Tom Waits - Orphans (Digipak Analysis)

Tom Waits Digipak Analysis

Rock Digipaks Research

Finding Folk Rock digipaks to analyse has been relatively difficult because a lot of folk musicians use regular CD cases as opposed to digipaks, because of this I have had to find digipaks of other subgenres of rock as well. However I will still be able to find useful information from them, such as how to keep synergy in the digipak.

Bob Dylan's digipak is very centered around showing him. This is similar to how his music videos keep him in the spotlight at all times. All of the images show him dead center of the image. There is little emphasis on colour, instead using the photographs as the images rather than created images.

Also the images are all quite different, with little synergy outside of Bob Dylan being the only thing constant within the digipak. He is shown on all four images however the back cover shows a different representation of him in the shadows, adding mystery but also the more practical aspect of giving the white text a black background to stand out on. There also appears to be red CDs behind each image.

Tom Waits Digipak takes the opposite approach of not showing the artist on the inside cover instead just keeping him on the front cover. The digipak keeps a dusty, sepia-toned colour scheme on everything in the digipak. This is similar to the Bob Dylan digipak however it also has similarity to the Nine Inch Nails digipak in that there is little in terms of imagery within the digipak, which is unlike the digipak. It is also worth noting that Tom Waits sits more in the middle between Bob Dylan and Nine Inch Nails in terms of his own musical style too. I am going to do a more indepeth analysis of Tom Wait's digipak in my next post.

Although not Folk Rock, Nine Inch Nails digipak is still useful as it has a clear example of synergy between the sides. NIN's digipak does not show the artist themselves. Instead they show a constant colour scheme using blacks, greys and whites. The white text is able to stand out more against the black background of the CD. It is a very simple minimalistic approach that gives the digipak a sleek and tidy look. 

Planning narrative - 2 Column Storyboard (And Peer-Assessment)

We are experimenting with a 2-Column storyboard to plan our music video. We haven't used one of these before so we were a little unsure of how to go about it at first.

We soon developed our idea and what sort of shots we wanted to use and then we traded storyboards with another group in order to get feedback from our work the feedback we got was as follows:
0:31 - 1:09 needs a little more detail as to what shot types are being used within this section
how long are these shots going to run for? 
In addition to this we were also asked what our narrative actually was and it was suggested that we put a brief outline at the top of the storyboard so that the camera-man or actors in question would know what is going on.

The two column storyboard was useful however I am unsure if I prefer to drawn storyboards, I am contemplating using both on the music video to see which one proves more useful for us.

Planning Narrative - Idea

Today we have begun to plan our narrative.
We have chosen to continue with our idea of a stalker. This idea was intially inspired by the music video for "I'm Afraid of Americans" by David Bowie and Trent Reznor.




However we don't want the video to be too serious as it would end up looking silly on camera whereas this video is played straight throughout. Instead we are going for a deliberately satirical video. We have the idea of the band members stalking someone but in a comedic way. The question of "how do we make stalking funny" is our next step.

In addition to this we are currently planning what points our narrative will peak at. As our song does not have a large amount of variation in its tempo we're using this to our advantage we as we get more control of when the climax and mini-climax's of the videos are.

Vagabond - Lyric Analysis

Oh girl, I don't know all the reasons why 

I found the answer looking in your eye 

I go out walking all day long 

Take away this lonely man, soon he will be gone 

'Cause I'll tell you everything about living free 

Yes, I can see you girl, can you see me? 

 You don't need to know what I do all day 

It's as much as I know watch it waste away 

'Cause I'll tell you everything about living free 

Yes, I can see you girl, can you see me? 

 Go and see the sorcerer and look into the ball 

You may find the answer written on the wall 

The left one was a dancer 

Can you see the answer, oh? 

 Put her on a mansion on top of a hill 

Please don't make her do the things against her will 

I found something special, I don't know why 

Looking into her pretty little eye 

'Cause I'll tell you everything about being free

     References to the narrator 

     References to stalking

When analysing the lyrics I found the song to be have implications of stalking throughout the songs run. The narrator mentions himself as a lonely man however he also seems to speak of being free and the implication that freedom is not all its made out to be. This could be taken in a straight forward dark way of him wanting to imprison this woman however I think if the song is supposed to be about a stalker I would imagine that the narrator of the song is far more complex than this. He appears to have lost meaning in his life and has found meaning from his observations of this woman.

There references to stalking are prominent with the line "I can see you girl, can you see me?" this is what has prompted me to pitch the idea of a stalker in our music video. This could make the video surprisingly sinister as there would be a huge contrast in the sound of the music and the lyrics/video of the song.

Final Logo Design

This is the logo design I have chose to go for for my music video. As the bands name is "Lift Off" I chose a bird as a reference to this. As birds "lift off" to fly.

At the moment I am pleased with the overall design of the logo and of the font. However I am contemplaying a different colour scheme than what is shown here. As I feel that red font with a dark grey bird may appear too dark-a imagery for the track we're using. 

I am contemplating making the bird brown or a golden brown colour. Similar to that of an eagle. As it connotes the west, as seen in hard rock and folk music, but also because that is an animal which is common in more rural environments which our song connotes.

When coming up with this design I took a look at my original designs and found that the bands name was often too small in comparison to the bird and it was hard to get the right balance due to the positioning of the wings. I have fixed that here with larger text in comparison to the bird, who's wings are up further in the air.

My next step will be to do a final draft of this logo to clean it up and make it appear more professional.

Folk Rock Music Video Research

Folk Rock music videos are usually show more of the artist in their videos in both performance and what narrative there is. However there is usually a lot of emphasis on performance as opposed to narrative based on my research. When researching Folk Rock I looked closely at the artists Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley. This was because they were artists I was already quite familiar with and both of them (being solo artists) tend to focus on the artist rather than the narrative.
 For example in this music video despite the song being featured in the film "Wonder Boys" with numerous guest appearances in the videos (albeit from stock footage)the video always focusses on Bob Dylan as he sings, in both performance sections and narrative sections. Jeff Buckley on the other hand makes videos that are entirely performance. As Jeff Buckley was often fond of the music itself just telling the story. There are some videos of Buckley that involve some non performance shots however they are largely made up of random shots with 90% of the focus being on Buckley.
 
 This is a common staple of his videos:




From this so far I have largely taken away that our video should have near constant focus on the performer. Which perhaps means that our lead singer should also be the lead role in the narrative too.