Website Homepage

http://www.wix.com/dazarosa/alpha-eagles-webpage

Final Eval

Rosey's Evaluation

Media Evaluation for Blog


Posted By Rosey

This is the home page for our bands website.

it includes

. a menu with videos, gigs, gallery and lyrics

. links to facebook, twitter and myspace

. a playlist with the song on

. a picture cube with images of the band and rehearsals and filming

. an image of the band

. a link to subscribing for newsletters and update emails

. a box with updates and news for the band

posted by Rosey

Performance scenes

Before Christmas we filmed in our school's drama studio.

These shots where ones of the band performing, included in our music video.

We set the room up to look like a student union style gig. We wanted the feel to be as though it was a small crowd of adoring fans and we also wanted to maintain a good energy with the band.

This meant we ordered pizzas and shouted direction throughout filming to keep up morale.

Over all It went really well and looks great in the video.

posted by rosey

A design plan for the cd...

This is just one design plan of some we are looking at and playing with.

To capture the playful side of the band we might have the image drawn by a child of the lead singer in the band away from the rest of the band. It shows the lyrics and story of the song and also captures a playful side. The influence was from the cover of the cure's album.

Another idea is using an image of the lanes in brighton where some of our filming is done and then having a bold font with the band name and song name over the top.

Posted By Rosey

Picture of the website so far...

1. This first image of the lyrics page, a link from the main page.

It has the lyrics from the song we have been working with.

2. The second image is the gallery link.

It has a selection of different events pictures of which the fans can click on.

(we will make links to these in other pages but wont have the images, just a description in bullet points)

3. This is a newer update of the homepage.

It still need the images but we added some animations

we also have the song on the playlist section

and have made a section for the video preview.

posted by Rosey

Digi pack progress

Today I am working on finishing the layout and links for the website. We are hoping to take photos of the band for the site on wednesday. We are also going to upload some clips from the video as a preview like they do on some sites.

We will create links to facebook twitter and myspace as well and on these links add bullet points of the kind of data that these sites would have.

We are now also doing templates and designs on photoshop which we will put on our cd cover.

.

This is the initial layout of our website using wix.com.

It features a menu section which have links to other pages.

It also has a link to a subscription page.

There are some updates in the bottom right box.

There is also an image of a band called 'paramore' this will be replaced with an image of our band.

We are going to add a video preview section and put our music/song onto the play buttons at the bottom of the site.

posted by Rosey

Updates on Digi pack

Since our last post we have been working on our Digi pack which includes a website design and also a CD cover and case.

What we've done:

Website:

Using A website called Wix we can design a website home page and include links to other pages and design the website in coordination to the band.
Whilst looking at this we have made the decision to change the name of the band because of permission and also because we want to be able to have complete creative control and create the band using "Geometrics" image and influence, but in our own design and image.
We researched for ideas and have come up with the name Alpha Eagle.

Editing

On Friday 20th we started to look at our shots and do some editing. Firstly we seperated the good and the bad shots and renamed them. Then put them into two folders. Then we imported the audio onto final cut pro. Then listened through the song putting in markers at certain points in order to make it easier when editing in the shots. Now we have begun to look at the shots and the storyboard and cut some shots and placed them onto the timeline.

posted by Rosey

Website influences

The View

The View are another band we have previously looked at.

They have similar aspects to them as the geometrics, including their style of music "indie", they're youthful appeal and their appearance. 

Their website now mainly focuses on an up and coming new album. They don't use a lot of colour but do use reds to highlight certain points on the website. 

There is a image that is linked to the new album on the right of the page which generates a focus point on the albums release. It is an 

image that can generate recognition so if it's seen again will be remembered. This is a tactic used by the production company to promote.

on the left is all the writing. the font is quite small but the words are in paragraphs to make for easier reading. Band websites don't want to over flow with wordy information but still are required to provide important information aimed as fans and people with interest in the band.

There are things included like a news feed to keep fans updated on event etc. which are good things to consider when creating a band website. The most important thing to include are things the fans would want to know about.

The headings and links are in red to make them stand out. Often people look straight to bold etc. so thats another consideration. Making main points in other colours or fonts.

In terms of the style of the page linking to the style of the band it does so. It looks funky and arty and appeals to a young audience base, or those 16-25 year olds that are the target.

 Because the website, like the band, appeals to a younger generation it includes interactivity and videos that are more interesting to people.

The modern media has to constantly update the ways of promotion and advertising to appeal to the evolving technologies and expected media forms.

This video will help to visually promote the band and album. We could maybe promote our "single" release or video release with some short clips composed into a short film or documentary style video of our website.

posted by Rosey

CD Cover Analysis

The Kooks

The second album of the Kooks again shows the whole band. They are framed with in the shot slightly to the right with their name of the album in lights which is representative of the fact they are more established. The are standing in a casual and cool way to show the characteristics of the band themselves.

The image in itself looks higher budget and more complex with the use of lighting and colour. A light spotlights the band so they're a focus. The colours are at quite a high contrast on them but there is a contridiction against the darker colours around them. The location they're in is an urban location outside a club or something.

Our video is shot in an urban cool and funky area so we might want to incorperate those images and the images of the band giving off the style they have like the kooks have done here.

Posted by Rosey

CD Cover Analysis

The Kooks

Another band we have looked at is the Kooks because they are a young and funky band who are also relevant to the style of music and fashion that the Geometrics and our created band are.
This is their first album cover in which we see the band doing what they do with their insturuments. It's quite a vouyeristic look in image as we see them in what looks like a dressing room or a rehearsal. They are all in the frame and as aposed to the other image of the arctic monkeys album cover it is the actual band who are on the cover and not an actor so you recognise the people themselves, this could be beneficial for the record label when promoting the look of a new band. That's something to consider.
The image is black and white but the font is in red to stand out against the image. It's also central and at the top being one of the focus points. I think it was important as this was a first album and they were promoting the band. As the band we are promoting we can assume it's their first album so we might want to consider how we can promote the image and name of the band.

posted by Rosey

Album Cover Influences...

This cover is really interesting as it is edgy, cool the fact that it is black and white adds an indie, rocker effect. The bright pink is also very confident of the band to use as the color itself is quite girly but they have used it as an effect of the bands genre to represent the edginess the band gives off. As you can see the image is repeated and they have used a tile format that also emphasizes the indieness and arty style of the band. The band are wearing stylish arty clothing that also create a sense of edginess. This is one of our favourite ideas as it is similar to the way we imagined our band cover to look like.

As you can see the image above is of the cure's album cover. We wanted to incorporated the styles of the influences of the band as well as following the conventions of current similar bands. The bright colors and childish drawings are fun and add to the edgy effect that we are trying to emphasize. We are developing ideas from this, possibly using a colorful background, maybe draw around them. As we are on a low budget, this cover is a perfect idea.

The font is smudged which creates a messy idea of the band, the overall drawing is not neat at all and this also emphasizes the style of music. The fact that the image has no relevance to the band itself is interesting, we felt that we wanted to concentrate on the band itself but we have taken in the same idea of the colorful background.

posted by dara

CD Cover Analysis

Arctic Monkeys

The reason we have looked at the album cover for the Arctic Monkeys is that they have a likeness to the band we are looking at and the one which we have created for our video. Alike to the band we are using they focus on indie music and have a similar target audience. We have looked at some of their videos in our pre production and so it made sense to continue our comparisons with the Arctic Monkeys and our Geometrics.

The first thing that is apparent about this image is the man who is prominant on the cover. He is framed centrally on the front of the cover and is completely in focus allowing us to really see closely what he looks like. His body language and what he is doing gives a clear indication of the personality of this man, which is that he is rough looking, casual and also the fact he is smoking shows that he follows the conventions of a youthful and rebelious person. The conventions of an indie band like the one we are using are similar, they are young and rebelious and this is shown in the video so this is a relevant image to look at.

The colour is black and white which gives it a moody feeling and not a happy tone. It makes the whole album cover more urban and moody and a bit more mysterious. The band logo is in the top left corner and is bold to draw attention, it is the logo the band often uses which makes it recognisable. We wont be able to do that although we can look at some of the logo's the band Geometics uses.

posted by Rosey

Posted By Dara

Filming in Brighton Video Update

Posted By Dara

Editing Schedule

Editing  for the Brighton footage will start on Monday, now that we have more than enough amount of footage, we can edit it all and create the music video which are hoping for. As we have not yet filmed the performance  shots due to problems in the weeks before, we will have to do them this week. After the performance shots are done we can edit it all together.

Posted by Dara

Lessons to Learn..

We have learnt that writing out a full day schedule and sticking to it is vital. We must make sure that for example 'lunch breaks' do not go over time as lighting in our video is significant to set the perfect mood, and by taking too long on one shot without spending enough time on another is easy to do.  Time management was our main problem for the day, we hope to manage our time better in the future.

Posted By Dara

Filming in Brighton...

So we have now finished all the filming which took place in Brighton, after a long day of hard work. The first shots we filmed were in the lanes, showing the band walking and joking around, incorporating the close ups of Vita and Stephan etc..

After following Jim Cole's advice, we intended to do all the busking shots at nighttime to give a warmer atmosphere, and we filmed the Stephan and Vita walking along to the beach shots during 'happy hour' at sunset. In order to do these we obviously had to wait. 

During the day we focused our time and energy on all the beach/brighton pier shots, as this is  one of the big settings in the film which we are using. Focusing on cutaways such as the rides, the views of brighton, this turned out well.

The main problem of the day was timing when we started the busking shots, our return train tickets were for 8:30, and the perfect lighting didnt come till about 6, we were pressured for time to film all the shots. Luckily, it turned out well.

Posted By Dara