Re-shoot (2)

• Aims

To improve my camera technique and get good shots of the band performing.

Get all the shots necessary.

Be concise and constructive. 

• Locations

The school theater.

• Personel

The band (Conor, Rob, Sam, Dan)
Me
Leah (i have asked one of my friends to be there so whilst i am shooting she could take some behind the scene pictures/films that i can include in my conclusion after)

• Equipment

Camera
SD cards
Tripod
Drum set
Guitars
Microphone stand and microphone
The soft light kit

• Date and times

February 4th 2014
As last time i will be preparing until 5.30 when the other band member arrives. However this time should there be no school production rehearsal i will start to set up the stage (including the soft light set and the drum kit).

• Other considerations

I had the idea to put the band's logo on the drum set, therefore if i have time i will make a cut-out of the logo beforehand.

I will have to go over the 3 point lighting theory.

And on the Monday before (3rd Feb 2014) i will stay in the theater to properly choose the main stage lights that im going to use on the shoot.

Sleeping Serenity's CD Digipack

The thought process:

• I was just brain storming ideas for this first and i started with the colour scheme. I thought that for rock the instant colour that comes to mind is black therefore i feel that black, grey, white and red would go well together.
• As the background is the one with more surface area i feel that either black or grey should be the focus. However as the logo is black it could also be white or grey as long as black is included heavily around it.
• The logo and the band name WILL definitely be included. And with this i was thinking that is should coordinate with the website.
• As i got together with the vocalist we browsed through the google images with some rough ideas and came up with some designs:

- As the song is called Tommy gun we came up with a bullet. Therefore what we were imagining was that on the front cover there would be an entry wound and in the back cover the penetration wound with the bullet casing opn the bottom with smoke coming out of it.

We didn't look at this image, however this gives an idea of what we were thinking.

- As we were brousing around the internet we found an eye with some sort of embeded symbol in it. Which therefore we came up with the idea to have an eye and then their band logo as a reflection in that eye.

This was the image that we found and taht we got insipred by for this particular idea

- Another thing that we found were thorns. We thought that maybe a thorn frame and just the simple logo and band name in the middle could also work.

This was the image that inspired me in particular. I felt that maybe if this image were also mirrored upwards then there would be a white middle in which the logo could go.

Drafts:

This was my first attempt at our favourite idea. I faded their logo into the pupil of the eye. I think this worked quite well because the logo is quite darker then the pupil however it still kept the reflection effect. The only thing that is missing in this is the band's name and the album's name. We thought that the band and album name should either go along the water line of the eye or be morphed to the eye (as in the band name would be morphed left side of the pupil making the lettering going up and the album name would be morphed to the right side making the lettering going upwards).

This is the second draft of the front CD cover. As said previously what needed to be added (the name of the band) i have completed now. In my opinion this does work very well and i think that it does look very unique yet simple. The only thing missing now is the album name on which the band told me that their chosen name was "Visions".  

This is my first draft of Sleeping Serenity's back cover. I chose to have a simple grey background with some fading  in order to give a slight depth to it. I think that the original logo should be on it and therefore that is what i did. I included a bar code and a copyright paragraph as they are conventions for Cd digipacks as i researched this before.

This is my second draft of the back cover for the digipack. On the previous draft i completely forgot about my CD Cover Preparation and i found that i forgot the sides of the back cover that bend to the sides of the CD. I think that so far it does look pretty good and goes with the front cover. The only thing that is needed now, is to add the track list.

Sleeping Serenity's First Draft of the Website

First draft:

This is the first draft of the home page. It includes the bands logo and name at the top which is linked to always appear on the top of the website and it will always take you to the home page. Then there are sub titles/links which change colour as the cursor is over it. These links are "Home", "Info", "Gallery", "Music" and "Tour". 

Below the links there is a slide show which at the moment contains/advertises the link to a story that is in the "Latest News"section and a link to the "Tour" page which advertises their upcoming performance. 

At the footer of the page it includes a small copyright phrase and the link/button to get to the band's Facebook page which always appear regardless on which section of the page you are.

When the cursor is over the "Info" sub link, a drop down bar shows and the options "biography" and "latest news" appear. When the "Info" sub link is clicked the page on the top right appears. I wanted this page not to be there so that one could just choose between either of the drop down options but unfortunately that isn't possible. Therefor when the info page is clicked i just put two links as text which will lead them to the drop down option as i have no other idea or use for just the info page. For it to not be that bland i added a picture of the band to relate everything together.
I have not yet edited all the texts, i have only made a rough guideline for me to fill in everything in time.

This is the "Gallery" page. Once you click on the "Gallery" sub link you get to this page. This contains pictures taken by a professional photographer (which i got permission from to include these in the website) at the band's concert at the last Rocks Green. When the pictures are clicked they enlarge in order to get a better look at them. Below all the pictures i have advertised the photographer and included his Twitter and Facebook link. 

When "Music" is clicked, it takes you to this page. Here i have included videos from the band performing at one of their previous concerts.  I have left the first one empty as i have not yet finished my music video completely and that's where it is supposed to go.

This is the page that you will get to when clicking on the "Tour" sub link. This contains information about their next gigs and links to the school (the venue of the concert) and again i put the link of the band to encourage people visiting this page to follow the band for more updates.

Comments:

I think that a few obvious things need changing. And some things are good.

• For the slide show in the home page i think the pictures need a bit of changing as they aren't that nice to look at, i think that maybe just text with a small picture would work much better.
• The home page itself is simple, which is good. But it almost seems too simple. Therefore i feel that it from my research i could take the sign up feature which would give the fans a way to further communicate and keep up to date with the band. Obviously for this media project it will only be visually, but should the band choose to use this design, this feature would actually be activated.
• I also noticed that as i had the cursor on the image/link for their upcoming performance, the title of the image appears. I will have to delete that.
• I think that the whole of the info section does look good. Therefore i intend to keep it this way, however i will obviously add information/text.
• I also think that the Gallery section is good, however i think that i might add the link to the photographer's actual webpage too.
• I feel that the "Music" section looks good. However i feel that maybe i should include links (again, not actually activated yet) to where the song could be bought digitally or the actual hard copy of the CD.
• The "Tour" section does look a bit bland. However there are no more concerts that this band will have (that they know of) so for this media project i think that i will make up some appearances to show how the page would look if it actually were to be launched for this band.
• I feel that all the links i have included for promotion to the band, the photographer and the school give this website more credibility. 

Some of these features will be "fake" for the purpose of appearance. Because this website is supposed to show how it would look if this website would actually be officially launched for the band.

Research on websites

Shown above i pointed out the key features of this website of the band Royal Republic.

  At a first look (as i like this band too) i can tell that this very much goes with their theme and what they are about. The colour scheme fits in perfectly with them producing synergy with the other products such as at least one of their albums.

  This structure of the website is very simplistic and easy, again, following the rock theme. Everything here is very neat and organised, so that it attracts audience. 

  Although the links to the categories are mostly already in the home page i think that it is still a good idea for them to be there in order to not give the audience everything (information) at once, this encourages to audience to still click on the links in order to find even more information.

  For myself and for the webpage i will be creating for my band, i think that the best features in this particular website are the links to different categories, the upcoming performances section and the recent news/stories on the band.

This is the webpage for the band The Specktators.

  This webpage also very much represents the band and their audience, This webpage is very quirky and original.

  As shown above it is also very simplistic and very easy to use. I found it interesting that the first thing when clicking on their link was that it came up with an immediate advertisement to buy their song and to purchase tickets for their upcoming tour. This is obviously very clever because it is the first thing that one sees therefore you can't just "forget" to purchase tickets or their song when just browsing through the website first.

  I find it very nice in this website that everything is organised, so you will only click on what you really want instead of looking through the homepage first and then find what you want. It is all well labeled  therefore with no struggle you can go to what you want immediately.

  Synergy is also created here as their logo is on top of the page at all times which is obviously also included in their digipack.