My complete progress with making the website, from start to beginning.

As previously mentioned I was appointed the role of developing the website for my group. I was very pleased to be given this role as I felt it would challenge me, but I also have had previous experience in making websites so this gave me a slight advantage. I started by getting inspiration for the website, looking at rappers who had very similar star images as our character and also artists who have very similar styles of singing. All of their websites were very minimalistic with one page which is scroll down, which then presents a certain number of pages.

I felt this would work well with the website. I particularly looked at Rejjie Snow and Slowthai's website as these were my favourite websites which I felt would fit our artist best.  I felt a video which begins as soon as you open the website would look great, this is also done in Rejjie Snows site. I didn't want the video to just be clips from our music video as we are not trying to represent a single, we are advertising an album.

I travelled to London with my group and with Jacob, to film a very aesthetically pleasing clip - essentially of Jacob messing around in London interacting with the urban areas which we travelled to. When in first started to make the website I placed a black and white time-lapse here to just fit the space to represent what was soon to come. I then started working on making a page which would show my artists tour dates and the venues where he was performing. It was important for me to find lots of different venues which weren't too well known, as it would be unrealistic that a new artist would be playing in the biggest venues in London. This took some time as I started in word and then ended up making it on Photoshop on my phone which is definitely not my forte.

After lots of fiddling around I was happy with the end result. I also spent a long time trying to make a logo for the front page which would go over the video. I used photoshop for a while trying to play around making different logos, but non of these looked very professional. I then used an app called Canva which was much easier to use than photoshop. I downloaded lots of fonts and started using English fonts, however after talking with my group we agreed it didn't look how we imagined.  I realised it would be hard to see what the logo would look like on the site until I had the actual video, so I waited until the video was on the site.

On the Monday, after filming in London over the weekend, I was ready to edit the videos which we had filmed.  I edited the video in to a short clip and when I filmed the videos I used a VHS filter on my phone which gave a very cool effect. I then placed it into the first page of the website making it as an overlaid video. I customised the functions  of the video meaning the viewer couldn't pause or play the video and couldn't control the video in any way. This gave it the effect when entering the website that it played immediately.

I then moved on to trying to design another logo.  Cam and I found a very nice VHS font which looked great and fit in very nicely with the video as the video was a VHS. We managed to get the logo looking how we imagined and then just had to decide on a colour. We felt that red would be good as it was bright and stood out against the dark colours, but also looked serious rather than bright yellow which would not have fit in with the image of the character.

I then worked on making a vinyl cover with our digi pack cover over the vinyl cover with a record popping out. This was not too hard to do as I only had to resize the digi pack image to the same size as the vinyl cover. I placed this at the bottom of the website.  Just above the vinyl image I wanted to have a button which brought the viewer to a shop which you could buy merchandise with the album cover on. This took quite a bit of time as I had to photoshop the image onto several different styles of clothing. I made the shop the same style as the homepage so it would flow well.

After the focus group I changed a few aspects of the website. I was unable to make the font disappear half way throng the video as it was pinned onto the screen and not connected to the actual video. I changed the vinyl products as I previously had a different image to the updated album cover so I used the updated photo instead and this was much better. I also added a box around the shop button which made it look more professional and lastly I added a link to the logo of the page which took you to the homepage which is used in many rappers websites such as Stormzy. I also added this feature to the shop so when shopping you can easily get back to their homepage.

Finally I asked the others their opinion off the website outside of the focus group to try and perfect the video. From this I changed the social media buttons as some were a slightly different size to each other which made the website look slightly unprofessional and lastly I changed the tour list adding more details like the city and the country.   I also added a button which sends the viewer to a link to buy the tickets. This also looked much better and this is often done in rappers websites such as Loyle Carner and Rejjie Snow.  Previously I only had London venues, but after after more thought, I realised it is unrealistic that the artist would just perform in London, so I researched and found other relatively small venues around the United Kingdom.

Focus Group

Yesterday a focus group reviewed our video, analysing the Digi pack, website and part of our video. The focus group went extremely well and we received lots of very positive feedback and also some very helpful constructive criticism.

The focus group first analysed the Digi packs and below are the quotes from this focus group.

Before hearing the song or seeing the website the whole group knew the album was a rap album which is very encouraging.



- This point was made by one member, we are reviewing this comment however we personally are not going to act on the comment.

- A few people felt that the back panel would have been better as the front panel. We are now currently changing the front cover and photoshopping the image differently so the back and front work together.

- This was a great point that we did not initially realise, we are now currently editing the photo on photoshop to fix this.

- As digi packs go, the back font is often very small however we will enlarge the font to make it slightly bigger.


- It was very encouraging that the focus group realised that he was a solo rap artists from just the digi pack.

The focus group then analysed the website, each looking at the website on a desktop computer. This also went extremely well and these are the comments which the focus group said.

- We were extremely happy to hear such positive comments about the website and how it seemed professional.





- This was also great to hear as we have worked hard as a group to make sure are products all worked together.

- We are currently editing the album cover so once that is finished we will replace the image with the new album cover.










- This was a great comment, however the majority of rappers do not have comments about the artist as the genre of rap and grime is very mysterious.

- This was a great comment and I am currently trying to make this happen by making a new video with the logo incorporated into the video and half way through the video take the logo out.





This is the exact website which the focus group viewed yesterday.














The focus group also watched part of the music video, this is much harder to give constructive criticism as we can't change the picture, only the way it's been edited. The group only said that all three products worked very well together and all shared the same themes and representations.

Progress on Website, Digi pack and editing.

This weekend my group travelled to London for a photo shoot with our actor Jacob. We had planned on getting lots of photos of social housing and very typical British landmarks around London. We had also planned on getting lots of video of Jacob messing around for our website. We all have had an influence on the website, editing and Digi pack, however we are each in charge of one item.

I was chosen to build the website as I have previous experience in doing this. When we arrived to London we arranged to meet in Hyde Park, however our actor travelled to the wrong side of Hyde Park, instead of meeting at Hyde Park tube station which held us back by an hour. By the time we had made it to Notting Hill where we were going to film it was getting dark.  We were planning on shooting in the light as this is much safer.

However, we managed to get lots of good shots of Jacob around a social housing estate on Portland Road which looked great, but we didn't get as many of the buildings without Jacob, as it started to feel slightly unsafe so we swiftly moved to another location. We then went to Holland Park tube station which is a slightly older tube station which was perfect for the video content which is now on the website. We also managed to get some good photos for the digi pack here.

We all felt that the digi pack should have images which have a strong representation of London in a black and white theme which we have also used in the website video.

In the last few days I've made lots of progress on the website. Before we started, we looked at similar artists websites which we felt had a successful pattern and we merged many different styles together. 

We all felt a black and white video which begins as soon as you enter the website, will entice the audience. We also felt keeping the website slick and simple will be the most successful outcome for the artist image. 

I started by trying to find the best font which is following the British theme to an extent but also a font which is typical of a rapper. The fonts below are all old English fonts which I initially felt would work.  I then made a mock video in black and white seen below to show where the video which we made in London would be.   When doing this, I noticed that the font didn't work with the website and also I felt did not portray a rapper image. 

After I realised that this font wouldn't work, I focused on the rest of the website as I felt it was better to choose the font after I had placed the video of London.

I started to work on the second aspect of the website which was the tour dates and different venues which we noticed lots of similar rappers had on their website. I initially tried making this on word but it was to complex so I used photoshop to get the correct sizing. I looked at up and coming venues which artists similar to ours has previously performed at and used these as a basis for our website. 

Reflection Of Shoot day.

On Monday we filmed our music video which we have been planning for the last few months.
The Friday before our video, we had one hour to prepare our first set. We were all relatively nervous, but after five minutes we quickly got the hang of preparing the set. We started by setting up the walls of the set, using clamps to join the walls together and supporters attached to weights to keep the walls straight. We then moved the wall which had a window inside of it which was acting as the rapping booth which we had envisaged. This window was pink from a previous video, so we had to paint it, to suit our video. The time went by extremely quickly and before we knew it, it was 4:30 which is when we had to stop.

When we arrived early on Monday morning, we all brought our agreed props.  I brought loads off empty drinks bottles, posters and ash trays. When we arrived I was slightly nervous as we had been planning this for a long time, however, as the set started to come along and we were getting ready to shoot our first shots we began to feel more confident. As a group of three we each had individual roles.  Cam was behind the camera as he felt the most confident of the group at filming, Lara was directing the cast which she felt she could do the best and I was behind the clapperboard for each shot as well as getting behind the scenes footage and looking after the cast. 

In the first hour we were keen to get individual shots off the band members on the set.  We therefore did not attach the last wall with the producers desk in as this would have made filming much harder. 

We started by filming our main character Jacob, who is the rapper. We got several different shots of him in the booth on many different lenses which gave us a variety of different shots to cut to. 

The featuring artist on the song was Sam and he then came into the shot after we had several shots of Jacob alone. Sam walked in from the side door for the last section of his song. The first takes we did of Jacob and Sam rapping, they weren't very confident, and were not singing out loud.  We attempted to up the energy by giving them lots of positive feedback and also singing the song from behind the camera. This really helped and after a few more shots, both characters were performing the song excellently, singing out loud and far more confident. 

We then went on to film the guitarist, Nammer. He was extremely confident and had learnt the song which gave him more confidence, which looked great on camera.  We got several different shots of him using different camera lenses to get wide and super close shots. 

We then proceeded to film the drummer who had also learnt the song, which made it much more convincing and also it gave him more confidence as well. The one thing with filming all of the band on their own first, meant they weren't as confident, as all of the attention was on them. Looking back it would have worked out slightly better if we filmed them on their own after we had filmed them as a band together. However that being said they still performed extremely well.

Lastly but not least, we filmed the keyboard player. From being in a music video last year I realised how important it is to get someone who can actually play the piano, as if the character can't play, it looks very staged. Luckily we picked a confident piano player, annoyingly he couldn't find the exact music for the song however as he was a talented pianist, he managed to play the keyboard making it seem very convincing.

After this we gave the band a rest and quickly started to work on the set to place the last wall into the set which was giving the look of a old recording studio. Cam and I had to go to the music department as the producer desk was not working, so we had to quickly go and get another one which delayed us by around ten minutes. Looking back we should have tested to make sure the one we had worked which would have prevented us being delayed. 

The plastic which we used in the set to act as the glass for the recording studio was extremely dirty and you could hardly see through it, so we had to get window cleaner and clean it down several times. Even after this it wasn't a very clear image however it looked great on camera. 

Even though the image was not very clear, it gave a very cool effect of the producers point of view. As the area where the band were performing was very small, fitting them all in was relatively hard, which meant us having to very slightly move where they were initially standing, as its essential to keep continuity, we moved the artist very slightly. 

Even tho the band were slightly squashed, they performed very well. We carried on having Sam walking in from the side for his verse and when he finished he stood next to Jacob. This looked very effective and Sam and Jacob seemed to have a very good connection on the camera like they were good mates which made it even better. 

The time went by extremely quickly and it was already lunch, we had planned on finishing with this set by lunch but still had three more shots to capture. We all had a thirty minute lunch break and went quickly back to work. The cast were very good at meeting the timings which made it much easier for everyone. After we had filmed these last three shots we had to quickly pack the set up. We had an hour and a half to take down this set and then also film the second set. This was definitely rather stressful, so we were all extremely efficient at packing the set up. Cam and I quickly moved the producer desk back and while we were doing this Lara and our set designer hung all the wall hangers and tapestry up and also moved the coffee table in placing all the empty bottles on top of it. 

Cam and I then moved a sofa from the shipping container boxes and realised there wasn't a second sofa, we had to go to the music department where we thought there was a sofa but it had gone so we had to go get another one from the upstairs media room which was very hard to get down. Unfortunately this ate into our recording time. 

The girls who feature in this particular set then arrived, by this time we had finished the set. We sat everyone down into position having Jacob in the armchair directly in the middle, with Sam sitting on a speaker next to Jacob. We then positioned the band with the girls on the sofa having two of the band members and one of the girls entering the video half way through almost like entering a party which was a very cool effect which we hadn't actually planned on doing. We were very pleased with this set and looked very similar to an actual party setup. 

Jacob and Sam at this point were extremely confident at performing the song. We wanted to get a certain shot before the time ran out which involved Jacob staying completely still, while the whole party left the room. I had to pause the song on the exact moment so Jacob knew when to freeze. Needless to say this took several attempts at filming as there were so many aspects which could have gone wrong. We managed to get the shot just in time for the allocated time we were given for the studio. We then got all our actors to leave after saying a huge thank you, however we needed Jacob and Sam for the final scene. We quickly moved the sofas back to the original locations and removed all the props which was much easier than putting everything up. We then all moved the flats which took little to no time as everyone on the set helped out which was extremely helpful.

We then drove to Guildford with Sam and Jacob to film the last scene, this was a narrative shot which we were filming in town, so we didn't need any large speaker.  However we brought a small speaker just in case. We started filming in an underpass which looked very effective and there were a large number of people walking through the underpass so we had to be considerate of them and also had to plan when to shoot so we didn't have anyone we didn't want in our video. We got several different shots of Sam and Jacob walking from different sides of the under pass meeting in the middle and greeting each other which was a very nice shot. We then went to the riverwalk way where we shot Sam on one side of the river and Jacob walking along the other side with lights reflecting of the river. This took many different takes as there were lots of pedestrians. 

In conclusion, I feel that our shoot day was extremely successful and as the day progressed the video got better and better. After filming I've realised there are several things which we could have done better like sticking more closely to our timings which we had previously planned, however this being said we managed to get all the shots we aimed to get. We could have also shot the band all together at first as I feel this would have broken the ice slightly and built up their confidence before moving on to filming them individually. 

planning digi pack

On Saturday Lara and I are going to travel to London to get photos for our digi pack and also to get a video of Jacob, our artist, in these locations.

We are analysing the conventions of similar products, looking at two artists, Rejjie Snow and SlowThai. They are very similar artists to which we are porting our character to be.
The video which Rejjie Snow has on his website is similar to what we have in mind for filming on Saturday.

We are going to use a black and white theme which will link all the images together and create a theme and meaning.

When we go to London on Saturday we are going to go to Portland Road in Notting Hill which is a relatively safe area which has several different social housing areas, which will be perfect for our digi pack as the images we have in mind are typical British themes. We need to make sure for each shot we get one shot with the housing or phone box etc by itself, and then another image with Jacob Interacting with the background. This gives us more options when we choose the layout off our digi pack as most of the images will not have Jacob in them. We also need to make sure when we take the photos that we take a wide photo as this will give us more flexibility as we can always crop and zoom in if necessary.

final repairing for Music Video

On Monday Morning we are filming our music video for the whole day, having set up the initial set by Friday evening. This weekend my whole family is coming over for dinner, which will result in many empty wine bottles, which I will collect and bring in on Monday morning!  I have also been collecting alcohol bottles over the last few weeks from any party or gathering I have been to, bringing a few empty bottles with me ash time. These will make the party scene look slightly more convincing. I have also brought two ashtrays and collected cigarette butts from my friends which will also add to the party scene aesthetic. Over the last few weeks I've asked my friend to keep any cigarette papers and packs which I have now collected from them.

A big part of the party scene which will differentiate the set from the recording studio to the party scene, is the wall hangers, posters and tapestry which I will bring in. These will hang from the ceiling and walls, making the set look very different and making it look far more convincing.

I am also bringing in a bamboo curtain and laser lights which will also add character to the set.

Digi Pack and website Lesson.

In the lesson on Tuesday, we started to talk about designing and making the digi pack and the website.  Phil expressed to us how important it is to use original content for the images on the video, this includes any background images. The album which we are going to be making should have around 10-15 tracks, we found this out by looking at twenty different digi packs and looking at the average number of tracks which was around 11-12.

Before the lesson I had very little knowledge of digi packs, not even knowing what they are made of, so it was very interesting.  We learnt that digi packs are made of different types of card, they are usually more expensive that plastic CD cases. They all have the same dimensions which are 14cm across and 12.5cm high. Its extremely important that when we are designing our own digi packs that we do these exact measurements as they are all the same size so they can fit on a CD rack. However the spine can be a different thickness, usually varying between 5-10cm. The majority of the digi packs had some form of artwork on the album which may have incorporated the artist in by having a drawing of them or a collage.  Some had a photo of just the artist, but this didn't seem to be very common. The most common theme regarding the font was the artists name was in the largest size font and the name of the album was smaller and in a different position to the artists name.

It is very important when we are designing our digi packs that we remember the image stays in the background and the font stays in the foreground. On the back of the digi packs they had a list of the songs which were on the album which was around 10-15 songs. This font was much smaller as this is done because digi packs are designed to be picked up and looked at, and having a small font allows this to happen. They also had a barcode on the back, copyright details and the company name, this was also very small font. The spine of digi packs usually have the artists name, the name of the album and a product code which is the same code from the barcode. All of the digi packs had the same or very similar styles of design on their whole digi pack, as it can look very strange having very different designs or colours on different panels.

Below is a few examples of the digi packs that we were looking at.

Rehearsals

On Tuesday me and Lara rehearsed sam, who's the featuring artist in our video wasn't as confident with rapping his part in the song we rehearsed him further practicing several times making sure he was singing the song out loud as when it comes to shooting, if the artist isn't singing the song and only miming it's very obvious and makes the video seem some what tacky. We are getting the band to come and rehearse the song tommorow to practice going through the song several times to make sure everyone is completely confident with the song so when it comes to shooting we don't need to worry about anyone being nervous or unsure of anything.

Digi Pack and website research

I have selected a number of different artists all in the same genre music being Hip hop/ rap. They all have some what of a similar style of how they perform or their general image so it was obvious to choose these artists. They all have different styled websites some being much more similar than others. Firstly most of these websites have a large bold font with there artist name in the centre of the page, this is done to stand out so you know when entering the website who the artists is and what

 they are about as an artist. All of the fonts are white with a relatively dark background which makes the font stand out greater. All of the websites have some form of artwork or imagery on the first page of the website which usually has some theme to what the recent album is about or similar artwork to the most recent album cover. As you scroll down on all the websites they have there most popular song or most relevant song on there album centred on the page and on some of

the websites the song will start playing without pressing a button.
The other fonts which are used to direct you around the website or to list the songs on the album is the same font which was used for the huge bold title however it's far smaller, which can be seen in the screenshots.

For all the artists I chose they unfortunately didn't have a digi pack however they did have Album covers for CD's and Vinyls. Lots of these album covers have a different font to what was used on there websites, they use what looks like handwriting for the font which I personally feel works very well, the font is also much smaller size than what was used on the website. The majority of them have the album name as the largest font and lots of them don't have the artists name on the actual album cover which is slightly unusual. The majority of the album covers have a form of artwork which is closely related to the album name or one of the songs featured on the album which is visualising the product in a certain way which attracts the customer. I couldn't find the back of most of the albums but the first album which is shown has the back, the font is much smaller for the list of songs on the album. Some of the albums have just a photo of the artist but I feel this is not nearly as interactive and slightly plain. The albums don't share any similarities in colour as there are many different variations which I feel is based around how uplifting the songs on the album are, obviously if the theme of the album is about negative views or themes the album cover is going to have a much darker colour.