Digipak Research: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

The digipak for 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' by Kanye West is very unique and interesting to take influence from when creating my own digipak.

This Digipak opens up into four sleeves, each containing something different.

This is a picture of my copy of the digipak fully opened so all the sleeves can be seen. If looked at carefully, these drawings form the name Kanye West- the name of the artist. It is clear that much thought was put into the planning and detailing of this digipak as every small area is covered by some form of art relating to the artist or the album.

When the two outer sleeves are folded inward it can also be seen that it says the title of the album on the left hand side, and the track list on the right hand side - all cleverly drawn in a similar style to the name of the artist above.

The left hand sleeve contains the album booklet containing album credits, lyrics and other pictures. The left centre sleeve contains the five interchangeable album artworks, as can be seen below.

These pieces can be slid into the sleeve, which has a small window from which the artwork that is at the front can be seen.

The two right hand sleeves are used to contain the CD and the 30 minute 'Runaway' music video DVD.

This digipak is very interesting conceptually, however I could not create something like this myself for my digipak as I do not have several items that would take up several sleeves worth of space. However, the idea for an interchangeable cover is one that I may use for inspiration.

Online survey results

We used an online survey creator called Survey Monkey to compile a survey to ask people questions about music videos in the house genre, which we then posted on Facebook and Twitter for people to see.

These are the results:

This research was not particularly successful as people did not take it seriously. However we did get some good responses

Party Location

We are intending on filming the party scene at our friends birthday party as there will be many people dancing in a small space which will give a similar effect to that of our inspiration party film 'Project X'.
For this we intend on using lots of close up shots of peoples faces and group shots of people dancing. This will help us create the right image for a house music video.
We also want to film some shots of the DJ as this is typical of a house music video. We are aware that this will be time consuming so we will take turns walking around with the GoPro throughout the evening.

GoPro Hero 2

We are using a GoPro Hero 2 camera to film both the time lapse shot and the party scene.

The GoPro has a setting which takes a picture every few seconds (you can set how many seconds this is) which we will use as a time lapse of us setting up to the end of our filming. This time lapse shot will be at the beginning of our video for the into of the song until the melody comes in. We thought this was a unique way of filling the intro gap.

The GoPro is a small camera that can be mounted on objects (helmets for extreme sports etc...) or carried in your hand.

We will also use it to film the party scene in a similar way to the film 'Project X'.

Complication with our location

Unfortunately we are unable to film at the warehouse as the owners objected to us filming on Saturdays as they are practicing Jews and Saturday is the sabbath. They also said that the were unwilling to have an A Level project filmed there as it is a professional location. We found this to be strange as our peers had filmed there the previous year, however there was not much we could do about it.

Considering the fact that we were nearing our filming deadline we had to find a location quickly. A member of my group's father owns a studio near where we live, which we could possibly use to replace the warehouse, but it would not be large enough for the party scene to be filmed there. Hopefully this location will be fine and we will be able to film there within the next few days.

Location

When looking for a location, we set our minds on a warehouse setting for the first half of the video. We were aware that another group of students from our school had used a warehouse for their AS Level Thriller, so we inquired about their location. It is about 20 minutes away from all of our homes, and is owned by the grandfather of a student in the parallel media class. We acquired the relevant number to arrange a visit, during which we took a number of pictures to see what the location would look like on camera.

This location is only for the circular tracking shot and the time lapse.

Choosing a performer

When considering girls to be the performer in our video, there is certain criteria that must be met:

• She must be comfortable and confident in front of a camera
• She must have the right appearance to be a pop singer
• She must be within a certain age bracket

We were aware that it would be difficult for us to gauge whether or not people would be good in front of a camera without actually seeing them in action. We found a girl called Jessy Barnett that was within the right age bracket, had the right appearance, and had just left Sylvia Young Theatre School. We felt it was our best bet to go choose her as she was experienced in performing arts and is likely to look good for the camera.

Here are some pictures of her: