Development of front cover

The landscape image is one I have chose for the front cover and will develop it further so it is more refined. This idea has a strong link to the visuals in the music video. I may use a thinner pointed pen in places to get more varied patterns and better detail. I have another development coming with adjustments to things such as the landscape, the writing and the wolf's position (which is a little too-camoflaged against the mark making and trees).

Further ideas

-Some sketches of what could be possibilities for the front cover of my digipak. Drawing the cover allows me to create something much easily than on a computer or taking photographs of. I still need to work on the ideas as the second (with the two "worlds" on different sideas) is a bit empty. I do like the last idea, with the landscape as I tried to put a lot of detail into the sketch. If I have a guitar in the sketch somewhere, it could have a British Union Jack sticker to symbolise Britishness (the band being British too). It's important that the cover relates to the music video which I kept in my mind whilst doing these ideas. Even more, whether to use colour or black and white will be a debate I have with myself. I could use watercolours to get some colour in them, which I think will look just as good as without.

I will continue to experiment with different sketches, collaborating different parts so it is attention grabbing. These sketches remind me a lot of Glas Vegas's album covers which have been very inspirational.
Song names to include: Honey, Threadbare Blues, Moon Song, Paranoid, Orchard Boy (the bands), Time Will Tell, Close Contact, The Burrow (our own).

Digipak ideas

The first idea is very simple, perhaps boring in some people's views (mine too) but it is a link to the music video- with the Wolf. Both images are atmospheric with a grayscale tone. The tree and sky image was taken by myself whilst the wolf was an internet image. I realise this will decrease my marks but I wanted to experiment with manipulating the image. I plan to sketch a Wolf myself if I do go with this or a similar idea, or another alternative to use a screen shot of the animation. Many indie and folk bands have adopted the "band-on-the-front" idea, most influenced by The Beatles album covers, which is an idea for the front cover. As it is a popular trend, although less unique than artwork, it creates a connection between the audience and band/artist. Artwork on covers can be more distinctive, take the Glas Vegas covers and Paolo Nutini's latest album which I find very bold and attention-grabbing with their colour schemes and interesting imagery.

I could use a mixture of art and images of the band to produce a more exciting and intriguing digipak. The three images of Tamas (our actor) are a development and separate ideas in themselves. The border emphasizes Tamas as being the main subject and focus, his strong pose and side glance gives him a masculine look. The circle could be represented as the Wolf's gaze or a spotlight on him. The last image has a very strong link to the music video as it is a silhouette and another with strings (like a puppet would have).

CD Album Cover Research & Exam Notes

Whilst exploring for CD album covers I made a random discovery, a blogger fascinated with CD album covers: http://aninsideoutsock.wordpress.com/ There are posts upon posts showing a diversity of covers (all of which are for signed artists/bands it seems), most being unusual/strange, creative and unique, with graphic and art techniques and influences.

Notes for exam:

G325A-

Write down what skills you have developed since the continuity task to the music video and print productions, since year 12.

Continuity task- 180 degree rule, match on action, edit, work in a team.

Thriller- genre, lighting, editing, sound, soundtrack, aspects of mise-en-scene, health and safety.

Music video- complex narrative, genre, complex edit, learn about marketing an artist/band.

Print productions- (...marketing artist/band, editing through Photoshop and similar software)

For all productions, we had to be acquainted with filming equipment (camera, lighting) and editing software (Adobe Premiere Elements). We also used cameras to capture parts of productions, such as locations, some using their mobiles camera or a digital camera.

The Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey's theory, "The Male Gaze", focuses on the representation of women as image in film and the mascilination of the spectator. "It investigates the way in which the unconscious patriarchal society has structed film form". Film reflects society's psychological obsessions.

The male gaze refers to the act of looking upon women as objects and adopting the role of spectator, but metaphorically it refers to a way of thinking and acting within society.

Classic Hollywood cinema has traditionally used gender differences as a function of narrative and representational forms. A flaw in the theory is how the research was done before homosexuals were made legal.

"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has split between active male and passive female. Mulvey establishes relationship between subject (spectator/protagonist) is related to active male and passive female.

The relationship between audience and protagonist - traditional attitudes to gender- can be reinforced or challenged in a media text.

Mulvey's feminist critique of patriarchal structures: sexual differences in film function to produce pleasure and this pleasure is produced for someone whom Mulvey identifies as male. This social imbalance is maintained both in films and the "real world" outside the film.

Mulvey thought there are a number of possibilites for pleasure in the cinema. The first is what Freud called "scopophilia"= pleasure at looking at another person as an object. The spectator in cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibition- projectional repressed desire onto the female. Mulvey calls this narcicism is passive and developed through identification with the object. Mulvey sees scopophilia as male active and narcicism as female passive.

The spectator's gaze is male in two senses:

1) The gaze is (aimed outwardly) in the direction of women as objects of erotic desire.

2) The gaze (from within) in its identification with the male protagonist.

Mary Deveraux (another theorist) distinguishes between sex which she says is physical, and gender, which she sees as social, and concludes that "the "male gaze" is not always male, but is always male dominated".

Another theorist, Rodowick claims Mulvey's theory glosses over possibilities as hetero and homosexual identities and pleasures, not to mention audience subjectivity defined by class, race and nationality.

Mulvey says men are reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist self. This disregards the issues of sexual preference (this is a weakness to Mulvey's theory- she is denying bisexuality & the "male gaze", i.e. strippers- men would not enjoy going to a strippers club where the strippers are male). Another flaw could be the theory denies influences of race, nationality and sexual orientation.

In relation to our music video production, there is a male dominance, with the animated wolf character and the (only) male actor, representing the main singer from the band.

There is an example of the "male gaze" being shown through Paolo Nutini's "Pencil of Lead" music video, as many times the camera has POV shots, as "the gaze is (aimed outwardly) in the direction of women as objects of erotic desire". It is extremely common in media texts for this to occur, whether as a serious attitude men have (usually the case) or used in a humorous manner, an example being Eminem's "We Made You" music video. A representation of Jennifer Lopez/J-Lo with an over-exaggeration of her womanly and well-known asset. "Dirty" by Christina Aguilera is attending to the "male gaze" theory as she and the other females are shown as a sex object with skimpy costumes, sexy dancing and the behaviour in such a location (club).

Shamefully even Blogger, has allowed a gadget to be made available to bloggers called "Car Wash Girls" which suggested by the name involves three women washing a car.

Initial design ideas for digipak

I have begun thinking of digipak designs, from sketching the album cover and/or parts of it.

The drawing in the box was an initial sketch I thought of. The image was inspired by our use of woodland locations and the main character being a wolf. An interesting design I have yet to draw (post later) was to have part wolf (animation perhaps) and then the other half be real-life, of our actor coming out of a tree (animation world) into the real world.

Another idea was to have the wolf's head merged and created by the trees in the background as the front cover. The band (our main character/actor) could be gradually shown through the digpak as it is a four sided production. I had this idea a while ago and then found Glas Vegas has this style for many of their albums. This is the basic drawing of my idea.

Another idea is below, the use of black and white and then the simple landscape with the wolf in the centre (use of rule of thirds). As I did these examples of my ideas in Paint, it isn't the best quality. I could either do some kind of print (using my techniques and skills from Art) or maybe do it digitially- but with more thorough detail.

More ideas are coming...