Tuesday, 12 April 2016

Request for Song Use

For the use of M.I.A.'s song we had to contact the record label to ask permission. This is a screenshot of the email that I sent to Interscope's dominant label Universal Music Group.

Tuesday, 22 March 2016

Music Video Draft and Feedback

Our first draft:



After watching the video, members of our target audience said that they liked the green screen parts of the video, and they would like more. So we edited the video to include more footage of Nicole in front of the green screen with the pattern/white background behind her. Furthermore, they said some of the green screen footage appeared quite jumpy and didn't flow into one another well, so we worked to create smoother transitions.




Wednesday, 16 March 2016

'Nikkie T's Instagram Account

Our group have decided to create an Instagram page for the character 'Nikkie T' where she can post pictures of 'sneak peaks' of the music video to tempt her fans to downloading the song and watching the video. This allows us to gain feedback from others in our target audience by commenting on the pictures and videos. We created the account to further develop Nikkie T's brand identity as well as advertise the video and ancillary texts.



Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Digipak Final Draft Feedback

After giving our draft, physically made, to our target audience, we gathered some feedback on final improvements and how to design it to be made for our final and professional product.
One person suggested that the graffiti dollar sign, although linked with the themes of the artist, did not seem consistent with the rest of the digipak. As there was no dollar sign in the 'Nikkie T' font
(DOCALLISME ON STREET), we thought we'd change the middle side to the 'T' from the logo.
In terms of the actual product, between the squares there needs to be some black bars to fill in the white space and make it more professional. We decided the dollar sign pattern on the CD should be changed as it didn't flow with the rest of our product.


Monday, 14 March 2016

Digipak Draft

This is our final ideas for Nikkie T's digipak. We used close-ups from our photo-shoot in areas that are also featured within the music video to make a connection between the products and include the recognisable artist. The theme of money and dollar signs is also running through the both the video and the packaging. The large red dollar sign in a graffiti font connotes the criminal side of hip-hop and an urban style. The black and white links with the black and white in the poster and some shots in the video. We decided to extend the inside image to cover two squares to make it look less disjointed and smoother. For the back of the album we included track titles and addresses to social networking sites for our artist for publicity. The logo for her record company is also featured. The front cover is a complete replica of the poster so our target audience will instantly recognise the album.

Feedback

We recently interviewed members of our target audience asking for their feedback on our current music video. some members stated that more black and white shots in front of the green screen were needed and less shots of the car. One member of our audience suggested that we film in an urban location, so like a skate park or somewhere with lots of graffiti instead of filming it in a school car park. Another member suggested that some of the green screen shots are jumpy and don't have smooth transitions. 

Wednesday, 9 March 2016

Improved Green Screen Shots

For the improved green screen shots we came up with the idea of having a plain and simple background in black and white which is similar to Beyonce's all the single ladies music video which we took inspiration from. 

Beyonce uses different levels of lighting to create a darker or whiter backgrounds keeping the filter in black and white. 

we used a white background keeping the filter in black and white to conform to the R&B / Hip Hop trend that Beyonce has set with 'All the single ladies' music video 




Tuesday, 1 March 2016

Re-Shooting

From our draft, we decided that the green screen shots needed re-shooting as there were too many shadows so it didn't look clean enough for our style. 

Monday, 29 February 2016

Progress




Over the past couple of weeks, we have continued to edit our video and work on the digipak and poster.
We have created a logo using photoshop that appears on the album cover, the poster and in the video, and we have taken photos of Nicole as Nikkie T which we have edited and used on the digipak.

Furthermore, we have been adding effects and colour corrections to our video. For example, in the scenes where Nicole and Georgia are dancing in front of the wall, we have darkened the footage and added a blueish tint that brings out the colour of the headlights. At the beginning and end of the video, we have added a 'bad TV' effect over the title, accompanied by the sound effect of a tuning radio, which fades out into the footage of the car steering wheel. We liked this effect as we felt it was quite unique and gave a retro feel to the opening of the video.

Tuesday, 9 February 2016

Final Poster and Digipak Design



These is our final design idea for the poster and album cover. The poster is an enlarged version of the album cover, focusing on the high quality image of 'Nikkie T' and her logo title.

Tuesday, 26 January 2016

Roland Barthes 5 Codes Applied to Digipak and Poster

Roland Barthes has 5 Narrative Codes:

  • Action Codes
  • Enigma Codes
  • Semantic Codes
  • Symbolic Codes
  • Cultural Codes
Looking at our poster, we have a simple design focusing on presenting the recognised star. We create an interest from the audience using a semantic code of money (dollar signs and notes), suggesting the additional meaning of materialism. This also acts as a cultural code as dollars are typically associated to gangster rappers and hip hop artists who include expensive cars, branded clothes and women in their music video, which we have included. This code makes the audience aware of the genre to advertise to the people who are already listening to hip hop. In our draft, although the money creates an interest for our character, I feel that more should be included in the design to suggest more about the music video and star, such as action codes and enigma codes. For our final draft, the colour scheme will include more of a contrast with bright red and blue with black. This links with the symbolic code, with the contrast connoting a mixture of her gangster side and her colourful fun side.

Green Screen Tests


Before we began filming the scenes with the green screen, we did a short test to practise filming in the area and editing the background. This allowed us to see what we would have to do to Nicole's hair for the shoot so it didn't leave green marks as well as the lighting in the room to avoid shadows.

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Feedback on the posters

For this we turned to web 2.0 for feedback on our designed posters, most of our audiences stated that with the information on the first poster put onto the second or third poster.




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Monday, 11 January 2016

Poster Draft

To match with our draft digipak, we designed a poster that advertised the album's release.