The Ancillary Tasks

CD COVER:

This is an image of me (Enes) facing a wall of graffiti in Southbank with my hood up. We wanted to keep the figure hidden to increase a sense of enigma and create a feeling of neglect with the graffiti. Another reason as to why we wanted the identity hidden to allow the audience to identify themselves with the person if they consider themselves a fan of this genre. The graffiti is in the image because we felt it was part of the skateboarding culture and needed it to be in at least one CD cover to fit some of the forms and conventions of a skateboarding CD cover. We did however, blur the graffiti to keep the figure as the focal point of the cover. The font is also partly see through as we thought this looked more effecticve, compared to solid blocks of wording, especially when we could use the graffiti in the background. From looking at other poster and CD covers, the colours black and white seems more dominate and therefore we decided to include this to follow these conventions. We then added a 'Parental Guidance' sticker to keep a sense of realism, as some of the lyrics are considered offensive.

This was considered our second best attempt to create  a CD Cover. There are many similarities and differences with the this CD Cover to previous one as they both are quite dark, however the identities of the characters that are filmed in the music video appear on the front of the cover selling the artist instantly. Again as mentioned above we added a 'Parental Guidance' sticker to keep a sense of realism, as some of the lyrics are considered offensive. In this CD Cover we decided to go against what we have previously seen with the use of black and white titles. We decided to go with purple which symbolizes calm and  which is reflected in the image. Also, purple is the colour which are most favored by artists. The font of the title was also created in a different way quite different from what other CD Covers which we have looked at, we wanted to make our CD Cover more playful and attractive reflecting the personalities of skateboarders in our music video.We kept the graffti in the CD Cover as it relates well with skateboarding and skateboarders.

This is our final CD cover for OPM'S album "Menace To Sobriety". I chose this image because it depicts the tile of the album as the figure has his middle fingers up and is also looking down at the camera to show both power and mischief. I used the filter Dark strokes to give the photo more edge and create a gritty feeling. The background shows graffiti which is synonymous to the skateboarding scene as is the attitude from the gesture. The figure is wearing convention adhering clothing through the checkered shirt and vans. I decided to pixelate the middle fingers for several reasons. Firstly, I didn't want to keep them in because they are obviously offensive but, also through pixelating them it makes them the focus of the image which is ironic. This works for me and my promotion because it would interest audiences as to why the artist is gesturing like that. The gesture compliments the tile which is also something I was aware of. I kept the font fairly simply and bold to show a stark contrast in colour to make it clear to read. The font is somewhat untidy to add to the sense of menace I have already created through the photo and filter. I then added a 'Parental Advisory' label to give it a more authentic feel as a CD cover.


MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT:

This is our final Magazine Cover. We opted to include the identity of the artist to further promote him along with his music. The location of the photo was taken at the public skate park in Sothbank ,where some of our filming had been taken place. The location was also near to the London Eye and other iconic landmarks,  meaning we had the opportunity to create a juxtaposition with the neglect and gaffiti of the skatepark in contrast to the beautiful lights and visuals of the city on the left of the image.We followed the conventions of  most avertising prints of our chosen hybrid genre, by having a bold white title with a black background which allows the information to stand out. It makes the text clear and concise to read, clearly promoting the artist, his album and his new track. We chose a very bold and smooth font to make the text easy to read and to also make it aesthtically pleasing, attracting the attention of the audience. We did however, change the font on the track title to make it stand out more, thus further selling the single. The red and black checkered shirt represents the idea that skateboarders have personalities from two ends of the spectrum. For example the red represents passion, happiness, energy towards skateboarding whereas the black represents remorse, anger fear and sadness of the way that they are being represented in the media. These are the interpretations that we were trying to portray in the Magazine Cover. The figure is also following the forms and conventions through mise-en-scene as he is typically wearing skateboard attire including; a chequred shirt, jeans and vans (trainers).

This was another attempt we had made of the Magazine Cover. Again the artists images appear on the front of the cover to promote the music video. What you would typically expect to see in a magazine cover for a skate-punk music video is presented, for example the graffiti, a group of youths and the font in which 'OPM' is written in. This was done purposefully to reflect the message the cover is trying to portray and therefore keeping a sense of constancy and professional, attracting and promoting the music video further to the audience. The use of purple in the title reflects the calmness of the skateboarders which is definitely seen in the  magazine cover. However from our previous research on magazine cover of our chosen genre, we realized that the majority use black or white for their titles. The use of colour was done intentionally breaking the convention to add more life to the cover. Furthermore, we wanted to present a friendly and fun loving side to the skateboarders which we were attempting in our music video. This is done by having the characters smiling.

 This is another design for the Magazine Cover. One trouble we had with this piece was the font. This is because the wall for this image had too much graffiti so when we put the see through font over it it, it made it slightly hard to read. We solved this by using a white brush to add the white behind the wording to make it easier to read which we had learnt from looking at previous examples. Adding colour however was very important to us as we wanted to reflect the fun and lively side of the skateboarders which the public don't get the chance to see. Nevertheless we kept to the conventional use of black and white in the title to give the magazine cover abit of edge to it. This magazine advertisement however, does not display all of the necessary information you would typically find in others, for example, we do not have a date for the album or where the track is available.

BACK OF CD COVER:

This is the final design for the back of the CD cover. I decided not to use an effect or filter on the actual image to give the piece a sense of realism. I didn't want the image to look too worked on on photoshop. All I did to the image itself was add colour burn at 25% opacity and 25% flow so you could still see parts of the image behind the shaded areas on the left side. I then added  normal 50% airbrush to the areas I wanted even darker so you could clearly see the text. The left side is darker than the right because we wanted to use the pictured skatepark as a metaphor for the skateboarding culture and how it is perceived by the general public. The skatepark is the dark side and anything away from it becomes the bright side. The text I made white to create a stark contrast between the text and background so it is easily read and the font I kept simple for the same reason, to make it easier to read but, also to not take anything away from the image. I then added some text on the bottom left corner which is text I saw on several other CD covers, a compact disc logo, the record label and a barcode to make the image seem more realistic.

Experimentation of lightning:

The last two images were experiments on changing the lighting and to investigate whether this would effect the way in which the lighting would influence the interpretations made. We also wanted to see if using a dark stroke filter looked too worked on in terms of the final image. We decided to make the left side of the image darker to show the publics negative perspective of the skateboarders and the light pathway was done to symbolise the pathway to Heaven. We used this image to create the back of our CD Cover, however we decided to not use any effect on the image as we thought the sense of realism that were trying to portray will be lost.