Diary Entry Week 10

This has been a busy week for our group as we have began working on the initial storyboard for our music video. Thursday was the first time we had sat down and actually discussed what our ideas actually was and between the 3 of us we had a lot and a lot we actually easily agreed on. We decided that we wanted both the performance and narrative aspect, using black and white in the narrative and colour in the performance. We also decided what locations we are going to be using and who is going to be playing in our 'band'. So during our lessons we have just been organising our ideas using post it notes.  

I also created more merchandise for our band today, this time I created phone cases. I used the same graphic on them as I did on the T Shirt, making sure that everything is consistent and professional throughout. I just need to create a merchandise tab on our website now to be able to sell it.

New Merchandise - iPhone Cases

As I have discussed before Merchandise is vital in a band's popularity and fame, but also it is a free way of promotion. That is why I have been spending more time on photoshop creating more, I have created 3 iPhone cases, all with the band's Shh Logo on. My research shows that indie band fans demand black and white phone cases, and no other colours. I have concluded this after searching numerous indie band merchandise stores and even fan blogs.

What is a Digi Pack?

As well as curating the music video half of our coursework task is to produce a digipack, by definition "this is a type of packaging for CDs or DVDs, typically made from cardboard with an internal plastic holder for one or more discs."

A digi pack is made up of several components.

1.  Front Cover
2. Lyric Pages
3. Pictures 
4. Thank You Page
5. Back Page 

And I will be creating all of these as part of my task. 

Starting The Storyboard

During today's lesson we sat down as a group and began to start putting our ideas together in an organised form - a storyboard.

Although we only focused on the first 26 seconds of the song today, we got many ideas wrote down and it really got us thinking about the rest of the video. Something which we all agreed on was the importance of both performance and narrative throughout, with the performance in colour but the narrative in black and white. Now with our performance location confirmed as Heebie Jeebies, we can picture exactly what we want our final product to be looking like, with close ups of the band members faces and long shots of them setting out featuring throughout the first 26 seconds.

We have also nailed the narrative for the first 26 seconds, showing onscreen what the lyrics are saying on paper - rushing in a small town. We have also decided on our location for these shots, as we want it on appear like the male actor is pushing past people we believe Bold Street would be able to give us that. Bold Street also gives us the vintage, indie look we want to be identifiable from the Music Video.

For the rest of the week we are going to continue to build on the storyboard and get more of our many idea's onto it.

Diary Entry Week 9

So this entire week has been taken up by the creation of the Secret Nothing's website - which is finally live.

I wanted to take a lot of time on it because I wanted to include all the themes which every indie band uses on their websites and although this is my first draft of it, I am happy for my reasonings behind why I put things in and designed it the way I did. I put the fans comment section in, which is something which I took note of when analysing other bands website, that the fans should be entitled to there own opinion. Also by having a fan comment section it makes the band appear popular, which is something we want to portray. I also offered a free sneak preview of our new single, which is another way to interact with the fans and get them talking. I documented my analysis of my own website by using powerpoint.

First Draft of Website

A Website is an important part of the band and it's image, after researching several indie bands I know the look I want to be going for. Although this is only my first draft at the website and there is plenty of room for improvement, I am happy with how well I have managed to get the indie genre across.

Check the Website out for yourself -

http://thesecretnothings.wix.com/thesecretnothings

Website Plan

I decided to make a powerpoint of what features I want my website to include and the reasoning behind my choices.