Advert Process

Advert

I narrowed my images down to this one for my advert because I feel like it represents the artists and their song well.

Firstly, I used the paint bucket tool to fill the canvas background in black. After this, I used the magic wand, eraser, background eraser and burn tool to remove the background from my focal image and refine the edges.

Next, I used the line tool to create gutters, allowing me to line everything up neatly.

Following this, I dragged over the artist's names and song title from my album front cover, to keep the synergy and continuity. I replaced the stroke texture in the artists' name with a chiseled stroke and some contour as this looked better. I also added a brightness and contrast layer as well as a small image of the album cover to build a strong sense of brand identity. It took quite a bit of experimental rearranging before I was happy with the positions of the texts.

At this point, I used a small brush with a very light opacity to brighten up my actress' hair and eyes, as well as combining it with the eyedropper tool to remove blemishes on both of my actors. I prefer combining the eyedropper tool with the brush and putting them on a low opacity over the spot healing tool, as I find it gives better coverage.

Soon after, I added the 'available now' text to make it clear to the audience that they could go out and buy the CD right now. I used bevel and emboss combined with contour to give the text texture, so as not to look like it was just dumped on the page. Similarly, I added in a positive quote from a well-known jazz magazine to raise audience expectations and bring up the overall standards of the CD to consumers. I used the same font and colour that was used for the song title, with an extra two drop shadows to give the text more dimension.

Finally, I added in the conventional features such as a website URL and the record company logo in the corners. I decided to put the URL in black, as white would have blended in with my actor's shirt, and another red text would have been too much red. I added bevel and emboss and contour to the URL in order to give it texture for an added sense of professionalism. The very last step I did was remove the gutters, as they were no longer needed.

Album Inside Process

Left Insert

I chose the image of my actors drinking wine to go on the left insert as it is cheeky and fun, and makes the consumer feel privileged and cared for.

I used the magic wand to remove the background, then used the background eraser and burn tool to blend the edges, especially the hair, into a plain black background. I created the background by using the paint bucket tool to turn the whole background black in one click.

I wanted to keep my inserts quite simple, as it is unconventional to overly edit CD inserts. However, with just an image on a plain background, it looked a bit too plain. After gaining some audience feedback from my teacher, I decided to include a quotation from the song on the image. I chose this particular quote because I feel like it represented the message behind the song well with an added sense of humour.

Right Insert

I decided to use a screenshot from the music video for my right insert, as it was only going to be covered by the disk so there was no point using an intense, purpose-built shot. I really like this shot as it has jazz elements such as the microphone and piano, and it also shows my protagonists dancing which represents their warmth and friendship, which is appealing to a jazz audience.

CD Design

Similar to the spine, I wanted to keep my CD plain as it is unconventional to have a fancy CD design.

I began by dragging over the artist's names over from my album cover, to ensure continuity and synergy. I then skewed and warped the text to give it curvature to match the round shape of a disk.

Similarly, I dragged over the song title, again to ensure continuity and synergy.

Album Cover and Back Process

Front Cover

The first thing I did for my front cover was choose which image I was going to use as a focal image. I did this by narrowing down the best shots, which can be seen in a Cincopa embedded on my blog in a previous post.

This is the image that I chose for my front cover as I feel it has the 'star quality' that is required for an album cover.

I placed this image on to my album template on Photoshop and used the magic wand to remove the background. I then used the background eraser tool to go around my actor's hair, followed by the burn tool to darken and blend the edges as much as possible.

Next, I took a screenshot from my music video where my actors were just about out of the spotlight, so that I could take the piano and set from the stage. I placed this behind my focal image, however this didn't fill all the space in the frame, so I duplicated the image of the piano and vertically flipped it, placing it directly below the original image - this worked perfectly to fill the space in the bottom of the page.

The next thing I did was get a very small eraser and changed the opacity and hardness to be very light. I used this to blend the edges of my focal image even further.

I then used the rectangle tool to create a shape around my actress' arm, made a new layer via copy, put it over her original arm and skewed and duplicated it to look natural. The reason behind this was because somewhere during the editing process, I accidentally ruined her arm without realising.





The eyedropper tool was very useful alongside the brush on a light opacity to remove spots/blemishes, tidy up eyebrows, smooth over the skin complexions and brighten up eyes.

I then wrote the artist's name using the font Bernard MT Condensed with added bevel, emboss and stroke, switching it to white as this is what was conventional of other jazz albums that I had looked at. As well as this, I wrote out the song title using the font Title Rage Italic with a double drop shadow, using the eyedropper tool on my actress' lipstick in order to match up the red perfectly. The added textures were crucial in making my album look more professional, and not like I just placed any font there carelessly.

Back cover

I began my back cover the same way I began my front cover - I chose an image, and then used the magic wand, background eraser and burn tool to blend the image into the background. I chose to stick with a plain black background as this is conventional of the genre.

I then dragged over the title and artist's names over from my front cover, to ensure that they matched perfectly.

Finally, I added in the conventional features of an album back, such as a barcode, record company logo, credits and copyright info.

Spine

I decided to keep my spine plain and simple, as this is typical of any CD package. I chose to only integrate the song title and record company logo to again, follow conventions of any CD package.

Best Shots From Photoshoot

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Photoshoot Call Sheet

Lighting Test Shots for Shoot

Due to time limitations with my actors which won't allow me to shoot in the studio, I decided to test out how some artificial lighting and a projection screen come out on camera in my house. My brother was the model and my dad was on lights.

The Set

 

Mini Screen

White Artificial Light Only 

Room Light

Brown Artificial Light

No Screen, Artificial Light