Website research - Content

In this post, I will show the next stage of my Website research. This research will be based around the content that can be find on existing artists web pages. These pages will be based around the same genre that Milburn are classed in "Indie Rock". Example of pages that usually are present are home pages and contact pages for example.

Home
The most used page on a website is the Home page. The home page is usually the first page that appears to the user once they have clicked on the link to the website. A Home page that i have looked at is on Jake Buggs Website who also creates Indie Rock Music. His Home page looks fairly simple but there is actually lots of content when the user looks closer. The first major content that stands out on his page is the social networking links that can be seen. They are contained in little circles with there notable logos that the audience should recognise. Examples of  these social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This is a very common convention that artists use in the present day. It allows fans to interact with each over about there artist, they could even interact Jake Bugg himself vie Twitter. Having links to YouTube is also smart as this promotes Jake Buggs music, as fans can view many of his music videos if the click on the YouTube link.

Other content that is used in the home page is news. Here the user can scroll down and find all the latest information such as upcoming Gigs, new albums, new music videos and so on. This is useful as the user does not necessary have to scroll through the other pages on the site. On his home page, we can also see a banner at the top, this banner gives the user information on his newest album titles "Shangri La" saying is is available to purchase now. If the user clicks on the link it takes them to iTunes where they can purchase the album. This is useful as the artist can make money as well as promote his work at the same time. The banner is actually on evrypage and changes to many different types of advertisement related to Jake Bugg.

Gigs

Photos 

Contact

Releases

Editing Using Final Cut

In the above photo, i have added an effect to a clip at the end of my sequence. The effect i added was a fade in at the start and then a fade out at the end. The effect was rather easy to implement. First i highlighted the start of my clip, i then pressed control and T on my keyboard, the same process was completed at the end of my clip. This added the fade in and fade out effect. The scene that i added it to shows a long shot of a pathway which ends my sequence.

Above shows the place where my clips were placed once they were imported into final cut from the camera. This area makes it easy to drag and drop my clips into the timeline and then edit them.

The image above shows the edited footage for the start of my track, around 35 seconds in.

The next screen shot, shows me browsing through the effects, the effect i was looking for was a colour change. Part of my clips will be a separate time period to the others, so around half my video i would like to be in black and white. To add this effect, i went to color corrector, i then dragged it to my chosen clip.

Once i dragged it to my clip, the clip becomes highlighted. To change the colour i then double clicked on it.

When i double clicked the clip, the clip appears separately on the left, i then clicked on color corrector at the top. The above image shows what appears. Here the colour can be changed to what ever the user desires. To change it to black and white however i just dragged the saturation bar all the way to the left.

The above shows what the visual look like when i completed this process. As you can see the colour has changed to black and white. This was very useful and quick to apply to my video. However if i want to add this effect to another clip, i actually don't have to complete the same process again. Instead there is another method which is much quicker.

Above shows the quicker method. The middle icon with the hand shows how i do this. I went back into color corrector on the clip, i then selected this icon and dragged it to another clip that i wanted in black and white. I completed this process for all the clips that i wanted in black and white.

The next editing technique i added to my clip was change of speed. The change in speed that i wanted, was to slow down time. I managed to do this by double clicking the particular clip, clicking on the motion bar, scrolling down to speed and changing the speed. This slowed to clip down once the percentage was dropped. I used this on many clips throughout my video, the speed various depending on the clip. I used this in my clip, because it adds more focus into what is going on in the clip, hopefully the audience will be able to highlight these moments.

Risk Assessment

Call sheet

Web page research - Style

Part of this project, I am required to design a website for my band. This is required because websites are very useful in terms of promotion. Before I design my website for my album, I need to gather research that will give me ideas in-terms of visual style and navigation. The band that I am creating the music video for is Milburn, so I will analyse 5 similar bands in-terms of genre and compare them later.

Arctic Monkeys - (http://www.arcticmonkeys.com/)

I will first start by analysing the website for the Arctic Monkeys. They are a good starting point because they have a similar music style to Milburn, they also come from the same city of Sheffield and are currently one of the most recognizable bands in the country. I think it is also relevant to start with them as I am taking a slightly same approach to my style of video as they do, these styles can be seen in a previous post that I have completed.

The Screenshot to the left shows the general home page for the bands website. The first notable style of the website seems to generally use the colours of black and white ( black for the background,white for he text. Firstly this is a smart way of separating the text and backgrounds so the viewer knows what is going on on-screen. However i think the main reason this is used is that many elements of the bands new album consist of black and white styles. 

This can be seen firstly with the Album cover for 'AM'. The cover has the same
colours white and black, it also implicates a white zig zag line which can be seen on the home page of the website.

This can be seen in a music video by the band for the song 'do I wanna know'. The video shows a black background with a white guitar string that is in sync with the music.

As you can see from the above, the Arctic Monkeys have started a theme that can be seen throughout their work. They use a range of blacks and whites that are easily recognizable to the audience, so when they see this style they will know it is something to do with the band. This could be a style that I implement on my website, for example i could take a certain aspect from my video and implement it into my webpage and digipak.

Navigation

The navigation on the Arctic Monkeys site is rather simple, but simple is sometimes good for a web page as some web users may struggle to use complicated sites if they are not used to using the internet. Their site is very simple to use and the most inexperienced person on the internet should mange when browsing the site.

The above screenshot, shows the simple navigation bar that can be seen at the top of the Arctic Monkeys website. This is the main bar that allows the user to browse through the main pages. over navigation on the pages includes links to pacific pages, for example if one was on the releases page, there is a list of albums/singles that have been released by the band, if the user clicks on one of these, they will be taken to a separate page that details the album/single. This can be seen throughout the main pages with video, pictures and much more.

The above shows the gig link at the top of the page. When not highlighted, the link remains black (left). However when the browser highlights the link, it changes to white (right), this can be seen above. this is an interesting way of making the page interactive to the audiences. It has also kept to the black and white theme that the Arctic monkeys are currently using throughout their work.

The Strokes

This style of navigation could be useful to use for my webpage design. Keeping the navigation simple will attract more of a broad audience increasing the popularity of the webpage. I also like the colour change when the navigation is highlighted. However i would use a range of colour to make the page more stylish and interesting.

The next website that I will annotate is the band the strokes. This band is also similar to Milburn and the Arctic Monkeys, so I think it would be a good idea to research websites that are the same genre of music. First I have taken a screenshot of the homepage of the website. This is the first page the audience see when they enter the site.

The home page uses only three types of colours, red for the background, which is very eye-catching for the audience. Black is used for some of the text present, this is the banner "home" this shows the audience which page they are on. black is also used to highlight the title of the band in the top left "the strokes". Like the Arctic Monkeys the strokes site share themes that can be seen throughout the latest work.

The website shares the same colours and names as the album design. This is a common convention that artists use in the work. It allows the audience to recognise an artist work, for example if a user saw the strokes website and then the album, they would beadle to easily tell that the album and website are linked.

Digipak forms and conventions

Forms

There are many different forms of digipak that are available to purchase or design. Digipak are unique to traditional jewel cases because there are many ways to form a digipak, they can have any number of panels that fold out, these styles change to suit the particular artists. During this lessons we were given a number of existing digipak to annotate the various features.

This is a digipak by Seth Lakeman, the album is titled freedom fields. I like the artistic style of this digipak, the colour contrast that highlights the artists face is some-think that i would like to use for my design. This digipak does not have only UV coating however, which means it will damage quicker.

This digipak has to panels, when opened one comes out at the left. The left holds a CD that is slotted into a card board slip. The right side features the main CD that is fitted into a plastic case, this is usually the only place plastic is used on digipak.

This next digipak is from the band the Beatles, This is one that stood out for me because of the wide rage of colours that are used.

When opened, this digipak opens slightly differently to the one above, first it opens into two sides with where the CD can not be seen. It features band art to the right and has a cardboard slot where the album notebook is places, which contains the track listing and various over things.

The right side then opens again that shows a very good picture of the band. A plastic slot can also be seen where the CD is placed.

Overall the digipak that i have looked at all share similar conventions. They all have these plastic slits in the digipak where CD are placed, this is usually for a bonus disc, whereas the main disc is placed on the plastic CD slot that is more of a traditional way of holding a CD. I would like to include both a Plastic holding and a Card slot. This is because i will include a bonus disc and the main Album CD.

Digipack Planning

Disc Area

Front Cover

Back Cover

Inside Front Cover