LF: Deconstruction of a Digipak

 

 

 

Deconstruction: Eminem ‘Recovery’ Digipak:

• The name recovery symbolises the artist has had a bad spell in the music industry and is now wanting to re-achieve what he has before.
• The first aid sign in the ‘O’ is a first aid sign so it could be medical issues for instance drugs.
• Iconography:he glass box Eminem is sitting in on the top left page expresses an enigma code that he could be in his own little world and trying to make a change with noone in his way.
• The next picture along gives a different impression. It is more rural, whereas the other is more urban, which shows the different locations the music video and the Digipak designer has used to create a busy and quiet, two very contrasting scenes.
• The bottom one has ‘Eminem welcomes you to Detroit’ on a bill board in the background which shows he has made it as he is in centre of attention in the city and it is like ‘Detroit’ is his home.
• He is wearing very dark clothing which creates a darker mood and reinforces his own mood of getting out of a bad life and entering a new.
• The back shows all the songs that are on the CD.
• Normally the digipak front cover always has the artist prominent in the image and in this case Eminem is on all 3 sides.
• There are three signifiers in each of the print, but all the signified have a different meaning. On is looking at the camera, creatig an extradiegetic gaze and builds a relationship between the audience and the artist to give authenticity; another is the artist walking away in a desolate location expressing a meaning that he has come from nothing and walking to a better future, reinforcing the title 'Recovery'; and the other print shows him reading a book, but facing the camera in a glass box, suggesting he wants to learn about the outside world.
• The camera techniques used does not always frame the artist in the centre, but uses the rule of thirds in two out of the 3. The artist is positioned as much to the left as possible showing the open road and making the audience focus more on the location rather than the artist.
• Introducing Dyer's theory, the artist is seen as ordinary and extraordinary in the same digipak. Ordinary in the sense he is walking down the road and wearing basic clothes of what you would expect to find from a middle class person, but also extraordinary when sitting in a glass box infront of part of a skyline that looks as though it has been dropped there.