DVD cover Analysis

Music DVD covers seem to usually follow certain conventions. It is common for them to have a large image on the front cover that relates to the band or artist. It will also have the name of the artist and the title of the DVD in large letters. It will always have these on the spine of the cover as well.
On the back of the cover there will be a list of songs and footage that is played in the chapters of the DVD. Also there will be a barcode and logos of sponsors and the bands or artists labels.
I will have to keep these codes and conventions in mind when analysing and creating my own DVD covers.

I like how Blink 182’s DVD cover is plain yet distinctive. They have copied their album art on to the front. This automatically pulls in fans of the band as they know what songs will be on it even if they haven’t read the back as they would have the CD.
This cover has followed the codes and conventions completely. With it’s colour scheme that is consistent throughout and large image and titles it would be quite appealing to its target audience.
I like this cover because it follows these codes and conventions yet I dislike it because I find the colour scheme too boring, so in my DVD cover I will try to use more colour.

Eminem’s ‘Hitz & Disses’ DVD follows the codes and conventions but in a different way to Blink 182’s’Greatest Hits’. On the back, instead of a list of songs or footage that is shown, it gives us a synopsis of the content of the DVD. It is also in colour but there is no defined colour scheme. Also, there is a 15 age certification, this means there is some unsuitable content such as swearing, I may have to think about this factor when creating my DVD cover.
I like this cover because of the images, on the back of the cover the artists face has been edited so the colour has changed and half his face is in negative. I will also have to think about picture editing when doing my own cover.

On the other end of the scale to rap artist Eminem we have the female pop group, Girls Aloud. This means we would expect to see a different type of colour scheme and pictures as to appeal to the pop culture fan base that Girls Aloud appeal to.
On the cover we get a picture of the whole group this will appeal to both males and females. Yet the colour scheme of pink and purple may be more attractive to females.
One interesting feature of the cover is that there is an ‘Extras’ feature on the back however the rest of the DVD follows the codes and conventions I mentioned earlier.

I find Nu-mental band, Slipknot’s, ‘Welcome to the Our Neighbourhood’ music DVD very interesting. The background on the front may seem to be just black and red stripes yet it appeals to fans of this band as it is actually a motif. It references the barcode the band use on their CD cover and boiler suit costumes. The barcode motif is also used on the spine of the DVD.
Another interesting feature is that it advertises the CD that has the songs from the DVD on, this will make fans who like the DVD contents go and buy the CD.
Other than these deviations, the rest of the cover follows normal codes and conventions.

Shock Rock artist Marilyn Manson’s music DVD follows the theme of the genre by showing lots of pictures of him performing live, as live performance is a main feature in the Shock Rock genre.
I like the large front image of his face and how it has been edited. Yet I can only guess at the reason behind the changing Manson’s eye colour I still like how it works with black and white scheme of the whole cover.
I have also realised while analysing the DVD covers which artist / company is more Americanised than others. We can see that Manson’s DVD was made by an American company whereas the likes of Girls Aloud’s hasn’t. We can tell this by how the back of the DVD cover is set out. I know that because the artist I am using I will have to set out my DVD cover in the style of a ‘British DVD Cover’.