Analysing Album Artwork #1

The Velvet Underground were an American rock band from formed in New York City in 1964, their best known members being John Cale and Lou Reed. The Band had little commercial success whilst together, although the band was named by critics as one of the most influential and crucial bands of the 1960's.
Andy Warhol became the Manager of the band who became the house band at the 'Factory' and played his 'Exploding Plastic Inevitable' events, which was a series of multimedia events organized by Warhol between 1966 and 1967. Warhol's management allowed freedom to the band to play whatever music they wanted, and their debut album 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' (featuring German singer Nico with whom they collaborated) was named the 13th Greatest Album of All Time by 'Rolling Stone' in 2003.
The Album cover for the bands debut album was a design by Warhol which featured a yellow banana with 'peel slowly and see' printed near a perforated tab. For those that removed the banana 'skin' discovered a peeled pink banana underneath.
Here is the album cover, I love the instant 'pop art' impact the cover gives as soon as you see it. I also think that the unusual aesthetic would draw in a persons attention on a cd or vinyl rack in a music store. I think that the child-like nature of the cover would relate directly to the childlike, simplistic first impression an audience may recieve from viewing a piece of  Andy's artwork. Therefore, this could represent Andy's influence on the group, making the Album cover also a piece of art, signing his name at bthe bottom of the image. The silkscreen effect also seems to resemble a stamp which could imply Andy's 'stamp' he put on the group with the debut image and the idea to collaborate with Nico.
The unusual and almost disjuncture effect that the image gives could relate to the unusual and provocative music the band produced, an intelectual indication to the genre on the cover of the album.
I believe that to produce my album artwork similarly to this would have an ideal link to the Warholian image that 'Rickie & the Islanders' have for their debut album and video for the leading track 'End of the Night'.

1960's Album Artwork.

As the concept of the album and the band's aesthetic having a huge vintage influence, I thought it would be a good idea to research origional 1960's album artwork and apply the factors of album artwork from that era to my final digipack design.
I used 'bing' images to research album covers (vinyls) and these are some of the images I found, I can already see aspects of the artworks that I can use and evolve to fit my intented concept and apply to my intended audience.
I really like the arty feel of this vinyl cover by 'The Mothers of Invention', at first glance, I think that it has a real similarity to the 'DFifference Clouds' filter on Photoshop, which is something I think I could experiment with on the artwork, and have already done so on the temporary 'band banner' for my blog title.
However, I don't think that the overall aesthetic design of this album cover will bode well with my ideas although Andy Warhol's artwork holds similarities to this which would work better with the concept so perhapos I should do a post on his work and how his art could influence my design choices.


Here are some more examples I found of 1960's Artwork.

1960's album covers

View more presentations from Matthew Needham.

Animatic.

Here, I have created an animatic from my storyboard for the music video to 'End Of the Night'.
When storyboarding, I wanted to use post-its to create each shot as I had ideas in my head of the shots I wanted to use but I was unsure as to the order I wanted to place them in. So, because of this, I used post-its so that I could re-arrage shots until I was happy with the final result.
I also thought it would be a good idea to use three different colours of post-its to determine the three locations to avoid confusion in the animatic of where each shot would be filmed, especially during the faster editing.
I decided to use a beige colour for the studio location, the lighter green for the park location and the darker green for the 'factory'.
Some shots are used more than once as I wanted to use multiple shots using the same techniques and camera angles which I believe will add continuity and link the locations together.
I used Windows Movie Maker to produce my animatic which I found hard at times due to the program crashing a lot of the time which became fustrating and time consuming.

Applying the Star Image to my Artist.

After reading through theories on the 'Star Image', I have begun thinking about how I could apply this theory to my main artist, Rickielee. After continuing with him from my AS media coursework, I decided that if I were to decided upon an iconic 'look' then it would most probably have to be relevant from the artists past career as a solo artist without the band. I thought that to do this, I would look at mainstream artists and their iconic styles and construction, as they are the artists that are the most successful and are most likely to have long term artistic careers.

Something I noticed alot when researching artist construction and artiist imagery is through the use of their hair, for example, 'Florence Welch' from 'Florence & the Machine' with her firey red locks and 'Jessie J' with her edgy black bob. This is a feature of artist imagery that I think would work extremely well with Rickie and his -could be iconic- quiffed up hair.

In order to do this, I believe that I should make his hair a feature of the Digipack artwork somehow, this is something that I need to look further into and how to market it to the right audience.

Creating a Star Image.

One theory on the 'Star Image' is by Andrew Goodwin which he calls 'Dancing in the distraction factory'
His theory is that the importance of creating a character and an identity of an artist allows them to gain fan loyalty and maintain a long career. He also believes that creating a character image adds visual recognition to an artist when lyrics in a song may lack depth, something a record company relies on in the industry in order to make profit. For example, Madonna and her 'cone bra' or Michael Jackson and his silver glove.
Another theorist is Richard Dyer and his theory entitled 'Stars'(originally about cinematic stars).
He believed that a star builds a relationship with an audience, and he spit this theory into four categories;

• Emotional Affinity - whereby 'an audience feels a loose attachment' which is the most common relationship among a star and their audience.


• 
  Self Identification - this is when an audience is empathetic to a star and puts themself in the same situation and persona.


• 
  Imitation - This is most common in young audiences where an audience views their 'star' and a role model and aspires to be like them.


• 
  Projection - This is the most obsessive relationship which is quite rare, whereby an audience member imitates a star to the extreme through their choice of clothing, the way they act etc.
  

8332958-Star-Image

Risk Asessment.

1. Falls of crew/equipment?
Answer: Yes
Severity: Medium/High
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: all actors and crew (4), all equipment
Precautions: Minimise risks by briefing band members on what they are required to do beforehand, make sure all wires from microphone, keyboard etc. are tidied away or in clear sight. Make sure that the camera is either on the tripod securely or around my neck with the support of a strap. When finished with the camera, make sure it is put back in its leather case to avoid drop damage or scratches.

2. Temporary Structures?
Answer: Yes (Garage/Factory)
Severity: Low
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: all actors and crew (4), all equipment
Precautions: Minimise risks by briefing band members on what they are required to do beforehand so the shots can be taken quickly and efficiently. Ensure structure is safe and secure along with any stacked boxes etc. being safe and sturdy.

3. Tripping Hazards?
Answer: Yes
Severity: Medium
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: all actors and crew (4), all equipment.
Precautions: Minimise risks by briefing band members on what they are required to do beforehand, make sure all wires from microphone, keyboard etc. are tidied away or in clear sight. Make sure that boxes stacked in the factory are secure and sturdy. Make sure footwear in the park location is not likely to be slippy or a trip hazard.

Vehicles?
Answer: No
Severity: Low
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: -
Precautions: No precautions to take.

Special Effects?
Answer: Yes (Cigarettes - smoke giving an effect)
Severity: Low/Medium
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: all actors (3)
Precautions: Minimise risks by briefing actors to be careful when handling the cigarettes in order not to burn themselves. Also, ensure actors are aware of objects around them and their costume and dress as this may cause a fire hazard (especially hairspray).

6. Weapons?
Answer: No
Severity: Low
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: -
Precautions: No precautions to take.

7. Burns from Lighting?
Answer: Yes
Severity: Medium/High
Likelihood: Low
Persons at risk: all actors and crew (4), all equipment
Precautions: Minimise risks by briefing band members of the heat from the lighting, especially in the studio and factory Locations. In the studio, we need to be careful that the lighting does not get too hot and overheat the camera.

Shooting Software.

To shoot the music video, I will be using my Olympus PEN E-PL1 with HD video as well as for the album artwork and promotional shoot.
When filming the video, I need to make sure that the memorycard in my camera will be large enough to hold all of the footage and the photos from the shoot. To avoid this possible downfall, I will take two, possibly three, memory cards with me on each of the shoots so that we will have enough storage if more shooting needs to be done e.g. multiple shots. This is also as looking throuh the footage on location and deleting will be time consuming, I also believe that you dont know what footage youve truly got and what is usable or not until you see it on the computer screen. Another issue with time consumtion is that in the studio location, I can only rent it out for two hours at a time, four hours being too much, we will need to be efficient and not waste time which will be aided from the scedule list and the order of one band member geting dressed whilst the other is being filmed etc.
I will need to ensure that the battery is funny charged etc. which is an obvious thing to do, and I will also need to book a tripod in advance from the college library and enquire of how long I can take it out for.
I will need to ensure that the camera is safe, so to avoid damage, I will bring my hard leather case for the camera which I will ensure is on the camera whenever I am not using it.