DVD album covers

For my ancillary texts I have to also produce a cover for the albums release on dvd and a magazine advertisement for the dvd. The brief has recently changed and I am now required to produce a digipak including the cd and dvd. In order to produce to the best of my ability I will do extensive research into cd/dvd covers and magazine advertisements to learn the codes and conventions of each.

I will begin my research by analysing a range of different styles of music dvds. I thought it would be best to research a variety of genres and not just RnB so as to get a good grasp of what would be expected of my digipak.

To represent the unity between the girl group they are all adjoined in a mermaid style fashion. Their gold sequined dresses represents their glamorous celebrity status. The dress is figure hugging showing off their trim figures and the black waist band adds style and class to the sequins. It also relates to the colour of the text which is important when designing a cover as there are conventionally three or four colours that dominate. The text is clear and bold so it can be easily read and recognized by potential viewers.

The dvd title ‘out of control’ is represented through the hypnotizing pink and white candy striped spirals. This is also portrayed though the way they have positioned their arms up in the air and looking in all different directions. The pink and white candy stripes portray their stereotypical ‘girly girl’ group persona. The spirals are made to look fun and inviting, bold and strong. It grabs the attention of consumers as it looks as though it has lot going on when really it only portrays the necessities; the title of the band, the title of the dvd, a picture of the band looking sexy and stylish and an eye catching background.

It is something like this dvd cover that I would like to adapt to my own creation. I want the artist to stand out by wearing something bold and colourful whilst still looking attractive.

Good Girl Gone Bad contains up-tempo and ballad oriented songs, and it heavily incorporates pop and dance-pop music styles. First ever full concert dvd release from multi platinum and grammy award winning artist

Her name appears in bold font, centre to the top of cover. It is white, contrasting the dark background to make it stand out. The cover is a still image taken from her live performance. This can be interpreted from the background lighting and microphone of which she is singing into indicating that she is in the middle of performing. The black is broken up by the lighting which appears as a star at the centre. This represents her star quality and illustrates her celebrity persona.

The dvd is coverage of her ‘good girl gone bad’ tour. Her outfit choice represents her ‘bad girl’ look, this can be seen through her studded, leather, black dress which is stereotypical of the ‘bad’ look. It is appealing and sexy showing lots of flesh, but without looking too provocative as to draw the wrong attention. She looks strong, dominating and in control through a low angle shot.

When thinking about my own cover this would not be suitable as it is promoting the star’s new album therefore she would not yet have done a live performance of songs consisting of the album.


Take That Presents: The Circus Live is a concert tour by British Boyband ‘Take That’. The Circus Live is Take That's biggest tour to date and was seen by over 1,000,000 people. The tour became the fastest selling in UK history, with the 600,000 for all original eight dates selling out in just five hours. They are a pop band and this is evident in their DVD cover as there are a lot of bright colours which is a convention seen in pop music videos and CD/DVD covers.

The Cd cover is vibrant and inviting, mainly because of the great use of colour. It holds a very 'random' theme and the images supported on the cover are extremely varied, however it seems to fit very well in representing a circus theme. This is illustrated through an array of coloured balloons of all different sizes surrounding a transparent hot-air balloon. The dominant colour is sky blue; the background is made to look as though they are in the air, illustrated through the use of faint clouds. The sky looks bright and inviting, maintaining the uplifting spirit of the band, music and dvd as a whole.

During the performance the band walk through the crowd on a giant robotic elephant. On the cover the band are shown to be sat on the same elephant that appears in the show, giving the audience something to relate to and remember the performance. By featuring the most memorable part of the tour people are more encouraged to buy the DVD.

This is something to keep in mind when creating my own dvd cover for the release of my artists new album, as it could be affective to portray her in perhaps her most memorable outfit from the music video.

Eminem's dvd released in 2000. This features the majority of his music videos and fans have described their collections incomplete without this dvd. Eminem is a well known American rapper, record producer and actor. He rose to fame in 1999, now with 11 Grammy’s in his career; he claims the longest running #1 hip-hop single and is the best-selling artist of the decade.

The dvd is entitled a backwards ‘E’, the first letter of his name. There is nothing else on the front of the dvd that says it is Eminem. Due to the fact that he is such a famous music artist and almost everyone knows who he is, he can get away with entitling his dvd with the first letter of his name and people will still know who it is.

The white back-to-front E against a contrasting black background makes it stand out. The blur of green situated behind appears rather surreal, almost appearing as if to represent the image of a sound wave. Which is suitable to the dvd as it features his music. Note the cover only sports the conventional number of three different colours, often a feature of many publications including cd covers, magazine covers and posters. The three contrasting colours give off a rather sinister feel. Artists within the rap genre tend to rap about life experiences or life as it is today, often sending out a serious message, highlighting hidden truths that society play ignorance to. It is therefore important that his dvd cover portrays his music.

Eminem is renown for his use of explicit language used in his song lyrics. It is for this reason a ‘parental advisory’ sticker is situated in the bottom right hand corner. It is important to display these stickers as a warning to parents when allowing their children purchase dvds of that content. This is also a big clue that it is Eminem’s dvd as all of his cd’s feature this sticker and fans would recognise this.

Developing Ideas.

As we are in the process of editing our music video, we are constantly finding out new ways to make our video more professional and to a the highest standard. From experimentng with numerous fades, blackouts and general trial and error editing techniques we found out how to conduct a split screen affect.

This would be ideal for our video as it portarys the deeper meaning behind our video of issues such as split personalities, being torn between two emotions and good vs evil. Moreover it would help bring to light the surrealness within our video, a blur between realsim and fantasy.

We took a series of posed photos when shooting at our beach location. We decided that toward the end of our video we would use a series of still images from each of our locations as the backing music takes the song to a close. Now that we have come across the idea of using a split screen affect, we can adapt it into our video giving it a more professional, unique and spiritual outlook.

Here is an example of the type of thing we want to appear in our video:

Behind the Scenes (chorus)

To represent the idea of a 'sweet dream' and a 'beautiful nightmare', which are the lyrics that appear in the chorus, we have designed the singers face to appear as a contrasting good vs evil. Within our video we have a fairytale theme that runs throughout, to involve this in our chorus we use a red apple, an iconic prop associated with the fairytale 'Snow White'. When the 'good' side is turned toward the camera the apple appears red and shiny. As the lyrics change into a 'beautiful nightmare' the singer appears facing directly toward the camera as she takes a bite out of the apple. As she turns to reveal her evil side, when the apple is removed from her mouth it appears black to represent her poisonous evil.

'Sweet Dream'

We have purposely chosen not use any colour eyeshadow on the eyelid as we wanted her to appear as sweet, innocent and pure as possible. We used lip-liner to create the flower shape that appears to be coming from her eye, to continue on with the idea of a fantasised reality which is a major pattern throughout our video.

Natural make-up with a hint of gentle pink represents her softer side, representing purity and innocence. The pink and white flowers tie in with the idea of love and romance. The hair has been left in its natural flowing curls representing natural beauty.

'Beautiful Nightmare'

The 'evil' side is dominantly black, with smoky silvery eyes to portray the mystery within her character and a smudge of red dripping from her lips to illustrate blood, often a feature associated with the evil character. We used eyeliner on the face to create the bold, dramatic and sharp patterns. The pointed curl on the arrow is to represent the devils tale, the master of evil.

The hair appears in a tight curled bun on the side of her head to show that she is in control and makes her look powerful. We attached the hair onto the face using hair-spray. This unusual creation we decided would look effective in creating a masculine and powerful image, it also helps to make her look more evilly possessed.