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.