Digipak Insert: The Digital Download Code

A lot of physical albums released after 2015 often include a digital download code, like The New Abnormal by The Strokes (woah! a callback to another blog post!). So I decided to include one for Flower's CD packaging.

I initially came up with this design, but I realized that the Magz font wasn't good for legibility, so I had to change the font to IBM Plex Sans. And I added some legal shenanigans. Here is what I made:

Sadly, the website doesn't actually work. It's just there as a concept.

Designing the Front Cover

Hey guys, I'm currently in Miami International Airport when I started writing this, and probably in Charleston, SC when this is finished. Anyways, I was watching this video on YouTube about glitching photos with an audio program. I really like the abstract results it makes, so I'm gonna do something like that for the album cover. Maybe even the back if I'm feeling silly... 

I took some photos of my hotel! I'll narrow down which photo I wanna go with later. I like how psychedelic the carpet looks like, almost like a 13th Floor Elevator cover. And the architecture of the staircase feels out of place in a modern hotel, kinda like the Backrooms. 

It's time for an update! I'm no longer in Miami, or Charelston, but Savannah, Georgia. I gave it some thought, and I decided to scratch that idea because none of the results looked good and Jack agreed with that, and all I did was distort carpet. So I'm pulling a Radiohead and doing the (kinda but not that) greatest left turn in music history by completely redesigning the front cover.

Recently I've been listening to more New Order, and I saw the album cover for Music Complete. I also saw a playlist for highlights of Van Halen on Spotify, which had this really cool stripe design. Both of these fall under the neoplasticism movement, which is an art style that reduced the amount of visual elements to reach "pure" abstraction. I imagine that this style would stand out in a CD section.

With that, I made this in Canva. I then decided to expand that and included the star from the logo into the cover, as well as the song name + artist.

My brother actually gave me a really helpful tip! Have each color on their own layer, so the other colors look like "shadows". I implemented this by having black on top, white in the middle, and blue on the bottom.

I sent this and the back cover to Jack, and he approved both of these!

Editing! (Day 1)

I'm currently in a hotel room in Savannah, Georgia just resting. I'm feeling a bit bored, so it's time to edit! First things first, I need to fix some audio playback issues. Whatever you do, don't ever use Bluetooth earbuds to edit. Just learned that mistake...Oh, and I also forgot to convert the 2DS footage from AVI, a format that Davinci Resolve hates, to MP4, the best format. The next thing to do is to make a multicam sequence in Resolve. Thankfully, this video shows me how to do it. There's just one issue. Instead of giving me one multicam sequence, it gave me 7. Not what I wanted, but the more the merrier...! It's actually really useful with the clips where I simultaneously recorded with my phone and my 2DS. I'll show y'all...

Look! In one of sequences, I can switch from my phone camera to my 2DS one! I can also press 1 or 2, which selects which channel shows in the actual project timeline.

I used this to help make a cool intro. It starts with a fill from the drums, which fades into the intro of the song. Here's what it looks like. It gives a slight sense of nostalgia to the music video, which ties into the brand Jack has.

Back Cover for the Digipack

Today I asked Jack if he could send me any "aesthetic" photos. He sent me a couple, like:

But the one that caught my attention was this:

Sigma grindset face. Turns out, it was gonna be the album cover for another of his songs, but it was never released. So I can use it! I used the same font as my social media (to keep it consistent) and included track listing, producer and songwriting credits! 

I noticed that singles released today often have different versions (like a sped up or instrumental version), so I added an extended remix and a demo. 

About the costuming...

    Yea... so we had originally agreed on that type of costuming. I thought it looked good in practice. But in theory, it looks weird. It just felt inauthentic to Jack and his brand. So I just told him to wear something casual that he would wear to school. 

I think this came out well! Sure, it is simple, but it isn't supposed to be the most wacky costuming. The simplicity reminds me of the costuming Dayglow has.

Ignore that Dayglow is wearing a shirt, while Jack is wearing a hoodie. When it's simple, it can be worn in a lot of places.

Filming!

 Today I'll be filming at Jack's house! I brought over some gear including:

The forbidden tripod! Janky-ness returns again for A level! I didn't use it too much, as most of my shots were handheld and had camera motion.

For filming, I used my Google Pixel 8 phone as my camera. I've heard that Pixel phones have some of the best cameras in a phone, so I decided to use this. Plus, I don't have a DSLR camera or anything fancy, so this will do.

I also used a weird piece of tech for a camera: my old Nintendo 2DS. One of my friends was joking about how I should use it because it would be vintage. I thought that actually would work with this music video, as it can tie into the nostalgic brand that many indie musicians, like Dayglow have. And the change of camera quality should keep the viewer hooked. 

My laptop was also there, with it having the shotlist and being able to playback Flower. Playing it will allow Jack to perform in time with the song so it will be easy for me to sync in post production.

The actual process of filming went smoothly! It took around 2 hours to get all of the shots, and then some. Jack helped give me some other ideas of shots, including a shot of a flower being dropped on the floor. Subtilty isn't our forte, but guitars are! We took some blooper shots, like this. The bloopers can be posted on my social media page for promotion.

Final touches on the song!

    Jack sent me the individual track stems for Flower, and I wanted to mix it since I know (somewhat) how to mix/master songs. Also the original song is almost 5 minutes long, and I want this to be less than 3 minutes so I won't have to film as much. 

I started by making sure each individual track had a good feeling loudness. Like I didn't want the bass to be overpowering the drums. Next, I used an EQ (or equalizer) to cut out certain frequencies that were barely audible, but were taking up space in the sound, like the high frequency background noise in the bass. Here is what one EQ looks like for the lead vocal! I did both of those steps here, and a little dip with the blue point because it was overpowering a little bit. 

Next, I decided to pan the supporting vocals to the left and right so it makes the song "wider" and just sound a bit cooler. To make the song a bit shorter, I decided to remove the breaks, a chorus and a verse because those would take up a lot of runtime. With those removed stuff, I could use them as a vocal double in the background, adding more depth to the song. On all of the vocal tracks, I added a small amount of reverb to make it slightly wider sounding, and so the vocal doesn't stand out a lot. On the guitar, I added a chorus effect, which duplicates the sound and slightly makes it sound out of tune, and adding a small delay which makes it sound like there are 2 instruments instead of just the one guitar.

After all of those changes, here is what the final project looks like! Trust me, it looks a lot more simple than it seems.

Also y'all can get a sneak peak here of the song here!  I'll be posting short snippets on my social media account to tease it.

Costuming

 I believe costuming should be easy. Jack should be wearing a band/musician shirt, and jeans. Maybe he could wear a flannel because it somewhat screams "I AM A MUSICIAN!". Kind of. Here are some examples:

    Basically, Jack should dress like an average teen boy (ignore that the examples are of adult men). Nothing too crazy, but something that shows he's a musician. If I'm being honest, he already dresses like that to school, so he won't really need a costume. But I'll still tell him to wear a band shirt and jeans/casual pants.

Finished Shot List!

    I finished working on my shot list. This isn't fully exhaustive, as I may find some shot ideas from now to when I film (most likely over the weekend or on next week weekdays) to include.

Also, I watched some music videos in my free time, and I noticed that some shots cross dissolve, which I can incorporate it in my music video.

Print Component Research

I would like to take a look at some real life examples of digipak. I'll look at both a vinyl digipak and a CD one. I am not sure which format I will commit to.

Let's take a look at vinyl digipak for The Strokes "The New Abnormal". When the wrapping is removed, we are left with the album cover (from a Basquiat painting!). It's abstract, and I would like to create something like this for Jack.

The back cover is actually transparent, and would originally contain the tracklist, which was printed on the wrapping. Without it, the cover looks boring. The most interesting thing is that the barcode extends to the middle, and there is a cutout for the printing on the vinyl.

The inserts are very cool! There is a poster included, which includes the full art of Basquiat's Bird of Money painting. On the other side, there is a photo of the band members' silhouettes. I would like to include something like this, where there is an "extended" version of the album cover as a poster, and a photo of Jack on the back, or something symbolic from the song, like a flower.

One more thing...There is another insert that includes a code for a free digital download. This is becoming more popular in physical releases after 2015, so I will be including a digital download code. 

Let's take a look at a CD digipak for Radiohead's Kid A. The album cover is bold and glitchy, which encompasses the production of the album.

The back cover is almost a continuation of the front, with the same style. It includes the tracklist

The front cover is secretly a booklet! It contains artwork in the same glitchy style, and at the end has the credits.

In some copies of Kid A, it was released with a secret booklet hidden behind the CD! Shoutout to pookapeeka on YouTube for finding it and showcasing it off. It contains lyrics and random streams of consciousness that Thom Yorke felt like saying. Some of these would appear in later Radiohead albums, including lyrics from "I Will" off of "Hail To The Thief" released in 2003.

Shotlist+

 I've decided to create a shotlist instead of a storyboard because I'm not the best drawer, and I can better articulate my ideas in a shotlist. 

So far I'm not finished with the shotlist, here are some example shots. Planning a promotional music video shouldn't be very hard, so making more shots should be easy. Also the "+" is for me including pictures of how I want.

On some shots, you'll have to pull a John Lennon and "Imagine" it. This amp is around the same shape as a kick drum.

Starting the Social Media!

 For this post, I'm gonna start making the branding and layout for an Instagram profile for The Jack Project (that's the alias Jack wants). I'm doing Instagram because of Jack's target audience mainly being people of all genders aged between 16-21.

    I started by researching logos of other bands. The best logos often have an easily memorizable icon or text distorted to be unique. Since I'm not the best with photoshopping text (you'll see), I decided to make my logo have an interesting icon. I went onto Canva and looked around for interesting logo templates. A y2k style template got my attention.

I like this logo, but it's too complicated for The Jack Project. And the colors are too feminine, with a lot of pink and light yellow. My first changes included adding text that says "the" at the top of the star, and changing the colors to a mainly yellow theme, with some black text and white outlines, and blue being the accent color.

It looks nice! But it's still complicated, and I would like this to fit on a kick drum, like a lot of bands do, so I removed the highlight with the 4 pointed star on the right. I then made the big star a bit larger, and fitted the "project" text to be directly under the star.

I tried to experiment with the design, but I wasn't feeling this one. The star could be read as an O instead of A, so that would give this project a different...yea...

This is going to be my final logo for The Jack Project. It's playful, which reflects onto the aspect of Jack's brand that I would like to show. Also, below I made a black and white version to be on a kick drum, and for possible merch. Both of these designs are more circular shaped compared to the last ones, which makes it good for merch and being on a kick drum.

    I showed these designs to Jack, and he really likes them! He said "Oooh that's really fire" so I'm gonna commit to these.

    The next step is to use this to set up an account on Instagram. After I set it up, I'll follow other indie artists, like the Strokes, Beabadoobee, etc. I have some ideas for posts, like "quirky" posts that Jack already has posted, and some snippets of the song.

    Make sure to follow at instagram.com/thejackprojectofficial !

First Group Meeting

 Today in class, we had our first group meetings. I was grouped with Riley, Maria, Natalia, Rafael, and Cindy. We talked about our projects, and where we are in the process. I found out there were many people who were already deep in the planning portion, like making a shotlist and script. So I probably need to pick up the pace a little bit. 

I gave some good advice to the other group members. I named Maria's project "The Ballad of Bobby the Blob" after a Beatles song called "The Ballad of John and Yoko". The alliteration makes the title catchy and fun to say out loud. 

But I got a bit unlucky in my group, since no one else is doing the music promo project. But the other group members still gave me some important tips! Maria told me that I should include clips of the breakup from the song happening spliced into the performance music video, as it will keep the audience's attention. I noticed that instead of drawing out a storyboard, which can miss out on certain items in frame, Riley used a detailed shotlist that includes the mise-en-scène elements. I will be using this, because I can write better than I can draw. For the print component, Natalie told me that I should use the design of the digipak to inspire some shots in the music video, since that will be done before the music video is finished.

Group selfie! It counts as incorporating multimedia, right?

More Conventions of Music Videos

 I feel like I need some more inspiration for certain shots and techniques for my music video. Here, I'm gonna focus on budget music videos, because I want to be realistic.

I'm gonna be analyzing Black Sabbath's Paranoid live music video from Top Of The Pops. Even though it's live, it uses a lot of techniques that I could use in my music video. The intro shot is interesting to me, as it's a closeup of the guitarists, and zooms out to show the drummer. A lot of shots have movement, as to keep the attention of the viewer. There are many shots that start out wide, and then zoom to focus on the bassist's or guitarist's hand that plucks the string. Shots also start zoomed into one band member's face, and slowly zooms out to show the rest of the band. There's a really cool clip where the camera switches from a zoomed in shot of the guitar to the bass and back really fast during the intermission that I want to incorporate.

In that really cool clip, the camera switches from the bassist to the guitarist on every 16th note, around 8 times per second. I will do this by having one continuous shot of the guitar, and then one continuous shot of another instrument, and switch to it every 16th or 8th note.

    Next, I'll be analyzing The XX's Crystalized music video. It's interesting how much a director can do with a projector. The camera shifts focus to different band members to keep the viewers attention. The projector changes the "overlay" on the members, who are all on the same wall. When the chorus happens, the overlay becomes more intense, and its pattern starts to change to match the chorus's energy. The visuals can get a little bit psychedelic, with one being a flower. In the breakdown, the overlay darkens, and allows for focus on the singers. When both singers are singing, the camera does a close up on each of their faces, which shows the dynamic between them.

The director uses extreme closeups on one singer's face to emphasize key lyrics and movement into the chorus.

Ideas based off the music

 Today, Jack sent me an unfinished version of his song to me. It's very cool, and I want to incorporate some ideas into the narrative of my music video. 

The song has an upbeat, and playful mood. I'm gonna play into this with having some playful elements, like that motion extraction effect. The flower is constantly mentioned in the song, so I could have some flowers featured. But I don't want to make it too clear. There is an acoustic outro, so I want to remove all fancy effects in that section. Maybe I'll add a slow frame rate effect (which I talked about last year but didn't implement), which matches Jack's lyrics being melancholic. I'll have to discuss this more with Jack so we can brainstorm more ideas, or how we can build on my ideas. He probably has a better narrative of the song compared to me, so we can work on making the best ones possible.