Digipak research - Album artwork

Digipaks are a patented style of compact disc packaging. They typically consist of a book-style, paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD attached to the inside. Digipaks were among the first alternatives to jewel cases to be used by major record companies. Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums.

An Oversight

Digipaks consist of either a triple layout (pictures below), or just the layout of a normal CD, only it is printed on this card rather than put into a plastic case. We will likely use the normal CD layout as more information and examples are available to us.

The most important feature of the digipak will be its front cover as this is the main artwork and everything else is designed to compliment it. Here are some examples of digipak and normal CD artworks in our hip-hop/urban genre, as the conventions and styles remain the same for each.


The most prominent feature of our genre's artwork is probably the use of simple font in capital letters. Other than that, there appears to be a large variation in the use of colour, images and styles. This is good because it leaves our group with a large area to work in.

The Back

The back of digipaks are usually much more simple than the front. They contain a simple image and a list of the tracks present, along with various credits to their partners. They maintain the same house style as the front.

Closer Analysis




Features of all digipaks

Parental Advisory notice

This had to be added as there is graphic content in the song we have chosen to work with. It is a compulsory feature of all CD artwork. We will need to find a place for it on our album cover







The Bar Code

A bar code is a machine readable representation of data, anything sold in a shop needs one, so our group will have to find a place for this on the back of our digipak







Record Label Logo

Many digipaks played host to the record label of the song they contain, our group will likely embed the 'young money entertainment' logo into our digipak













Recycling Logo

Many digipaks had this logo on this somewhere, most were in green but this black and white one would be more fitting to our scheme.

Digipak research - CD disc art

After looking at many examples of CD disc art in our selected genre, a feature that became clear to me was the simplicity of them, and fact that they all try to be unique, and have something different from the rest. They all look worn down and weathered, as this fits the urban music genre they belong to.


Almost every CD we saw was black in background, and had a lighter font. As in the case with 50 cent's CD, the bullet holes provided a direct reference to the overall theme of the album. Our group have notices that the CD we will make must conform to conventions of simplicity, dark background, worn-down look and simple, lighter coloured font. We could also add something unique to our album, such as a firework or hot-looking text.

Shot List

Our video will require a large amount of different shots if it is going to look professional. Here are the shots that the majority of our video will be composed of:

Clothing for our video

We want Remi to have a blend of formal and casual clothing to show all aspects of his life. Some scenes will be shot in the formal clothing, and others will be shot in the casual clothing.

Ideas for formal clothing:

Ideas for casual clothing:

Location shots - Alley way

Some shots of the alley way in which most of our verses will be filmed

Copyright letter

Dear Young Money Entertainment

I am a representative of a student media project in which we wish to use the track ‘Fireworks’ from the album ‘Thank Me Later’ by Drake.

The project involves creating a music video for the track, as well as producing an album cover and magazine advertisement for the artist.

With your permission, this track would only be used in an educational context and be viewed by my media class, my teacher and the OCR exam board moderator. It will not be uploaded to any public video websites.

Of course, the artist and your company would be fully recognized and credited throughout the pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice, with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details.

I look forward to hearing from you

Regards,

John Spooner

Making The Video Look Professional

Many examples I have seen of A2 media videos, however good the composition may be, are let down slightly my the amateur looking colour. It is plain to see that the work they have produced has been filmed on a small camera and retains the basic look of a family video.

To attempt to avoid this fault, I will try to use the right amount of colour correction on our video without going over the top and making it so heavily edited it breaks the illusion. The basic concept of colour correction and the changes it can make to footage can be seen in this video: