Cd Cover Analysis of Enema of the State by blink-182

Front

On the nurses work shirt you can see the band name blink-182 written in a colourful font on a colourful background that stands out from the white shirt the nurse is wearing. This is important as it’s the bands name so people who want to buy the album know its blink-182’s album. The main thing about the album cover is the way the bands used a nurse as a sexual icon by having her reveal some cleavage right next to the band name so it will attract people’s attention to the album cover to make them look. The album is called Enema of the state but it does not include the name of the album on the front cover as you can see, but elsewhere on the album it does like on the back and sides of the case. The model on the front of the CD cover is linked to the band as she features in a music video for one of blink-182’s songs ‘What’s My Age Again?’ Which is a track on the actual album. The song ‘What’s My Age Again’ was released as a single before the album ‘Enema of A State’ was released and so was the music video for ‘What’s My Age Again’. So people who like the band blink-182 can probably recognize the model from the music video, and ‘What’s My Age Again’ is the most known song from blink-182 so it’s quite clever what they've done.

Inside the Front and Back

Inside the CD case it has taken up both the front and back of the CD case as you can see, instead of having a separate picture on both sides of the cover. The picture is a shot of 8 men all wearing swimwear/underwear standing in front of some cyan lockers. The 4^th, 6^th and 8^th men in the queue are the 3 members of blink-182 (Mark, Tom and Travis). The picture links with both the Front and the Back of the CD cover. It does this because on the front we can see the nurse up close with nothing else there, whereas on the back you can see Mark, Tom and Travis sat on a table with the nurse sat in front of them and they’re wearing swimwear like in this photo. So this tells us that this photo could be a queue to see the sexual icon that is the model nurse. The band does have a large sense of humour so that can explain why Mark the first member is wearing very tight swimwear compared to the rest of the men queuing up. The colour scheme the band has used on this photo is quite colourful but mainly focusing on the colour blue. On the front cover they also focus on the colour blue as the nurse has a blue tattoo and is wearing a blue glove but also more importantly the outline around the bands logo is light blue.

Back

The back of the CD case is the most important part of the whole CD Case. It contains the nurse from the front of the cover who is helped to promote the band as she starred in ‘What’s My Age Again’ and is a model. The cover also contains the 3 members of blink-182 Mark, Tom and Travis which is important as they’re the members of the band who produces the music for the album. I think the band personally chose to do a back cover like this to show that they have a sense of humour as the nurse is sitting in front of them all holding a giant syringe and Mark the one to the far left in the white swim shorts looks happy and the other two members Tom and Travis look scared. The band once again have also gone for the colour scheme of blue in this shot as the floor of the room they’re in, is light blue colour and at the top of the back cover the background of the band name and album name is light blue. I think the band have tried to go for the colour scheme of red, white and blue as those are the colours of the American flag and the album does contain the word ‘State’ and the band comes from California. At the top of the back cover it contains the band name and the band album which it doesn’t on the front of the cover on a blue background. It also contains the track listing on the album which is very important so buyers know what songs are on the album obviously. In the top left corner it also has the bands record company which is important s without that record company the band probably wouldn’t of been able to make the album.

Posted by Tom

Filming Finished

Today I shot the final scene of our music video with my friend Alex in the location where it was planned to be shot. The scene was where I ( The actor in the music video) bump into the girl I like and give her a hug then walk off into the distance with her happily holding hands. This scene should of been shot earlier as its an important part of the music video but we had some slight issues trying to get the location where it was almost deserted and we really didn't want to change location as its perfect for the scene.

About the band..

Architects are an English Metal core band from Brighton, England, formed in 2004. The band went through several name changes before they decided upon Architects. Their first name was Inharmonic, which was swiftly changed to Counting the Days. After a couple of years this was in turn changed to Architects.

Band members..

Sam Carter – lead vocals, keyboards (2007–present)

Tim Hillier-Brook – guitars (2004–present)

Dan Searle – drums, percussion (2004–present)

Tom Searle – guitars (2004–present)

Alex "Ali Dino" Dean – bass guitar (2006–2011, 2011–present)

Architects was founded in 2004 and are currently signed to Century Media Records worldwide and Distort Entertainment in Canada. The band has toured the UK and Europe with bands such as Bring Me The Horizon and The Chariot. They have played at a number of independent UK festivals, as well as the Download Festival 2007 and 2009, and Sonisphere 2009 and 2011. The band have completed a European tour and a Canadian tour, receiving great receptions from crowds in different countries and gradually spreading their fan base.

The band currently have 5 different albums released since 2006-2011. Their most recent one being ' The Here and Now' which features the song we are using for our music video, 'Heartburn'.

Posted by, Bethany

Research into music genre

The genre of our chosen music video is ' Alternative Rock'.

We have looked into and researched what 'Alternative Rock music' actually is, and some history behind it.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a new genre of rock music emerged and quickly gained the title college rock because of its prominence on college radio. During the '80s, alternative included everything from jangle pop, post-hardcore punk, funk metal, punk pop, and experimental rock. Eventually, the name of the genre became alternative music because of its new sound that did not draw from the more typical heavy metal and new wave genres popular at the time. The style instead built a post-punk era defined by indie sounds and rock roots. Alternative music was extremely popular through the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, when the genre experienced a decline in popularity. In the '80s, most alternative bands were on independent labels; if they were on majors, they didn't receive as much support as most of the label's mainstream acts.

Sounds range from the dirty guitars of grunge to the gloomy soundscapes of gothic rock to the guitar pop revivalism of Brit-pop to the shambolic performance style of tweepop. More often than in other rock styles since the mainstreaming of rock music during the 1970s, alternative rock lyrics tend to address topics of social concern, such as drug use, depression, and environmentalism. This approach to lyrics developed as a reflection of the social and economic strains in the United States and United Kingdom of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Alternative Rock is usually characterized by bands who have a "do-it-yourself" or non-conformist attitude; hence "alternative". It is not usually designed to be a popular genre of music or well known to all cultures. The label “Alternative” often applies to new music/bands before they become more widely popular due to creative people whose music does not fit into current genres.

Popular Alternative rock bands in the 1990's are ones such as Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, etc. It started out as an underground/indie scene, but when it became popular in the 90's, Alternative became separate from a new emerging indie style.

Posted by, Bethany

Advert analysis

The main feature to Green day’s album advert is the background image to the advert is the album cover for the new album ‘21^st century breakdown’ and is a clear importance to selling and marketing the release of album by giving you a look of how the case will look and maybe what the songs will be about, for example and breakdown or relationships. This feature is similar in most album adverts to show the audience what it will look like. Another feature used in the advert is the headline shown on top of the advert. The writing used follows the genre of the music and targets the intended audience of punk rock. ‘The wait is finally over’ is key to the fans of green day, as they will get to see when the release date is and wont have to wait any longer to hear green days new album. A key feature in selling the advert to the audience is the white font at the bottom of the advert telling the audience the release date of the album. This advert in particular is good because it uses the same font which is stereotypical of punk rock fans and it also gives a release date not just for the CD but the release of the album vie download for example, iTunes. This is different to other album adverts as others just mainly show the release date for the CD and not the release of maybe download or a single from the album. This brings the album advert to another feature of showing a single that is maybe in the charts and has been released before the release of the album. This will attract fans of many audiences who may just like the song and want to buy the album to hear the rest of the songs. Overall the features for green day’s album advert are similar to many other adverts, but is key to attract the fans of punk rock and green day fans.

Change of Location

On Sunday I went to film a scene for the music video where i give a homeless man(my friend sam) some money. He was originally supposed to be sat in a phone box as a shelter for him but I was unable to film in this location as there was several police officers around as a crime had been committed in the area. I tried to film the scene but a policeman asked me to film somewhere else and that the street is going to be closed for a few days. So i resorted to simply having my friend Sam lie on the pavement near by as if he was asleep. So I decided to make this slight change to the music video and to be honest i think it looks better.

Editing so far.

As mentioned on a previous post, we have uploaded all the video files from the SD card onto the computer and into final cut pro. We are currently half way through editing, and just piecing all the scenes/clips together. We haven’t done a lot of editing or used too much special effect to our clips we have kept them the way they looked when they were filmed. This is because our song is a romantic, slow paced song, so if we used a lot of editing in our video it would ruin it and wouldn’t be the style that we want it. So far we have put a minute or so together of our video. The lip-syncing isn’t great so we may have to either repeat filming or use the green screen to fix these areas. We are trying to include more visuals into our video to make it seem like more is going on, even if the clips are random and don’t make a lot of sense in the song, it still makes the video interesting. During the chorus of the song, the pace speeds up a little so we are currently trying to make the clips and editing match this pace.

Final cut pro is really good software for editing different filming productions as it allows you to do almost anything to the clips and change them the way you want. It has enabled us to put our song choice onto one of the sound timelines, which makes it easier for us to edit as we can check the lip syncing, the pace and weather it matches and looks okay.

We have done around half the editing for our video, so we will need a few more hours to complete and perfect it along with the extra filming we may need to do. After this we will make a start on producing the magazine and CD cover using Photoshop to design and complete this.