Website Research

Crystal Castles

www.crystalcastles.com

Genre:

Electro - design of website goes against the genre conventions

Images & Logo:

Sad looking little girl, band name as an image. The band is represented in an abnormal way.

New technology & links:

Video for latest song is embedded on home page as a link through Youtube used to promote themselves. In the top right-hand corner an address bar is used to subscribe to their newsletter using your email address. Links to all other pages of the site run across the top of the homepage. 

Colour & Style:

The colouring of the website is monochrome and boring which does not go well with the image of this band. In addition to this the style of everything on the page is simplistic.

Written Content:

There is no written content on this page other than links.

Font & Layout:

The font used on the page is very simple and boring yet clear to read for all users. The page layout is also simplistic which makes it user friendly for everyone.

Target audience:

I believe the audience (17-24) is targeted through use of the link to Youtube and newsletter subscription. However, this website is easy to use for people of any age.

Advertisements:

The adverts used are to iTunes and amazon (in both the US and UK) which are where their music is available from. I think these adverts are suitable for the target audience.

MGMT

www.whoismgmt.com

Genre:

Electro - The generic conventions are definitely portrayed by these website in the way that everything is a bit crazy and abstract.

Images & Logo:

The background image is very warped and eye catching, as is the ever-changing band logo in the centre of the top of the page. These images represent the band as abstract which is what they are.

New technology & links:

Media technology is used to promote the artists new song with the video link to Youtube in the centre of the page. There is also a link to the record label, Columbia at the bottom of the page.

Colour & Style:

The colours are very vivid and bold which says that the artist is wanting to stand out and be different.

Written Content:

There is no written content on this page.

Font & Layout:

The fonts used for the band logo are wacky and fun which constructs the image of the artist perfectly. The layout also adds to this convention.

Target audience:

The target audience (17-24) is reached through eye catching colours and imagery.

Advertisements:

The only advertisements used are the video link to their new song and a hyper link at the bottom to Columbia Records.

Soulwax

www.soulwax.com

Genre:

Electro - The music is played loudly and flashing imagery is used.

Images & Logo:

None.

New technology & links:

Soulwax use video technology from previous gigs and talks to promote themselves. At the end of the video loop there is a link to their myspace.

Colour & Style:

The colours used in the video footage with the lighting are vibrant and flashing which makes it eye catching.

Written Content:

There is no written content other than the word loading in between videos.

Font & Layout:
The font is futuristic and bold which goes along side the image of the artist. As for the page layout, nothing exciting takes place. Simplicity is the key once again, with a plain black background which makes the video content stand out.

Target audience:
The audience is targeted by them starring in the video footage on the homepage and having eye catching lighting and cuts. Music from the band is also on the video.

Advertisements:

Soulwax advertise themselves on the website and have a link to their myspace, the way in which this is done is through the video loop which is suitable for the target audience of about 17-29

Daft Punk

www.daftpunk.com

Genre:

Electro - The conventions of this genre are generally met with this website.

Images & Logo:

The only images on the page are textual ones i.e the interstella 5555 logo that looks futuristic in the bottom right corner which links to the film that Daft Punk made for their entire album, Discovery (2001). Also, the Daft Punk logo in the centre of the page represents the artist in a futuristic way.

New technology & links:

New technology that is used on this homepage is a link to a Youtube video of their latest song, which pops up when you hover over the 'electroma' logo as well as an email address subscription at the bottom of the page, which are both used to promote the artist.

Colour & Style:

The overall colouring of the site is monochrome with bursts of fuchsia that attract the audience's attention to important areas of the page. On the whole, the page looks futuristic, which is the image that daft punk portray. 

Written Content:

There is no written content on this homepage.

Font & Layout:

In terms of the page font, it is futuristic and bold which makes it easy to read. The layout of the page itself is simplistic and easy to navigate.

Target audience:

As a group, we believe that this website is highly suitable for the target audience (17-24). Features of the page which attract the target audience are the bold font and style of the font & logos.

Advertisements: 

On this page there aren't really any advertisements other than the one for the film Interstella 5555 that Daft Punk made for their album, Discovery (2001).

Klaxons:

www.klaxons.net

Genre:

Electro - generic conventions of the genre are followed with this website.

Images & Logo:

Through the images on this page, the band is represented as eccentric. The album cover in particularly makes no sense and makes the audience question what they're seeing. All the other images on the website are crazy and make the audience think. The band name is on the left hand column in the form of their logo, which also represents the Klaxons as being eccentric.

New technology & links:

The website is structured in a blog format with posts included from Twitter. Links along the left hand side navigate users around the website. In addition to the internal links, there are links to places where the Klaxons music is available i.e hmv, itunes & youtube. 

Colour & Style:

Colouring of the actual website is monochrome with colour added through the bright pictures. The style of the website is modern in the way of a blog which infers that the band are modern. The images contained are futuristic just like the band.

Written Content:

Written content of the website is blog posts that inform readers of updates from the band and is composed in an informal style.

Font & Layout:

The layout of the website is structured and simplistic, which makes it easy to access. It is set out in blocks making use of easy to read fonts and a futuristic font for the band logo. I think these layout points go with the image of the band because the future is often portrayed as simplistic.

Target audience:

Abnormal pictures are used to capture the audience's attention as well as bold fonts. The target audience for the Klaxons is a bit wider i feel because they make it into the charts which are liked by a wide range of ages.

Advertisements:

As i said with the previous point, the target audience is quite wide so the advertisements need to be suitable for any age of about 12 - 35 which I think they are. The adverts on the page are for music stores i.e HMV, iTunes & Recordstoreday.com.

Cara.

Test Shoot

We decided to do a test shot which consisted of filming in front of the green screen in a close up head shot as it jerked in different directions. We then sped this up on imovie to make it seem robotic which is suitable for our performance as the majority of  Daft Punk video's contain dancer/actors/band in robotic outfits and movement is static and isolated. In additon we added earthquake effect and ghost trail to make it look less human/normal. We wanted to use this shot for the end of our film along with smoke in a can as we feel this would be a dramatic ending. What we have learnt from this is that the green screen is not suitable for this shot, but instead we will use the dance studio because it has black out curtains against 3 large walls and a black matt covering a large area of the room which gives the actors more room for performance and less pixilated. In terms of lighting we used the green screen lighting as we will use when we come to filming out final video we decided we would hire 2 lights to illuminate the actors faces contrasting with the black backgound to emphasise their presence.  We took 5 different shots of this as we tested out using the "smoke in a can" effect to resemble robots malfunctioning and shooting different characters to see which actor made the shot seem more aesthetically pleasing. Overall we were quite content with our final test shot as framing and type of shot was how we would like it to be in our video.

Cara, Harriet and Emma.

Letter to Daft Punk

In order to use the song Crescendolls by Daft Punk we would firstly need permission before filming to avoid copyright. Here is the e-mail we sent:


Daft Punk
c/o Daft Music
9, Rue de Versailles
92430 Marnes-la-Coquette
France

Dear Daft Punk - Virgin Records

We have sent the following e-mail to ask for your permission towards the creation of a music video accompanied by your song “Crescendolls” for our A2 media project at Bilborough College.  The final piece will then be shared via social networking sites such as Youtube and Facebook.

Kind regards Harriet Taylor, Cara Wain and Emma Bott.

Harriet.

Event Ideas for our music video

As our song choice of "Crescendolls" By Daft Punk for our music video is fairly repetitive with few lyrics we decided that we need to include a large variety of different events, funny scenes, bizzare and abstract shots and generally need lots of action to take place in order to keep our target audience's attention maintained throughout the video. In order to do this we need to do some research to enable us to come up with the best idea's possible.

We can firstly do this by looking at already existing music video's which stand out as more comical or uniqe than others.  We would then either adapt these idea's or simply give us some sort of knowledge of what we're up against to set targets.

Here is a video by "New Order" called "True Faith" in which I believe is extremely comical and intellectual video that our group could learn a thing or two off.

This was an interesting video as it showed the artists almost defying gravity as they seem to be appearing from the ground into the shots. I thought this was an interesting idea we could use in some sections of our music video.



Coldplay - The scientist could be an idea we could use in a section of our music video as its video's in reverse however lip syncing is done backwards. It could be difficult to do however would be very effective if done in small sections of our video.




We would also like to use slow motion sequences as the tempo alters half way through. This is to split up the video into three different sections so that it doesn't get repetitive and boring. In addition we believe that everyone will be attracted to slow motion movement as humans can't see it happen through our own eyes.
We would like to use paint, glitter, confetti, party popers, silly string, cannons, water with colouring and powder. Here's a video we found on youtube that gives us an idea of what it may look like.








Harriet.

Research & Planning list

Here is our music video "bible" that we have created in order to make ensure we will have included all aspects of planning on our blog!

 

 

 

Harriet.

Light Drawing

I thought that a photography process i had heard of called light drawing would be great to look at for the CD cover inspiration. Below are some images of light drawing/ light graffiti.

The colours used in this picture are great and i love the crazy nature of the image drawn.

Using light graffiti on an existing object looks great but I think it looks hard to line up in the right place. With the light not lining up with the actual strings of the guitar this image looks a bit messy, however it does add to the effect of the whole photo somehow. 

The images below are taken by someone that i know who i will learn how to do light graffiti from.

I plan to experiment with my own light drawing asap.

Cara.

UV

We also came up with the idea of involving U.V paint in various shots to make the music video more colourful and fun. We would do this by hiring out U.V lights, turning off all normal lights, covering our cast in u.v body & face paint, shining the u.v lights onto them whilst they dance around in time to the music! So therefore I decides to research some images as this idea could be used as a possible CD cover...

... although this image isn't someone painted I still thought it would be an eye catching U.V CD cover

I also found some pictures of the paint we would need to buy in order to create this effect.

Harriet.