Contact Sheet for Digipak

The other day we did the photo shoot for the digipak. We had clear plan of what we wanted out of the shoot and I feel like we were successful in this capturing this in shots we got. We got a verity of distances, angles, lighting and layouts for each side of the covers. We really tried to use these things to show the real meaning of the digipak and have some of the features that a typical digipak would have for the target genre. This means we have lots to choose from when making up the drafts of the digipak.

Click on the image to view our full contact sheet from the shoot

Some of my favourite shots from the shoot are… 

When we planned the shoot we had a different idea for the inside left of someone grabbing the letters. When we did the shoot we tried the something different of me laying around the letter on the floor.

Our idea for the inside right of the digipak. This is where the CD will be.

A different angle of the inside right of the cover

This is the idea we have for the back cover of the digipak. Again it is a letter with all of the song names in bold. Most album covers have the songs on the back so used this idea and linked it in with the conventions

A different idea idea for the back cover. Instead of the simplistic look we have used some of the ideas for the inside covers for the back.

Our idea for the front cover of the digipak. A simple design with the album name as the title of the letter

Reflection

Overall upon reflection and chatting to the group we think that this is one of the most successful shoots we have done towards all of the course work. We believe this because we had such a precise  and detailed plan of what we were going to do during the shoot. We knew exactly what shots we needed as we had made the moc up of the digipak so it was just a matter of taking a few shots of each cover and then changing a few things like lighting and distance to get a good verity of them. Something we have learn’t from the shoots we have done in the past is its defiantly better to get more shots than it is to get too little shots and not having an enough to work with. As on previous shoots we hadn’t had as good of a plan and not know the exact shots we wanted meaning quite a lot of it was guess work and thats where things could normally go wrong. By having all of this information and experience it was a simple task of going to the black room taking the photos we wanted and downloading them onto the computer all in very little time. Now we have these photos and picked the favourites we can start working on the first draft of the digipak which we will do in the come days.

Production meeting agenda for Digipak

Now that we have an idea for what the layout of the digipak is going to look like we can know plan when we are going to do the shoot for it. To do this we made a production meeting agenda with all the information on it. It included the shoot list, where we are going to do it, props we might need and the equipment needed. We decided we are going to do the shoot at school so we do not need to make a risk assessment for this.

Below is the production meeting agenda sheet. 

The production meeting agenda sheet. Click on the image to view the full document.

Reflection

This task was useful to do as it we have now our planned the shoot. We as a group now know what we have to do in order for it to be successful and the shots we need for the covers of the digipak. It has given us a better understanding who’s going to do what to get ready for it and will use it to look back on when actually doing the shoot.

Digipak mockup

The task was for us as a group to draw up what we wanted are digipak to be with all of the conventions in it. We all had lots of ideas so it was hard to work out what was the better one to go with which also worked with are genre. In the end we all agreed on an idea we liked and put it onto the paper.

This is the layout of our digipak. It is following the style of the album name ‘letters from nowhere’

Reflection

For are digipak the design is all based around the album name we have come up with of ‘letters from nowhere’. We see it as each song is a letter and each one tells a story which all links to a narrative of the album. We hope that this idea is obvious from the layout of it and gives an understanding of who the band and star image is. From doing the research on other types of digipaks a typical repertoire of elements in the genre we noticed is that lots have a minimalistic look to them with very simple plain designs too them. The groups idea was originally to try and copy this for our digipak. But once we came up the album name we preferred to try and base the layout on that. I feel that it still does have some aspects of this in the front and back covers of it. We can also adjust some of the layout if we want later on if we don’t things look right.

Digipak Conventions Analysis

In this task the group each had to find an album from are genre and annotated it looking at the layout of it, some of the themes that are used and could be used in most styles for the genre and the techniques the band has used to draw the reader in to buying it.

Reflection

From doing this task it has widened my understanding of digipaks. I especially highlighted on from this one about how they are made, what the formal key elements that are in every digpak like the track list and barcode, how they are specially made for the target audience to buy and listen too, what message the band is trying to convey to the audience through it and what the generic features are that are in more digipks for that genre like having a simple design too them. This has given me a better understanding and made me  realised what we need to put in the groups one in order to hit these targets and it too be successful and the represent what are band is.

The Look Book - the package

From the task we did on our bands mission statements and aims we now had to take some of this information and the ideas we had come up with to make a mood board. This was a selection of the ideas, inspirations, styles, fonts, images and colours that could work well for our digipak and social media page.

Below is our mood board…

Reflection

This task was good to do as the group got to put some of our ideas together and looked at what the competition is. Something we noticed when collecting  information was a repertoire of elements in that lots of bands in the genre we are looking at have simple album cover with bold simple colours and a creative design to it. Another thing we noticed from the social media pages is how important it is to advertise information to the target audience in order for them to invest in the bands mechanise and tours. All of this collecting of information is good work towards building the band and the brand around it.