Digipak Analysis, The Script - Science and Faith

Genre – The Script are an Irish alternative group who play in arenas across the UK, Ireland and the US. They have influences of soul in their music and is quite lamented in some of their song. The album cover and Digipak for this album reflects their soul influence with them looking reflective on the covers and on the album, has two hands together, showing the alternative side, trying to get an important message across.

Star Image – On the Digipak it has the three members of the band Daniel O’Donoghue, Mark Sheehan and Glen Power. This may be to enhance their image as usually in their music videos you only see the lead singer (O’Donoghue) and then the band in the ‘live performance’ shots. This shows them all together which is the message that they are trying to get across with the album, titled Science and Faith.

Visual Narrative – The album cover front and back shows two hands together and could be trying to portray a very important message. It raises the contentious issue of Science and Religion clashing, but they are trying to say that there are something’s you can’t explain so the two must be able to work together in some way, which is what the two hands signify and why the album has a very apt title.

Colours and Palette – The colours used on both the album cover and the Digipak are both reasonably simplistic. The Digipak is a photo of the band in a location, which has dark lighting and can suggest a reflective feel to the album. The album cover has a bland sort of grey/ green sort of colour with black writing standing out. It then has the picture of the hands on top of this. This could be to suggest that they don’t want to do anything massively flash but just want to get their message across through the album that they have created.

Typography – The font on both the Digipak and the Album cover show the bands logo and is put in a colour that will stand out on their respective background. On the Digipak, the lighting is quite dark so the logo is in white to stand out against this, showing their story to an extent. The fact that their band came out of the poorer areas of Ireland in the 90s and is now a band that can get messages out there. On the album cover the font is in black so that it stands out, reflecting what the band is doing now, getting a message out from their songs and standing out from the crowd of musicians who are singing to make money and not a lot else.

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light Magazine Advert

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

1.     On the advert for The Foo Fighters new album you can see the band’s name and the album’s name very prominently. Below this you can see the logo that will be on the front, in this case it is Dave Grohl (the lead singer) in many different shots and colours on a black background. This is the part of the advert that would be eye catching as it is what you would be drawn to, especially as it is in the dead centre of the page. Below this picture is the date when the album will be released, April 11^th 2011, and a part saying what one of the singles is, Rope, which was released previously as part of a ‘taster’ for the album. In the bottom left corner there is a logo for a shop that will sell it and their website. This is Play.com and is next to the people who produced and mixed the album, which gives the impression that they were somehow involved in this.

2.     From the advert that I can see you can tell that it isn’t your average pop song that fill the charts and that it is by a band who have been around for a long time. Foo Fighters have been around for years and you can tell as their adverts have grown to look very professional and sophisticated. It has a lot of black on the advert, contrasting with the colourful nature of the picture, signifying the rock element of the song. This reflects the way that the Foo Fighters play their music.

Images Used – Black background, colourful pictures of the band, mostly the lead singer (Dave Grohl). Logo of Play.com. Logos of RCA and Roswell Records (Record companies).

Text Used – There is a big title at the top introducing the band and album title. There is slightly smaller text telling you the release date and the single, which is going to ’make’ that album.

The text and pictures work together as the text at the top introduce the whole advert and then the main picture help to keep the advert colourful and interesting and stop the advert becoming too boring and monotonous. The pictures in the corners act as a sort of border. This gives a uniform effect and makes the entire advert look very professional.

The advert would have been aimed at a specialist audience because as mentioned, it isn’t the sort of music or band that would generally be in the pop charts. It seems quite a dark advert and is definitely aimed at just the rock fans, which don’t really take up much a percentage of the industry today; it is mostly hip-hop or RnB.

Lip Sync Task

This is the lip sync task that I have completed for the course. It is a Beatles track called 'Help' and was performed by some of the teachers from the college. they recorded using a track from a laptop and lip synced to that. When I had got the footage, which included close, medium and long shots, I was able to put them together with the original track and give a good effect of the first chorus and first verse of the song. I was able to do this by lining up the particularly emphatic beats from the original track and the track from the video, which you could hear in the background. We located these and put markers on the tracks, once we'd done this we lined them up, muted the sound on the videos and put the original tracks volume on.

Ed Sheeran - The A Team, Detailed Analysis

Ed Sheeran – The A Team is the video that I have chose to look much more closely

There are 60 Shots used altogether plus quick montage scenes which could add an extra 20 – 40 shots
The main shot types are mid close shots or mid long shots to take in the facial expressions (mid close) or the environment (mid long).

There is a montage used and the video is in monochrome. At the end her face is on the backdrop of houses as almost a ghost, with her being quite transparent and this is the first time we see her properly smile.

Representation, narrative, genre, audience – It represents the things that some people have to go through when they’re going through a rough patch and gives a message to the people watching.
It tells a story throughout the song, at the beginning of the video it shows the main character being found dead, and the rest of the video is an explanation of how they got to that point.

It shows the vocal, acoustic style by being quite quiet and expressive, whilst still getting a message across and letting you hear the lyrics and the video not taking this away from it when the video is playing

The audience for this video would be people who like the style of music and those who like to hear songs and watch videos which get a message across and warn people as to what can happen if they’re no careful and responsible.

McFly - Falling In Love

The video for this song is the classic rock band video, with it being a monologue of pictures and videos from one of their live performances when they were on tour. It also has videos of them performing the song live and fits the video, it also has backstage pictures which give a new viewpoint to the band. The lip sync has been done very well and the live performance fits the recorded soundtrack very well.

Kris Allen - Live Like We're Dying

This video reflects the classic video which has an action sequence and also shots of the singer singing the song and playing an instrument (his guitar and is piano in this case). It has lots of bright lights and in-sync dancing which gives a good effect for the song. There is also a clock counting down in the chorus of the video which reflects the title of the song and one of the lyrics which says "we've only got 86400 seconds in a day" which is 24 hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ilTiwW66o&feature=related

Ed Sheeran - The A Team Video Analysis

The whole video is in monochrome (black and white) which reflects the dark nature of the song. It is based around a young woman who is addicted to drugs and has to sell her body so that she can get her money for it. This is a video which gives a new meaning to the song as if you just heard it on the radio you'd think it was just about his girlfriend. It is strange in one respect as you only see the singer once. This is when he is giving money to the woman, who is on the streets selling a "Big Issue" magazine.

Julian Opie Photo

I made this picture using Photoshop in the style of Julian Opie, who designed an album cove for 90s band Blur. I lassoed each layer and then replaced them with block colours, which is the style she uses. I cropped the image so it was just a face and then used the lasso tool to get the different layers. I used the pallet tool and bucket tool to create the colours I would use and then used the add layer tool to keep having the extra parts on. I used the pencil tool to draw on the features of the face and to outline the different parts. As well as the face, I used the technique on the neck and jacket to give the full effect.

The Script - Talk You Down: Video Analysis

The Script, Talk You Down – Telling a story, talks about a police car and you see one in the video. This uses the narrative technique to make it seem like the singer Daniel O'Dongue is telling the story of what is happening and giving a deeper meaning to the lyrics. Generally The Script's songs are very heartfelt and come from the singers own stories. The video for Talk You Down reflects this and is about the singers breakup with a previous girlfriend. It interprets the songs title, but in a different way. It sounds like stopping someone jumping from a building and it could be a way of him to stop her dying internally by leaving him.

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