Ancillary: Final Digipak/Vinyl Design

My final digipak prototype came out better than I expected and I am more than pleased with the final product. As well as the digipak, I made the decision to create the packaging for the album to be released on vinyl too and I believe it was a good choice. Photoshop 7.0 paid a significant part in achieving the final product of this ancillary as it allowed me to easily layer text and other images (barcode) over the main original picture. I felt the main graffiti image I used worked great and I believe that it would work effectively as a logo for Jake Bugg as time went on. I made the decision to make the album self titled.

                         Front                              Middle (Booklet)                                   Back

This is the finished template of my digipak. Although the same image is repeated on both the front and the back I believe this look really effective especially after printing and placing in the CD holder itself. The camera that Dan used to take the original image was of high quality as you can tell. I also edited out the background and gave it a blurry effect to ensure that the logo was the main and the central part of the cover. When it came to making the booklet, I used an image from the video I created and added lyrics to the song over it. I chose the red text so it would coincide with the red disk upon opening the CD case. It was essential that the name of the artist on the front sleeve stood out, therefore I made sure it was in capitals and could easily be read over the background.

Here is a physical copy of the Jake Bugg digipak album and what would look like if it was being sold on the shelves in music stores:

As well as the creating the digipak I made the decision to make the album available on vinyl record too. I thought it'd be a great idea especially as Record Store Day was fast approaching. If the album go the go ahead, I had planned to release the album as a limited edition red 12" vinyl with only 1000 copies pressed. I felt this added to the authenticity and would make it much more special for the release and fans of Jake Bugg. I decided to use just Bugg's initials (JB) on the vinyl edition as I felt it looked quite effective against the tiled background.

Here are a few photographs of the physical copy of the vinyl edition:

Ancillary: Digipack Plan

As mentioned in my previous posts I wanted to have an album cover with a logo or stand out image rather than a picture of the artist, despite going against typical codes and conventions of the indie/folk genre. The general idea is to have a hard plastic case with a booklet inside that has images of the artist on and the track list written on the back in the same font as the Artist's name on the front. At first, I was planning to create a logo but my friend Dan had recently gone to Amsterdam for an educational school trip and was showing me the pictures he had taken on his camera. One picture of some graffiti particularly stood out and I thought it'd look great as an album cover. There was also a picture of the graffiti from a different less zoomed in angle which I felt would suit the back cover great too. Dan gave me permission to use both images too which was great.

The concept I was aiming to achieve was actually giving the artist a logo in which people would recognise them by. A good modern example of a band that does something similar is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This logo would be the face of Jake Bugg and people would associate him with it. Looking towards the future, the logo could make an appearance in music videos and perhaps on future album covers but in various different scenarios and places. Although the image itself is quite basic, I believe it will be really effective and stand out on shelves and online. The front cover of the album would include the artists name on also in black capital letters. As well as creating a digipak for the album, I had an idea of making a vinyl record for it too. If I did come to design it, the general sleeve would be the same but tiled across the front in four squares. Similar to The Smith's 'Meat Is Murder' record. To create the cover for my digipak I plan to use Photoshop 7.0.

Before actually creating the digipak, I quickly sketched out on paper a rough plan of what I wanted it to look like and include. 

Ancillary: Digipak Research

Another task to complete for ancillary work was to compose a digipak for an upcoming album of the artist I am focusing on. I had the general idea of what a digipak was and included but in order to get a better idea of what I should and shouldn't incorporate into mine I did some further research. At first I looked into what digipak's generally consisted of and then those inside my genre. The general design of a digipak is the developed version of a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc packaging. Typically, it includes a gatefold card stock outer binding or paperboard, with at least one plastic disc tray attached to it depending on what CD is and what the artist is offering. A complete digipak usually contains a front cover, back cover and booklet inside. The booklet inside usually has pictures of the artist inside and lyrics of the song on the album, perhaps information on the band/artist and it's members too. In my opinion, the most important feature of a digipak/album is the cover. This is as it's the first thing people will see whether shopping online/iTunes or in-store at a music shop. I personally believe it is essential for the cover to be quirky and catch people's eye as people who may not even be a fan of the particular artist could potentially be drawn in and end up buying it.

I typed into Google 'most influential album sleeves' in order to see what stood out and in general what made a successful album cover. I found this article of 'Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 100 Album Covers' (http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fedderedder/rolling_stones_100_greatest_album_covers). After looking down the list I noticed that a large majority didn't include the artist on the cover and instead had a logo, pattern or other image. There were two albums that I was familiar with but I felt particularly stood out which were, Pink Floyd with their album 'Dark Side of the Moon' and The Velvet Underground's Andy Warhol album. The artwork is so simple and effective yet it catches the eye straight away. Between them, the records have sold over 100 million copies worldwide.

Typical of the genre
After researching influential and successful albums I looked more into album covers within the genre I was focusing on. I came across these two - Miles Kane's 'Colour of the Trap' and Jack White's 'Blunderbuss'. Both artist's are singer songwriters and their music is fairly similar to Jake Bugg's. It is evident from both of these album sleeves that typically, solo artists inside the indie/alternative genre tend to feature on their cover. Also, the colour of the artists are edited to black and white whilst quite a bright and vibrant colour features elsewhere on the cover. I quite like this and would definitely considering doing something similar on my own digipak. There are without a doubt a number of advantages to having the artist appear on the front cover of the album. For example: fans like to see their artist on the cover and it makes the record much more easily recognisable for people who know the artist but may not be aware that they're releasing a new album. Despite this, I personally prefer to have a logo or stand-out image to feature on the cover and plan to do so.



I also looked at the general layout of some digipaks within the indie/alternative to get an idea of what to include on the back and inside. From my own CD collection I came across Kasabian's second album 'Empire'.Typical of most digipaks, the case is made of hard plastic and includes an inner booklet, back cover with the tracklist on and front cover. The booklet inside folds out t feature an image of each member of the band, I quite like the idea and would consider doing something similar when creating my own digipak.

Ancillary: Final Website Design

When I came to create my website I had no problems working out how to use the 'weebly' website and from what I remember it was a lot better and easier than the actual web authoring I had used previously. The website took me about 2 hours maximum to make which wasn't really long at all and I quite enjoyed using the website. I appropriately named the website 'www.jakebuggofficial.weebly.com'. Unfortunately though, as I hadn't paid to register the domain myself and was only using a free website the '.weebly' had to included within the domain name. This didn't bother me too much and if I actually came to create an official website to market an album I'd look into purchasing the domain name. I managed to include everything I wanted to and the website itself look very similar to the original plans. The link is -http://jakebuggofficial.weebly.com/.

Home/First page

This is the home page of the website. As you can see I included a picture of the artist as I previously said I wanted to before. I also used a still from my music video that I liked to break up the text in the 'About the Artist' section. I felt it was important to have the artist's biography on the homepage in order to try and drag the audience in and for them to get an idea of who and what Jake Bugg does, especially considering he's a fairly unknown and upcoming artist. It may not be very visible but in the top right corner of the website I included links to both his official Facebook and Twitter accounts. This would allow fans to keep up to date with information without having to visit the website on a regular basis. These links, as well as the banner picture and navigation bar remain on the screen for every page in the website whilst the information in the bottom half changes. 

Other pages on my website included a videos page, gallery, and contacts. 

Here is a screenshot of the Videos page. I inserted the embed code in so the YouTube videos would be viewable on the page. I included my video for Trouble Town as well as two of the other official music videos.  

This is the Gallery page. I added six images to begin with and would probably add more to the website as time went on for example the poster for the other ancillary piece. Two of the pictures were stills from the Trouble Town music video where as the rest were just from photo shoots with Jake Bugg. 

This is the Contacts page of the website. I inserted a form so fans of the artist could get in touch and send fan-mail or let Jake know what they think of the video. Any forms submitted get sent to an email address where we would then look into sending a reply. There is also a Useful Links page on the website which includes links to Bugg's YouTube, Facebook & Twitter. 

Ancillary: Website Research & Planning

As part of the ancillary tasks in order to try and promote the artist I was focusing on and their upcoming album I had to design and create a website. I had previously made websites in the past which was great as I had a good idea of how to create them and the general things to include on them. However, it was important for me to specifically research band and artist's website in order to try and get an idea of what they look like and what features are available on them as I had only made sport related and educational websites in the past. Some of the websites I researched were quite complex and included features that I wouldn't be able to create with the tools and software I had available. In general though, each website stuck to a similar pattern and the majority of them included a similar set of pages, which were: biography/about the artist, tour, photos, music videos and contact links. In order to find something that was appropriate for me, the websites I tended to focus on were those of singer-song writers and folk artists. These included, the official website for the artist I was focusing on Jake Bugg, Miles Kane & ex-Oasis man Noel Gallagher.

Jake Bugg

Miles Kane

Noel Gallagher

As you can see there are a number of things that each website have in common. Firstly, they all feature the name of the artist in relatively large writing in the top left. I believe this is quite important and plan to include it on my own. Also, typical of websites in general, there is a  navigation bar with a number of page links relative to the artist as I mentioned previously. Another feature I noticed was that each website includes an image of the artist on the homepage as soon as the website is opened, I feel this is important and shall include it on the Jake Bugg website as it's what the fan's would want to see upon opening the website. The main colours used all tend to be dark too (brown, grey, black), I'm unsure whether this is typical of the indie/alternative genre but I can only assume website's of pop artist's and band's wouldn't look similar. As well as this I noticed the websites included links to their Facebook/Twitter/YouTube pages, I plan to do something similar too. 

Before creating my website, I decided to sketch out a rough plan and idea so I had something to work from rather than making it on the spot:

I plan to use a free website called 'www.weebly.com' to create the Jake Bugg website.  

Censorship

Media censorship is the action of suppressing any type of speech or public communication that the government, media outlet or other controlling body may deem offensive, harmful or inappropriate to anyone in the public domain. Censorship can be used for a number of different reasons including religious, military, political and moral. When applied to the music industry, media censorship may involve filtering out certain aspects of a song such as inappropriate language or showing a censored version of a music video as it includes violent or sexual images that may not be suitable for people of all ages. An example of an artist who had to filter out his music video as it included inappropriate is Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's with their single 'Jubilee Street'. An uncensored version of the music video is also available on YouTube.

Some artists may go against having their music censored but it means it probably won't get played on mainstream radio especially during peak times or lead to it not being played at all. Radio stations have special methods like 'bleeping' for example to help filter out bad language in songs. The general aim of media censoring is so music can be played at any time, for anyone, on any radio station or television program/advert, etc.

Examples of how pop songs are censored for radio use include:

-Bleeping- when a 'beeping' noise is play over the word or lyric so it cannot be heard.
-Blanking- when the song is completely muted for all or part of the offensive lyric/word in the song.
-Re-sampling- overriding the original lyric with music or a like-sounding portion of vocals.
-Re-singing- replacing the inappropriate lyric with another by singing over. Perhaps a word that sounds similar or fits without changing the context of the original lyric.
-Backmasking- taking the original audio of the bad language and reversing so it can no longer be heard.
-Repeating- repeating the word before the explicit word was used so it isn't as obvious. This can sometimes make the lyric sound strange and hard to understand.
-Skipping- removing the inappropriate word without a time delay.

 Here is an example of a song by Kanye West called '25 to Life' where words that may cause offence are blanked out and can no longer be heard.

Music Video Plan

Above is an initial brainstorm plan of my music video I made before filming. This helped me come up with a general idea for the narrative of my music video and I used the majority of ideas outlined in the plans.

After what I found from analysing the song lyrics, I was certain I wanted to make a narrative based video with the story taken in the direction of there being the artist/character doing the same thing day after day with no opportunities. As you can see in the brainstorm plans, I came up with the idea of a busker (the artist) waking up and  getting ready to go out busking. The camera would show shots of empty bottles of beer which would later become more relevant towards the end of the video. The busker would then get as much money as they could, people and perhaps dogs or children could possibly walk by to give the place a built up kind of feel to it. After, the artist would then walk off towards a local shop to purchase more beer and then head home. I also came up with the idea for the artist to light up a cigarette as the lyric 'Smoke until our eyes would bleed, sparkle pops up the seeds" sounds but I wasn't entirely sure. The general message I would try and give off from the video is that the artist/main character is living in a 'Trouble Town' and doing the same thing day after day. Living with his parents perhaps off the very little he gets from busking so he can just afford his cans of beer each day.

As the artist of the original song obviously wouldn't be able to perform in the song I planned on asking my friend Nathan to appear as Bugg as he agreed to help me previously. Also, some some extent he looked surprisingly similar to Jake Bugg which was an added bonus! I didn't plan on using an fast editing or cuts in the film to match the music as the song itself stayed at quite a steady and consistent pace and I felt it wouldn't really suit the video and could perhaps disrupt the narrative.