Magazine Advert Feedback

I posted a picture of my Advert on my Facebook wall and asked people to give me some feedback.

I am really pleased with the responses and have found all of the comments really helpful. I want to try out some different layouts for my advert, so I can compare them and see which work best!

Creating My Magazine Advert

My model came over to the photography studio after school so that I could take some photographs of her holding my signs. She was really willing to pose how I wanted and was comfortable with the shots. She is also 18 so there are no problems with the suggested nudity. I needed to take some test shots first to make sure the studio lighting was correct and that the camera was focused.

 

 

 It didn't take long because I knew exactly what I wanted the photographs to look like. I took shots with the model in different parts of the frame; below are a few of the results.

I decided that the last photo would look good on the magazine advert, where as the landscape, more centred photos would look best on the album cover. I was really pleased with the photos as they looks really effective and the signs stood out too.

I needed to create a new band 'logo' to go on both my advert and my digipak. This time I just went for black and white as I thought this would go best with my photo; I did not want the writing to take away from the photo, just to soften it slightly. 

I went online to look for a suitable font. In the past I have found this method really useful as you can discover some really unusual but effective fonts to download for free. I came across one called 'Bright Young Things'. When I gained feedback, many agreed that the font went with the alternative rock genre of my song, which was really good to know. I decided to use this font for my logo.

I did need to retouch the photographs a bit. I found this quite easy as I have used photoshop before. I used the clone stamp tool to edit the underwear out of the photograph as I felt it was ruining the illusion.

 Although some adverts do not feature a record label logo, I decided to add mine. I found the Beggars Banquet logo online and pulled that onto the poster. I decided to put it in the bottom right corner of the poster so it is not too obvious but can subtly be seen.

 I erased some of the background on the image to make it blend in nicely with the advert background.

The finished advert! I will be getting some audience feedback on it to see how effective it is.

Preparing for My Advert Photoshoot

I had an idea in my head of what I wanted my signs to look like for the album cover image/advert image. I wanted the signs to stand out a bit more rather than just write on cardboard, so I decided to try cutting out each letter and sticking them on another piece of cardboard. 

I started by printing out the words 'Naked Truth' off the computer, in a font I liked, large, on two pieces of A4 paper. I then cut out each letter individually, put it on a piece of cardboard and drew around it in pencil.

I then used a small craft knife to cut out the cardboard letter. This proved really tricky!

Both words completed.

I also had to make sure the cardboard was wide enough to cover the body.

To make the sign stand out more I decided to put a border of cardboard around the edges, made out of strips of leftover cardboard.

I just stuck the letters and border on using Prit-stick.

I found that when I took photographs of the signs using the flash, the letters didn't stand out. I coloured in the letters and borders using black marker pen.

The final signs! I am really, really pleased with how they look and hope they look good in my photographs.

Developing My Advert Idea

After creating my mock-up advert, I realised that I needed to research some other alterntive rock magazine adverts. It proved quite difficult to find them as many 'rock' magazines such as "Kerrang!" didn't actually feature any advert for albums. I had a look on the internet too, though the more common adverts were for the pop and RnB genres. Through research of these adverts however I found that many share the same image as the album cover. I think that I would like my advert image and digipak cover image to be the same or similar.
Here are some album covers taken from 'alternative rock' artists or similar genres.

I have decided to go right back to basics and think about literal ideas of my band and album name. Obviously 'naked truth' can be represented quite literally, what with the basis of my video I thought it would be a fitting idea.

The cover above also inspired me. I really love the idea of using a sign with the album name written on it. I really want to make two signs out of cardboard; one that says "Naked" and the other "Truth". I want them to be held over a woman's body, the first to cover her breasts and the second to cover her bottom half. Although she will appear to be naked behind the signs, she won't be.

Logos and Magazine Adverts

After choosing what my band would be called a began to experiment with some logos which I could use on the magazine advert and the digipak. This is an initial logo I have come up with. I decided to link the first letter of each word as they are all nicely curved. Obviously the acronym of the band name is SOD! I also thought the logo needed some colour and decided to use the colour red because black and red are recognised colours within the 'rock' genre.

I then changed the font used in my logo and decided that I preferred this one.

Even without thinking about designing my advert, I was playing around with some new Photoshop 'brushes' and created the image below. Even though I was just messing around, I was really pleased with the effect they gave and thought this may look quite good on an advert.

I then started to create an advert as a 'mock-up', just adding whatever came to mind and laying it out in different ways. 

When looking for feedback, it was apparent that "Naked Truth" looked more like the name of the band, rather than the name of the album.

I decided to swap the two titles around to make it very clear that "Second One Down" was the band name and "Naked Truth" was the album name and it looked much better.

 However, this poster was only a mock-up. Other feedback I received revealed that people thought it looked more like a film poster than an advert and quite like a 'Twilight' film poster in particular. Although this was not an adequate advert, I have learnt a lot through the process, especially that feedback from others is invaluable!

I also need to look at some alternative rock magazine adverts to get an idea of the kinds of images and text they use to advertise bands and albums.

Names, Names, Names!

As I need to start creating my poster and digipak, I really needed to come up with names for the band, album and the song! It was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I began by looking at the lyrics in my song for song names and jotted down any names that came to mind. I also looked at the names of current alternative rock bands on Wikipedia to get a feel for the types of names I could use.

The names I have decided on are:

Band Name - Second One Down

Album Name - Naked Truth   (second choice was Preserving Common Sense)

Song Name - Breaking Apart   (second choice was Mirrors)

Shot List Vs. Storyboard

As I've begun to really plan what shots I want in my video, I have found it increasingly difficult to log them. I started to create a storyboard, but I found that it took much too long and it was hard to decide which shots could go where. I just couldn't create a sequence of drawings. 


I then decided to have a look at shot lists. I created a template on Word which I could fill in as I came up with shot ideas:

I found it much easier using the shot list, because I want many of my shots and cuts to coincide with the beats of the song. This means that the shot list is precise and I can shoot efficiently. It can also be used during the editing process. To fill it in I listened to the music, looked at the lyrics and visualised what I want to happen at certain points within the video.


Using the shot list has proved really effective, however I also like to sketch out a shot here and there to see what it would look like.