Wednesday 30 November 2016

BV: Gun Footage: Why we won't be using it

For our music video, we decided to film 2 different endings, and choose which one to use after filming both. 
We have decided to definitely not use this ending- Where the main character pulls a gun to his head and there is a fade to black- As we thought it would be too problematic.

Violence in music videos is less more common and tolerated than it would be in Film. Because of this, we decided to decrease the amount of violence in our video. 
To add to that, a violent ending to the video would restrict where it would be shown, (For example, certain TV channels may not want to show it), therefore giving our video less views and opportunities, specifically with our young adult Target Audience.

Using Final Cut Pro X, I edited some of the gun footage together. We shot this on two separate occasions (once without tattoos, as a practice, and once with) 


Friday 25 November 2016

Podcast 8

This is our 8th podcast. 


BV

KO: DIGIPAK: Idea

I have been thinking about the design for our digipak and will describe it in the post. This might not be what we end up using in the final but gives a ruff idea of my idea. The front cover of the digipak will feature the singer holding an umbrella as that is the album logo. The front will also have the tile of the album over it. The colour of the text or font used i haven't decided yet ill see what I think looks best.

The back of the digipak will have the back of the singer walking towards the sun with the sunlight blinding the camera. The back will also include the titles of the songs that are included in the album. As of yet I have not thought about where the barcode or colour the text will be, this is something I will experiment with.



When you open the digipak there will be a single picture of all the band members with a border on the pictures. On the picture there will also be the BMTH letters. The disk will be in-between the pages like Bring Me The Horizons "THATS THE SPIRIT" digipak. The CD will have its own art which we will discuses later on.

Tuesday 22 November 2016

KO: DIGIPAK: Research

Digipak is a patented style of optical disc packaging. Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one ore more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.
To the left you see a template of what a digipak looks like.
The digipak was made to resemble a vinyl with the cardboard covers but instead of holding a vinyl it holds a CD.

The good thing about digipaks rather than a CD cover or a Vinyl is that it is smaller in size than the vinyl but lighter in weight then a CD this makes transport cheaper and will also mean that shops can hold more inventory of digipak.

Digipaks have become very popular, due to the artwork they appeal to collectors, because of the paper feel it targets the nostalgic fell of vinyl. Because of its popularity it has a target audience on youtube of unboxing videos.

To the right you can see an example of what a digipak looks like. In this example you can see that you can open it to have 3 sides rather than a CD which only has 2.
On one page you can see the main cover which has the title of the title of the cover. On another page you can see a list of the songs that are on the CD. On the last page that we can see you have a medium close up of the artist.

Depending on the digipak whats on the pages might change. Some have a bunch of text but the most common is photos of the band or artist.

Bring Me The Horizon do have a digipak for their album "THAT'S THE SPIRIT". I found an unboxing video for the digipak and their box set (the video is in Spanish and the unboxing doesn't start until 2:35). It is very simple with no photos used only a black background with either white font or a different colour black. On the back there is a list of the songs, a barcode, music label, parental advisory warning and trademark message. The inside of the pack has one painting which goes over both pages with bright colours. The disk is in-between the paper and you have to grab it by the top to get it or you have to slide it out. There is also a booklet with some information on.

Friday 18 November 2016

Wednesday 16 November 2016

Website EG8 - AC/DC

The fact that you can get it in different languages is quite impressive. I found that it linked with google translate that translates the webpage immediately. The back to top design feature simple but really good.  

Website EG7 - Bullet For My Valentine

Feature is an auto-scrolling gallery. Quite minimal, home, live, merch (slang, abbreviated), music and video. Very much to the point. Newslettter sign up means that they can push marketing and can sell your personal data.

Nothing personal about it - no bibliography, story or anything.

Website EG6 - Shawn Mendes

Variation on splash page and is arguably a smarter way to do it cause they haven't obscured the webpage completely. You can click the X to close it but are getting immediate marketing for the latest release.




The site only contains the tour dates very simply. There are links to Amazon, iTunes, Google Play. However there is no other content, which indicates a bad webpage

VIP package industry awareness. broken link -- not so good


Website EG5 - Charlie Puth


WHAT I CAN APPLY - WEBSITE

The Charlie Puth website doesn't have a banner and is also very different from other websites since the links lists and social media links are at the bottom. The picture focuses on him as an artist playing one of his songs on the piano. He is mainly appealing to a female audience and therefore a picture of him sitting on a piano, with phone flashes behind him that look like stars make him look even more appealing on this picture. 

On the website there are a total of 6 links and there shouldn't be a link called E-Mail, there should be a separate link called contact details instead of e-mail, otherwise it looks as if you can contact Charlie Puth directly. Another clever trick in this website is that the Charlie Puth is the home link rather than writing HOME. This is a very nice idea, and is also where we got our idea from for our website. 


Another useful thing on a website is a pop-up at the beginning when clicking on the link to the website. The pop-up can be a lot of different things, including a sign to sign-up for the bands/artists newsletter or maybe some news of the new music video being released. In this case, they have posted the news of having new merchandise, which are also more "Christmassy". By adding the title "Happy Holidays!" in the pop-up, the advertisers immediately make their audience happy because it let's them feel as if they have gotten a personal christmas greeting from the artist or band. 

Website EG4 - You Me At Six

This webpage is a good example for how our website shouldn't look. It is a quite disorganised website, since there are no links lists to either home, store etc. At the beginning I thought that this was an unofficial website, however after searching for You Me at Six website again, I concluded that this was their official website. As a fan of the band, I wasn't happy about this website. I had never visited the website, since I mainly follow them on their social media rather looking at their website. Due to the fact that their social media is quite popular and organised I was astonished and also slightly disappointed to see their website.

However two things that were good about the website was that first of all, it showed the music video to their latest song "Night People", and again there were three social media links and also a link to merchandise with the ident of a shopping cart.

Website EG3 - The 1975

Instead of going directly to the home page you get a splash page, which gives the audience the opportunity to immediately see their new music video and see the newest updates from the band. 

The splash page shows a wider grasp of technology, and would be a good element to imply on our website once we create it. 

The links are really clever on the splash page, because of the fact that these include all of the pages that the audience can buy their music on. It has a link for Vinyl, CD, Spotify and iTunes and also includes a link to their merchandise and their tickets. 

However, the colors on the splash page are really pale, the light pink that goes against the white background, doesn't work very well. And also, the colors again, for the same with ALT-J, don't fit the genre of the band, since it is a rock band and has used very bright pink. 

There are 9 links list on the website page , which is too many links list, and some audiences might not want to stay on the webpage because of so many links lists. Also, you don't see the symbol or the logo of the 1975 band in the banner at the top of the website, which is not very good. If it is not in the banner it should have been at the bottom.

The assumption of the webpage is that it is teen friendly, due to the Pinterest kind of style and design. If the section had been shorter it would have been very good, however it is a bit too big and long.

Website EG 2 - ALT-J

The website for ALT-J is a very minimalistic website. The design doesn't really fit with the genre of the band. The band is a rock band, however the design screams of a dance genre due to the bright colours of blue and pink rather than darker colors such as dark blue, black etc. 

When hovering over the ALT-J it turns into color rather than the letters being written in dark grey. This is a nice design feature, because it adds a bit more color to the website, which is good since it i very minimalist. 

This time there are 5 links. The links list LIVE would allow you to highlight how the industry is changing and how acts is relying more and more on ticket sales. The links are all useful because they include merchandise, the live links list, the news, the music and the sign-up. The sign up links list is where you get marketing for albums, special editions tour tickets... 
For some sign up you have to pay and you have to give your email address 

Good side is that you get specific offers only on the website which aren't published on their social media either. 

Compared to Adam-Ant.com, they have more social media accounts such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter along with SoundCloud and their YouTube Channel and Spotify, which allow them to share what they are doing and again reach their audience fast. 

Website EG1 - Adam Ant

The website that we will analyse is the one by Adam Ant. This is the link.
In this post I will go into a lot of detail on the analysis of the links lists and comment on the design of the banner at the top of the website.




There are 6 top links lists in this website. This amount should be the absolute limit of links lists and there shouldn't be more on our personal websites for our bands, because it will be too much for the audience to keep an overview and also for ourselves

In case you want to have more than 6, you can do a drop-down list. For example on the Adam Ant website there is a drop down list on the features links list.
One of the links lists includes home, which is a main links list that you should always have, because it allows the audience to always go back to where they started. 
The merchandise links list is an absolute must! It wouldn't have to be called merchandise but could also have the name "shop", "store"etc.  

The forum is what usually allows the audience to follow the band/artist that they like. It is also often used in order for fans to have discussions among eachother. For example, discussing the new song that the artist has brought out. However, nowadays the new websites might have taken the forum away, because social media is used more, where the fans can have discussions in the comment area and can follow the band/artist very quickly because they get notifications on their smartphone every time the band/artist posts something on their social media. 

The banner is very important, because it should be a link into the latest album and the digipack of the band. This banner is a bad example and this is definitely not how it should look. 
This banner is only on the Adam Ant net website, and not on the adam ant com website, which makes the adam ant com website look a bit better. It is not entirely clear why there have been created two different websites for Adam Ant. It could be because one of them is addressing the UK more and the other one is addressing the US more. 

Looking on the right there are the links with the idents of Adam Ants social media such as Facebook, Twitter, his YouTube channel and a link to the apple music on iTunes. 

Friday 4 November 2016

Podcast 5



There is a mistake in the video where it says Podcast #3 when this is actually Podcast #5.
This week:

  • Filmed Performance 
  • Updated production schedule 
  • Started working on website

BV: MISE-EN-SCENE: Tattoos

UPDATE: CHANGE OF TRACK BUT KEEPING THE SAME TATTOOS AS THEY FIT INTO THE SAME GENRE
As tattoos are a very common feature of rock bands, and as we wanted to achieve verisimilitude, we decided to have tattoos on the band members. 

When first designing the tattoos, I took a lot of inspiration from the lead singer of Bring Me The Horizon, Oli Sykes. There were a few tattoos that i saw very often on singers or band members such as: 
- Roses
- Crosses
- Skulls
- Instruments/something music themed.

I also took the lyrics of the song we are using (Follow You) and found some phrases that I could base a tattoo of. 

I immediately saw the word heart and was inspired by that to draw a realistic heart. I drew the designs in biro as it allows small detail and creates a similar effect to that of a tattoo.

After having designed all of these tattoos and drawn them out, i began testing the paper we had bought to make the tattoos temporary, as my previous attempts had not worked properly. 
I drew a very simple sun design on word, and then printed it out 5 times onto the paper. I tried a few different methods, the one I found on the internet, and one that was on the packet of the paper. 
This was moderately successful, although there was still a strange plastic texture to the tattoo. I tried again a couple of times and found that if i used hot water, and dampened the tattoo often it worked fine. 
I then took all of my on the day of the shoot. 




Production Schedule UPDATE 2

Today, I updated our production schedule (update 2) after we have filmed some footage. Unfortunately our female protagonist wasn't able to make it and so we weren't able to finish filming the entire narrative. We have also decided to choose another female protagonist, which we will be talking about in our 4th podcast.