Digipak feedback



We presented our draft of our digipak design today to our media class so we could get feedback on what was good about it and constructive feedback on the elements we could improve.

Pros -

·         They really liked the front cover of our digipak, they liked how we used the two masks that we used whilst filming and had the black and white divide as the background. They thought it fit the theme we had for our music video well.

·         They also liked that we used the image of the candles going across the whole inside of the front cover.

·         Another positive was the colour we used throughout was quite dark and in some points quite monotone. They thought that it was good as it fit the theme of our music video.

·         They thought using the close up of the eye made it quite mysterious.

·         They also thought the image on the back cover was appropriate for the song and we had framed it well.

Cons -

·         It was commented on that our pictures were quite straight forward and it was suggested that we could play around with some of the photos and manipulate them. For example, manipulating the image of the eye to make it look like there is something inside it.

·         It was also suggested that that we play around with the font and colour of the word 'ILLUMINATED' on our inside cover.

·         We were also given different ideas of how to make the title 'HURTS' look on our front cover. It was suggested that we could outline it in black and have the inside transparent or smudge the edges to show the disturbance.

CD covers in our Genre

Our song Illuminated by Hurts falls into the genre of Synthpop.

The Hurts album covers usually are very monotone or black and white and usualy fetaure themselves as the artists on the cover. the Band name is usually always the focus and the album or single title is usually significantly smalelr but still noticeable to the audience.

The Killers also fall into the category of synthpop and their alums and unlike Hurts rarely feature themselves on the covers. Usual the band logo and name of the album is the center focus of the album cover. They also use black and white on there covers but also have quite a few in colour but they have a vintage, monotone tone to them. The look of their covers has an indie feel to them. 

Depeche mode are another band that fall into the category of synthpop and share some of the similar fatures with the previous two album covers. The mover is mostly greay and black without much colour and like The Killers rarely feature the actual band on the cover.

Planning for our digipak

Definition of a digipak
Digipaks are a patented style of DVD and CD packaging made out of heavy card or cardboard material. They can be divided up into portions of 3 or fold out in the style of a book and have one or more plastic trays inside for the CD's. This plastic trays are simply attatched to the card background.
Digipaks don't crack like the standard jewel cases.

What is the purpose of a digipak?
This style of packaging is usually used for special editions or a premium packaging for CD's of DVD's. They are also used as there is more space.

Brainstorm- What should our digipak include?

• Images - Masks, Forests, Feathers, Lights, Hands, Eyes, Cats eyes, Nature.
• Colours - Black and White, Dark, Blue tones, Sepia, Vintage colours.
• Text - Illuminated, Artist name. On the front cover.

What we filmed during the half term.

We were unfortunately left with a very limited amount of time to film what we wanted during the half term as I had to leave London for a week and my Partner had a university open day to go to so we only had 2 days to film.
As we had the whole day we decided to film at different points of the day to get different lighting and we also got the opportunity to film in the dark which gave us much more opportunity to play with light which is the main theme of our music video.

The main problem we face with having to film outside and deciding to have costumes was that the weather was much too cold so we couldn't stay filming one shot for too long, meaning the standard of the shots we got weren't as good as we would like them to be.

Feedback on rough cuts of our music video - Illuminated.

We showed a rough version of our music video to our media class to get some positive and constructive feedback on it so we could improve it.

Positive Feedback

• The positive feedback we received was that they liked how we had change the colour of some of the shots to gave the video a different feel and so the colour was not the same all the way through each shot.
• Our group really liked and enjoyed our shots where we played around with the candles and the lighting.
• We got positive feedback on our use of masks, saying it gave the video a unique feel and and good use of symbolism.

We also got some constructive feedback on what we could improve.

• It was commented that we needed some more action in our shots so not all our shots were static and still.
• We were also told to change the pace of our music video so that our shots would change at the right time with the beat and so they just didn't seem like continuous shots stacked on top of each other.
• Also some of our shots are a bit long or a bit shaky so we should shorten some of our shots.
• It was also suggested that we should have some sort of sound for the beginning of the intro rather than just silence. However, it was also said that they preferred the silence and thought it was a good opening. So we can play around with those two ideas and see which opening we think would be more successful.