre of music that the band was which was 'bluegrass' .

Each page we did as a template, i.e same background colour, which for us was what looked like a coffee stained old piece of paper. With pinup girls, old coca cola bottle top, American flag and an ace card. Each page contained an image of the band that we had taken ourselves during the shoot day with a digital camera.

The front page included the background and 4 images as well as an image of the whole band ,a bar code and the name of the band, of which the font for the name was carefully picked out to work with the image that we were trying to portray. The front page was just to advertise the band image and genre as well as making it colourful as to stand out.

The back page was again the same template but with an image of a bass player taken by Josh Gorman on the day of the shoot. The back page was for the track list allowing the consumer to know what other tracks were on the CD and other music that the band had created. We also put the bands web address to add an advertisement element to the digipack.

The middle page was again the same template but with 4 images of the band playing the instruments. This was to allow the consumer to see what they were buying into and showing what instrument the band played.

The other middle page was also again the same template but had the lyrics to the main song 'This Little Kitty' that featured on the CD to enhance again advertisement for the band, as well as two logo images for the band.

Throughout this process we had to look at semiology, denotation and connotation of which we used both, semiology meaning that pop groups and singers use there images to link there brand to what they want to say which is what we did with our image on the front page, allowing the audience to see the bands image and also what genre of music they mightt be, which links into mise en scene and the image that the band is portraying. We then looked at denotation which was when looking at an image, what can you say about it. And we used this with the back cover, whilst having a closeup of the bass player, allowing the audience to see as well what genre the music might be and also enhancing people who might like listening to that particular instrument to buy the CD. Connotation is what you connote, when you attach a cultural meaning to the image i.e MacDonald's logo (M) is immediately recognised as well as Starbucks logo. The connotation of Toy Hearts digipack would be old fashioned/worn out of colour; font is old fashioned as is the name of the band based on the connotations that we bring to it.

A topical example of selling the brand would be the super bowl. A 30 second advert during the breaks in the match cost $3 million dollars , but snickers had 10 of them which means they need to sell 6 million snicker bars to get there money back, but the estimate is they probably spent $10 million on producing the advert. This therefore relates to our pop video as its all about a brand and shows ways of advertising and that creating the brand is very important.

TASK 1 - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?

For our pop video of ‘This Little Kitty’ by The Toy Hearts we researched and analysed the major conventions of a pop video. We did this by looking at Negus conventions, of which include
• A possible performance element
• Use of special effects
• A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement
• A carefully constructed mise en scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track
• The featuring of the artist
• A possible narrative structure

We used these by firstly, looking at possible performance element as to what ‘story line’ would work with the image of the band, would it be a performance element I.e. just shooting the band whilst they are performing as to give in a concert feel or would it have a storyline where the structure would be narrative which brings us on to the next convention of possible narrative structure which is where the video would have a storyline and would relate to the lyrics, allowing the audience to connect more with the song rather that watching it.
When looking at special effects of which include (lighting, animation,

CGI’s,In-Camera effects) we used a lot of lighting, as we were shooting with black screen around all 4 walls of the studio ,we had to look at specific lighting in order for us to see the band and what they were wearing. With animation we didn’t use these, neither did we use CGI’S. With the shot types we used a wide range of different ones to make our video seem somewhat surreal , ranging from close-ups straight into mid shots, wide shots, extreme close-ups and establishing shots. With the mise en scene point of view, the band bought there own clothing to fit with the image we were trying to portray as well as fitting to the lyrics of the song, making the band look similar to there genre as well as looking ‘rebellious’ and ‘sexy’. And obviously the featuring of the artist is simple as we were lucky to be shooting the actual band The Toy Hearts we didn’t need to worry about getting other people to ‘star’ In the video for us.

The band also gave us a lot of feedback and wanted us to look at spe

cific music videos that has already been produced to get a feel of what they wanted as well as inspiration to what we could do, one of these was Mumford and Sons video of Little Lion Man, of which they liked the overall feel of the music video and related to what was happening as well as it relating to the music that they were producing themselves.

We looked to imitate the pop videos to give plaisir, the expected pleasure to the audience as Barthes explains with his two theories of Plaisir being pleasure from the unexpected and Jouissance, which is pleasure from the expected. We used Plaisir in our pop video, and we also subverted the conventions in order to give jouissance, something new or unexpected in Barthes terms.



The message from the song itself that we tried to convey was that our song had two messages. We wanted the story to sell the song, so the lyrics portraying it as a girl who is ‘crazy’ not in the psychological sense but in the way that she is a bit of a ‘rebel’ breaks the rules and goes through a lot in her life, yet she is still find and finds her ground in the end. As

well as the brand image being ‘crazy and wacky ‘ the whole image has to conclude with the song. We wanted what the lyrics were saying to match the image in the band whether that be through the set/ props or the mise en scene of the video.

With this screen shot from our pop video, it is a wide shot of the whole band, the two girls being the selling point of the brand image. With this shot we coveyed the meaning of the video through again Negus conventions, as we have with all the images. With this particalar image, minus the bass player, we are trying to pin point on mise en scene and to show what clothing the band wore to portray the ‘bluegrass’ genre. Within this image , using the rule of thirds, the blonde singer is particular central as well as the red haired girl, which immediately grabs your attention therefore allowing the girls to be the brand image selling point.

This a long shot taken of the two girls during a close-up shot being taken of them. This again shows mise en scene with the outfits the girls were wearing. Looking at the rule of thirds, the attention is brought to the right hand side of the picture where the two girls are standing, as well as the fact that the background is black also draws attention to the colour of the girls. This picture reflects the brand image, as it’s a long shot, again portraying the mise en scene of the girls.

This is a wide shot of the band. This shows the image of the band as to be of country or folky genre. Again it uses Negus conventions by showing mise en scene and allowing the audience to relate to what is going on. The song is about a girl who is quite rebellious and free and this shot shows the ‘rebellious’ image that the band have.








This is a close-up of the two main girls. These two girls were the main selling point of the band, and as a result, many of the shot used throughout the video were of these two as it appealed more to the target audience.

This is a photo of one of the panels from the digipack that we made. We used the same design as the CD as so allow continuity between the two so it would not only relate but grab the audience attention. We used Photoshop for this process, and produced 3 of the same but with different typography font. The faded/stained look to the image , portrays the bands image.

This is an image taken from our digipack of the front cover of the CD. We gave it a stained look to go with the vintage feel of the band and also because it suited the genre. We did this on Photoshop and has images of the band that were taken by our group member Josh Gorman.

This again is a picture taken of our CD Digipack - and is of the back cover. It has the same template as the last two pictures, but is different as it has a different content. Different font has been used from the poster to the didgipack.