Christina Aguilera 'Bionic' Digipak Example- Hayley Donovan

When i was asked 'what is a Digipak?' i honestly did not have a clue. However after thorough research i realised that i come in contact with Digipaks everyday of my life. A Digipak is a cheaper and easier way to produce an album cover , it consists of six panels, rather than just four.

During my research and the link to conventions of a digipack, i found an excellent example of how a digipak should be presented. This was 'Bionic' by Christina Aguilera.

This example, shows the conventions of a typical Digipak , because firstly they state the Artists name and the name of the album. Which is vital as the audience need an indication of whom the artist of the album is. Also the album cover has a 'Parental Advisory' tag this is important as it indicates that it is not suitable for young children; contains explicit language.


This type of imagery on the front of a Digipak is crucial , as it draws in audience interaction, and has a captivating style, that is hard not to look at!

 (Front cover of the Digipak)

These images have a great deal of emphasis on the artist , they are  dynamic, the colour is exaggerated to make it more prominent, and it plays a huge part in relating Christina Aguilera to her music.





(Inside of Digipack)

On the inside of the digipack , this is typically what you would see , pictures of artist or band and the actually CD. However this Digipak contains a personal message from Christina which adds a personal touch. Another convention of a digipak is to include the names of produces and artistic directors , which is shown on the far right panel of the 'Bionic' album.

(Inside of Digipak)

This image shows the back cover of the digipak. This includes all the songs included on the album , the ones that are exclusive are highlighted red , which is a clear indication to the audience. This also includes a bar code and the record label who has ownership of Christina Aguilera herself and her songs ' Sony Music'. And to add visual effects they have included vibrant pictures to again captivate the audience.

(Back of Digipak)

Being creative-Jessica Hung Han Yun

We learnt that producing a music video you need a lot of creativity to be able to get though the process, this is because before its even made you need to be able to visualize in your head how it will look. To start off with we started to research into the music and we had to start to deconstruct the lyrics part by part, this we had to be creative because during this process this is where it started to begin the production as the lyrics is where we did a rough sketch of what the music video could be about. Then producing a storyboard we had draw creatively the different shots that we would be using, we were always considering the different angles that we could use in the video to make sure that there was variety in order for the viewer to get a clearly perspective of the situation in the video.

Being creative was easy as there were 4 of us so we all had different ideas that enabled us to produce a music video that was very unusual. The ideas for the hoes came up as we decided that we didn't want to produce a video that was the same as all the others so we thought what we could produce on our budget. Then the theme of love was also a theme that came up because of the lyrics, it was clear that best coast were talking about love. For the blog we were also creative in the fact that we  had to consider the appearance of our blog which we decided should be simple and  not cluttered with back ground photos or any bright colours that would distract from the work that was being produced and to ensure that that was the main focus of the blog 

Planning the setting and props that we would need, we once again had to think carefully about how our props and our settings would portray and make it clear to the audience what the narrative is. Considering settings we had to visualize in our heads how these shots would look like, whether they would work also when filming, for example we had originally wanted to shot the performance shots in Carnaby street however we thought about it realistically and we decided that it would be much to busy to be able to film usable shots so in the end we decided to use a back street of Brick lane in order to ensure that we got good usable shots. 

From producing the storyboard in planning to filming and editing we were still required to be creative in different ways. For filming we had to be creative in the way that we were doing a a lot of shots that were from the ground so meant that using a tripod was not an option in some of the shots because the tripod would not go down enough for us to succeed in our shot. Instead of using a tripod we decided to use some books to balance and to get a straight shot, this was us using our own imagination as we had to solve a very important problem. 

Editing was another section that would have to  require us to be creative. This was because we had to carefully choose the many clips that we had filmed and creatively put them together via our storyboard, to make a fluid flowing music video. When editing we had to watch each of our clips then decided which  ones we felt would portray to the audience the narrative that we had created. We wanted to make sure that the audience would understand what the video was about. We were able to show to the audience a clear story line by personifying the shoes so that the shoes had human features, making it much more relatable, we had to use of imaginations again to make it realistic. For example we made the shoes be affectionate to each other which made it more human and naturalist. 

E-mail Permission Request - Jay Gomez and Scarlett Giannotti

We researched the contact information of record label Mexican Summer who own the copyright to artist Best Coast in request to seek permission for the use of the track "Feeling of Love".

Using Digital technology-Jessica Hung Han Yun

From starting off the process of producing a music video digital technology was used straight away. Starting up the process we had to start up blog, this blog we keep on updating throughout the production of out music video. At the start we used the Internet to start to research into different music video this research was essential to the process this was because this enabled us to get an idea of the conventions of a music video that we could include. From collecting the information about the conventions of a music video we had to use digital technology for us to broaden and learn more about the process of producing a music video to a high standard. 
We also researched and started to analysis what song we should use, so by using the Internet this enabled us to get information on the artist and the sing so this would give us and insight to what our music video should portray.


Next in using digital technology that we used was the cameras, we had to use the cameras a number of times in the production. We firstly used the cameras when planning, we did this by making a story board (hand drawn) and then we had to develop it into a animated storyboard so this would give us an idea of how our finishing product would look. We had to then use the cameras to film each of the shots that we had drawn, then by using the camera we filmed each shot for at least 5 seconds each so then we could have enough footage just in case. The we uploads this to imovie HD on the apple macs another thing we used from digital technology. By uploading this onto the mac's and by using imovie HD it enabled us to visualize what our music video could potentially look like. In imovie HD it was very important in this process, this was because it enabled us to cut the clips that we had filmed and by cutting this clip we were able to put it to the music that we were also able to upload to imovie HD. 


When it finally came to producing the music video we used the camera  to record however we also used a cannon SLR to take photos of the process and to back up our stop motion. By using the camera we were able to take photos of the process so to refer this back to our bog and to help in showing to the readers how we were able to achieve certain angles. Th SLR camera was also used for the stop motion, as a back up. As we had already done the stop motion clips on the camera  (recording) we were unsure whether it would be okay on recording the clips and so to make sure that we had a back up we took photos on the SLR camera. 


From the filming process we also had to keep on referring back to our blog to make sure that we had to update what we were doing everyday in the filming process. 


Moving on from filming we went back to using the macs for imovie HD, to start the editing process. The editing process was made much easier by the using imovie HD this was because when it came to editing we wanted to use some effects which we were able to do by imovie HD for example when we had to add text to our video it was very simple by going to effects and applying to the video. 


During this proccess we learnt the GREAT importnace of digital technology within the indusrty because without it the media world of course would not be able to survive at all. Digital technology enables you to become creatuve as a person and to capture moments as a director that you are able to share with the world in the eyes of a director. When using the digital technology it enabled me to experiment with the technology that I had to use and even though it was not top of the market technology it did the job and still I was able to create a product that was effective and told the narrative in a way that used effects and a variety. 

Post to Best Coast - Jay Gomez and Scarlett Giannotti

We contacted Best Coast via their Blog; http://bestycoasty.blogspot.com and left a comment with a link to ours. We thought their input and opinion would be useful feedback.