Album cover photography

A few weeks back whilst shooting the narrative for the music video we found an old TV outside in a back lane, we then went to the front door and asked if we could have it, the man said yes so then we took it back to Tilda's house where it has been sitting for weeks waiting to be smashed up.

The idea is that the album has a theme of loss of signal/ telecommunication error of which we will name our album 'Antennae' this gives it the retro old school indie theme that is conventional but allows us to be very creative and arty as well.

Today we wanted photos of the TV screen smashed through and and for it to be lying in a back lane, we thought this would be a good idea because it is rebellious and eccentric just like indie rock fans want to see. The screen smashing to allot of effort to get it to crack in the way we imagined but we are pleased with the results.

Tilda smashing the TV with a hammer

Photographing the TV

Tea Break!

We imagined the cover to be a close up shot of the smashed screen with little background boarding the image, we took various other shot types too just in case for whatever reason we change our minds later on. We took a wide shot with blank wall space on the left and/or right sides for example if we decided to use it for the back cover where the list of song titles go. We also took some photos with a Doc marten as if it's kicking the screen inspired by the hand smashing egg idea on the Yeah Yeah Yeah's cover for 'It's a Blitz'

Colour Bars

Today we begun to make the coloured signal bars that we will use as a filter over the band image for the inside cover of the digipak. First we tried out microsoft publisher but this proved difficult and not efficient for what we wanted, also when we wanted to transfer it into photoshop this proved difficult as it didn't recognize the file type. We then tried on Adobe InDesign which proved allot more efficient since we all knew how to use it from year 12 work. To align the boxes evenly we used the guides quite allot for the boxes to snap themselves into place, also this program was good because it gives you signal to tell you when you are drawing a box of an even width as the other.

Once we had our filter we opened it into photoshop and placed it on a higher layer to the band photo we'd previously edited, we changed the opacity to 60% for the right effect to produce the image bellow.

Creating the coloured bars on InDesign

To create the coloured signal bars to use as a filter over a band image I made these on Adobe InDesign. Firstly I opened up the program and went new document>paper size: A4>Ok

Next I clicked the rectangle frame tool at the left side toolbar...

...and drew my first rectangle frame onto the page, I copied and pasted this a few times to get the right amount I needed using the black selection tool to select boxes and move them around.

To line my boxes up equally I moved one of the  boxes slightly closer to the one I wanted to align it with and waited for the arrows to appear at either end to tell me they are equal. I also used guide lines by dragging down/across from the rulers.

Next to change each bar to the correct colour I clicked on the Fill tool to select my colour then the apply colour tool afterwards to use it.

Once I finished the colour bar effect I saved it as an Indesign file because that way the background would remain transparent as this file type is supported in Photoshop where I will be superimposing it over my band image.

Band Image Photoshopping

Today we photoshopped an image that will appear on the inside left cover of the digipak with a colour signal bar filter over the top afterwards. First we got rid of the bands spots by using the clone and airbrush tools close up on their skin, we then used the healing tool to smooth the gradient screen in the background. We were originally going to completely cut the band out but we decided against it because the shadows would have disappeared and the image would look very fake and flat. We then changed the brightness and contrast to get the boldest effect we could so it would definitely stand out against the bright filter we will pout on top. Bellow is the finished image ready for the filter:

Deluxe Edition editing

In order to make it obvious to our target audience that they are obviously buying a deluxe edition digipak I looked at Lana Del Rey's Born to Die albums to see the contrast and what I should include on ours.

Lana Del Rey- Born to Die: Paradise Edition vs. Original

Here the deluxe font is a metallic gold and the background much more rich looking as the original is a plain blue sky. Also a different image of the indie singer is used but in the same pose so there is a direct link between the two versions. 'The Paradise Edition' font is cursive and clearly stands out from the text on the cover.

On our own album we have decided to make all the deluxe features a lime green so it will stand out over the other text. We will also use an obscure image of the lead singer that would most likely not be used on the original released album it would most likely be of the full band but here analyzing these two albums it is clearly conventional.

More images from the shoot (unedited)

 

 



    

Final Band Shoot

Today we planned to re-shoot the full band as everyone was now informed on the costume decisions for the whole band image. We had a lesson just before lunch so us 4 set up the studio once more but this time with different lights. It had been suggested that for the dramatic slow lit image we wanted to achieve that we should use a specially positioned backlight. We also had the opportunity to use the better photography lights with the light diffuser panels to give a smoother look. We positioned the backlight (1) on the back left next to the screen and the light with a diffuser panel (2) in the top left corner of the area. We placed the tripod (3) with the camera in the front center of out set up and we took turns to hold the reflector (4) to the right of our band.

 

We used the reflector to bounce the light onto Tom's face because we positioned the band in a triangular stance with Tilda in the middle Tom was in darkness because of the lighting only coming from one side and this piece of equipment was a way around this.

Tom and the reflector

Backlight

Difuser panel

     

Bev being a happy photographer!