Digipak

Features-

Digipaks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipaks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that holds the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD. The plastic part is simply attached to the paper background.

Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. Since Digipaks were among the first alternatives to jewel cases to be used by major record companies, and because there is no other common name for Digipak-style packaging made by other companies, the term digipak or Digi-Pak is often used generically, even when the media holder is a hub or "Soft Spot" rather than a full plastic tray.

Bands and labels like to use them for aesthetic reasons. The three section digipack sleeves opens up more design options because there is more room. However, they're more expensive than traditional liner notes and jewel cases. Digipaks can also be more environmentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper and much less plastic is used. They aren't however always made in this way.

History-

IMPAC Group, Inc. originally owned the Digipak trademark. That company was acquired by MeadWestvaco (MWV) in 2000 and folded into its AGI Media division. Following this acquisition, the Digipak name and designs were licensed to manufacturers around the world. As the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic "digipack" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

In Monday's lesson me and Beste planned to meet up on Thursday during our free period to work on our stop animation, which we want to use for the introduction of our music video. We made a check-list of all the props and equipment we needed so that we would be organised for shooting. We managed to produce a really sweet layout for the animation we worked on, as we had the idea of using our different locations as the theme for each animation. For example the one we worked of consisted of balloons and shells, with blue material around the outside as the sea, as one of our locations is at the seaside. Our stop animation consisited of the balloons floating around in the middle and the shells twirling around the edges. We uploaded the photos onto imovie in yesturdays lesson and noticed that because we didn't use a tripod to hold the camera still, the pictures were quite jerky when we put them together. We also noticed that we will have to make each movement of the object bigger so that it looks more like they are moving. We've decided that we want to re do this as we feel it will work much better now that we've had a practice, and I have also come up with a few more ideas which I will share with beste on Monday!

Here are some pictures of our storyboard which we have finally managed to complete..

 

Etc etc...

Last year we didn't spend as much time creating a story board, we just wrote a list rather than writing in details such as the location. Obviously this year it was even more important to create a detailed storyboard, breaking it up shot by shot, as we have to make sure everything fits in time with the lyrics.

Last night I watched a film called Easy A, and Aly Michalka, one of the singers from our music video, happened to star in it. I was really shocked to see her as an actress as i only ever knew her as a singer. I thought it was a really good film, it had a lot of famous people in it including Lisa Kudrow (pheobe from Friends) Amanda Bynes, Emma Stone etc.

Here is a trailer from the film..



Here is a scene with Aly Michalka..



It had some really humorous moments throughout the film, which added to the chick flick comedy genre..here is a short clip from YouTube

Stuart Hall's Theory (Research)

Stuart Hall (born 3 February 1932, Kingston, Jamaica, then a British colony) is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall's work covers issues of hegemony and cultural studies, taking a post-Gramscian stance. He regards language-use as operating within a framework of power, institutions and politics/economics. This view presents people as producers and consumers of culture at the same time. (Hegemony, in Gramscian theory, refers to the cultural production of 'consent' as opposed to 'coercion'.)

For Hall, culture is not something to simply appreciate or study, but a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled."

Hall has become one of the main proponents of reception theory, and developed Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on part of the audience. This means that the audience does not simply passively accept a text — social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.

His works — such as studies showing the link between racial prejudice and media — have a reputation as influential, and serve as important foundational texts for contemporary cultural studies.

Hall has also widely discussed notions of cultural identity, race and ethnicity, particularly in the creation of the politics of Black diasporic identities. Hall believes identity to be affected by history and culture, rather than a finished product, he sees it as ongoing production.

Here are some pictures I took on our Journey to Richmix, archiving the trip.

On the train on our way to Liverpool street..

Arriving at Liverpool street..

Things we saw as we walked through London..

Here is a very typical London building, covered in modern art and graffiti, this would be an interesting location if we decided that we wanted to shoot some footage up London.

 Nearly there..

 Finally we arrived at the building and were each given a timetable of our day at Richmix..

Here we are entering the theatre where the presentations took place..

Richmix Education

Today we went on a media trip to Richmix in Bethnal Green. Here we were met by music producers and directors who showed us their work and gave us advice on how to make music videos. Me and Beste found this a great inspiration seeing their work and hearing about how they were made, giving us tips and ideas for when we make our own music video.

Our day consisted of many speech's starting with a morning session with Pete Fraser who is the chief examiner of OCR media studies. He gave us a presentation giving us tips on how to make a successful music video. He showed us a range of examples showing the use of voyeurism and the male gaze.We found that these codes and conventions are nearly almost always used in music videos.

Here are some of the examples we were shown:

At 0:20 we are shown the use of voyeurism where we see a frame within a frame (on the scopitone) of the artist looking back at himself. Then at 1:14 we are shown an example of the male gaze and how it has been used. We are shown this with the use of a downwards panning shot of the lady and her bare legs.

This particular video of 50 Cent's - Candy Shop is another example we were shown which uses a lot of male gaze throughout. This is presented with the use of revealing clothing, sexual innuendos such as the whip and the bath (two females pouring chocolate over themselves).

Voyeurism is also used very much in the music video for example, at 2.55 when the photo frame on the wall shows the female artist singing, again this is a frame within a frame.

At 0.36 voyeurism is used where we are shown the artist Jay-Z through the station screen. We also really like this music video as it is very snappy, various different camera angles have been used which are very effective for example, panning shots, point of view shots, zooming in and out, close up shots etc.

In the afternoon we were shown clips by Liz Kessler who works in the industry and produces music videos, followed by Corin Hardy who works as a music video director. I found it really fascinating hearing about how they managed to produce some of their work on such low budgets. 

Here is one of Corin Hardy's music videos. I love how we can focus on the emotion of the song rather than being distracted by tons of other things going on. Its a very symbolic music video, at one point we are shown dead birds lying on their chests, which could be symbolism of feeling trapped 'No Rest', as freedom and hope are connotations of a bird. However the bird in the video is death, so it could be symbolising that freedom and hope is gone. Also one of these birds was a black crow which has connotations of death.