Rehearsals

Phoebe Palmer's Blog: Tertia and Will:

 This is a link to the rehearsal video, we used a microphone and guitar and amp so they could practice realistically. As you can see we attempted to do a moving shot but it is a bit shaky with the phone camera. hopefully this helped them get used to the idea of being filmed so hopefully they can be more comfortable in front of the camera, and around us.

Further Website Work

Today me a liv spent a long time on photoshop trying to find a way to get the white background, surrounding the T-shirts on the merchandise page, to disappear to give it a more professional look and to make sure all the attention is on the merchandise products.

To get rid of the white background we attempted using the Magic wand tool however it proved too difficult for us. We then realised we could use the eraser tool to erase the correct bit. This took a really long time and we had to zoom in and use a very small eraser size to make this possible.

which looked like this...

Here I am very carefully going round the edge of the t-shirt with a very small sized eraser tool which is just about visible in this picture in the bottom left hand corner, after this I went round with a larger one getting rid of the rest of the white background. (The checkered grey and white is the deleted bit.)

Working On The First Digipak Draft

The background:

We changed the background to black and white, as this would go with the inner part of the digipak that we are planning to have a CD on. The CD is supposedly going to be black so we thought it would match.

The Text:

The title was initially put in the middle and on the front like in the digipaks we reserched. We thought about putting the album name in a triangle like below but we didn't think it looked very good.

With the triangle.

Creating the triangle in layers.

The font.

This is not the exact font that we like  but the text is not available in photoshop, but this is the closest one.We want the same one as the one on the website. We played around with where to put it. I personally like it in the upper left hand corner with the band name at the bottom. We will show all these idea to the focus group.

Colour:

We do love the the black and white however we feel that we do need to see how it looks in colour too just in case. you can see their expressions more clearly and it shows off their personality more because of it. We will se what the focus group thinks.

Low hue (-101)

Low saturation

Playing around with hue and saturation

High red in channel mixer

channel mixer

We even tried making it a little wacky using the channel mixer giving it a red tinge, just to see what it looked like however decided against it as it strayed too much from the relaxed genre making it look more electric rather than urban jazz.

The CD Page

We chose this image because we would be able to fit both of them in and see them behind the CD.

Digipak Research

LONDON GRAMMAR

London grammar is a band that throughout the process of making our products we have referred to them as they are the the closest band on the market. Their digipak work has a clear title of their name and the name of the album is much less importantly shown. 

Therefore we will need to make sure that the bands name is bigger than the album name.  

ALUNA GEORGE
Aluna george is another similar band, but their artwork does vary slightly. Their first has the album name bigger than the band name and heavily focus's on the female rather than the male. However, as their target audience we much prefer the second two where the band members are equally shown and the band name is the main focus.

Based on this we will make sure that the band is represented as an equal band so we will take a similar image for our front cover when it comes to the digipak photoshoot.

Results From The Focus Group

Our focus group was made up of our target audience, 12 people aged 16 to 18. The first section of our focus group we allowed the group to study our digipak. Without giving them too much information we asked them what sort of genre they thought the band was. We then showed them the website and asked the same question, then we showed 
them the song and saw their reactions and heard any further comments on it.

This is the video that we prepared and showed to them:

 \

1)

Statement: 
They look like a rock band
Why they think this:
It was not specified why this was but we think it could be the display of the guitar. 
What we need to change as a result:
We will make sure that the digipak doesn't include any pictures of the guitar.

2)

Statement:
That it looks quite sixties
Why they think this:
The outfits are quite dated especially the dungarees
What we need to change as a result:
When we reshoot the digipak we will make sure that she is wearing something modern and up to date.

3)

Statement:

That the homepage of the website looks like very different from the rest of the site.

Why they think this:
The first page had very bright colours and is a lively picture whilst the video and the other colours or calmer and more simple with darker colours.

What we need to change as a result:

We need to make sure that the homepage has the same colour scheme as the rest of the website and that we stick to all dark colours throughout all three products.

4)

Statement:
The font used in the bio page is too thin.

Why they think this:
Because they can't read it properly.

What we need to change as a result:
We need to choose a different font and make sure that it is a bit thicker and easy to read.

5)

Statement:
They wanted to see more of the guy and his role in the video.

Why they think this:
It's a band of just two and therefore there should be more equally centred.

What we need to change as a result:
We need to put more shots of the guy in to show that they are an equal band, and also more guitar shots.

Overall:

Their Dislikes:

Digipak

They didn't think that the digipak was very modern and felt it was quite dated. they suggested a reshoot with the band for a more variety of choices to choose from for the digipak. A couple of people felt that it looked slightly sixties. They suggested trying to take inspiration from the video so they fit together better. They also pointed out that the positions they are in in the picture on the front of the digipak make them look like they are in a relationship but this, but unfortunately we think that people will make these sorts of assumptions with a band only including a boy and a girl the same age.

Website:

They thought that the picture chosen for the background on the homepage gave an impression that they were a completely different genre. They felt that the merchandise page was too plain in comparison to the rest of the blog and the merchandise was boring They also suggested having a specific colour scheme to stick to. They felt that the we needed to link the merchandise to the digipak somehow.

The Music Video:

The group thought that we needed more of the boy in the video as it is a two part band so needs to be equal and sometimes they said it doesn't look like the girl is singing.

What they did like!

They liked the fact that the black and white element fitted with the digipak. They thought that all three elements were realistic and professional, they just needed to fit together better.

What we now need to work on..

We need to find a way to link all the products, as even though they all work individually they need to work as one product. We need to choose a colour scheme for the website which will probably be either black or white or dark blues. Finally we will need to work out what aspect of the products to put onto the merchandise.

What is a Focus Group?

The point of a focus group:

• To get new information 
• To get an objective for the next stages of the work
• To see how target audience reacts to the product
• To see how well a product is working

Why it might be worth testing our products at this stage:

• It gives us the opportunity to make the products more interesting
• It can help us make any further post production decisions
• It can help us make our products more target friendly

Good ways to test our individual distribution products:

• Video: to show it on the big screen, at a good stage where your intended outcome is recognisable, then chat about it without saying too much
• Digipak: to print it out and put it into realistic packaging and pass round listening intently to peoples comments and questions.
• Website: to go into a computer room, so they can have one each, go onto the site and let them discover it for themselves, to see if it user friendly enough to navigate around.

What our group would like to find out from our focus group:

• How well all the products match up
• Are there any differences in the way that the star image is portrayed
• How much the video keeps their attention
• What impression they get of the band all together 

Our group thinks that the best way to record the focus group is by voice recording, subtly on a phone. We think this as a camera would make the group feel self conscious and will distract from giving their true opinions. We also think we should jot down and main pieces of information that reoccur or stand out.

In our research of focus groups we studied 2 focus groups, discussing how successful they were and what we can learn from them:

1. 

This is a successful focus group, he got all the information he could have needed and from the correct target audience. He was friendly, asking open questions and did a lot of listening. He never looked for a fixed answer, something that we should take into account when holding our focus group. Most importantly he never defended his product.

2.

This was definitely an unsuccessful focus group. They entered the focus group already with the outcome in mind which they wanted to hear and therefore they ignored the comments that challenged their fixed idea meaning that they couldn't learn anything new from holding the focus group. Answers were fed to the group which they agreed with, meaning that the group were prevented from feeding their true opinions. The group took things personally.

Work On The Website

We started from scratch without using a template, this was because we wanted the website to be fairly simple without too much going on, as the genre of music is very relaxed and uncomplicated. We looked at similar band's websites to get inspired such as London Grammar ( http://www.londongrammar.com/home/ ). We took the idea of having an artistic and slightly blurred version of the band as the homepage background, and to definitely have the single's music video on the homepage with the release date.

Our original lay out without colour, including all the details needed. We decided to concentrate on including the correct things before deciding the artistic features.

The band already have a twitter page so we made sure there was a link to it.

They also have a some recordings on sound cloud which we put in the music page.

We tried out these two different fonts for the band name, to make sure that the font described the genre and finally decided on the font shown below.

We also chose this picture as the main background as it is a similar style to that of London Grammar, ( a picture of the band but blurry with interesting colours)