Advert analysis

For my advert analysis i'm using this album cover of Gorillaz Plastic Beach that a found in a magazine. The cover pictured above was located at the top of the advert with the words "THE NEW ALBUM OUT NOW" located just below this image in large white font with a black background behind it, making the text clear to readers. This clear and large text is used to grab the attention of readers and make it clear that the advert's main objective is to advertise the release of this particular album. The words "OUT NOW" are in a larger size font than the words "THE NEW ALBUM" and located just below these words in a slightly bolder font, giving an even clearer indication that the album is now on sale. Just below this in a much smaller font are details of the band's official site, encouraging people to find out more by visiting this site which will most likely contain more information on the album as well as additional information on the band, which could help to create new fans of the group, increasing the bands popularity. The advert features an image of the album cover, giving practically no information on  the contents of the album meaning that no information is given away, leaving the audience to have to purchase the album if they want to find out what is on the album itself. As well as this, the lack of information could prompt anyone curious about the album to visit the website also featured in order to investigate and find out more.

This is an advertisement for singles and an album by Greenday. At the top of the advert we see the band name in large, clear, white writing on the right hand side of an image of the bands lead singer, a face that will be easily recognised by the bands fan base. These two combine to instantly grab the attention of it's audience as it is made clear that this advert is related to Greenday. Beneath this is the name of the song "When September Ends" which is the main feature of the advertisement and has been placed in that position in order to hold a prominent place in the advert, most likely so that it is the next thing t grab the attention of the viewer after they see he band name. Below this we see the bottom section of the advert split in half, with one side being focused on advertising the new single while the other side advertises the album American Idiot. This is a clever technique as it raises awareness  of both of these releases by the band, meaning that two separate adverts don't need to be released as they have been combined into one. In the section advertising the album we see a picture of the album hat the band have released, meaning that fans know what to look for i they want o buy their album. The text in these sections alternates between white and red, with the red emphasising the more important aspects of the advert. for example, this technique is used to make it clear to viewers that the new single being advertised at the left side of the advert is now available on the album.

Photohop task

Black & white effect

This is the finished product of the black and white Photoshop tutorial. I completed multiple Photoshop tutorials in order to get a better idea of how Photoshop works and how it can be used, as i have very little experience of using it until now. In completing this specific task, i aimed to take an item in an image, and alter the background colour around it so that everything but my selected item is in black and white, with my selected image still retaining it's full colour, making it stand out over everything else. In this case i decided to alter a football upon a background of grass, as the simple circular shape of the ball made it very easy to select using the quick select tool, making the process as a whole quick to complete.

I began this task by opening a saved image of the football into Photoshop and selected the football using the quick select tool, as can be seen here. The dotted outline around the football indicates that i've selected it.

After doing this, i then selected "inverse" in the select menu in order to swap my selection from the football to the area surrounding it. My selection of "inverse"can be seen on the top left side of the following screenshot.

After then i then selected the black and white feature to turn the selected background black and white while leaving the football that i first selected it's original colour as can be seen below.

This left me with the complete product of this process which can be seen below. This task was simple to complete and didn't take long to finish, i came across only one issue in creating this effect, as when i tried to select the football using the quick select tool, it also picked up small parts of the background which i didn't want. To fix this i used the lasso tool to select the parts of the background which had been accidentally selected by the quick select tool. This worked by circling these unwanted areas and then using the same process i used on the rest of the background in order to tun it black and white as desired.

Blur effect

This is the finished product of the second Photoshop technique i attempted. With this image i decided to create a blur effect which would be applied to an image of an image of a Formula 1 race car, as they are associated with speed which could be affectively amplified by the blur effect. I began by turning the image into a smart image, which would allow me to add the effect in the way see fit.

After successfully converting my image to a smart image, i went into the the filter menu where i selected the blur, which opened a secondary menu in which i selected radial blur, as can be seen below

Adding the radial blur turned the entire image into a blur which i didn't really want, but this was easily fixed by changing the setting of the radial blur. I did this by changing the setting of the blur from spin to zoom and changing the quality from good, to best, altering the style of the blur that i created to one that better suits the image of the F1 car, as it added a tone that gave off a feel that made the car look like it was travelling at a fast speed, this effect can be seen here.

This isn't the final image that i as looking for however, as i felt that having a clearer image of the car while still retaining the radial blur would be more suitable. To do this i applied a smart filter to the image which i set to black and white, which would allow me to select part of the image that isn't affected by the radial blur, therefore drawing attention to that section and giving the image a more desirable effect.

Seen below is the final product of my radial blur editing on Photoshop, which has the smart filter effect in place around the center of the car, leaving the central areas of it and the driver unaffected by the blur, while the outside of the car and the background still have the radial blur effect in place. This edit leaves a very good effect , especially in relation to the image i used, as it indicates that the F1 car is travelling at a high speed. This edit was quick and easy to create and i completed it without ay difficulty.

Lip sync task

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taSmtC70Piw

This is the video that i created for the lip sync task. My partner and i decided that we would add an element of humour to our video and therefore chose Whole New World from Disney's Aladdin as the song that we would be lip syncing to, as this song could easily have comedy twists added to it. The song was also simple to sync with as it's lyrics are clear and easy to understand, making the lip sync look more authentic as the slower tempo of the song means our mouth movements can easily be kept in time with the music when filming.during filming we used only medium shots and a close up shot as any  shots taken from further out wouldn't be suitable for the lip sync and using these shots meant that we were able to clearly show our mouth movements to the song as well as our actions. We added our humour in by using clips of us lip syncing on a toilet, as well as gripping onto a tree in an inelegant way and using a hoodie to imitate long hair, mocking the usual custom of romance and grace associated with   the song we selected. After filming was complete, we used Final Cut to arrange our clips and edit the music into it. Although the music can be heard playing during our clips as we mimed along to it, we edited the son in over our clips in order to make it seem more realistic and n time with our mouth movements, as well as making the music heard in the final product clearer to the viewer, while also making our video more professional. When using Final Cut we used a marking technique in order to edit our video to be in time with the music. Marking allowed us to precisely move our video by just a single frame at a time to make sure that our lip syncing in the final product was as precise as possible and give a better illusion that we were singing the songs ourselves. After filming was complete we uploaded to Youtube so that anyone may see it.

A2 Brief

Get Ahead at A2

A2 Brief 2013

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with:

• a digipak for the album’s release;

• a magazine advertisement for the digipak.