Upon our arrival, the whole group was given a tutorial on how to use the programme Photoshop through using a picture of a Geisha-like woman who seemed to be modelling. The woman in charge there was very helpful as she guided us through tools and devices we used to edit the picture through removing parts, replacing them, adding effects and styles, all to the point that by the end it was completely different but remaining with the same face. Certain tools we used included the magic wand, which completely cut away parts of the image we did not want, and we learned some shortcut keys including the apple button +D to deselect things and apple and +Z to undo.
The CLC
But now it was time to get cracking on with the main task.
CD INSERTS
The images on the four inserts were a mixture of photos taken while filming and stills of the video, so we first had to find them on our e-mail attachments and add them onto the Photoshop programme.
The images were two separate ones of two of the criminals, one of the bike-mugged character lying on a pool of blood, and one of the policeman showing his badge. We chose these images because of both their cohesiveness with the video and their strength in effectiveness: two images of the criminals relates to the overall campaign and gives an alarming look to the cd inserts thus gathering interest, the image of the mugged victim lying in a pool of blood is harrowing and reflects the slogans we placed around the inserts, and the image of the policeman showing the badge is like a conclusion the first three images as if to say there is now some control.
Here are the images as they were when downloading them off our attachments:
The image of Ali on the ground is silghtly different to the footage in the video as there is a larger amount of blood (this being his position before attempting to get up), but this way it is more alarming and even makes it look like he is dead which goes better with the slogans we placed. This image was already different as it is in black-and-white apart from the blood which is bright red and stands out. We had decided we would use this after some inspiration from the visuals in the film 'Sin City', in which the colour is majorly black-and-white whilst some crucial colours (mostly of the blood in that film) are kept.
Here is an example of how the colour
red contrasts with the black-and-white
visuals of the film Sin City
Bearing in mind that the inserts were to be cohesive, we decided that each insert would be in the same style of black-and-white with a red colour. So after changing the colour to black-and-white, we stylized the images of the two criminals with the use of the 'Dark Strokes' effect (one of the visual effects available on the programme) which gave them a slight blurry effect and also contrasted the images, resulting in a somewhat rougher look which was altogether effective for the grittiness of the theme and the intimidation of these characters.
We added two slogans on each insert which conveyed the continuous message of anti-crime: the slogans read 'Face the world', 'Walk to the light', 'Unmask and be free', and 'The reward for good is life'. We used the red font for writing these so that we had the use of red. We also put Roni Size's logo at the top of the first insert, which we grabbed from the internet. For some reason, all the pictures of our inserts, cover and poster are coming up small so just click on them to view them better.
Inserts 1 and 2
So the next two inserts were the images of the victim bleeding on the ground and of the policeman. Once they were both in black-and-white, we played around with using the 'Dark Strokes' effect and some others but found that they didn't work with the image of the victim as each effect ended up blurring or somehow fading the blood which then did not look effective enough as we needed it to brightly stand out. So we left the image without any effects and added another slogan, this one saying 'No more crime on the streets - pain violence abuse'.
For the insert featuring the policeman, we stretched the picture out a bit to make him look bigger so that he looks a bit more authoritarian. We then added a few fictional credits for credibility. We know that Roni Size is fully in charge of his music - so the credit of producing, mixing, and arranging goes to him. We made up some fictional names for the rest, and gave ourselves a little wink by putting our names for the 'with thanks to' credits. Taking notice of how this section of album leaflets mostly say in small writing the country that the product was made in, the album's label, year of making and the artist's website, we put those details as well.
Inserts 3 and 4
ALBUM FRONT AND BACK COVER
For the album's back and front cover, our final design differed a fair bit from our rough draft idea from a while ago. The original plan was to show a group of figures stood upon a hill in a paradise-like desolate location, with the image of the mask faded in the background to represent the threat they want no more of and an image of a knife and flower/s wrapped together symbolising violence against peace.
However, as we had to keep the cover cohesive with the inserts, it was clear this was also be in black-and-white with red. So the image was turned to black-and-white, and we used the red font for the all the lettering; this consisted of the album's title, artist, track list (the one we wrote a while ago), and brief info (record label/year/website). However, everything else apart from the landscape and mask were removed because they did not fit well with the new visuals. We again inserted Roni Size's logo, placing it on the front cover. We have achieved the look of desolation and emptiness, and of threat in the form of the mask, which is seen overlooking the landscape as if the violence and fear that comes with it goes everywhere.
A rough draft of the original idea
Our album cover
MAGAZINE ADVERT/POSTER
The image placed on magazine adverts of albums are usually extremely similar to the actual front cover: they will have small differences such as that there may be a close-up of something on the cover, or there may be one or two differences in the way people or objects are positioned. We decided that it would be more effective to use this image of the criminal character, which we zoomed into from our first image of our inserts so that the criminal is a lot closer, as it is quite a striking image and would hopefully the magazine readers' interest. Again, we used the black-and-white with red style, keeping up our overall cohesion.
We looked at real magazine adverts to see what text is written on them, so that we could make the advert as realistic and accurate as we could. They all mentioned the single/s that the advertised album contained, so bearing in mind that No More would be a single (as we made a music video for it) we headlined that and another song (the fictional 'Corruption', which we imagined that with that title the song would be hard-hitting) as the two tracks which people would have heard on the radio or online.
We wrote two quotes each from a fictional review from music magazines. The two magazines we decided we would quote our reviews from are Time Out Magazine and K Mag. Time Out is a global magazine (that in England is only sold in London) which has a music section with reviews and reports on a wide variety of music genres. K Mag is a UK magazine which focuses on drum and bass, hip-hop, breaks, dubstep, and electronica.
The quote from Time Out reads "An eclectic mix of hard-hitting breaks and basslines". This refers to the conventional sounds of drum and bass which I wrote about towards the start of the blog; whilst the song 'No More' is somewhat unconventional if placed under the drum and bass genre as it is quite soft and melodic. Other songs on the album would follow the more conventional sounds so that it can be properly categorised as a Roni Size drum and bass album. K Mag's quote reads "Electronic harmonies which hook you with deeply thoughtful lyrics", this refers to the socially conscious theme of the album. We want it advertised that the songs are not just plain repetitive drum and bass tracks, but that they do have harmonies worth listening to and have well-written lyrics which would provoke the listener to reflect on the issues brought up. I believe that an album containing this sort of material would be very appealing.
We also wrote that it is available on vinyl, as all drum and bass albums are so that they can be mixed and played on DJ sets, and available for download. Online programmes like iTunes store pretty much all discographies (of course there is also the illegal downloading but advertisements would not promote that).
Magazine advert
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