Websites Inspiration

We visited a number of websites, searching for aspects of other existing websites that we would like to transfer into our own website. Below are some of our findings.


David Bowie

We liked the extensive use of pictures on this website. Due to the diverse range of styles and alter-egos Bowie has embodied, the wide range of colours used is perhaps deliberate, as to not 'tie him down' as one brand. For our own website, a clear colour scheme would be used to create a clear, structured branding.

Dan Croll

This website is completely characteristic of an artist that is all about the music - something we also want to get across on our website. We like the very simple menu and clear branding, especially of his new album.

Daughter

I like the simple but effective layout on this website. The large focal image immediately sets the band as one not too much about image but one about the music.

The 1975

I love the really strong branding on this website as it ties in synergistically with the band's black & white colour scheme which features across many aspects of their work. The use of images is also something we may like to emulate in our own website.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

The focal image on the home page of this website is very striking and promotes their new album. We also like the way the background changes as you hover over different titles in the menu bar. The use of space is very interesting on this website, as they do not attempt to use it all, and leave many parts of pages blank.

Album Covers Inspiration

Below are our final album inspirations for our album front and back covers.

Front Covers

Simple white text

Simple white text

Simple white text

Simple white frame, clear typography, band image, clear branding

Simple white text, nice focal image

Frame within a frame, very clear indie genre signifier - polaroid picture

Frame within a frame, simple white text

Aesthetically-pleasing image, simple, large text

BACK COVERS

Interesting layout of track listing

Highly stylised, simple white text on black background

Quirky, original image

Meetings (week beginning 6th Oct)

This week our meetings were Tuesday lunch and Wednesday during a media lesson. We made an agenda on the Tuesday to agree on what needed to be done that week.

We began writing a list of all the shots we wanted to have in the video, and then began drawing them out using colour-coding to identify different framing for different shots.

We also spent quite a big part of the meetings this week deciding on what props we wanted to use, considering which props may be difficult to source or be logistically impossible to incorporate into our video. Once we had agreed on a list, we searched for prices of these props so that we could order them, mostly on Amazon.co.uk (see props post). By ordering the props into different types based on size and scale, we managed to strengthen our idea of having a visual progression through our video.

As we were going to start thinking about our own website design soon, we began to look for inspiration for existing websites, shown below.

I felt like this was the first week that our project really started coming together from ideas to real original visual aids such as our shot list. The website research also really helped us consider the image and branding that we wanted to get across through our styling of the band, website, album cover and, of course, the music video.

Track Copyright

The band who wrote the song we are using are 'Dog is Dead'; when on their SoundCloud page, we found that the song we want to use (Talk Through the Night) is licensed under a creative commons license, meaning we can use the track without asking for permission from Atlantic Records as long as we follow the license terms.

3-piece bands

When discussing what our master shot set-up would look like, we were thinking about how to position the 3 members of our band - whether we should conform to stereotypes, or break the conventions. To establish the stereotypes, we watched videos of 3-piece bands that we knew and tried to figure out what the standard band positioning is.

Green Day

Biffy Clyro

Band of Skulls

We found that all the bands we looked at had the drummer at the back of the band and pretty much in the middle of the frame. The lead singer would often be a bit further forward than the 3rd member of the band. One idea we had would be to cut between different band set ups, such as bringing the drum kit to the front of the band.

Meetings (week beginning 29th Sept)

Our meetings this week took place at Tuesday lunch and Thursday lunch + period 6. We created an agenda to make sure we set out our targets for the week and stick to them. 

Of the four of band, label, track and audience, band was the only aspect we hadn't properly addressed in the previous week, so we decided to created the personalities of each band member that we would want to represent. I think this was quite effective in establishing other creative decisions for our actual video as well as styling our band properly, especially in reference to costume.

As mentioned above, after creating the personalities of our band members, we were able to make decisions on costumes. We already had quite a clear idea of what costumes we wanted, and these were stereotypical indie-rock/alternative band costumes, such as buttoned-up shirts, skinny jeans, perhaps loose-fitting jumpers.

We started to think more specifically about the different set-ups we would use in relation to how the set would look. This gave us more structure when talking about specific shots as we could section them into the above 3 main areas.

At the end of the day on Wednesday, we realised that we needed some sort of progression through our music video, otherwise it would appear boring and 'samey', meaning the audience would lose interest. We created a list of ways we could progress our video - as we have chosen to not have a narrative, this progression is going to be purely visual.

We decided we would go through the song's lyrics and analyse them, drawing themes from the song which we wrote down. We would then use these themes to aid us when making creative decisions on specifics as well as wider decisions such as the overall style of the video.

Whilst I think we got a lot done this week, I feel we could have been more productive in delegating tasks and approaching different tasks in a more structured way, despite having an agenda.

Steal-o-Matic

This is the steal-o-matic we created, resembling the mood and style we would like to emulate in our video, as well as other creative aspects such as props and shot types we would like to include in our own video. We made this partly as a way of assuring that all members of our group were looking at a similar final idea. The text that accompanies some shots makes it clear what aspect of the clip we wanted to 'steal' for our own video.

Below is the playlist we initially created full of our influences and inspirations, which we then cut into the steal-o-matic.