• How is your research into institutions responsible for the production and regulation of the media influence your production work?

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music. In the industry of music, a record label is a brand and a trade mark associated with the marketing of music. When choosing a label you have to think carefully about what genre that label is associated with, what audience follows that label and how they distribute the tracks. There for we had to find a label that represented us and our style of music and kept us independent and original. As a small new upcoming band we aimed to get an independent label such as ‘XL’ which is based in the United Kingdom and they started off with the prodigy before they grew and became famous. The prodigy our now releasing a new album under their own label, as they have outgrown other labels and this would be where we would hope to achieve.

Many bands similar to our style stick with their first independent label to keep their music original and not to sell out to popular demand as bands such as ‘green day’ and ‘lost profits’ have over the years.  To the major labels such as Universal records, whose main aim is more money orientated rather than the music. So an independent label would be ideal for our band. Our whole style breaks against conformity and we would need a record label that would fit in with that, so if we were to sign for a major label we would be selling out our beliefs and that’s not right.

After researching these labels we decided to go for a small independent label we found called Breakbeat Kaos. A British independent record label based in London, UK that specializes in drum and bass. Starting in 2005, Breakbeat Kaos has released studio album debuts from Pendulum, Fresh and J Majik & Wickaman. The label has also released singles by artists including Baron, Chase & Status, D.Kay and Future Prophecies. Since its foundation, Breakbeat Kaos has released thirty one singles and four albums from more than thirteen artists, in addition to fourteen singles released through its sub labels, Under Construction and Dogs on Acid.

How did your research into audience contribute to your production work?

My research into our target audience did not contribute a lot to our final production work. We are all in the target range that we are hoping to become our audience. Therefore we didn’t have to research to much into what our target audience wants and likes as we all influenced our production work and therefore is already aimed at the correct target audience. However I did conduct a lot of research to solidify our point, for example I researched how many people are in our target range, what their background is like and what other music they are into. This was made easy as we had only to ask our friends as they are all in the target range and there information is perfectly valid for our research. So therefore we did not need to conduct much research as we had all the information we needed from within our group. So our research did contribute into our production work to a small extent, but we did not need much research so therefore there was not a lot of influence from it.

How did your research into genre contribute to your production work?

Research into genre contributed to our production work to a great extent as we had to make sure everything we created fitted in with the other styles within this genre, this influenced the album digipack that we are making for our auxiliary task. The influences came from other albums such as Pendulum’s album ‘In Silico’ which at first glance seems like just a colourful circle within a circuit board, however when you look deeper into the image you begin to notice that it is in fact an embryo not a circle and the circuit board around the outside transforms into sperm cells. This album greatly influenced us as we then wanted to create a similar style album cover with almost hidden images to catch the attention of our target audience. Because of this influence we decided to create a circuit board style cover which would then enable us to create subliminal album artwork.

However after researching further we decided that was not the path we wished to take and were then influenced by the album artwork of chase and status’s album ‘No More Idols’, which consists of just the tittle of the band and album and a full scale picture of a bulldog’s head. We were going to use the same style but exchange the dog for mine which features in our film, keeping it consistent, meaningful and slightly more original. But after many group discussions we decided that this was too similar and changed it yet again.

This time were going to keep it simple and concise. We wanted it to fit in with our music video and therefore decided to use stills from our film and previous band photo’s we took as the artwork, Louis would then use the skills he has on photo shop to edit the pictures to give them an edgy feel. For example one image is totally black and white except for my shoes which are purple. This brings the image to life and attracts the attention of any potential customers who would wish to buy this album. This way it would be totally individual and original to us, and could not be done for any copyright. Also it would be consistent as there will be continuity between all of our products which will make it all seem more professional.

Group Discussions - Digipack Alterations

After calling a group meeting we discussed everything that we had been doing and all decided to go against our original plan of using a circuit board theme throughout our digipack. Instead we chose to use new photo's we took and stills from our music video. We were then greatly influenced by the album cover of Chase and Status's album, No More Idols (shown below).

From this we used a still of the dog in our film and got a still image of it barking and incorporated it as the cover for our digipack. Then Louis took some photo's of me in the white mask and walking about, altered the images, changing the contrast, colour scheme and many other effects to give it an edgy feel. However only one of the images is in colour and the rest are in black and white.

However after further discussion we reviewed that our cover was to similar to the chase and status album, therefore meaning we had to start it all over again. This time we were thinking of using the white mask in our album cover, as this is totally individual and has not been done by anyone that we are aware of.

Later after further group discussions we decided to have to the inside of the digi pack all one image, using only the feet of our abbey road fake.

From this point we manipulated some of the band photo's we took at the beginning of this course, using Louis' photo shop skills to  turn the main cover, which consists of me standing against a brick wall with the white mask.  

After many trial with pictures, text stlyes we came up with a rough outline of what we wanted our digi pack to look like. With a consistant colour scheme throughout, which is linked with our website. However after gathering some feed back it was clear that it needed more colour to really engage our audience and to hold thier attention. So from here will work on bringing the pictures to life with colour, whilst still keeping the consistancy throughout our work.

This is our final and finished digi pack, we removed the image of the feet as it had no real resemblance to anything within our film. So instead we added an image we took a while back of a finger with what is ment to be an LSD tab, which helps keep the continuity through out all our media products.