Website Diary

This post presents a timeline of the process of making our website.

September - Right at the start of the project, we researched some websites. This was mainly to draw inspiration for artist identity, although the biggest lesson we got from it was the massive importance of interactivity on websites. One website we particularly enjoyed looking at was One Direction's. Being probably the most popular mainstream act in the UK, we felt that we were making a good choice to inspire our website from it. We enjoyed the interactivity and were amazed at how many purchasing opportunities there were.

October - We began thinking of a website theme, after noticing that One Direction's centered around a scrapbook design and Katy Perry's was associated with prisms and triangular shapes - with 'Prism' being the name of her new album and therefore presenting a synergistic connection. We began thinking about how we could use synergy like them, in our case between the music video and the website. Our first idea that we all loved was a line-up theme, seen on Busted and Cher Lloyd's album covers. However, this was only a good idea when we were considering doing our music video in a prison setting - it became irrelevant to our music video and no longer possessed synergy.

November - Although we had always placed a lot of importance of thinking of a THEME for our website, after looking at some more real websites we realised that not every artist website did possess a theme. Therefore we dedicated our planning more to colour scheme and layout, drawing upon The Saturday's website as our main inspiration. You can read the full post on our website inspirations here.

December - The process of actually making our website began. We would co-ordinate it in our edit suite so one or two of us did the editing and one of us did the website design to manage our time efficiently. We used an online tool called 'wix' which is a user-friendly and purposeful way of creating websites. You can see several screen shots of the finished product down below.

As you can see the website has been an ongoing process that was vital when constructing our overall brand.

Interactivity on the Website

This post discusses the importance of interactivity in this day and age and pinpoints exactly when we've used it.

One thing that we thought was crucial to the success of our website was making sure there were plenty of opportunities for interactivity. For the reason of our target audience being the technological natives of the population, it would be very easy for our website to become boring in their eyes.This would allow our artist to compete against others for the attention of the younger generation effectively.

Circled on the diagram are the opportunities for interactivity on the homepage alone.

From top to bottom they are:

1. A member sign in section for our fan club
2. Social media opportunities - increasing publicity for our band
3. CD - purchase opportunity to buy the CD
4. Tour Dates - the medium where most of the revenue would come from
5. QR Code - Link to technologically converged devices to be used to reveal more

Website Inspirations

In order to maximise the success of our website we researched websites we enjoyed browsing the most as users. These became key inspirations in the making of our own website.

From The Saturday's websites we liked:

• The white background - we thought it looked successfully aesthetically pleasing
• The placement of the Login/Register button and the social networking links - they were easy to find without dominating the website
• The photo of the group being at the top of every page

From Stooshe's website we liked:

• The informal tone of speech - we tried to adopt this also
• The bar at the top and how the writing changes to pink when you hover over it
• The 'The Girls' page

From One Direction's website we liked:

• The blocky grid style of the website elements
• The font that introduces each piece of news

As you can see, most of our website influences were of the same genre as ours, a girl band in the mainstream. Therefore, in using these as our key inspirations, this should ensure the success of our website amongst our target audience.

Boy band shoot

This post shows the pros and cons of our boy band shoot so that we could identify what worked well and what we needed to improve on for the next shoots.
The timing of our shoot was during our lessons and over lunch. This meant that we had a very specific time frame to work within. Through careful planning we were able to successfully get all the shoots we had planned for. In this shoot we accounted for changing, shots as well as freestyle where we were able to shoot new ideas that had come to us during the filming. This section was particularly effective as during the film when we were performing we thought of more iconic shots to use we could use throughout the video.
Originally we filmed the dance routine as a whole routine.  We repeated we perform and shoot the whole dance however, after several takes we realised that this was not the most effective way to shoot that section as we were not always in time with each other. To correct this situation we shot individual dances sections which allowed us to be completely in time with each other.
During the shoot we found in quite hard to know how to act during the performance. We looked at our inspirations again so that we could replicate iconic hand gestures and facial expressions. From the start we had decided to make the boy-band section quite sad and dramatic in order to create more comedic effect. Our main influence for emotions and how to convey these feelings was 'Gotta be you' by One Direction. During the shoot we watched this in order to remind ourselves of the type of feelings we needed to convey- this was very helpful and helped to uplift the shoot
Due to careful and detailed pre planning of the shoot we were able to gather all the shoots we need in a relatively short shoot. After watching the footage after during the editing stage the only problem that we had was a few of the shots were un focused. However, we managed to over come this by the ordering that we used the shots and adding a black and white effect. Overall the shoot was very successful and we feel this is shown in the quality of our boy-band shots.
Overall I feel that the success was a great successful and we worked the most efficiently on this shoot with the time available. We used our past experiences to see where we went wrong and what to improve on.

Country Prep

This post shows the planning that went into the country shoot. It follows the different video we looked and how we learned the dance used in the video.
Country was the most extravagant of all our sets. In order to create the right set up we needed to make the Seward studio feel like the countryside. From our previous research around the country genre we had already decided that the lighting was going to be very bright with a yellow coloured lights. We had previously test shot for this in preparation for the shot. We tested the spotlights as well as combining different orange and yellows lights to create the right feel.
We looked into have a potential green screen of a barn yet we thought this would look too much with all of the props. We used all our available  in order to find appropriate props. We managed to get 3 barrels of hay/straw, a sheep, a wheel from a cart, hedges and cow boy hats. We will bring the all the props into school a day before the shot and leave them over night. The barrels are going to be too heavy for just Emily to bring into school so we have arranged to meet before school on the day of the shoot were Olivia and Alicia will help to bring the straw in with the help of the teachers. We have also planned this with the media teachers and caretakers to take that it was allowed.
Costumes were again planned very far in advance so we could planning for any missing parts. Our research showed that in many country videos the artists would wear denim and cowboy boots. We all wore cowboy boots with Alicia and Olivia wearing denim shorts and shirts. Emily wore a dress to distingish her as the main performer.

One of the parts of our country video that we wanted to include was traditional country dancing. The week before the shoot we watched square dancing routines in order to learn the steps. This proved to be very helpful for the dance scenes we included in our music video.

These two videos were are main influences for our set ups
Practising the dancing before the shoot was helpful as it meant we were more prepared on the day and had longer to do some of the harder shots.

ATG Re-shoot Prep!

This post shows how we overcame the obstacles in the first shot and used our re-shot to our advantage,
After an unsuccessful first ATG shoot we booked a re-shoot to make amends and to collect better footage. One of the main problems that we felt was wrong with the original shoot was the backdrop. Going into preparation for our second shoot we still wanted a backdrop with out name as we wanted to be easily recognised as well as wanted all our set ups to be completely different. The main problem before the was the colour of the backdrop as it was too bright to be seen properly, so we booked a slot in the studio to test different backdrops. We found 6 different backdrops that we could use, downloaded them and went to the studio. We tested all the projections on both the studio projector as well as a portable projector. All the sides had different issues which meant that they couldn't be used. The slides were either too small, blurry or too light. However, as we had planned in advanced to test to slides we were able to come up with a different concept. We used the remainder of the studio time to test different coloured lights. After testing lots of different colour combinations we decided to use a bright pink. Although this was a much simpler idea that our original we were all agreed as we felt that our idea was already quite complicated so a simple backdrop would look good.
Another problem we faced was our performance skills. In the first shoot we were all very far apart from each other we didnt make us look very united as a band. We looked at past girl bands to see how we could perform better as a band as well as making the performance more interesting. Our man focus was around the iconic girl bands on the 2000s such as girls aloud, spice girls and sugababes.

With this video we liked how either though it was fully choreographed that had simple moves,such as moving their hips together, made them look more like a group rather than solo singers. We liked how they were all relatively close to each other showing their closeness as a band. That was one of the major issues with us was how far apart we were form each other. Furthermore there was just a lot of energy from all the girls even when the music was slower. We looked at this carefully and copied this as we needed to keep up the energy in out song during the slightly slower bits.

common performance themes ran throughout these videos.

As far as our costumes went we were all happy with how they looked on camera so we kept them the same. We practised putting on our glitter before the shot so that we spent less time getting ready allowing us more time to shoot. This proved very beneficial.

Furthermore we also created a shot schedule that allowed plenty of time for us to get all the shots that we needed.  

We learnt a lot from our first shoot and we felt much more prepared for our second shoot. 

Boyband Shoot Preparations

Boy band was a hard shoot to prepare for as we had to prepare costumes as well as to learn a new dance routine. This post looks at some of the different aspects that we had when preparing for the shoot.
As well as creating a shot list and a shoot schedule we also had to choreograph and learn a 'classic' boy-band routine. We looked at our previous research for any dance routines to pick out specific iconic boy-band moves. Our detailed research focused around 'Bye Bye Bye' by N Sync. This was a famous video which was later parody-ed by The Wanted in their video Walks like Rihanna. Throughout there video there are continuous boy-band stereotypes such as a specific joint look and group dance routines. Dance is one of the stronger themes within this music video.

We started practising about two weeks before the shoot so that we were able to be confident with all the moves as well as being in time with each other. As our main inspiration was the Bye Bye Bye video we looked at a dance tutorial from the video to pick out specific iconic moves that would be easily recognisable by our audience. Whilst was used the basic counts from the tutorial we also added our own dances moves from other iconic videos.

In terms of other preparations for the shoot it was relatively simple. We needed boy wigs so a few weeks before the shoot to allow plenty of time for them to arrive. We chose reasonable cheap and tacky wigs in order to promote the idea that it was a parody video and we were clearly girls dressing as boys. The set was simple as well. We used one stool and 5 back lights to connote a typical boy-band music video. We had a test shoot with the lights to check that we knew the settings for all the lights and how to work them on the day of our shoot. 

As far as costumes we also planned this a few weeks before our actual shoot in order to allow time in case we needed to find any additional costumes. We all took inspirations from different videos but we decided as a whole group so that there was a continuos theme/look. We all dressed very casually as the scene was already very comical so we did not want to over do it with costumes. All our costumes were borrowed from boys within our year as we need big shirts and baggy jeans. We practised dancing in our costumes so that we could get a feel for the routine that we would have to perform on the day of the shoot. One thing we had to work on was making the movements very manly be doing harder punches and making all the movements bigger and more aggressive.
Practising the dance early on was truly helpful as it allowed us to focus more on the filming on the day rather than learning and preparing the dance.

Important Decision

This post describes an important last minute decision we undertook. This reiterates that when creating media products, sometimes things can change last minute. 

Throughout the process, we were planning to incorporate a sleepover scene that would provide a narrative to our video. The plan was that the band would be at a sleepover playing the character of normal girls. Then, they'd switch on the television and appear to watch all these different bands (whilst unaware it was them). Then, as the television breaks, a CCTV style footage shot would appear on the screen of them looking around the room. At that point the music video would stop. The message of this would have been that despite being in a girl band, the band members are still just normal girls.

Alternative idea

The idea we feel we are better equipped for with our footage is scrapping the narrative side of our music video that was the sleepover scene, and making it simply a conceptual performance. However, we will still provide an explanation for why the channel is changing, having the channel box on top of the footage. The message of our music video will have to change too - now it is you can be whoever you want to be.

The reasons we changed it are:

• It over complicates the video, why would the girls having the sleepover and the girls in the band be the same? Of course there is a message, but the audience would need to work this out and we don't want to be particularly ambiguous.
• The footage we had filmed appeared boring in comparison to the studio footage.
• The quality of the acting and the footage paled into insignificance against the vibrant studio footage. 
• According to Carol Vernallis, 'the video may break or disrupt many of the 'rules' of continuity editing'. Therefore, we don't actually have to explain the significance of the television breaking - it is conceptual.
• We had so much good studio footage that it seemed a waste of the music video time to be cutting back to shots of a hand changing the channel. Of course we still have this element of channel changing within the music video, just on top of the footage.

We are very confident in our decision, as we feel it eliminates several of the problems we had, making our music video more effective.

ALBUM

Our album research led us to our final plans for the digipak:

INSIDE COVER A:
We decided to collage together some photos of the band from our photoshoots. Within this we used group and individual shots, with a bright pink border around the photos. This showed a very girly, teenage, scrapbook-y style, as has been seen on many artists previously, including One Direction.

INSIDE COVER B:
Here we used the image shown at the end of our music video, of the test screen edited to show our own faces and to show a glitter background. This is a girly image, connected to the debut music video of the album, fitting in with our theme of TV. The circular shaping of the image translates well to the digipak as follows the circular plastic shape of the CD, and will therefore show our band when the CD has been taken out and is being played.

COVER:

Our cover shows the heads and shoulders of the three girls in the band with glitter covering them, the band name and logo is shown on the top half of the cover, with the album name 'Good as Gold' shown vertically down the right hand side.

LOGO:

Our logo shows the name 'All That Glitters' in large white capitals, with the letters of the words connected to each other. The plain colouring and block style is classy, modern and fashionable, and very typical of these such girls. Inspiration for this came from such bands as 'The Saturdays'. 

BACK:
Our back cover has a basic black background with a sprinkle of gold glitter across the top corner, thus relates to our cover image, keeping in synergy with our band image. The font used for the song names is the same as the font used for our album title, and is also white, again keeping in synergy. For our song names we selected:

Album Cover Photoshoot

On Friday 6th December we had our digipack photoshoot. We were shooting from 9:00 - 12:00.

Inspirations

We liked the look of bare shoulders as we thought this connoted simplicity and a sort of 'stripped bare' look to our audience. However we were in no way looking to sexualize our band too heavily as we believe that our particular target audience (teenage girls primarily) would not appreciate this. Here are some examples of album covers that have done this:

  

However we wanted to take this to the next level by covering ourselves in glitter. This would add relevance to the album cover as our band name is 'All That Glitters'. This was inspired by Miley Cyrus' new music video:

The Shoot

We took individual shots of each other with the intent of using Photoshop to combine them together. We managed our time efficiently, with two people helping one get ready. Then we would shoot that person. We did the shoot against a black background as we thought the glitter would appear more striking. Emily had the most glitter because she is the main girl in the group. Here are some of the shots we got:

As you can see with the shots of Olivia we also experimented with over positionings other than straight on, which was our original plan.



Overall we believe the shoot was a success. We were thinking that we may have to re-shoot Emily's shots as we went very overboard on the glitter and could have applied it more carefully. However, this was actually rectified in Photoshop, as more glitter was applied.

Photoshoot One

TUESDAY 4th DECEMBER 2:30pm- 3:45pm

During this shoot we shot group and individual photos for our website and digipak. We repeated the glitter look from our performance shoot, to maintain a continuous theme across our band branding.

We had two outfit changes for this shoot, which were:

CASUAL: 

Emily wore a black skater dress and a gold chunky necklace.

Alicia wore a white shirt with bead detailing around the neck, and black leggings.

Olivia wore a white button up shirt with beads on the collar, and black jeans.

VELVET:

Emily wore a black crop top, red velvet skirt, gold necklace and black wedge heels.

Alicia wore a red shirt, black floral velvet leggings and tan heels.

Olivia wore a black velvet dress with a white collar and chunky Jeffery Campbell style heels.

 Overall this shoot was successful, with many good shots produced. However we will not be using these photos for the front of our album cover as we wish to have something a little more interesting, with a little more substance.

Hair and Makeup Boyband

This post shows how we prepared for our boyband shoot and some of the different videos that we looked at to help us do the making and styling for the video.
For boy-band we wore very minimal makeup as we needed to appear as manly as possibly. We wore foundation and a little bit of mascara. Whilst we were practising the makeup for the shoot we felt that we still looked very feminine so we decided to eventuate our eyebrows to make them more manly. We made them darker and a lot thicker- this helped our overall appearance.   As for hair we had previously bought 3 wigs-one black, one brown and one blonde- from Amazon. We then styled to wigs and cut them to make them somewhat more realistic.

Hair and Makeup Grunge

Grunge
For this genre we needed dark makeup with heavy black eyeliner and eyeshadow. We looked at different grunge artist for inspiration. We wanted to exaggerate the genre whilst keeping a 'girly' vibe. Our research mainly focused around the grunge group the pretty reckless as it fully embodied the dark genre whilst still being girly. For our hair we decided to backcomb it to create a lot of volume much like Taylor Momsen, lead singer of The Pretty Reckless, has. This element is common in many grunge videos so means it will easily be connoted with the genre. As for makeup it was mainly focused on very dark, heavy eyeliner and eyeshadow which meant this was easy to replicate. We used very light foundation and no bronzer/blush in order to eventuate the darkness of the eyes.  

We used the look from the pretty reckless as our main inspiration as we felt they embodied the grunge genre through their makeup and costume.

Hair and Makeup Country

We research the costume for the country genre in order to replicate it and make it clear what genre we were parodying.
For the country genre we needed a very natural look. We look at different country artists to get inspiration. Our research mainly focused on Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.
Both of the artists had a very natural look. They had their hair in loose natural curls with minimal makeup. The look was very basic, but effective, with soft eye shadow around the eye and a pale lip colour. We replicated this look in order to convey the genre properly. Again we all channeled different looks but had a sense of unity with our natural make up.

Hair and Makeup All That Glitters

All That Glitters
In order to create synergy between our appearance and name, as well as the whole campaign,  we chose to create an iconic look that would be easily recognisable and would enable us to create a unique brand identity. In order to tie in our name and look we decide to use glitter. We looked at how glitter had been used my previous artists and used this to inspire our own look. We decided to use glitter on our faces and use mainly gold to keep within our set colour scheme. We used the glitter aspect in different genre to reinforce the brand such as using it on the drums during the grunge genre

As far as the rest of our makeup when we were quite neutral but with a heavy focus of eye make up to tie in with the glitter. 
We all had or hair down to show our unity as a band but had different styles to help show our personalities.  Emily-Wavy curly hair Olivia- Straight hombre Alicia- Straight
The styling for the band was very important as it needed to be consistent throughout the the branding.We felt this look worked well with the name and made us easily identifiable.