Ancillary Task- Magazine Advert Analysis

Ancillary Task- Choosing our magazine institution

For our music video to marketed I created a magazine advert advertising the album that was created. For to be publicised we need to choose a magazine institution to place our advert. I have looked through a variety of different music magazines to pin point the specific audience demographics and target market. 

After thoroughly analysing almost all music magazines I have to the decision that ‘Revolver’ will be the most suitable magazine to follow the procedures of marketing our product. By using ‘Revolver’ we are targeting an audience of 14 to 18 year olds that enjoy rock music. This is the type of magazine that people buy when they are heavily interested in a certain type of music, in tis case it is hard rock and heavy metal. On a regular basis the magazine will include bands like ‘Nirvana’ which fall under the genre of grunge, like the Butthole Surfers. 

As the magazine is already aimed at the audience we have focused our media product towards we would be able to reach our intended audience very easily. It almost guaranteed that it will be viewed by rock music fans. Having this as an advantage will  benefit our product and will hopefully increase the sales of the record. In todays society it will most probably be downloaded illegally from the internet but the advert would have still worked. It would have created awareness about the band and even persuade some people to go see the band play live. This is where the money will be made, from ticket sales and merchandise. 

Before settling my decision on ‘Revolver’ I contemplated many other magazines. First I used the process of elimination to minimise the possible choices of magazines. These were: Kerrang, because they do not publish adverts for albums. Classic Rock, Mojo and Rolling Stone were all turned down because the target age of the magazine was to old. Although they feature a wide range of genres we need to use a magazine which is aimed towards a younger generation you will be most likely into the Grunge rock scene. I also thought of ‘Q’ and ‘NME’ but they focus on the wrong genre of music. Both of the magazines used to be based on a heavy rock genre but have gone very mainstream to indie rock and pop music which most rock fans do not like. 

Ancillary Task - Why do advertisers use magazines as a form of advertising?

Advertisers use magazines as a form of advertising for a variety of reasons: enhancing a products awareness, targeting a specific audience, using pictures to establish a mood, grab the readers attention and many more. 

Firstly an advantage that advertisers have when using magazines us that they can specifically aim the advert a a target group, a group of people who would be interested in the product. Using pictorial influences they can then grab there attention. This will then lead to the reader, who has been is typically targeted, now focused and engaged with the product being advertised. In the case of advertising a music, advertisers have the ability to pin point there exact audience. This would normally be assed by researchers seeing that a certain type of people read what magazine. An advantage with an advert for a music album is that it is easier to choose an institution for your advert. For example, if you were to publish an advert for a ‘Scouting for girls’ album then the advertiser would use NME magazine as they specialise in indie music. Where as if an advertiser was to advertise a Slipknot album it would be appropriate to advertise it in Metal Hammer magazine as they specialse in heavy metal. 

Advertisers also use magazines to advertise because they have a lot more freedom with pictorial marketing. As the advertisers have already selected the magazine they wish to use they may possibly have a target market. For example if you were to advertise in the ‘Metal Hammer’ magazine you would be able to use harsh, violent images to capture the attention of Heavy metal fans. This would be possible as the target market for the magazine is 16 years and on wards so the chances of a child seeing it is very thin. 

Although a specific audience can be targeted magazine averts are very costly. It costs more to advertise in a magazine than it does a news paper. The advert will be much bigger and will require more colour, which can also be seen as a benefit. On the terms of colour, advertisers can use special printing effects like UV glossing, embossing and laminating. This makes the advert more appealing and resembles quality within the product which most customers would seek to buy. In the case of a CD then the customers are seeking quality within music, in other words an album that they are going to like listening to. 

In conclusion magazine adverts are a very precise form of advertising as the reader demographics can be targeted almost perfectly. With Products like albums advertisers have a wide variety genres of music within different magazines, for example, Heavy Metal you would choose ‘Metal Hammer’. For Classic rock you would choose ‘Mojo’, ‘Rolling Stone’ or ‘Classic Rock’. If you were to advertise a new band which are considered to be ‘cool’ by teenagers you would focus on magazines like ‘Kerrang’ with a lower target market age. 

Ancillary Task - Album Covers

Ancillary Task - Final Complete Digipak Design

Ancillary Task - Second Initial Album Cover Design

Ancillary Task - First Album Cover Design

Ancillary Task - First Initial Album Cover

Ancillary Task - Initial idea album cover

Ancillary Task - Digipak Analysis

Front Cover

Inside Panels

Overlapping inside Panel/ Front and Back Panel

I am analysing a digipak of the band ‘Down’s’ album ‘Over The Under’. They are a well-established heavy metal band. Firstly the cover of the digipak if very simple. It features the bands logo in the centre top of the front panel. This is an exceptional place to put a logo as it is easily noticed when placed on shop shelves. There are only 2 colours used within the whole digipak. (excluding the booklet) The colours used are a faded black and a creamy white. These colours have been used to make it look like it is a vintage/classic album giving an old effect. Using these two colours also creates a huge contrast to other albums on the shop shelf. It also shows the bands personality and style of music. It explains to the customer what the music will be like on the album. My first impressions of the CD album cover tells me that it was going to be a very ‘heavy’ album with lots of shouting and extreme guitar solos.

The picture on the front cover is a lion eating a sun with three small stars. This implies many connations’s and gives a reason to why the bands have chosen to use this image. Firstly it shows how there music is almighty and powerful with a hard hitting heavy sound. The logo stays the same through out the whole album, and the bands whole career which has helped them in marketing. The Logo has become an established icon for the band which heavy metal fans will recognise. other than this the album cover is very simplistic. This is to foreshadow that the band are not aiming to become ‘rich’ or extremely famous. They are in the business for making music and want people to enjoy there music opposed to artists like Rhiana or 50 Cent who aim to achieve wealth and fame then most probably boast about it in there music.

On the inside of the digipak there are 3 panels. The first one hold the booklet in place. There is not much design here. From experience of using this product the booklet holder s not very user friendly. It just about s hold the booklet but if the digipak is to be rotated slightly the booklet almost always falls out.

The second panel names the songs which are on the CD. It is very unusual and i have never seen it before. There is an Eye in a spiky shape which is being covered by a cloud, with arms/tentacles coming down with the name of the song. Using an abstract image indicates and tells what the music will be like on the album before they have listened to it. When i first look at it i think, ‘wow, i don’t have a clue what it is suppose to be, but its cool’. This then made me think, i may not understand the lyrics in some of the songs, or what the lyrics mean but it may still be good to listen to.
The third panel is the jewel casing to hold the CD. Some digipaks have a sleeve to put the cd into and others using the plastic jewel case. The plastic jewel case protects the CD more and is more reliable in order of keeping the CD in the digipak during transportation.

On the back there is an image of the band. The image has been edited to make it look like the photo as taken under a black and white filter. The colours blend well together and parts of the image have been smudged in order to get the audience looking directly at the band. Phil Anselmo, the lead singer is in the middle of the picture. The photographer has chose to put him there as he is the bands song writer. He could also be an inspiration to other people in bands or interested in the music and more famous than the other band members.

The back cover, in the same style as the front cover has an image of Phil Anselmo’s face smoking. The font used for the song names os the same font used for the logo and title of the album on the front cover. On the bottom right corner there is a bar code. All albums have one in order to be scanned when being sold. Above that s the logo of the record company that published the album. Along with that are the copy right trademarks and where fans can ind out more information about the band like FaceBook and Myspace.

Ancillary Task - Introduction to Digipaks

Digipaks are a form of CD packaging. Being made from card opposed to plastic digipaks can widely advertise an artist and have more space to design album covers on. They age been established widely through out the digital revolution in order to boost record sales by identifying a unique selling point to the customer on the album cover. Digipacks were a licensed product owned by an American packaging company ‘MeadWestvaco’ in 2000. They sold there designs and trademark to manufactures worldwide.

There are many different ways a digipak can be layed out. Some digipaks may only hold 1 CD whilst others, usually` greatest hits albums, hold up to 3 CD’s` within one case. This is created by a series of folds and a long strip of card.

Here we have examples of The Beatles remastered album ‘Sgt Peppers lonely heart club band’ which has 3 panels for one CD. Lots of design work is able to be established through the space provided by the digipak.

Front panel

In the middle is the back cover, left inside picture and the front cover on the right

This is the inside design

Putting a CD in

This is another form of digipak. much smaller and more t the point. It if the album ‘Free Man’ by Burning Spear. It only has 2 panels and as you can see not much design work inside. Unlike most other digipaks it has a stapled in booklet which contains lyrics and photo’s f the band.

Front and Back Cover

Back cover

Inside booklet and CD jewel Case

Inside booklet and CD jewel case

Here I am showing you an Elvis Presley album, ‘The Essential Elvis Presley’. This is a 4 panel digipak which allows huge amounts of design to be established. This is usually used when packages have more than 1 CD. As it is shown their is room for up to 4 CD's. This digipak in particular has 3 CD’s and a booklet which all slide out of sleeves to allow maximum room for photos.

On the left is the Front cover, on the right is pat of the inside panel

Inside panels containing the CD's in Sleeves

CD Sleeves

Back Panels, the 2 middle panels are the front and back cover

Digipak’s are most commonly covered in UV Gloss which gives a shiny effect to it. Doing this creates a sense of professionalism and makes the customer feel as if it is a quality product worth buying. Different printing methods can be used on digipaks as they are made from card, which is ver flexible in terms of manufacture. Digipaks can also feature embossed fonts which look and feel as if they are 3D. they may also have shiny materials printed on them to establish an artists genre or music style.

Digipaks are also eco friendly and can be made from recycled card, or can be recycled. Unlike regular plastic CD packaging they will not produce harmful gasses once their lifespan is over and they are being thrown away.

We going to use a digipak when distributing the CD to our band as we will be able to create Unique selling points from photos of h e band and relevant pictures that fans would be interested in. As we are Using a digipak we can also use more than one CD which allows us to have more songs. From personal experience i have always wanted to purchase a CD with more songs on t rather than an album with only a few songs.

-Bradley Hart

Final Product

I have uploaded our final product twice because the video above was uploaded to 'vimeo'. It is a higher quality than the blogger video player but having never used the site before i wanted to upload the video straight to blogger as a back up. 

4th day of filming

On the 4th planned day of filming we wanted to complete a film the footage at both the train station and the car park. One issue that came about before we set off to film was which car park we was going to film at, me and Brad discussed the idea that we wanted it close and large enough for the shots that we wanted. From discussing our ideas as a team we thought the best place to film would be the car park in Brentwood behind the high street. We thought this was a good choice as it was big enough and was always busy.

When arriving at the car park around 11pm we noticed that it was very busy with nearly all spaces taken up. This was exactly what we was looking for as it created a better effect and it meant that our main character could run in and out of the cars creating the sense of panic.

We managed to produce some good shots throughout the hour we was there. We followed the storyboard creating the shots we needed. Apart from that we decided to get a few different shots from different angle's then we presumed because the layout of this car park was a little different and also the amount cars meant that we could get better less reviling shots of the character. One problem we did notice is that because the car park was so busy we had to wait a few minutes between shots for cars to drive past. This made the shooting in the car park longer then we had originally planned it to be.

After shooting in the car park we decided to get some food then go straight to Brentwood train station to film. After asking permission from the council if we could film at the station we started filming straight away. We decided to get both shots of our main character running off the train and down the platform to the exit and running up the platform and getting on the train. This allowed us to decide whether we wanted to have this after or before the car park scene.

Overall the day went well and me and Brad managed to get around 30-40 seconds worth of footage once we had edited it back in the editing suite.

3rd day of filming

The third day of filming was a great success. During our media lesson and free periods we decided to film the ending for our music video which was located at a church in Basildon. As we drove past the church to park up we noticed that the church was a great location for the video as it was located near the top of a hill which made the mise en scene perfect for the mood we was trying to create. Once we parked up and set off to the church we noticed that there was still some ice left over from the previous week where it had been snowing. This created a problem for us as we had to make the shoots fit so that we do not film any snow. This meant that we could keep the same sort of weather conditions as before so that it works well in the film.

When we arrived at the church we set up our equipment and looked at the storyboard for the ideas of which shots to film. The first shot consisted of the main character running up the hill towards the church. For us to have plenty to choose from back in the editing suite we decided that we would get a variety of each shot, this took more time but as an end result it meant that we could choose the best shot for the film, even if it doesn’t exactly match with the storyboard.

Throughout the few hours that we filmed for we noticed that the weather conditions changed slightly. This would have created a problem but we decided to do a lot of the end shots differently. In the terms of differently, this means that we shot a lot of the shots where we did not show much of the sky.

The shots came well together throughout the day and the angles that we managed to film from were better than we expected. The consistent shots of the graves and the quick shots that we filmed means that we will be able to edit to the highest standard if all goes to plan.

Overall our group thought that the day was successful as we originally did not mean to plan to film on this day as the actor in our film was meant to be busy, this enabled us to be ahead of schedule and complete the ending of our film.