Photoshoot for digipak

Here, Sarah and I are trying to replicate the reference photo from Pinterest to see if the pose is actually achievable and looks visually right. However, we found that this pose was in fact hard to pull off and therefore we would have to make some changes but still trying to keep it as close to the pose I wanted.

When properly setting up the back drop I took this difficulty into mind and resulted in using a chair for the model to sit on the help her achieve the same long, sprawled out pose but with more ease. I further set up a Gel wall behind her, enabling what ever light I chose to be places behind this and shine through the sheet, lighting her up. For the bold statement wall I used this red brick wall which fitted perfectly with the whole look. I tried to keep the background simple to feed into the minimalistic idea but also holding some detail to keep it from appearing boring.

These were the most successful outcomes from the photoshoot and will most likely be used for the from cover of the digipak. I am very happy with their appearances and feel like fit the criteria of what I have been planning very well.

Draft inside pages of digipak

 

To start with the draft of the inside page of the digipak, I decided of taking very rough photos of Kiera as the reference photos were very hard to edit. This way I would get an idea of the page but not waste time trying to get the perfect photo right away. 

After assembling the inside cover, I realised that these pages would have to have a lot more work done to them ignorer for the page to fit the previous ones and also look a lot more professional. Taking more thought out photos in terms of lighting and design would help this but I also has to think about if I actually now wanted two photos in the inside, with non of the writing or edited Disk, to reverse the amateur look to a convincing digipak.

Draft feedback

 After finishing the first two pages of the digipak draft, I received feed back from my teacher and classmates of what worked well and what rot improve next time. I was told that the coherent colour scheme, velvet textured wall and costume choice all worked well within the pages. 

However, there were many areas I still could improve on. they felt that overall the images were too large, filling too much of the cover, disrupting the aim of creating a minimalistic look. This can be solved when initially when taking the photos, to make sure there in enough background space and the model is further away in the photo and furthermore, making all the font smaller, ensuring more empty space. Moreover, the digipak begins to look more amateur and not very convincing when the images are cut out from their original background and stuck onto another. This flattens the professional look to the images and it would appear much better if the photos are taken with the desirable background already in the shot. 

lastly, when looking at the digipak I was mainly taking reference off of nd a couple of others that also use this minimalistic approach, I realised that they had a common ground of all using one photo for the front of the digipak and leaving the back page plain, to keep the pages simplistic. this is something I would like to achieve when creating the real Digipak. 

Initial digipak draft

As I am still in the process of finding out what exactly I want to do for my digipak design I started with finding reference photos off of Pinterest which I felt would work well on the cover of our digipak. I made sure the photos were along the lines of what I desired but also achievable in terms of taking them in the studio and the costumes we have access too. 

To prepare myself for the construction of the digipak I began with taking the reference photos I found and editing them to see how they would look together. I chose the theme of red and black to consistently show throughout the digipak, linking all the pages together. I edited the exposure, colour palette and brightness to ensure the photos fit with the temporary backgrounds I chose.  
 

Social media

For researching into social media and finding inspiration for our own artists Instagram, I looked at the artist Mabel as she has the same genre of music to our song and would present the sort of content a musician in that area would showcase. 

Makeup and Hair

In todays lesson I wanted to think about exactly what I wanted to do for hair and makeup to ensure I had everything I needed for the shoot tomorrow. gathering a photo of each outfit, I looked for hair and makeup looks that I though would fit best with the outfit along with giving the overall look of the artist a more done up and professional look. 

I wanted to ensure that all the different looks varied, not only in terms of the outfit but also the hair and makeup and therefore chose different colours and applying techniques for the make up and different looks to do for her hair, including accessories that would create diversity in her appearance. 

Digipak Photoshoot

Today I am going to take Kiera for a photo shoot in outfits I have selected for her, some of which will represent what she will be wearing in the music video and the others will be presented on the digipak. To give me an understanding of the sort of photos I would like to take for the digipak, I looked on Pinterest to find some similar ideas of posses, makeup etc, to give me inspiration. 

These are the photos I found:

I am very happy with the outcome of the photos that I took of Kiera. I felt it gave me a good idea for how the photos will look for the real digipak with all the elements such as her hair, makeup and outfit together. Furthermore, I specifically put her in different positions to keep the overall image interesting and distinct from each other. 

Although I am happy with these photos, I will not be using them for the final digitpak but instead, to practise designs with and enable the understanding of the exact posses and outfits that work well for the pages. This will help me when it comes to the final shoot to be more efficient and know exactly what I want the model to do. 

I have taken away from this photoshoot the idea that I would maybe like to incorporate different coloured and textured backgrounds into the shoot instead of at the editing stage. Furthermore I would like to spend more time on her hair and makeup to ensure its more stylised.   

I wanted to see how well the photos worked together by create a bit of a digipak, and although the colour palette runs throughout both of the pages, I feel they are still a bit plain. I feel the white background is too bright at takes away from the concept of her persona being orientated around London nights.