Digipack (CD)- Final Product

The front cover of my digi-pack 

The back of the digi-pack with record labels logo and bar code. 

Digipack (CD)- Editing and Final Touch's.

Planning Editing

I have no previous experience using a photo shop program so my planning will be brief but I have a general idea for both photo's. But the editing will be a working progress, I will have to go to the local college to use the apple mac computers there as media and art students who attend there tell me it is a really good program that will make my photo's look as professional as possible.

For this photo, I'm going to attempt to lighten up the photo and perfect the model from any goosebumps of blemishes so she looks angelic. Then for the album name and band name I was going to put it on the left side of the photo. Ideally I would like the writing to be in handwriting type all joined up so it looks mature and sophisticated.

This photo, I am going to again perfect the model, but the name of the band and album doesn't have such an ideal place to go it will probably end up over the legs. But again I would like handwriting joined up, for the same reasons as above.  After research i saw the name of the band could be put in the same format as the band's previous album's "It all leads to this" and "Grenzenlos".

Before editing I need to decide what the actual writing will say so i referred back to the bands previous albums to help me decide. I also emailed the band in the same way i contacted them before for information on the inspiration behind there previous Album names.

This is the email i sent to them, looking for help of ideas on the album cover name. Waiting for the reply I continued to research their previous album names. They replied with this; 

It was less information than was on the site, but it was good of them to get back to me so quickly.

What i'm looking for is a theme in which i can follow so my album fits in with the other Scala and Kolacny Brother albums.

Circle- The name could have just been picked to fit in with the album cover picture which is circle of light, which looks in some ways like an eclipse. But when I clicked on the album information came up about the album. Most recent album- 2010. 

It says Circle refers to the long way the choir has accomplished and to the fact that it has returned to the initial concept of the early years of the band, which is doing covers of songs only with a grand piano and their voices. 

Dans Les Yeux D'aurore- translates to "In Dawn's Eyes".

This album was released exclusively in Belgium and was recorded in the memory of a Belgian- French speaking singer who died in 2002. 

‘Paper Plane’ stands for the light, pure and diaphanous angel voices soaring above Scala’s audience like a paper plane. The lead track itself expresses unconditional faith in life and love

Paper Plane- the album name stand for light, pure and diaphanous angel voices soaring above Scala's audiences like a paper plane.Pane’ stands for the light, pure and diaphanous angel voices soaring above Scala’s audience like a paper plane. The lead track itself expresses unconditional faith in life and love

One Winged Angel- on the website there is no indication what this means, personally when i think of one winged angel is an angel falling. One who has committed a sin and is being punished or no longer allowed in heaven. 

It all leads to this- 

Buses, airports

Trials, rehearsals, dressing rooms and concert halls.


The beauty of the voice


Distilling songs again and again
In search of their essence,
In search of that extra dimension


This is what the website says next to the album case, it is to me talking about singing and getting ready to perform. All the preparation leads to this, the album and in turn their success.


Respire, Dream on and On the rocks- all show a young girl, i felt my album picture could be the girl grown up and show the progression of the band. " Dream on" is named after the lead song which is an option for me i could call the album cover I've created after the song i'm using for the music video which is " With or without you". 


I decided to brainstorm words I thought firstly would fit in with my album cover then try and find a double meaning which I could relate band.


With the branch of leaves around her head I first brainstormed Angel to try and find different and more sophisticated words for it, also it has been noted man times that Scala's voice have been compared to angels, which would be ideal for the album cover.

So the name of the album is Seraphic which is an adjective of the word Seraph. Seraphic means "befitting of angels" which the audience should interpret Scala's singing voices are befitting of angels.

Back Cover of Digi Pack. 
I came up with two ideas for the back cover; 


My first is just a black background, so the writing would be in white. Simple but sophisticated was my thought with this.


Secondly, a picturesque scene of hills/ nature to tie in with the front which is nature based. So I decided to Google this to try and find a picture I felt was appropriate.


Whilst looking I decided i wanted an autumn scene, but the issue i came across was that they were to colourful so the back of the album cover would be more eye catching than the front. 


After this research i decided to go with the plain black back cover with white writing. For me this fits with the theme of my album cover and with all the scala albums as a collection. 


Also on the back of both the album and single I'm going to mention Scala's record label through a logo or name because this will allow consumers to associate the band with the record label as well as give the record label promotion. This is whats done on products within the real music industry and I want the digipak i've made to look as if it could be sold in HMV and other music shops. 

Digipack (CD)- Focus Group.

I created a power point presentation in which I was going to show to a variety of age groups and classes at school, also groups of older people I interact with at home.


Here is the Power Point; 

These are screen shots of my power point which I'll show to people and below is the sheet I created for them to fill out so it would be easier for me to count the majority vote on each photo;

Decided to break my results down into; 

10- 25

26-40

41- above 

aiming to get 15- 20 in each group. 

I then created an excel sheet, which I'm going to import the results from focus group into and find the mean of the results for each photo and criteria and age group then analyse the results in my decision bringing it down to 2 photo's. 

Results of focus group

This is a screen shot of all my results after i'd imported them into an excel spread sheet i got a mean for each result and the 2 pictures with the highest means were Photo 1 and Photo 4 so these are the photo's i will go forth and edit. 

Digipack (CD)- Photo Shoot.

When shooting for the album cover on the call sheet I allowed myself time so if I came up with a different idea i would be able to create the set and shoot it. 
In my powerpoints this photo shoot is call "Good/Nature" in case it causes confusion.

Here's my call sheet; 

When the model arrived I requested she arrived with no make-up on so I'd be able to determine how well her skin could take make up and apply it myself, I was aware that more make up needs to be worn for the camera to pick up. 

To get the desired look, I took the hair down which is naturally curly, created volume in the roots and put hairspray in it to hold, I wanted the hair to appear natural. For the make-up I evened out the skin tone and blemishes with a concealer and foundation. Then for the shine I applied a powder liberally across her face. Then on her cheeks I applied a rosy pink colour, for her eyes mascara was applied, then a light whitey/pink colour was applied to frame the eyes. I tidied the eyebrows up a bit by plucking and combing them through and held them in place with a dab of hairspray on the eyebrow comb. 

This was the first set, which was based around the research I did with the girl lying in the rose petals, but I wanted to use leaves and a less sexual body positioning as this is the good girl, natural shoot.

This was the view from the top of the ladder looking down.

Set all set up and ready to go.

Showing the wires and places of lighting.

Here are a couple of the shots we got from this set up; 

I soon realised I wouldn't be able to get the shot I wanted because I wasn't fair enough over her and the angle didn't flatter the model. So I began to try different views and positioning the camera in different ways.

I moved the model into a sitting up pose hoping this would help, although the shot was getting better I just wasn't satisfied.

The further the camera became face in the better the model looked, but with this the set became useless.

I decided I wanted a shot like this face on with a fitting background.

I created a headband for the model out of a dead branch, as she get herself warm again I went outside and found a different set and used the natural lighting and the artificial lighting as much to my advantage as possible. 

Here's set 2, with the model been freshened up with make-up, given a headband and I made her hair bigger with more hairspray.

This was the new set up, outside it was 0 degrees so I set up each shot with the model in a dressing gown to keep warm then as soon as I was ready she removed the dressing gown and took the shots we needed.

The shots we got from this set were much better, here is an over view of the shots. I tried mainly straight on poses but varying how far away she was from the camera e.g. medium shot or close up shot. Although I did get a couple side shots which were really good and with editing I knew I could use them for the album cover. With .all the photo's below I decided to pick 6 then carry out a focus group in which they'd be narrowed down to 2 photo's i would edit both with the writing of the bands name and title of the album, create them and let focus groups decided which one they think they'd see in a shop such as HMV.

I picked this photo for the focus group as I felt the picture showed innocence and the lighting is working well in this photo giving her face a subtle glow, if picked from the focus group I would enhance this glow further showing youth.

Although the lighting on this photo is amazing,  felt the face wasn't quite how I wanted it to be.

 The mystery and subtle lighting in this one made more put it forward into the focus group.

The slight smile i felt worked well.

This photo is too far away for the album cover, want the photos to be more up close and striking. Furthermore the background makes it lose some of the magic for me.

This one for the focus group gives the judges some diversity by it being at a side, this photo for me with the right editing could be ideal for the album cover.

The lighting here shows real innocence and naturalness, with the leaves in the hair she looks as one with nature a more up close shot to add to diversity. Also the model had a slight smile which I think adds to the innocence of the photo.This photo will be in the focus group. 

This photo is slightly further away, this will be one of the focus group photo's.

With the smile this photo doesn't have the look I imagined for the front cover.

Once again the smile, and the leaf in her hand is too posed for the image I want.

Digipack (CD)- Research + Planning

Research
My research into ideas for the album covers began at Scala and the Kolacny Brothers official website. I browsed through there previous albums and singles looking for inspiration. The dilemma I came across was whether to stick to the forms and conventions of their older albums when they were practically unknown or create a more mainstream look as the band is currently becoming more mainstream with their songs being used for soundtracks on the English ITV series Downtown Abbey and the Hollywood movie Social Network.



This image is from the official website and shows a clear overview of the album covers from 2002- 2010. Rather than trying to go against the characteristics of the album covers above by trying to make them more mainstream. I’ve decided to continue in the progression they seem to be making. So it seems ideal to have a black and white photo, but with photo shopping so a part of the photo is in vibrant colour.

I decided to explore the choir market, looking at other choir’s album covers.

There were extensive choir album covers that were based on the same forms and conventions of Scala and Kolancy Brothers, like the ones above. This gave me the inspiration to make the album cover I’m going to create more diverse. But for me it is important to keep the band recognisable.

I felt through there music video’s especially the more recent ones like Friday I’m in Love and Seashell, the band wanted to have more sex appeal. I feel this instantly made them more mainstream, because sex appeal sells in this industry.

The above screen shots are from the Seashells video, the bottom shot is almost  x-rated and this woman is shown throughout, with the band that are singing fully clothed. I feel this shows there desire to be seen in a different way by audiences.

This video shows the girls as party girls, whilst singing choir, it’s the contrast that makes the band so attractive. It shows audiences that they can be both things.

Planning

My inspiration for my album cover came when i was watching the film "Americian Beauty" the iconic scene when Kevin Spacey dreams about his daughter's very sexualised friend played by Mena Suvari. Below is a photo off google of the scene i am referring to;

This image is very provocative, immediately i decided to go for a more subtle image for my cover as the leap from their previous album covers to something on the same level as this would be too much and they'd be unrecognisable.

I decided to advertise for the girl who would feature on the front of my album cover around sixth form for girls who could star on the cover of my album cover. Rather than getting an idea into my head of what I wanted the girl to look like, I advertised first so then I could pick the girl closest to the one I could imagine being on the cover.

I created the poster on publisher, and advertised it in select places around the school as I’d want a 17-18 year old girl who was womanly enough to pull off the sexualisation that would fit in with the band’s forms and conventions as they become a more mainstream band. 

Here’s a print screen of the poster I created to recruit girls for my album cover.

Here’s the first photo I took of the girls to do a comparison by and find the ideal girl for the album cover.

These are the three girls who came forward all three are in year 13.

When it came to picking the girl i went back and looked at Scala and Kolancy Brothers previous albums that had features girls. I saw a theme of it being quite pale, brown haired girls. Their 2002 and 2004 albums featured young brown haired girls and the 2008 album Paper Plane featured a older girl with brown hair. I decided on girl number one so it kept within the forms and conventions of their album covers, i also saw the covers as a timeline and i wanted my version to ellaborate on that showing an older more sexualised female

Below is the girl who i chose;

Once I picked the girl who would feature on the front, I began to sketch out what I imagined the album cover would look like, below is a shot of my rough sketch with notes;

The girl I decided would be wearing a a white angelic but short dress and the 3 things I want the picture to show is naturalness, innocence and angelic.