Tracks and fonts.

These are the tracks I am including within my album. I initially had 13 tracks I was intending to use for my album but I have now cut it down to 11 tracks as I thought 13 might be too many for an album which was intended for a debut album.

In order to make the names of the tracks look punky in their font I decided to have a look at different fonts on http://www.dafont.com/ until I could find a font which I believe fitted within punk style.

When I found a font which I liked I then wrote the track names into www.dafont.com, print screened the image of the track names, pasted them in Microsoft publisher, cropped them to the size I felt was appropriate and then saved it.

Logo.

This is the logo which I am currently using for Lifelong Controversy. I decided to use a spider as the image as spiders are typically seen as a a symbol of fear and patience throughout history and they are commonly used as an emblem within punk culture. For example, pop punk band My Chemical Romance have a spider as their logo for their latest album 'Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys' which was released on November 22nd, 2010. MCR's spider logo was the inspiration for my logo for Lifelong Controversy.

The image below is MCR's current logo:

In order to persue my idea of having a spider as the logo, I first had to find an image of a spider. I did this by simply typing "Spider drawings" into http://www.google.com/ and looking through the pages until I found an image of a spider that I liked, which was this one: http://insepia.net/wp-content/uploads/drawing_spider.jpg. I then saved the image, rotated it anti-clockwise twice and opened it into photoshop.

When in photoshop I cropped the image of the spider to the size which I wanted and then began to play with the different effects which are avaliable on photoshop. In order to find the effects I had to use the filter too and then click on a specfic section. The particular effect that I used was the crosshatch effect which can be found by clicking on filter at the top of the photoshop screen then clicking on brush strokes and then clicking on crosshatch.

2nd album cover edit.

1st album cover edit.

This is my first draft of my album cover for Lifelong Controversy. This is very different to the idea I started off with when I first started drafting my album cover ideas onto paper. My initial idea for my album cover was to have an amp with a disconnected guitar in the background. I wanted to have the amp at the forefront of the image blurred out with the guitar in focus clearly in the background of the image. I then wanted the band name, Lifelong Controversy, at the top of the album cover with the song title 'You're Disconnected' at the bottom of the cover. However, I have decided to change this idea due to the fact that I thought it would of been to complicated to make possible.

I decided to change my idea. I still wanted to keep the idea of having a piece of musical equipment disconnected from a power source as the main image. I asked one of my friends, Aaron Hill, to bring in a headset which he owns into College in order to take pictures of the disconnected headset for my main image of my album cover. In order to keep the focus on the headset and the fact it has been disconnected, when taking the picture I decided to place the wire of the headset carefully away from the main headset itself so that it didn't block the image. I then took a couple of photographs with a digital camera once I was happy with the positioning of headset and then chose the image I believed looked best.

I then uploaded my photos onto a computer and then opened the photography I liked into photoshop. My next task was to create a font which I believe represented the punk genre and then place them onto my image within photoshop. I already had the band name's font finished so I started with that. I opened up the name in Microsoft publisher, clicked on the image and then dragged it across to the photoshop tab, dragged the name onto the photograph I had taken and finally let go of the text. I then used the arrow tool and positioned the text where I wanted it on the image. In order to change the size of the text on photoshop I had to use the free transform tool. In order to find this tool, I had to first click on Edit and free transform. This tool allows you to edit images and text on photoshop, for example, rotation and changing sizes of text.

A common feature I found on most album front covers is a 'parental advisory' sticker. Seeing this, I decided to include one on the front of my album cover. To do this I simplely copied an image of the sticker from google and pasted it onto my album cover. I then moved the image into the corner of my album cover.

1st filming session.

On the 12th of March I began filming for my music video. The filming took place at a local park. I chose to film in a park as it is a typical child play area which links into my music video narrative, teenagers acting like children. During our time at the park, me and the other actors that will feature within my music video played a game of basketball and used to park apparatus' such as swings and slides. The proms we used during my filming session at the park was a 'Green machine', skateboard, scooter and a basketball. I asked members of my cast to bring props such as these as they resemble iconic children's toys. The props were used in one particular scene I had decided to include within my video, which is inspired from a scene from Good Charlotte's video of 'The Anthem', in which the cast members come towards the camera on their designated props. I filmed these particular scenes multiple times until I felt like I had enough shots that I was satisified with. These shots took place on the fringes of the park so it appears asif the cast members are approaching the park. The basketball game took place in the basketball court within the park. I have chosen to include this scene as it resembles the cast members acting as a well functioning group in order to play a game of basketball with each other. During the park filming, I told my cast members to act childish in order to give the audience the feeling that these teenagers have forgotten what age they are. One of the key points of this is when I asked one cast member, Karl Spurgin, to have a childish tanturm. In order to do this I directed Karl by suggesting to him what to do and how to act. I asked him to scream, punch, slap and kick one of the toys at the park in order for the tanturm to feel realistic. I believe that this is a good scene to use as it will give the audience the feeling that this character is having an actual tanturm within the video's narrative.

Font.

This is the font I have chosen to use for my band name. I have decided to use this particular font over the others as I believe this font fitted best with the punk rock/pop punk genre of the band. The black colouring in a convetion of punk as black, green and red are typical punk colours. Another reason why I have chosen to use this font is that it is similar to three big pop punk bands that inpire me, Good Charlotte, Green Day and Blink-182.

Punk band text fonts typically look trashed and battered so I have decided to stick to this convention by having my text looking trashed. The leaking ink from the letters I believe give the text a more punky feel to it as it links in well with the black of the text. This also helps make the text look more punk-like. There are parts missing from the text aswell which also helps make the text look matured and battered. A band text I tried to emulate is Blink-182's. I have tried to copy this text as it looks like stereotypically punk-like.

This is the font that Blink-182. Have used to present their band name. The font of the text I believe follows the conventions of punk style as it is black which is a common colour within punk style. The battered effect of the text also follows the conventions of punk stylistic features as it gives the audience the impression that the text has been old and is worn down. Punk style is stereotypically seen to include dark colours such as reds, black and greens so the black colouring of Blink's logo follows these conventions.

Blink-182's name font is a good font to try to emulate as Blink are one of the most popular pop punk bands in the modern age so they are a great example of a punk icon to inspire my work.

Anamatric.