Conventions Of A Music Video - Rihanna Ft Calvin Harris

Rihanna ft Calvin Harris - We Found Love

The music video for Rihanna’s We Found Love consists of many conventions of a music video. The camerawork has an impact on meaning that she is trying to portray. In Rihanna’s music video the camera is not perfectly still, it has a lot of camera shake, which I think connotes their relationship right from the beginning. Shots drifting in and out of focus represent the unease that Rihanna is feeling. The angles and shot distance both also play a part in the representation of Rihanna and her emotions in the song. During the scene where a group of people are dancing in the middle of the field and Rihanna is on her boyfriends back, high angle and low angle shots are used to show how hectic the scene is getting. Another way of showing fast pace and situations becoming hectic is with the editing.  The editing is a crucial part of a music video, it’s often cut to the beat of the music and that produces a fast-cut montage. Often enhancing the editing are digital effects, which play with the original images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience.

Back panel of my digipak (Development)

Sophie Habibis is not a professional artist and there are not really that many photos of her on the internet so i have to work with what i have got. I researched on loads of websites for professional looking photos of her and i found what was advertised to her 'her official fan' website and i was really drawn to this one photo.

This is the photo i wanted on the back, her style of clothing is a contrast to what she is wearing on the front of the digipak. She is portraying a different style in this photo, she is wearing all black and her hair is not as neat as the front cover. Her rock look is another element of her personality that i would like on my digipak, she is on the stage with a massive grin on her face. This shows the audience that she enjoys being on stage.

I began with this photo cropping it to size, so Sophie on the right hand side of the cover. I then slightly adjusted the background by adjusting the colours and added the circles growing out from behind her head, representing the 50's microphone.

I then added the track list next to Sophie, i made sure the track list was written in a clear font. I picked Verdana, however the font might change in the final stages of my digipak. I centered the track list, i find this makes it easy to read. I applied a suttle glow and a shadow to highlight the text and make it stand out more. The tracks were chosen by me, some names of the songs were made up and i decided to choose songs that she's already sung and/or i would like her to sing.

After seeing the panel like that i wasn't happy with it. I decided to make Sophie bigger in the frame, almost bringing her forward, like she is closer to the audience. I wanted to do this for a number of reasons, i didn't like how her belt was showing and i didn't think it looked interesting enough. Sophie also seemed kinda distant in the shot.

Digipak - Front Cover (Front Cover Development)

The front cover of my digipak consists of the artist on the right hand side of the cover, the name of the album and her name is beside her on the left hand side. Sophie is posing and there is direct contact with the audience with the use of eye contact. The background fades from red into orange and then into yellow, from the bottom left had corner to the top right. I added a drop shadow behind Sophie so she stands out more against the background.

To improve this basic design i added a drop shadow to her name and her album name to make the text stand out and look alot more clear then it did before. The shadow on the text is at the same angle as the shadow on Sophie, i done this because i thought it looked better and slightly more real, it's as if there is one light source casting a shadow on both Sophie and the text.

I then thought that the background needed more, it needed something to make it less boring. I played around with a new layer behind Sophie and the text. I added rings behind her head by using the radial gradient to conotate an old 50's style microphone, this is to match her style and voice.

I think adding the rings makes Sophie stand out a considerable amount more than she did before, i think this adds dimension to the front cover. The rings also conoate the style of microphone they sung in the 50's.
After adding the rings, i didn't think it was jelling together as well as i wanted it to, so what i did was change the colour of her dress from this peachy orangey colour to orange by using the colour balance. I selected the parts of her dress that i wanted to change the colour to and i copied and pasted it onto a new layer, to change the colour i played around with the colour balance. 

Font Type - Jellyka Delicious Cake

I have chosen a font that i found on a font website for my digipak. I thought that would be more unique and original than the standard fonts that you would find on programs like word and photoshop.


I tried a website called dafont.com; this website was fantastic and provided me with the font that I used to run through all of my digipack covers. It offers a massive variety of font possibilities, designs..etc. I decided to used a font named 'Jellyka Delicious Cake' because i think it suited the style i was looking for. It's written in a calligraphic style and I think it is quite a feminine font type because it's curly way it's written, I also think it's quite a sophisticated font. 
After deciding on this font i wanted to make it even more unique by playing about with the way some of the letters were written.

I took away some of the letter and added dots, i done this to represent the 14 tracks on her album. Each song being so emotionally connected to Sophie it's literally written in her name. I also joint her names together i think this jells it together and makes it look allot better 

My Digipak Ideas

For my digipak i wanted to create a brand for an upcoming artist so i could keep my ideas separate from ideas that have been done before. My artist is going to be X Factor evictiee Sophie Habibis, i like her voice, her style and her style of music so producing a digipak is going to be fun.

Font - for a font i was thinking something that either looked hand drawn or in a calligraphy style. For example Bickham Script Pro Regular or Edwardian Script ITC. I want to use old fashioned fonts and edit it on photoshop to make it original. 

Colour Scheme - I wanted to use red as a running colour through my digipak. The colour red connotes stability, love, warmth and high energy. The connotations of the colour red is also going to follow in the songs i put on the digipak. Some love songs, songs that make people feel warm inside and some high energy songs.