Album Cover Research.

In our promotional package, we have to include an album cover for our artist. To gather some ideas we done some research as to what an 80's ablum cover entices and what other album covers in general feature. The image to the left is the original album cover for the song Chromeo- Call me up. The voyeuristic style of the cover is very interesting but the look in which we want to go for is completely different.

We want our album cover to follow the theme of our music video. We want to incorparate bright, bold, funky colours which will capture the audience's attention. By sticking to the video's theme, this enables our artist to structure an identity in which the audience can recognise and relate to. We looked at some artists album covers which caught our eye. By doing so, we were able to begin making ideas as to what our album cover will feature.

Things We Liked.

We really liked these images of 80's themed things. The images all use bright and bold colors and are very funky. This is the idea that we want to convey in our music video.

Research of Music Video's which have been succesful - VMA music task

Practise Research - R & B Moodboard

These were R & B artists which were inspiring for our R & B genre, for our original research of our promotional cover. However we decided not to follow this genre in the end.

Some of the artists captured on our mood board are extremely well known names and would appeal to the target audience we aim to attract. Therefore we took ideas from the outfits they are featured  wearing to inspire us with our mise en scene ideas for our music video, with 'Call me Up' by Chromeo. The genre of R & B follows specific conventions in order to attract both a female and male audience. In the more stylised male R & B music, money is a popular theme featured throughout the videos. There are many references to wealth and money. The majority of artists are wealthy and successful and it tends to be rappers that have strong reference to money in their videos. This is a way of showing the audience their power and wealth, often communicated through the mise en scene i.e. their jewllery. Women in R & B videos are represented as voyeurs. They're used to add appeal to the video. This is mainly conveyed through their lack of clothing and provoking dance routines. They mainly feature in male videos, this is because the target audience will have a heavy response. R & B music videos usually have more of a narrative perspective which is more likely to be a story told throughout the video which strongly links to the lyrics of the song. An example of this is the video Like a Boy by Beyonce. The emphasis in this video is the heartache women go through by men. The song expresses how a men takes advantage of a woman and how women treat men with more respect. The video conveys this story through Beyonce acting out a day to day life of her partner.

Inspiration and Ideas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpILkfDYIs

Little commets- One night in october

We found a lot of inspiration for our own music video from this video. We liked the unique, quirkey style throughout the video and we wanted to incorparate some of the ideas current in our own music video. The main idea which we fell in love with was the staggered writing on the chalk board seen in the image below. As the artists sing the lyrics to the song, each word is written on the chalk board as the lyrics are sung. This technique would be time consuming as we would have to write each word seperately and keep stopping and starting the camera but it is something that we would want to use in our video. We were thinking of writing the lyrics for the chorus, which features the words 'You can call me up, day and night, when you need someone to talk to.' We have gathered some ideas as to where we would write the lyrics. We were thinking of writing them on a brick wall or a plain black drop set in bright colours written in chalk.

Costume Inspiration and Ideas.

The theme for our music video Chromeo- Call me up, is a funky, colourful, 80's throwback style. The costumes that we want to use in our video have to be bright, funky and very layed back. In doing some research into outfits, we have come up with some ideas...

The peices of clothing above are the style that we want to incorparate in our video. The clothes are of a layed back style, baggy, funky and cool. This is the theme that we want to capture throughout our video. One of the members of our group put forward the idea of having a person in a cow suit in our video. The idea behind this is that we want our video to fun and quirky and the whole idea of our video is that we could play around with random things and incorparate random ideas into the video, conveying a fun style.

Inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8awKpyqSQc

Booty call- Midnight Beast

We were inspired by the differant ways to present the lyrics in the song, for example the writing on the hands. We also liked the shots of the phones and the settings of the video. It looks very low budget and easy to do. We liked the quirky style throughout the music video and thought that it would work well within our video. The video in a way presents itself as a mickey take as it is very low budget, all in a house, the band members are dressed in random clothes and the props used are simple. But we beleive that this all works very well as a whole because it creates a fun vibe and relates to the song.

Test shots- Point of view shot

 These were our original shots, with no editing.

 These were our shots after editing them with colour corrector and matte effect to display the image with enhanced shadows. We made the saturation higher to create this unique colour.

Practice promotional image in the genre of R n B

This image reflects the genre of R n B because it displays the urban background, which is a stereotypical representation of an R n B location. We chose to dress the artist in clothes which contrast with the background to make her seem the main focus of the cover. In addition to this the artist's top stands out in the image because of the unique pattern. The artists stance represents a very layed back persona which is a common convention of RnB. We chose to have the artist looking off in the background in order to create a more naturalistic image.