Progress Report- Website

I have designed the official template that we will use for our website...

The first page of our website, which will be the one that audiences are directed to first, i have made quite simplistic. This is to almost ease people into our website rather than trying to cram information into the first page. The background is a moving image, with the smoke moving in the wind. We will have to re-shoot a similar shot ourselves, as this one is a video from the Wix website. I wanted our title to be on a straight line above the line of the building, to create a more neat and clean look. The name of our album is the biggest piece of text on this page, as this is the most important piece of information for this website. Above this, i've put our band name underneath the mock logo for our band. The one in this template is the kind of thing we want to create as our logo, as it is simple and relates to all of our platforms, because of the costume choices in our music video and our digipak, therefore linking all of our platforms together. This works well with the codes and conventions of the ska genre. I will have to change and add to the "contact information" and legal features of this page, and the rest of the pages.

This is effectively the 'about' page for the band. However, I wanted to make it slightly more personal as if the fans are actually meeting the band on this page, 'Meet the band'. I've made the layout of the writing almost like a magazine article, as this looks more symmetrical and works with the theme of the page. We will take our own picture for this page, with the three band members in a similar costume. I will fill out the paragraphs so they look the same on both sides, rather than being split up. I will probably change the background to be a white brick wall, which reflects the background of our digipak, creating a theme which runs through our different platforms.

 

On our page that allows the audience to listen to a preview of some of the songs on the album. The logo of our band will be on every page of the website. We will take a photograph of our own band's feet/ legs with the ska-genre costumes and shoes. Our black and white theme is clear on every page. We will link some music to this page along with our album cover next to each one. 

The tour date page currently has a marble background, which we will probably change to a white brick background. I have to change all the dates to be more realistic dates and locations, which fit better with the level of popularity and location of our band. The links will redirect to the ticket master website. 

This page is for the pictures of our band. I will have to change the green text at the bottom of the page. These images are just off the Wix website, which I put in as templates for the black and white images we will take ourselves. The layout of these images is neat and clean, which is a running theme through our website. The images we will shoot will go with the theme of our band, which we will take at our next Kingston University visit. 

Progress Report

We're currently editing the footage that we have recorded over the two Kingston University visits. We realised when we had the two sets of footage together that the lighting differed between the two, so we've had to use the colour matching tool and alter the lighting in order for them to look similar, otherwise there would be a continuity problem.

Planning music video

To try and incorporate the actual subject matter of the song into our video, we need to use the school setting. To do this we can try a number of things that would look effective but require a fair amount of planning. One idea we have is to try and direct a whole year 7 or 8 year group to perform an action or actions, which we would record and use to cut in between our band shots. The prime time to do this would be in one of their year group assemblies. We will have to talk to their head of year to confirm this and make sure that the actions we will ask them to perform are safe and that it doesn't cause chaos and disrupt the assembly.

Another thing we want to try and organise is to have the band walking through a number of different subject classrooms, such as maths, science, art, etc, performing some of the actions that are mentioned in the song. I would want these shots to be symmetrical within the frame, with Tom in the middle and Mark and Filip on either side of him performing the actions. We originally wanted to have younger kids in the classrooms as well but this may be very difficult to organise so we are going to use empty classrooms instead.

We will film some shorter shots to cross cut to between the band shots. These will be mostly close ups of objects or some actions, such as a cup hitting someone's head when the song says "Back of the head with a plastic cup" for example.

website research

Before we start designing our website, i need to research a few websites in the genre of Ska. From this i will gather a list of codes and conventions of Ska band websites in order to make our own website look as professional as possible. 

Madness's website is not as playful as their music. It has a more serious and information based feel to it. Their website includes a gallery of their images, links to their social media bases, a store to purchase merchandise and a news blog along with some other pages. Their colour scheme is quite basic, with the main focus of colour being in the images of the band performing live. The colour yellow features as the font colour, making it stand out from the fairly dark background of the photographs. 

The website for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones is very different from Madness's. This is a much more colourful website which features very bold colours such as blue, red and white on their home page. Each of their different pages has a different colour scheme, which distinguishes them from each other in an interesting way. There is also an illustrated depiction of the band members, which is an aspect which we are hoping to feature across all of our platforms as a band. 

The specials' website has the sort of theme that we will be most inspired by when designing our own website. It has a black and white colour scheme, which would go perfectly with our music video colour scheme. Their merchandise page consists mostly of t shirts, with the band's monotone colour scheme and their band logo. 

Call sheet

Call sheet for Friday 24th November

We're returning to Kingston Uni for a final shoot in their studio. The remaining footage we need for our video will be shot in the school, to fit the theme of the song. This means that at the uni, we will have the time to take some pictures of our band and some other shots for our digipak and website. 

• I want to get the picture of the three band members so that I can use this to create the sketch that we will use on our digipak. 
• I also want to get some photos of some objects and other shots of the band, with a black and white style. 
• We want to get some shots of school objects such as rulers, pencils etc to fit the theme of our song, these could make good backgrounds for some of our website pages. 
• The costumes the band will be wearing are the same as they are wearing in the music video, so that there is a continuous theme that fits with the codes and conventions of the ska genre. 
• We need to ask the Uni to prepare a black and a white background for our shoot. 
• The shots we will take will mostly consist of medium shots, close ups and long shots. 

Props/costumes that we need to bring:

• Trumpet 
• Ruler
• Pencils/pens  
• Exercise books
• Sunglasses 
• White shirt 
• Ties

Audience Interview Questions

(play them the song)

1. What genre of music is this?
2. What other artists can you name in this genre?
3. What images do you think of when listening to this song?
4. What themes come to mind when you hear this song?
5. What colours would you associate with this style of music?
6. Do you think there would be a narrative in the video for this song?
7. Does this music have an emotion that you would identify with it?
8. Which messages and values do you think these artists convey in their songs?
9. Have you ever seen this band live? If so, where and when?
10. What setting/locations would you expect to see in a video for this song?
11. Do you have any merchandise? if so, which items?
12. What situation are you likely to listen to this music in?

The idea of these questions is to try and gather information about our audience and what kind of things they would be expecting from our video so that we can possibly work around this and adapt our ideas to suit our audience. Some of the questions are to try and assist with our website and give us ideas for some of the merchandise and tour locations, etc that we can include. Some of the questions we may have to ask to older people as Madness is a fairly old band that may not be particularly popular with people our age, however most questions will be asked to other students as this will be more suitable to our target audience age group. 

Audience Theories

Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be applied to this video. Maslow created a theory that there was a set of different human needs, organised into groups,  that every media text fits into in some way.

   

'A message to you Rudy' i feel appeals to the love and belonging section of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. The video shows a large group of people who make up the band, who appear to be close friends, and seem as if they are comfortable with eachother and give off a sense of belonging, which would make the audience want a large group of friends too.

Our music video that we are creating also applies to this section of the triangle, as the band is smaller but appear very close, for example when Filip and Tom are play fighting and messing around with eachother, it gives off a sense that they have a sort of brotherly relationship, which fits into the belongingness and love needs section. I also feel as if Tom, being the lead singer of our band, fits into the next section of the hierarchy which is esteem needs. He gives off a sense of confidence and self esteem in the video, which would be envied by the audience, and make them want to be like him.

The hypodermic needle theory says that the media injects messages into passive audiences, media consumption influences the attitudes and behaviours of audiences. It suggests that audiences are easily led, influenced and manipulated. This theory could be applied to our music video as it could be encouraging young people to mess around in school and disrespect the rules of authority. Most of the images shown in our video display a rebellious and disrespectful attitude, with a lot of it set in school. This could encourage a section of our audience to act in the same way. Cultivation theory could also be applied, as a student could already have a tendency to misbehave in school, and our video could be enhancing this and making their behaviour worse and more common. Although this applies to schools in a literal sense, it could influence people in society in general, disobeying authority figures such as the government, police, parents, etc.

Older people may frown upon this attitude, as they are generally considered the authority figures of society, and therefore may disagree with the behaviours we are displaying in our video, and may not want younger people copying or being influenced by this. This could fall under Reception Theory, which is how factors such as age, gender, class or ethnicity effects the way a person reacts to or feels about a media text. A younger person would react very differently to our video than an older person.