Website!

The Website is not completely finished yet but here is the Link :)
Further blogging to come on the process of creating the website.

www.wix.com/danniixx/thesummerset

Inside booklet for DigiPack

After looking at different CD digi packs we notices that most of them have a small booklet inside that contains information about the band members, pictures and lyrics to the song. We have decided to add this to create the feeling that the DigiPack is more realistic. Working through Photoshop myself and Sarah worked out our measurements from a template we found on the internet. We worked with many different background which would reflect on the song and the band members. We chose red and white because the band name is 'The Summer Set' and we believe these are summer colours. The red colour also reflects on the song title which is called 'Punch-Drunk Love'. We have used red continuously as a motif throughout most of our designs and within out music video.

Here is pictures of our booklet below:

Front Cover
















Page 1
















Page 2
















Page 3 & 4




This would be the same hieght as the other ones, this is because it is two pages put into one.




Page 5
















Page 6
















Page 7
















Page 8
















Page 9
















Page 10
















Back Page


The back page is just a plain white page, we have done this so that on the small booklet we will have the band members signatures here. Just to make it look good.

Our completed digipak!

Today Danni and I were hard at work and completed our digipak. We decided that we wanted to have a 4 panel digipak and then invest more time into a booklet that would then slip in to the inside left of our digipak. This is a bit like what you can see on the Beatles digipak that I analysed. Also, as its effectively a digipak for just a single and a bonus track, having a 6 panel digipak may look a bit excessive. We thought that having a booklet would enable us to really introduce the band and the members (being a new band), as with in it we have not only got the lyrics (as highly requested from our audience feedback) but pictures and bios of each of the 4 members. We too completed this today and you will see this when Danni later posts a blog of the pages of our booklet.

However, for now this is our completed digipak. We especially chose the front cover picture as it was a good photo of all the boys and was nice and bright. We then added there logo (the red 'The' and the white 'Summer Set'). We decided to make this our logo as white represented a nice bright feel (without being cheesy and using yellow for the literal 'Summer' meaning). But we wanted to use red and have it as an on going theme across all of our ancillaries. We therefore decided that red - with the connotations of love and punch- with it fading into a hint of white, would work well being the main backing colour for the digipak and booklet.

You can clearly see that we have shown how the pocket would be created on the inside left. This is where the booklet would be slotted.

The back of the digipak clearly advertises the bands website. We also legally have the 'record label' at the bottom with a bar code.

Website analysis

I chose to analyse this website by "We The Kings" as they too have 4 band members and also have music similar to that of The Summer Set. On iTunes, We The Kings and The Summer Set's music was linked together at the bottom in the section saying "listeners also brought" which suggests their similarity.

On this website we see the same background design as what appears to be in the background of their CD (left). We also see their red logo of their name, which too appears on the CD. There is a large bright picture clearly showing the 4 members at the top. They are wearing sunglasses which reflects the idea of 'brightness' in the website. This too could perhaps reflect their music. Underneath this, keeping with the red colour theme contrasting against the blue, there is a bar that has all the headings of the pages of the website. The home page, as we can see consist's of different elements that we are more likely to put under some other pages rather than the home page. For example the 'fun' video that is showing. We, however, will be putting our behind the scenes fun video under our 'video's' page where our music video will go too.

On the left they show a picture of their CD and then give many links, for different countries, to buy the album. This is widening their market so they've given a lot of people an easy access to buying their music. We too will put a direct link from our website to where our audience can buy their music (E.g- iTunes). This is likely to go under the music page on our website. The photos that we can see to the right of the home page, we too, will be likely to put under our 'gallery' page.

The reasons for us making these differences are because we wanted to have a main big picture on the home page to straight away have our audience linked with the band to create a reorganisation of the members, perhaps at a later date. This is conventional, (Goodwin 6) as us being the record label, want our band to be given as much of a chance as possible in the industry. Another reason will simply be because we wont have enough information or updates to give fans about the band straight on the home page as they are new and obviously don't have as many updates as bigger bands. If we were to put a lot of information on the home page we wouldn't have anything under the other pages!

Pictures for Gallery

Today we had a chance to finally take some pictures of the band and individual shots. We wanted to be able to take many pictures that we can now use for our website and also our Digi-pack.

Margot kindly let us use her house and garden which is were we wanted to shoots some shots and the band inside and outside. We also took some pictures of each of the individuals as we are hoping to put a small biography about each of the band members on the website and also the Digi-pack.

This gave us a chance to experiment with different heights, angles close-ups that we believed work best. We use My camera as it is a very good quality camera which in previous editing experiences I have had an excellent quality with the final edit.

At this moment in time I am unable to upload and of our head shots and pictures we have taken but they will be following this blog shortly.

DigiPak Anaysis

I will analyzes The Beatles digipak, as they too are a band (although very different) and consist of 4 people like our band.

The front cover is quite 'old fashioned' but this is obviously to reflect the era that was 'The Beatles'. They also show this, and their history as a band by having the dates at the top next to their name. The font is also in a 60's retro style. The basic blue background carries on the theme established earlier in their career when they had an album known simply as The White album. Their greatest hits were then realised; The Red album cataloging their earlier hits and this album (The Blue album) covering the later hits. There is just one large picture of the 4 of them, linking to the dates shown at the top. The Red album has the same setting but is of them in their younger days. The left top shows The Beatles logo (the apple) and their signature type face. The apple is significant because it was the logo of the record company established by The Beatles in 1968.

The above shows, the continuing theme of the apple as well as the younger picture taken at the same location used for the front of the red album.

The digipak has 6 panels. The first one is a pocket containing a booklet. This booklet contains various pictures, detailed history of the band and the lyrics for the songs that appear on the CD's. This is something we would like to do with our digipak. However, obviously our band doesn't have a lot of history but from our audience feed back it seems that they would want lyrics, pictures and bios of the band members, all of which is achievable. Panels 2 and 3 contain the CD's. Over the 'slips' that hold the CD's is a black and white picture taken at St. Pancras Old Church in London in 1969. Although it's meant to look like a crowd, perhaps watching The Beatles, all four band members are in the scene.

Finally, the back of the digipak shows a list of the songs that appear on each CD. Again the heading/date is in the 60's style font, whilst the songs list is in a simple font. Their website is advertised at the bottom, which we too will do with our digipaks. There is the obvious bar code, which again we will need to incorporate to make ours look realistic. At the very bottom the legal disclosures about record labels and copyright ect. are shown. We will make up an element of this on ours including 'Unplugged Records'.

Editing/More Filming

We are now extremely close to having a completed music video. We have been working hard on editing our two pieces of footage to complete the video. Firstly we decided to put the clips all into place along the music timeline. This involved picking the clips that looked best from the footage we had (E.g- where George mimes best or where they are putting a lot of energy/emotion into it). We used final cuts 'ins' and 'outs' to create this. It wasn't to hard considering we had the music playing and often George actually singing in the clips.

However, as we watched back what we had, we found that our video became very repetitive. Obviously as we only had two locations of footage. We therefore, the other day, made the decision that we needed some more clips to make our video more interesting. We decided that we could mix a bit more of the 'love story' narrative into our video by making more footage involving George and our lead girl Ellie. Luckily both Ellie and George have free periods when Danni and I have our Media lessons. With exams over, they were both happy to come and help us film during one of these times. Therefore the next opportunity we got we went around the village and filmed a few more shots. We filmed bits with George walking and singing (through trees and at a bridge). We then filmed bits with both him and Ellie meeting, walking and at a park.

We have now uploaded these clips and added them in/replacing some of the other, more repetitive ones. I think it has really added more to the video, especially narrative wise. Whereas before it was more 35% narrative 65% performance, we have now gained more narrative, really making it the kind of 'love story' music video we were trying to achieve.

As said, we are very close to finishing. We have all the clips in place and have added transitions where needed. We also have brightened/sharpened shots that needed it. For example, we had to use a normal camera when doing the third lot of filming instead of the HD. This obviously made a difference in terms of clarity, however sharpening these shots has helped a lot. We asked Miss Hill yesterday to watch to see what she thought and criticise anything she thought looked wrong. She suggested that the performance shots at the party needed to perhaps have some colour changes added to make it look more like a proper audience performance. Today I tried to play about with the editing of that to see what worked. Danni was unfortunately not here, so it was hard to make a final decision. However when she gets back, I know we can find something that works to complete our video!