When designing this digipak I used the masks as quite a heavy influence, as you can probably see from these images. I chose to make a link between the website and the digipak by planning on using the same sort of grungy effect (not that you can see in the plan) and then a link with my video by using stills from it, namely of Andrew wearing the mask and then without it, since we hadn't found a use for that shot, and it was a pretty cool shot. But I still think that mask should be the main link with both, as they're also on my webpage, albeit small on the website.
Out of the three that I analysed, I decided that the KJ52 and Aesop Rock covers would be most relevant to me and decided to compare them. Both have colours (obviously) but use them very differently, where the Aesop Rock cover has a fairly limited palette, the KJ52 one seems almost random with the colours chosen, giving it a much more lively feeling than other. They also have a different feeling, the Aesop Rock's cover's cartoon makes it seem considerably more mature than the guy sitting on the television and indicates the difference in age of the target audience, leading me to believe that the Aesop Rock one is aimed at an even older audience. I feel that this is reflected in the music, as Aesop Rock's music does tend to have a much more serious tone than KJ52.
I still stand by my decision that the KJ52 iconography isn't as strong as the iconography for the Aesop Rock cover. Although the genre itself is easy to tell, within it's genre it's not very unique at all, where as there aren't that many bands with a similar iconography to Aesop Rock's. The KJ52 iconography could easily be copied and made just dissimilar enough to avoid lawsuits, like Tetris and not being able to call a falling blocks game anything ending in 'tris'.
I've learned that the iconography itself can be easily tweaked or meddled with to make two completely different looking covers that still fall within the same genre iconography. I've also learned that the late teens to very early twenties are quite the varied bunch. Many of the covers aimed at them that I've seen are completely unlike another of the genre.
The KJ52 Five-Two cover features the lead in the group of the band, suggesting that he is the main focus of the music. From this and the way he's dressed I'd say that this was a pop group or RnB. The colours used within the picture also suggest this because they're all pretty bright like pop music albums usually are. Subsequently, I'd say that the target audience were teenagers. due to the clothing style and the colours used, bright colours usually appeal to younger audiences, but by dulling them down slightly (in this case making them lighter) lifts the target audience's age range from children to teens. I think it's not a very strong iconography itself, but it could be easily translated to other media, i.e. using light colours on a website or the artist wearing the same style of clothes in the video.
The Aesop rock cover for Bazooka Tooth features a cartoon of a boy, rather than images of the band, implying the the band is indie or alternative. The colours used are also mostly yellows, browns and greens, again a common colour scheme for indie music. From this and the more mature style of the cartoon, I'd say that the target audience were people in their late teens to mid twenties. The fact that they seem to be in school uniform doesn't change my opinions on the matter, due to the colours and style. I think it's successful at creating a brand identity
purely because of it's cartoonish style, in a similar way to the Gorillaz are famous for their cartoon alter egos and I can quite easily see them having an animated video and patterns like the wallpaper in the background.
The cover for the Tchaikovsky Collectors edition, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra features a photo of Tchaikovsky as the main focus, and the addition of decorative floral patterning indicates that this is a classical album. The mentions of symphonies and orchestras also helps to make this completely clear (though the Trans Siberian Orchestra's probably not the best example for mentioning orchestra related names connoting classical music.) From this I would say that the target audience is probably gender neutral, due to the mention of Romeo and Juliet, and aimed at people around 28-36 because of the grey colour scheme. I'd also say that it was people fond of Tchaikovsky's works, due to the large picture of him on the cover. I think that this could potentially be a fairly strong iconography, though it could have been stronger had it been related more to St Petersburg. But as It's probably for people that know the artist, they would probably know that he's Russian.
Awwyis. We've finished filming the narrative part of our film. It looks pretty awesome so far, but the doors here don't know how to close themselves. They kept opening when they were like, less than an inch open. Bleh. But apart from that, all went well. Though we might not have enough for the whole song, we can just film a quick performance if we need more meat on the bones. To make a clear iconographical link we could have the group members wearing the mask and can then put images from the video into our CD covers and website.
How have you used web page conventions to create brand identity?
I have used the conventions of a webpage to create brand identity
Layout/navigation/video Specific aspects of the convention (what have you produced, how did you you do it?) How the use of the convention reinforces the use of the convention reinforces the recording artist's iconography and brandidentity
We started our filming yesterday. I think it went pretty well, we got quite a few shots of the large group of children marching and in the classroom, but I'm not entirely sure we're gonna have enough footage. We might have to improvise performance or something. Hopefully not though.
If we don't have the masks by Wednesday: -Shoot the CCTV shots of the building. This will be needed to do without any person in shot. If we do have the masks be Wednesday: -We do all the marching shots with the kids, all shots where they are moving in main street e.g. the shoes, the rebel looking round the queue etc. We will have to do these shots during lesson time so no disturbance will occur. -Shoot the classroom shots where all the students are working then the rebel runs out. This will involve the whole cast as well as the marching will. This will require an empty classroom which won't be interfered with during shooting. -We will then do the escape scene which will also involve the whole cast including teachers. This will require some outside work therefore the weather will need to be right - sunny, not wet. -Then we will do the toilet scene with the rebel boy. This will not take long but is an important part of the video. -We then will shoot important shots such as the CCTV or certain shots of the teachers e.g. one walking on the bridge.
This shooting schedule can be spread out over two days but the same cast would be preferred in order of them knowing what they were doing and how to act the part etc. If this isn's possible then it isn't a major problem as most of the cast are wearing masks so no one will know we haven't used the same people. The rebel will have to be the same as his identity is shown and to keep with continuity he has to stay the same.
For our film we needed to include masks to make the group of kids all look the same. Originally we had planned to use plain white masks. But when we saw the the comedy and tragedy masks like the old theatre ones. We're going to get 29 happy masks and one sad one for the rebelling child to wear. We had also considered using the editing software to blur their faces, but this would have been far too difficult to do due to the limitations of our software and it would have taken more time than we have to edit each and every one of the faces in each of the frames.
We also plan to use chroma key to make the gold of the mask stand out in the shot to draw attention to him since he's the main focus of most of the video.
I used a combination of Gimp and Photoshop to create my banner, the latter of the two ing the preferred software, even though I only actually used it for the font effects. For the background of my banner I used a photo of Hollywood to relate to the name of the group, setting it to multiply so that it would pick up the grungier looking texture and greyish blue colours of the layer below. I then used these colours as my website colour scheme, bringing out the blue on one of the buildings into the back of my menu bar to make it stand out more. Though I had originally been going for more green colours, I decided that the bluey grey would look better. I've also only used red once in the logo to draw the audience's eyes to it, just to make sure they'd see it. I also used a different font for the name of the single to be released in the corner, again to draw the audience's eyes too it, since I want them to buy said single. I tried to keep it relevant to the lyrics and topic of the song rather than the band itself, but used colours from the rest of the site so that it would still fit in.
For the main body of the text I used arial, everyone's default font just to make sure that people could read it. I would have used the type writer is font as well, but I thought it'd be best if they could actually read it as if they can't read it, I can't convince them to like the band and spend their money on them.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
In lesson we discussed our ideas for our music video. We decided to do it about the fairly oppressive way we tend to view the school system. We're planning to make them seem like prisoners with in this system, using teachers like a sort of dictator figures and riot police. To give this narrative we're going to have one nonconforming student that's 'breaking the mould' and later encourages the other students to rebel along side him.
Logo: When I made the logo for my group I used contrasting fonts. I decided that it would be best if I used the name of the group, "Hollywood Undead". I kept the 'Hollywood' part of the logo similar to the letters on Hollywood Hill as it would be a clear visual link to the band's name and would help people to remember the name, since people make links between images, sound and words and this will help them to effectively remember the name of the group. I used a darker, more destroyed looking font to fit in better with the conventions of most rock/metal groups. It's bold and attention drawing, more so than the hollywood part. This is intentional because the Hollywood by itself may indicate a pop group or something like that, which is obviously not what I wanted. I also included blood splatters which fit into the conventions of a metal band since quite a few of them seem to have organs, bones and blood (and sometimes worse).
Today, I created a logo on paper for my band and production company. to create my brand identity I used a fairly recognisable font; the fancy looking one in reference to to the Hollywood part, and a more industrial, or rather, urban stencil font for the Undead part. I chose to put the most emphasis on the undead part in reference to one of the bands other songs called 'Undead'.
I will target my audience by creating a visually interesting logo with blood and bold fonts to keep the attenton of the younger
Today we had an arranged meeting with Jake Wynn, an established music video director who's worked with big people. He went to a film school in Staffordshire and then went into the business as a runner before becoming an editor and working his way up and building up favours as he went along before being signed up to a major company.
He also told us that when he first started budgets for music videos were much healthier and have gotten increasingly low as the time's gone past.
He taught us that we should have a 'performance bed', one or many long shots of the artist performing rather than only recording what you had planned to be seen. This would mean that when working we would never (in theory) have to get them to perform the song again and you wouldn't run the risk of having gaps between your performance and your narrative. He also said that narrative can be used to hide 'weak spots' in the performance, which I think is a little sneaky.
How did you use your iconography research and web page analysis' to inform your homepage design plans?
When designing my webpage I kept my research and web page analysis in mind by taking features from each. I found that many websites within the genre used a lot of black and darker colours in their designs and often had a sort of grungy quality. I then decided that I should use the same sort of grungy effect as in my digipak to preserve a group iconography between the two. I also included a picture of the 'band' we had created in the two, since many of the other digipaks and websites of groups in the genre had images of their band, I thought it'd be best to do the same in my own.
From the band's current website, I also used the same idea as them by adding a cityscape to the background of my page. Unlike the band's page, however my webpage had the city scape as a combination header and background rather than just a header. I also decided to try and make it fit in more with some of the genre conventions, such as using dark colours and choosing a city at night rather than in the day time like the group's official website does.
When designing my digipak however, I decided to focus more on the masks, as they're quite a big part in the music video and if we were to make more videos then we may not use them again. I also tried to make it rewarding to the people who buy it by having a lot of pictures and making the want to buy it in that way, though it's a bit of a spin on the conventions. As usually there's be more lyrics or something more graphical rather than photos that could be later sold as merchandise if the digipak were limited edition.
Age: 18 Occupation: Student Our audience member is a female who is interested in music and creative hobbies such as photography and dance. They prefer to wear light colours and skinny jeans and enjoy comedy in their films (though they also like horror and action films as well). She likes to listen to indie and rock music genres on the youtube usually and listen to Kiss on the radio.
Results: We collected our results via our surveys, and after deleting the irrelevant ones we started to analyse the results. We found that 64.4% of our fans were female, and 71.1% of our fans were 17-19. We found that the majority of them are students and 44.4% had creative hobbies 57.8% (as a joint result) said they like to wear skinny jeans and light colours. 71.1% of our fans like comedy films and indie music. 82.2% said they watch their music videos on youtube.
We used Wordle to see which occupation, music genre and radio stations were most popular since the largest word in the image would be the highest percent.
How are web page conventions used? This website uses all of the website conventions, it has a large banner at the top with the band's logo on it, helping us to understand what we're looking at due to the brand image. It has a collage of many images for the background, again helping to reinforce the band's image since most of the images involve the group in their masks. It also has a working, clear and esay to use navigational bar below the banner, enabling us to navigate the site as we choose via appropriately labled links. The target audience would of course be people who like the group, but could also a appeal to people who'd found the website by chance or out of curiosity. It's use of colours and images leads me to believe that the target audience would be males in their late teens/ early twenties, so around 18-24. The site itself does a fairly good job at advertising the band, though it could make a better use of media such as audio players and perhaps easier to view videos since the current ones are confusing.
Benefits:- Wider audience Easy to access, can be accessed for anywhere in the world Can be cheaper Can notify a lot of information all in one place Can be a popular place for fans to visit Viral marketing and messaging spreads quickly Much more interactive Use of conventions helps to target the audience
Drawbacks:- Over-advertising can bring too much traffic Technology fail. Complications can be caused, like the internet having problems, disconnected etc. Not everyone has /knows how to use the internet Hackers can invade the site and destroy or disrupt information Lots of useless information on the internet Trolls can invade the websites and bully, intimidate members
I decided to look at 'Patenbrigade: Wolff''s website for this task, a German industrial trance group. Found here.
It fits in well with most conventions, though most could be improved. Although the website has a banner it's small and if you didn't know the band you wouldn't know what you were looking at since is has no logo or name on it. It also could've placed the navigation bar below the banner so that the text was more visible as currently it's kinda hard to see it. Again with the lay out it gets rather confusing and has a very blog type look to it (Well I guess it is the news page AS WELL AS the homepage) as the majority of the content is just one long stream which can be very confusing for the audience. It does, however, use lots of different media types within this confusing layout, including video, audio and pictures, though they could've been used more effectively.
This leads me to believe that this website is directly aimed at the fans of the band because of the lack of names on the site and that it's aimed at about the 18-25 age range or older, due to the simplistic style kids would find difficult to maintain interest in. IT's also rather aimed at people that spend alot of time on the internet, seeing as one of he first things you see on the page is links to twitter, their blog and youtube.
I think that overall the website's very good at promoting itself, infact,the entire home page is an advertisement for the group's new album which they're letting you download for free now as a sort of viral advertising and this download button is HUGE for a download button, as well as having the most obvious link in the nav-bar is about tour dates.
For my iconography I chose to play of the name. I used a font similar to the one of the letters on Hollywood hill for the first part of the name and played of the sort of more grungy looking fonts for the undead part. I chose to make it look more horrory, not unlike fonts used for horror survival games such as Silent Hill or Left 4 Dead. For the colours I chose to use dark colours such as blacks and greys, half to represent the more urban feel to their music as well as sticking to the conventions of rock and metal groups's having black in their iconography. I think I now have an icon design and colour scheme that I'm happy with to use for my homepage.
0:00 – 0:26 Starts off as a long shot and zooms into a long shot of the singer’s eye
0:26 – 0:28 CGI zooming through skin + organs
0:28 - 0:41 More of the previous through the drummer and then a cockroach
0:41 - 0:45 Extreme close up on guitar which moves up the neck of the guitar
0:45 - 0:50 Long shot of group then mid shot of lead singer, then drummer, then bassist
0:50 - 0:51 Profile two shot of Singer and guitarist
0:51 - 0:53 Extreme close up of feet, 3/4 of the singer's face and then the guitar
0:53 - 0:58 Mid shot of guitarist, long shot of band, Mid shot of singer then close up of singer
0:59 - 1:00 Full body shot of guitarist that zooms into a mid shot
1:00 - 1:05 Long shot of group, then an extreme close up of his feet, then midshot of lead singer, then a close up of guitarist and then another profile two shot of Singer and guitarist
1:05 - 1:07 Mid shot of lead singer that transitions through 3 different camera angles
1:26 - 1:29 Mid shot of drummer that transitions through 3 different camera angles
1:32 - 1:33 Close up of CGI cockroach
1:33 - 1:38 Zooming in through guitarist's ear
1:50 - 1:52 Mid shot of lead guitarist that transitions through 3 different camera angles
1:54 - 2:04 Zooms into the guitaris's crotch into CGI organs then out of his mouth and zooms back out
2:04 - 2:05, 2:08 - 2:09 Close up of singer spitting in slow motion
2:09 - 2:11, 2:13 - 2:14 Close up of symbols being hit in slow motion
2:17 - 2:19 close up of singer's face
2:19 - 2:28 Extreme close up of singer's hair which zooms in and then into his skin before finishing as it comes out of his shoe in an extreme close up, ending with another zoom out
2:28 - 2:42 Zooming extreme close up of drums, then another of the dentist's chair that then focuses on the cockroach's growth on it's leg. It then goes through it and comes out as a close up of the guitarist's ear w/ cockroach on his face, in the same shot as it zooms out we see the singer move on screen in a close up
2:44 - 2:50 Slow mo' long shot of the band, then a close up of the singer's face and another slow mo shot of the band from a different angle
3:00 - 3:03 Extreme close up of of singer's mouth when he spits up CGI roaches
3:03 - 3:05 High angle long shot of the band w/ cockroaches crawling on floor
3:36 - 3:48 Zooms into tattoo on back of singer's neck then CGIs through his neck, mouth, teeth, microphone and wire and sparks are made to look angel shaped.
