Practicing with iWeb software

Today is lesson we began to practice with iWeb creating a webpage. The purpose of the activity was that we got used to how iWeb functions, and how it works, especially with things such as inserting a youtube video, as these sort of things are really important when it comes to this project. I needed to be able to develop my skills before I created my ancillary webpage

This is a screenshot of my homepage. As it was just to practice the program, I didn't make this serious, and just did a slightly comedic one on Batman. I added several different pages to the sidebar so that I had the option to go on to these pages, and if clicked on, it takes you to these pages, though they are currently uncreated pages. I practiced using the 'Youtube' widget in order to insert a video, which was actually incredibly easy. I also added an image of Batman and Robin and the Batman logo in order to practice inserting an image onto a webpage. 

Overall, I found that iWeb was very easy to use, however, there is not enough freedoms for the page, as  some things did not move where I wanted and would not change colour how I wanted them too, which could prove to be a large problem with my actual site, and may lead to me drawing most parts of the site myself, and adding them in as images. 

Band Name and Logo

Our group has decided on the name 'Lift Off' for our band, as we all had idea's relating to birds. After deciding on the name, we went on to design separate logos of the band each.

As I was linking the logo to birds, I made a brainstorm of different types of birds and the things they symbolised, and made several rough sketches of example logos from each.

This is the brainstorm I made of different birds and their symbolic properties. Most of these have a relevance to the ethos I am giving the band.

As I'm aware my handwriting is hard to read, this is a list of all the things appearing on the brainstorm:

Owl- Mystery of magic, silent wisdom, (night) vision, deception

Condor- Mysteries of life and death, Spiritual communications, overcoming limitations

Eagles- Illumination of spirit, Healing, The divine
Peacock- Resurrection, Watchfulness, Pride
Phoenix- Rebirth, Immortality, Renewal
Swallow- Protection, Warmth, Home
Raven- Magic, Shape-shifting, Creation
Magpie- Intelligence, the occult
Canary- Power of Voice
Blackbird- Understanding energies of nature
Hummingbird- Joy, Nectar of life

The one's which seem the most relevant to the ethos of the band are Eagles, Phoenix, Ravens, Magpies, Canaries and Hummingbirds.

The Eagles are relevant as I wanted the band to be in touch with their fans, with the hope their songs could help their fans and evoke strong emotions within them.

The Phoenix is relevant as the idea of rebirth is something which making a band successful draws links with (as they are both new starts) and the hope of music is that it will become immortal, which is what I'd imagine the band to want.

Ravens are relevant as the idea of shape-shifting is relevant to the creation of a band, as creating a successful band includes a lot of things being altered, and although the band would not change themselves, it is more in the figurative sense, such as growing up.

Magpies are relevant as the band aim to present intelligence, and it also links to the origins of folk music, which was formed from old folk tales and traditions, and gradually evolved, much like the birds, and presumably the band.

The relevance of Canaries is obvious, as they are the power of the voice, and the band aim to have power through their music.

Hummingbirds are relevant as the band would hope to spread joy and life through their music.

Questions for Questionnaire

We devised ten questions for our questionnaire which we plan to give to five people each, which will give us 20 sets of results to go from. Below is a link to out questionnaire on SurveyMonkey and print screens of it. The point of this questionnaire is to find out who our target audience are and what they would expect from us. Questions include age, gender and what magazines are read and music channels are watched.

 

We ended up with two seperate but similar questionnaire's on survey monkey, and had 17 results on one, and five on the other, giving us 22 sets of data to work from, the results of which will follow on a different post. Having two seperate questionnaires should not cause a problem as the questions which were important where the same and so should give us the same key useful information.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TZX336C

We also plan on holding a focus group made up of both teachers and students in order to see differences in opinion among potential target audience members of different ages. We aim to have about six people in all. Despite our mix of people, we aim to pull these from the results of the questionnaires, and use our findings here in order to get a better idea of who we are aiming our music video at, and how best to appeal to them.

 

We have planned the things we aim to get from our focus group:

Names and Ages- This enables us to have a higher level of friendliness with everyone involved so the focus group goes more comfortably. Being aware of ages will also mean we can better seperate data within each age group, so we understand interests which are specific to each age group.
Music Channels- We need to find out which music channels are popular with our target audience as this information benifits us when we come to advertising and distributing our music video.

Show them Vegabond and the song lyrics- This is so we can see first hand how a potential audience reacts to the song and their opinions of our track. We also intend to get any possible idea's for video pitches which they would like to see which we could incoprperate, and see what they think of the pitches we came up with.

Video pitches- This is actually when we would pitch our idea's to them. Here we hope to get a mixed response to our pitches, and be given as much constructive feedback as we can get. This will enable us to see if we are thinking along the same line as the audience, and find out exactly what they want or expect from us.
Where they go to gain information on bands/artists- We need to know where our audience goes to get information regarding a band or artist so we can gain specifics on where we should promote our band, such as using fan bases, magazines and social networking sites.
Examples of music video's within the rock genre which interested them due to narrative- This is so we can draw out specific interests of the audience and let them be free to talk about these things. This will also help us with the setting for our video, and see what sort of bands we will be linked to so we can look further into these both for inspiration and to know what is expected of us.

What is effective in a music video and why- This is so we can decide what needs to be in our video and link this to the appeal it has for our target audience so we an create an impressionate video which is well recieved.

Video Pitches

I only managed to come up with one idea for the music video, which goes as follows:

The band are performing in a small room, such as a studio for the most of the video, being very vague about their performance, but clearly still caring about what they're playing. The band will be messing around a little bit, and the lead singer will be playing with a bouncy ball at some points.

Together as a group, we looked over our ideas and came up with two.

In this, a boy is stalking a girl. She is going around and minding her own business, completely unaware of him being around or even that he exists. In a typical music video with this sort of theme, it would only really include a typical follow and hide theme, but we plan to make ours a little more complex then this. We'd plan to represent this in a way of a more typical love story, with him helping her in a friendly way at times and being friendly, with her either responding as a friend or not at all. The stalking element would only really become obvious when at the end he goes into his room and has pictures of her everywhere.We wanted to avoid the really obvious and cliche stalking idea, such as where the woman thinks she's being followed and looks around, but no one is there. 

Another idea was of someone going around London, and we don't see their face, and putting up missing posters. At the very end of the video we see that the person putting up the posters is the person in the video, demonstrating a more mental or metaphorical missing, rather than actually being missing. 

Band member Idea's

I designed an exaple of what I imagined a member of our band to look like and how things linked to the etho's I thought they should have. Of course, all things featured will be discussed and changed within our group at a later date.

In case my handwriting is difficult to understand, the below is my annotations:
Slightly Messy Hair- To show they are laid back and that there are more importnant things to them (such as their music) which they care about.
Shirt (below the jacket)- This shows a more serious and professional side to the band.
Jacket- This particular one is checked due to it's folk influences which I felt the band will have. It is also more casual than the rest of their clothes, and presumably more comfortable, showing the bands practicality.

Microphone- This is a representation of the band members taking their music seriously, and also of how they belive in free speech and speaking out.

Smiley flag (or other child-like/ happy motif)- This shows that as much as they are serious about their music, they have a fun-loving side too.

Smart Trousers or dark jeans- They could wear either, as both are fairly smart. The difference, however, would be that smart trousers would denote they were even more serious/ professional, and dark jeans would maintain the casual look which I'd mainly imagine.

Shoes- Most likely to be some sort of trainer or boot, as both can be casual but somewhat smart, which is how they should look. They are most commonly worn by members of rock bands.

Webpage Design and Webpage Research

Webpage Analysis by

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This is the website design I came up with from the moodboard I created. The left hand corner is where the band logo goes, and below this is the navigation bar for the website. The circle next to the 'HOME' button is actually a bouncy ball, and moves to different parts of the bar based on what page the veiwer is on. Clicking the larger words which have arrowed words under them leads to a page with the same design, but in the space has boxes with the links to the options within it.

Mood board

Here is my moodboard for the band image and webpage/digipack. As the song sounded very folk rock to me, I took things which reminded me of folk rock. I created a colour swatch of blue and purple tones, as these reflect the blue's influence of folk rock which are evident in 'Vagabond'. The bouncy ball is reflective of the bouncy beat in the song. The drawn images remind me of folk rock, as its very raw, and hand drawn images reflect this rawness.