Ancillary Task: Finished Website

The link to our final website can be found here: chasingtigers.mbdesignsolutions.co.uk

Overall, I feel that our website was very successful, as we have taken into account some of the many conventions that are popular with websites of this genre. Our website's colours and themes reflect those that are present in all of our other products, including our digipak and our music video, which helps to create brand familiarity with our audience. The website includes social network integration, clear navigation and a news feed, which are all things we found when studying websites by other bands in the genre.

Ancillary Task: Analysis of Indie-Rock Websites

 

The Beatles website, which can be seen above, is a good example of an indie-rock website. The website uses a scrolling banner to show the latest news articles, with links to other websites. The site features a search bar, where visitors can search for Beatles music, along with a merchandise store, which I feel we should try and incorporate into our website. This site also encourages visitors to interact using social media, giving people the opportunity to get more involved. This provides the ideal base for fans, who want to find out more about the band, and the design makes the site easy to navigate. Furthermore, the site uses responsive web design, so that it adapts and fits to any browser site, meaning it can be viewed on a variety of platforms, making it accessible to a wide audience. 

The Coldplay website is not dissimilar to the one that I will create for our project. The website features the navigation bar at the top, whilst showing the latest news along the right hand side, and highlighted articles, including a twitter feed, along the left. The band's video is a key focus of the page, which is something that we could consider using, to link our products together. In addition, the colour schemes used on the website tie in with others across other products, which is again something that we could consider incorporating. 

The Oasis website uses a photo focus as the banner at the top, which is something that I will consider using on our website. This creates a focus, and shows how popular the band are. The navigation is clear, and the colours used compliment each other well, perhaps giving a more professional feel that the Coldplay website. All of the neccessary information is clearly displayed, making it easy for fans to navigate the website. I will try to ensure that I incorporate elements from the design of this page into our website.

Conventions of a Digipak

The Mumford & Sons digipak above is a good example of a minimalist Digipak. The front cover features an album photo cover, with the band name and album name at the bottom of the picture. This shows how the band wish for the photo to be the main selling attraction of the album, and hope that the style of photography will become associated with the band. The rear cover continues in the same theme, with a very minimalist look, and the tracks of the album being shown in the same font. Again, the photo is the main focus of this cover, and is perhaps meant to represent the rear of the building shown on the front. This sort of technique is something that we will try and replicate in our digipak.

The minimalist theme is continued on the inside. The inside left cover is blank, and features just a small amount of writing in the centre. As well as drawing attention to the writing, this technique gives the impression that the band have been successful, as they have not had to squeeze information onto this pane, and can afford to spread information out. Another photograph is shown on the centre cover, which again helps people to identify the band with this type of style, whilst the CD holder is found on the right hand panel.

This digipak effectively represents the conventions portrayed in many digipaks of this genre, and we will try and use some of these techniques in our own work.

The second digipak above is for Coldplay's album Viva La Viva, and features a contrasting approach between the inside and outside of the product. The outside, like the Mumford & Sons cover, features a minimalist approach, using a grey background and yellow text, which compliments each other well. The front cover uses just text in the centre, which is a slightly unusual approach, but effective nonetheless. This theme is continued on the rear of the digipak, which simply features a yellow track list and barcode, and the minimalist style is one that we will seek to use in our product.

The inside of the cover is, however, very different, and a sharp contrast to the outside. The inside features a bright, colourful background, and an intertextual reference is used to link to old art pieces by famous artists. The other cover features performance shots of the band, which is very common for digipaks, and again, is something that we will look to incorporate in our product.

The Oasis digipak breaks convention for a Indie-rock digipak, by featuring a picture of an accustic guitar. This digipak gives a slightly older feel, and is representative of a 1980's and 1990's product, with the variety of colours used. The rear of the Digipak shows the track listings, whilst the inside features the CD, with the same style of background continued.

I feel that when creating our digipak, inspiration should not be taken from this product, and instead from the previous two that we have looked at, which more closely represent the conventions of a modern digipak.

About the Digipak

Elements of the Digipak:

Images:

• Band images
• Logo for the band?
• Barcode
• Record company logo?
• Main images for front and back covers

Text:

• Band name
• Price, possibly on barcode?
• Song/track list
• Record company information
• CD/Album name
• Extras/bonus tracks?
• Band information

Theme/Design:

• Genre-matching theme (unless going for the unconventional image)
• Suitable packaging to hold different Digiback elements.

Audience Feedback

Thomas Robertson, University Media Production Manager:
"A nice range of shots and good use of location, in particular the beach sunset. Lots of thought has obviously gone into camera angles and story boarding and this shows in the final piece. An initial criticism would be a lack of narrative in relation to the song however this is relieved with the photo album at the end of the piece. A very strong video with good reference points coming from the stop start animation and band onstage. Impressive to get that much stagelight working but get the guitarist to wear a darker top next time, dayglow compared to the other two."

Feedback from Social Networking site Facebook:

Some names have been removed to protect identity

Overall, we feel that the feedback we received was reasonably positive. The feedback from social networking allowed us to get the views and opinions of people who are in our target audience, gaining the views of people who do, and of people who do not know about media. People also offered some constructive criticism, such as that from ******** Cooke, who suggested that the video is a bit repetitive, with going from the shots of the band to the shots of the narrative and back again. This is something that we hope to address in our second version of the music video.

There were also some good comments that were given about our music video. For example, I am pleased that ******** Cooke noticed the book that the character was carrying, as we were unsure if this would be noticed by an un-briefed audience. Also, it was refreshing to note that Thomas Robertson felt the shot on the beach reflected a sunset - an effect we were hoping to achieve, even though the shot was filmed at 10:00am. Thomas' point about a lack of narrative will also be taken into consideration for the next edit.

Research and Music Video Development

Research into our Band

Below is an interview that two members of Chasing Tigers conducted with BBC Radio Norfolk. This gives us a really good insight into the band's background, and will help us to develop our products to suit the band's style and genre.

Development of our Music Video

Below is the first draft of our music video. Please have a look, and give us some feedback in the comments section.

Ancillary Task - Website Plans

Before undertaking any web design task, it is important to carry out thorough plans. The plans for the website that I will create can be seen below:

House Style

When designing my website, I will endeavour to ensure that the design is kept consistent across all pages. All pages will have a black background with white text, which reflects the style portrayed on other marketing material from the band. The header will feature the band's logo on the left, with the rest of the screen width showing a photo of the band's performance. Under this area, the navigation bar will be shown, which will feature on all pages, allowing easy navigation for the audience from any point within the site. All headings will be written in HTML using the< h1> tag, and, in the CSS file, I will specify that this uses a font size of 2em, and a font of 'Reprise Title'. Similarly, all body text will be written using the <p> tag, and a font of 'Gill Sans MT' will be specified, at font size 1em. The use of 'em' in font size will ensure that the font size remains relative to the size of the browser window, helping to create an enjoyable browsing experience for users on all platforms. I also feel that Reprise Title and Gill Sans MT compliment each other well, creating a professional feel to the website.

Audience & Purpose

My website has been designed to provide information about the band, and provide an online base for fans interested in the band. With this in mind, I feel that the audience for my website is likely to be older teenagers and young adults (14-25), and is likely to be predominantly males, although I shall design my website to be used by a much wider audience range, with simple and intuitive navigation making it possible for those with few IT skills to use my website.

Accessibility for my Audience

I will design my website so that it is accessible for a wide variety of audiences. For example, I will ensure that no advertising banners appear on my website, as these can sometimes appear as genuine buttons, confusing some users, making them press the wrong button. The font sizes I use for my website will also be accessible to the majority of people, using reasonably large sizes and clear fonts, helping to aid navigation, along with the body text, which will be clear to read.

Although the timescales of this project will not make it practical to incorporate Responsive web design, I will consider some elements of this in the production of my site. Responsive web design involves using multiple CSS sheets, and then using HTML code, so that the browser decides which CSS document to use, depending on the size and resolution of the screen. This means that designers can drastically change the way a site looks on a mobile device compared to on a full desktop monitor, excluding some parts of the site, or making other adjustments to fonts and colours, all from one site and base HTML document. Elements of this will be considered with designing my site, ensuring that my website is accessible for all users who view the site.

Tools & Techniques used to Create my Website

When creating my website, I will use Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) coding. This is the standard language used for the internet, and is compatible with all web browsers. HTML documents load quickly for users, which is partly down to the very small file size, which reduces load on the server. A website designer building a site in HTML will use a variety of tags to define different elements in the site, by starting with the tag, <tag> for example, and ending the section with a closing tag, such as </tag>. For my website, the <p> tag will be used to define paragraph text, whilst< h1> will be used to define headings. All heading information, including metadata, the website title, external style sheet link and JavaScript will be wrapped in the <head> tags, and this tells the browser to load this information before the rest of the page. Where a table needs to be used, I will begin by using the <table> tag, and then <tb> to define the table body, and <tr> to define individual rows. Formatting tags will be used, including <strong> to make contents bold, and <i> to add Italics formatting to text.

In HTML, comments can be added to the code, which makes it easier to understand and edit at a later date. These comments can be written as <!---COMMENT--->, and when surrounded with the <!--- and ---> tags, the browser knows to ignore this information. As I will be writing my website using HTML5, I will be able to take advantage of some of the newer tags, such as the <video> tag, which will be used to insert the video on the Idols & Upsets page.

DIV’s will also be used as containers for my page, to create the main framework and layout of the page. By using DIV ID’s in my HTML, using <div id=”hello”>, I can specify the size, background colour, margins, padding and position of each div individually, via my CSS sheet (discussed later). DIV’s will be used to hold my header logo, image, navigation bar and footer, along with individual elements on each page, ensuring that my website displays as intended on a wide variety of devices.

The use of DIV’s has replaced tables and iFrames which used to be used for layout, but have now become obsolete. DIV’s can contain a mixture of paragraphs, headings & videos, and so are extremely versatile when being used on the internet. Furthermore, DIV Classes can be used on my website, and I will use a class to define the page which is active for my navigation bar, using< class=”active”> in my HTML, and then by defining different formatting in my CSS sheet for this class, the active page will show the down state on my navigation bar.

An external Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) will be used to provide all of the formatting and layout of my website. The use of this makes it easier to change the formatting of my website, as only one CSS sheet must be used for all page of my website. Therefore, to make a change, you must simply edit the CSS document, instead of changing the coding on each HTML document. CSS will be used to specify styling and positioning for HTML elements, ensuring consistent design across all pages. For example, to specify the formatting of all paragraphs, I can simply write ‘p {‘in the CSS sheet, followed by the relevant attributes for the section, such as‘font-size’, ‘font-family’ & ‘padding’. These will be written in the format‘attribute:value;’, and the vital use of a semicolon after the instruction separates the lines of coding. The block of instructions will be finished by using ‘}’, preparing the document for the next instruction. Multiple elements of my HTML will be formatted in CSS, including paragraphs, headings, videos and DIV ID’s, and in CSS, a DIV ID is defined using ‘#DIVID’. In a similar way to HTML, CSS comments will be written, to make the document easier to understand when editing, but with CSS, these will be written in the format /*COMMENT*/, with the /* and */ sections telling the browser to ignore the enclosed piece of text. In the head section of the HTML document, <link rel=”stylesheet”type=”text/css” href=”css.css”> will be used, to tell the HTML document to take its formatting from the correct CSS document. The use of CSS makes the HTML document faster and more efficient, as there is less HTML coding for the browser to implement.

JavaScript will also be used in my website, to provide the interactive elements for my website, including the PayPal eCommerce, video, and the RSS feed. JavaScript elements that I include in my site will be sourced from the internet, so that they are appropriate for the task in hand, and then manipulated for use on my website.

I will also use Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, on the news page of my site, to keep my page updated with latest news. This method easily allows my website to be customised by clients, as it does not require a new HTML page to be uploaded every time news articles need to be added. Furthermore, this is ideal for users, as they may wish to add the RSS feed to apps on their smartphones or tablets, or widgets on their desktop, so that they are always fully up to date with the information from the site.

A navigational plan for my website can be seen below:

Ancillary Task: Album Cover

For our album cover, we looked at the way that other bands produced their own. We decided that a lot of these bands used abstratc art or other artistic ideas, especially in the text on the cover as this is usually in a unique font that portrays the 'rock' idea.

For our album cover, we decided that we wanted it to be abstract but still portray the main idea and concept behind the band. We decided to use the tiger idea but use different photoshop effects to overlay the colours onto different images. For the back cover, we decided on a simple idea of just using a leaping tiger drawing from the internet and editing the colours to make it more interesting and appealing to the audience. The text colour is white to make the cover more original and also because the white stands out on the black background and therefore is easy to read.

The images on this CD cover both started off as images from Google, allowing us to use research to gain these secondary sources. I then spent hours on Photoshop editing the images and producing different effects in order to make the images more personal and unique to our album cover. The image of the eye just started off on Google as a picture of a female eye wearing gold make-up. I then edited the tiger colouring into the pupil in order to refer it to the band name, Chasing Tigers. I then added a lighting effect to sharpen the colouring as well as upping the contrast in order to make the colours more effective.

The tiger image on the back cover was also from Google, but I edited it on Photoshop to make it black and white as well as producing a fuzzy background effect to make the background less boring and fit in with the colour scheme of the text and the black frame.

Ancillary Task Preparation: Website

 

As part of our project, I have decided to utilise my skills in web design to make a promotional website for our band. As well as enabling me to develop my skills, this will be the ideal way to promote our band's album within our genre, as research has shown that a large proportion of our audience use the internet to discover new bands.

A screenshot of the initial developments of our website can be seen above. The header image features the band's logo, and to depict the house styling portrayed in the logo, a simple black and white theme will be continued throughout the website. The header also features a performance shot that we took when we filmed this part of our music video, which instantly gives website visitors a feel of the style portrayed by the band. The navigation bar can then be seen below, which will be shown on every page, enabling easy navigation by the user.

As this website will be built as part of my of one of my BTEC ICT units, I will construct my website using raw HTML and CSS coding, and the coding for the website so far can be seen below.

Performance Shoot Evaluation 25/10/13

This shoot was extremely successful for many reason:

• Massive range of shots due to unlimited time allowing us to use tripods, ladders and handheld cameras which then gave us a good range of low-angle, high-angle and close-up shots of the band performing.
• The performance looks professional as we didn't have to make each individual band member wear headphones in order to play along with the song as we were able to play the song out loud and just sing/play along with it in that way. This means that there was no need for music sheets or lyrics.
• Because we filmed it on the school stage, we were able to have full use of the curtains and the lighting systems in order to make our production look more professional and interesting.
• Bozzy also brought in his own lights and laser systems to add to the production value of the performance shooting (we wanted to use our smoke machine but weren't allowed due to the smoke alarams in school)
• It was also successful because we did it during the half-term holidays, allowing us as much time as we wanted and no interruptions.
• We had a lot of help from people not in our group (Jack - drums, Matt - guitar and Dan - lighting and general help). All these people also brought helpful equipment like Matt's guitar and amplifyer as well as Jack bringing his drumkit in the car all the way from Peterborough for a 9am start.
• Good quality instruments made us look like an actual band and not like cheap copycats, even if we weren't actually producing the song ourselves.
• Multiple run-throughs which meant that we were able to get as many shots as possible as well as to allow us to get to know the song properly and get comfortable with it. This also meant that we have a lot of footage which can only serve to assist us in the final production of our music video.
• Great song to perform as the lyrics are easy to understand and hear, meaning it was easy to perform to, as well as the music being quite audible, allowing Matt and Jack to improvise the music but still make it look and sound as if we were actually the ones performing the song, which will be very helpful for our actual video.
• Jack and Matt both wore white and I (lead-singer) wore a different colour which actually looked quite effective and made me stand out as the key performer, which is quite conventional generally in Indie-rock music videos.

This shoot would have been improved if:

• We planned all the different angles and shots we wanted of each band member or the band as a whole before we started, instead of just putting the camera in loads of different places and improvising a lot in movement and shot types.
• We had one more person to assist us, as when we were getting the high angle shots, Bozzy had to hold the ladder still for Dan so therefore I had to run to turn on the music and get back into position as quickly as I could.
• We had charged the camera instead of having to run it on mains which made the lead get in the way of the dolly, inadvertently interrupting our performance at one point.
• Would have been better if we had planned the lighting sequences before actually filming as only decided to start playing around with the lighting after we had already done about 10 run-throughs of the song.
• Had the music playing louder from the beginning as sometimes it was a little too quiet for Jack on drums to copy it as he couldn't hear it too well over the noise from the drums that he was playing, meaning that occasionally he was a bit too fast or a little behind the actual music.

Final Advanced Storyboard

Cup Technique 2

The video above is another attempt at the cup technique that we will be using in our music video. This time, instead of using black paint, food colouring was used and diluted with the water. This technique worked far more effectively, as the water was black enough so that when the cup was full and the letter was written on the side, it could not be seen. 

We will be able to use this adaptation in our music video to improve our results, making the technique more effective