My team and I have produced a selection on images to be used as our music video’s ancillary texts. Our ancillary texts include an album cover and a promotional poster. These images were created from our own creativity which was inspired by real media texts such as music videos and album covers.
We formatted each section of our album cover by using a consistent house style which consisted of the same font style and colour scheme.
We took images using Michael’s laptop as well as his iPhone5 and then edited the images on the photo editing software: Pixlr.
Front cover
My group and I had thoroughly planned the design of our digipack’s front cover since it is the most important section of the album cover. This will be the first thing that audience will see if this product is advertised to them. The front cover of our digipack includes a close up of our protagonist’s face. We edited the face so that it would be vertically divided into two halves. The right side of the protagonist’s face is depicted in clown makeup whereas the right side of the face is made from a collage of medication pills.
This section of the digipack was inspired by two album covers which my team and I had researched in our product’s planning stage. The first album cover that we researched was the 2009 album Relapse which is Eminem’s sixth’s studio album.
We primarily gained inspiration from this album cover since we were using the song ‘Beautiful’ which is featured on this album.
Relapse’s font cover depicts a close up of Eminem’s face which is made from a collage of pre prescription pills. This design was used to signify the name of the album’s title: Relapse. The term ‘Relapse’ means for an individual to regress back into an illness which they had previously recovered from.
This album was influence by the period of Eminem’s life when he relapsed back into his previous drug addiction during the mid 2000’s.
We developed this convention by depicting the left half of the protagonist’s face. This was to connote that our protagonist has a mental illness (Bipolar) and is required to take medication for it.
The other half of our protagonist’s face is illustrated in clown makeup. The significance of this design is that it relates to a lyric in song “Marshall you’re so funny man, you should be a comedian, Goddamn, Unfortunately I am, I just hide behind the tears of a clown”. The protagonist will be presented with clown face when he says this lyric.
We gained inspiration for this side of the face from a poster of the Dark Knight which features and image of the Joker who is a character who wears clown makeup throughout the film.
The two sides of this protagonist’s face show that there are two sides to the protagonist which further signifies this character’s bipolar illness.
We also changed the colour to black and white to connote the depressing mood of our music video.
In addition we included the title Relapse which is formatted in Eminem’s trademark style in which the ‘E’ on end of this word is rotated backwards. We also included a parental guidance sticker on this front cover to emphasize that this album contains explicit content.
I feel that we had selected an appropriate selection of real media texts which contained conventions that were ideal to use for our product. I was very pleased with the outcome of our front cover.
Interior sections
This section of our digi pack is used in the album covers interior. These images depict two images of the protagonist as they face each other. One of the faces had an angry expression while the other face has a sad expression. This creates the impression that one of the faces has upset the other.
The concept of having two images facing each other is that it connotes how this character has a split personality. In addition these characters are expressing negative expressions to each other as they are face to face. This connotes how this character suffers from inner conflict since these characters appears as though they are enemies.
This section also represents this character’s mental illness. The protagonist of our music video suffers from bipolar which causes a person to feel intense anger as well then severe sadness. We emphasized how this character has bipolar by depicting him from two separate entities as they both display the emotions associated with bipolar.
Track listing section
This refers to the back page of the album cover. The purpose of this section is to display the list of tracks which is included on the album. We used a white font style for the text and edited the background of this section to be black. We selected this house style was so that the list of tracks would be readable against the background.
The centre of the section includes an image our video’s protagonist as he sits on a table while surrounded by a group of people. The people around the protagonist are blurred out while the protagonist is in clear focus.
This use of editing is used to signify that this character is the main focus of our music video. In additional it also represents how the protagonist perceives everyone around him.
Due to this character’s mental illness, he has become deeply depressed with his life and ignores everyone around him. His bipolar has made him become very antisocial and reluctant to communicate with anyone around him.
The background consists of people being blurred out of focus which connotes how the protagonist is not focusing on anyone around him.
