Digipak Analysis

                                          All Time Low - Don't Panic
One digipak I am going to review is from pop punk band All Time Low and their 2012 album 'Don't Panic', this digipak was created by TinmanCreativeStudios. The overall colour of the digipak is a blood orange type red with a cartoon drawing of monsters, zombies and distressed citizens with a cartoonish apocalypse style background. The bands logo is featured at the top of the digipak in a white font. The name of the album in a speech bubble with similar white font that is used for the bands logo. On the back is the full list of songs featured on the record in a black font with a cartoon styled crowd . When you open up the digipak the first two panels follow the cartoon style post-apocolyptic wasteland this time featuring the four members of the band (Alex Gaskarth, Rian Dawson, Zack Merrick and Jack Barakat) who are also in a similar cartoon style. This trend continues into the next panels with the band members doing different everyday activities such as taking pictures and sitting at the beach.

Neck Deep - Wishful Thinking
Another digipak that I have reviewed is also from a pop punk band called Neck Deep. The overall colour theme of the digipak is dark colours such as a dirty golden which is heavily used throughout as well as pale cream, baby blue and dark pink, the background of the front image (which is a Zoltar from the movie BIG) is supposed to resemble a carnival, I have came to this conclusion as you can see fairground rides such as a ferris wheel. The back of the digipak is stylised to resemble a carnival ticket stub or a strip of paper from the fortune machine with the top image being a sketch of the Zoltar fortune machine and the bottom features the track listing for the album. When you open the digipak fully the inside image is a zoomed in picture of Zoltars hands holding the crystal ball, the focus is on the crystal ball as this is in the centre of the panels, the predominate colours of the inside panels are white and cream with dark blue in the visible background. The final back panel is a continuation of the carnival background with a sunset coloured background and black silhouettes.

                                          









We Are The In Crowd - Weird Kids

The final digipak i have reviewed is by another pop punk by, We Are The In Crowd. The overall colour of the digipak is a simple matte black background, this colour scheme runs throughout the entire digipak. The front of the digipak features an image of a sleeveless denim jacket with a patch sown onto the front which is an abriviation of the bands name. The album title is overlaid on the image with the first word 'weird' being stylised in a graffiti style font and a simple lowercase font for 'kids', the font colour on the front is white. On the back of the digipak you see the back of the denim jacket with another patch sown onto it, the track listing is in a small white block capital font. When you open up the digipak the inside the lyrics to 'Attention', their first single from the album, the lyrics are spread out across the three inside panels, the font is the same as the track listing with the same colour white as the rest of the digipak. Overall this is the digipak i am going to take reference from when creating my own.

Website Analysis

www.bringmethehorizon.co.uk:

The first website I have analysed was the webpage for Bring Me The Horizon, a British rock band. The home page for this website includes a banner at the top of the site advertising their newest album 'Sempiternal' and when clicking this it will redirect you to link where you can buy the album. In the centre of the page you have the name of the band and the cover art from their album. The hotspots for this webpage are located at the bottom featuring links to the 'home' page, 'about', 'gigs', 'video', 'music', 'gallery', 'sign up', 'new album' and 'music store' as well as links to the bands Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud and Vevo pages for fans to feel more connected to them.

www.tonightaliveofficial.com

I have also looked at the official website for Australian rock band Tonight Alive. The main theme for this webpage is black and white with a dark blue colour for the hotspots at the top of the page. The home page includes a photo of the band in black and white. The name of the band is located on the top left which is a large stylisation of the bands logo. There is a transparent banner underneath the top banner on the homepage linking fans to the bands albums on iTunes, their Vevo page, Songl, Google Play and Spotify. The hotspots on the main banner feature links to news about the band, the bands biography, blog, tour, gallery, videos, shop and contact where you can contact the bands managers and for bookings. For a band that is quite famous there are no links to the bands social media accounts featured on the home page which is uncharacteristic of bands in the modern era.

www.alltimelow.com

I have looked at the official website for American rock band All Time Low. The home page is a blood orange colour with small splatters on the main colour. The logo for All Time Low is featured at the top left of the page in a large font placed on the burgundy coloured banner, the hotspots are in a white font similar to font that occurs throughout the website. The hotspots on the banner include news which relocates you to a page about the latest news for All Time Low, music which relocates you to a page of the bands discography and where to buy their music, tour which relocates you to a page which shows you their entire schedule, photos/videos of the band, ATL hustlers which relocates you to the bands fan page (www.alltimelowhustlers.com) and store where you can buy the bands merchandise. The homepage also includes a youtube link to a playlist of All Time Low related videos and a link to buy all time low merchandise.

Director Research

Daniel 'Cloud' Campos:

Daniel 'Cloud' Campos is a newer upcoming director who has directed videos for Panic! at the Disco and Paramore. Some of the videos that he has directed include 'Stay The Night' by Zedd featuring Hayley Williams, 'Now' by Paramore and 'This is Gospel' by Panic! at the Disco. In these three videos he uses a lot of quick motions for example he will have the actors or the artist to use a quick choreography sequence and then speed up the motion in the editing process. He also uses pans quite a lot during his videos, for example in 'This is Gospel' he will use quick pans to the left and right to symbolise the head turning motion by the lead singer. I could use his style of lighting if I use a black background, in some of his videos he uses a lot of spotlights to emphasise the main person in the video, by using this technique I could make it more obvious who the main star of the video is going to be. His use of slowed down and sped up shots are interesting because it shows that he is using the parts of the songs that are slower to use slow-motion and the parts of the songs that are quicker to use quicker motions, although I do not personally like the slow-motion to quick motion technique it is something that I could consider in my video.

Isaac Rentz:

Isaac Rentz is a director that has done music videos for artists such as All American Rejects, Blink 182, Paramore and Eminem. For his videos such as 'Still Into You' by Paramore he tends to use a lot of colour in his videos make them seem more bright, however I would not personally use this technique in my video it is a technique I could consider during the planning process of my video. In videos such as 'Up All Night' by Blink 182 he includes more shots of the artist than the narrative, this is an aspect I could incorporate into my video as it will show that the artists are the main focus of the video. Rentz also frequently uses mid shots of the artists he is making a video for instead of a normal close up, this could be because he wants to showcase the artists talent for example if they are playing an instrument, this is also an idea that I could use for my video. Some techniques he has in videos such as 'Up All Night' by Blink 182 is the use of a steady cam where there are slight jolts in the camera to create the idea of a hectic environment as portrayed in the narrative of the video. His videos also take in account of the mood of the video for example if it's a heavier rock track the video will be more intense and hectic however if it is more of a slow somber song he will incorporate more shots of a narrative to relate to the lyrics of the song. 

Dyer summary

Richard Dyer
Dyer's theory was that a record label will manufacture the star or face of a company and sell their image to the audience so that what the audience gets isn't a real person but a manufactured star. Dyer also had two paradoxes for the star image theory; these are the paradox that the star has to simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer and the star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer.

Audience Theory

 LifeMatrix has 10 audience groups, these groups are classified to how people live their lives, I could use this as a reference before making my music video and possibly targeting the tribe wired audience group because the genre of music i have consider making a video for in September has a mainly younger audience so targeting this or the fun/atics audience could work best as this is usually the type of people that listen to rock/punk music.

Tribe wired	Digital, free-spirited, creative young singles
Fun/Atics	Aspirational, fun-seeking, active young people
Dynamic Duos	Hard-driving, high-involvement couples
Priority Parents	Family values, activities, media strongly dominate
Home Soldiers	Home-centric, family-oriented, materially ambitious
Renaissance Women	Active, caring, affluent, influential mums
Rugged Traditionalists	Traditional male values, love of outdoors
Struggling Singles	High aspirations, low economic status
Settled elders	Devout, older, sedentary lifestyles
Free Birds	Vital, active, altruistic

Young and Rubicam had four classifications of Audience groups, I could use this as a reference for my music video, for example if I continued my plan of using a rock track I may refer to the mainstreamers audience group because people who listen to that style of music usually belong to a social group and I would be targeting this type of audience for my video.

Mainstreamers	Make up 40% of the population. They like security, and belonging to a group.
Aspirers	Want status and the esteem of others. Like status symbols, designer labels etc. Live off credit and cash.
Succeeders	People who have already got status and control.
Reformers	Define themselves by their self-esteem and self-fulfilment.

Negus Summary

Keith Negus
Negus has two ideologies regarding the music industry; these were organic and synthetic. Organic is when an artist is home grown and is true to where they started for example bands like the Arctic Monkeys would be organic as they have kept the same type of music and stayed with the same Independent label (Domino Records). Synthetic is when an artist or group is manufactured by a large scale music company (Sony) with mainly manufactured songs, an example of a synthetic music artists would be One Direction because they were created by a major label (SYCO) because they had the right boyband image and would have music made for them. 

Adorno and Hebdige Summary

Adorno (1903-1969)
Adorno was a Marxist and believed that the capitalists (music artists) fed the people lower down on the scale (fans) new products every so often to keep them satisfied meaning that the people lower down won't cause an uprising and going against them. His theory suggests that essentially the media is controlling the way we think meaning that we don't have a say in what we consume and the media decides for us what we like. Adorno spoke of a theory called 'false needs' this means that the poor will rebel against the rich people so because of this the rich people bring out a product that makes the poor people forget that they are poor.

Dick Hebdige
Hebdige was against what Adorno thought, he believed that the media isn't completely in control of everything that we consume and that we have a say in what type of music we listen to for example not listening to what is on the radio compared to people who only listen to what is on the radio, so Hebdige says that the public has a choice in their personal consumption.  

Music Video Shot Count Analysis

Track: Lonely Girl                                                 

Artist: Tonight Alive                                     

Director: Bill Stepanoski                  

Release Date: 15th August 2013

Length of video: 3:16

Number of shots in entire video: 120

Average length of shot: 2 seconds

Number of shots in 30 second segment: 21

Within the 30 second segment there are: 21 shots

Number of CU: 10

Number of ECU: 3

Number of LS: 1

Number of MS: 3

Number of panning shots: 0

Number of tilts: 0

Other shots: 4

Analysis: Songs for the punk rock genre include a lot of quick cuts featuring longer shots of the lead singer and well as a few long shots to fit in the whole band while playing to put them in the focus of the video. I will use this research in planning as currently I am thinking about doing a punk rock genre track, this video will help because it shows a good amount of the band as well as parts of the narrative, it also helps as I can base the amount of shots I will use in my video from this, this video had 120 shots overall in the video so if I plan on doing a punk rock video I should take note of show many shots were used in the video.

Shot number	Shot type	Shot length	Description	Edit to next shot
1	Close up.	1 second.	Close up shot of actress sat in on a bed. Low lighting, colourless shot.	Straight cut.
2	Mid shot.	2 seconds.	Mid shot of actress lying on a bed.	Straight cut.
3	Mid shot.	2 seconds.	Close mid shot of actress lying on a bed with the book she has written in being the focus of the shot.	Straight cut.
4	Mid shot.	1 second.	Lead singer focus of the shot, centred in the middle of the shot with guitarists out of focus behind her.	Straight cut.
5	Close up.	3 seconds.	Close up of lead singer, she is looking directly into the camera.	Straight cut.
6	Close up.	2 seconds.	Actress sitting up on the bed with headphones on.	Straight cut.
7	Extreme close up.	2 seconds.	Extreme close up of actress turning up the volume on a record player.	Straight cut.
8	Close up.	2 seconds	Actress sat on the bed listening to music.	Straight cut
9	Close up.	1 second.	Close up of drummer.	Straight cut.
10	Close up.	1 second.	Close up of lead singer	Straight cut
11	Long shot.	2 seconds.	Long shot of entire band.	Straight cut.
12	Close up.	2 seconds.	Close up of lead singer	Straight cut.
13	Low angle shot.	3 seconds	Shot of actress going into the room with other actress on the bed.	Straight cut.
14	Low over the shoulder.	2 seconds	actresses engaging in inaudible dialogue.	Straight cut.
15	Close up.	3 seconds	Close up of lead singer.	Straight cut.
16	Extreme close up.	2 seconds	Extreme close up of the guitarists hands.	Straight cut.
17	Close up.	2 seconds.	Close up of the guitarist.	Straight cut.
18	Low something	3 seconds.	Actress sat on bed with inaudible dialogue.	Straight cut.
19	Close up.	2 seconds.	Actress stood in room.	Straight cut.
20	Close up.	2 seconds.	Close up of lead singer.	Straight cut.
21	Over the shoulder.	2 seconds.	Close up of picture frame.	Straight cut.