Diary Entry Week 8

During the week I was able to create the first piece of merchandise for our fictional band - a T Shirt. I decided a T Shirt would be an essential first piece of merchandise because it also a form of advertisement when a fan is walking around wearing it. I could also now begin this process due to the fact we still have our own logo now. I created a white t shirt with the band's name visible across the front and back and also a 'shh' graphic to symbolise 'The Secret' in 'The Secret Nothing's'.

Also this week I analysed another Indie Band's website -  Two Door Cinema Club. Now I have compared two band's websites I can begin to take note of the similarities between the two and begin creating my own. What I have found between the 2 is that the fans defiantly come first and informing them about everything they do is something which they both do alot of.

Two Door Cinema Club (Website Analysis)

Merchandise

During today's lesson we used photoshop to create a piece of merchandise for 'our band', The Secret Nothing's. I wanted to focus on a T Shirt firstly, as they are the most common and popular for our chosen genre. After I finalised the bands logo last week it was easy for me to create a t shirt according to my research. I found that to be able to sell band T Shirt's online you have to be relatively popular, as even some of the biggest and well known bands in the indie genre didn't even offer merchandise online for the fans. This is okay, as I want our band to be quite well known with a relatively large fanbase. All of the T Shirt's was all the same, or similar - featuring the band's name and a logo or piece of artwork.

Here is my first piece of merchandise for my band The Secret Nothing's. As you can see I have the bands name clearly at the top of the front and at the bottom of the back - this is important as it is another form of promotion when one of your fans wears your top in public. The graphic or artwork is of a woman 'shhing', this links with our band name - showing a secret.  

Diary Entry Week 7

An exciting thing happened this week - we finally have designed our band's logo. 

The logo of the band had to be spot on as it more than likely going to stick with the band for the rest of their career and is what fans are going to be wearing on their T- Shirts and other merchandise and therefore it is also the main face of any advertising. I documented the journey of designing the logo in a prezi presentation, where I choose 9 of the most popular indie rock bands and found there logo's. The clear resemblance between them all was the colour - all of them were black. They also featured a bold distinctive font, and the use of capital letters. Which is exactly what I then focused on when making our own.

I also researched the History of the VMA's during this week. I thought this was essential as if our final product was in real life it would be potentially be up for one of these  and is one of the most prestige awards you can win as a music video director. Sadly the awards is more well known for it's controversy, due to the fact it's a live award show - but the award is still regarded highly. 

History of The MTV VMA's

Band Logo

Diary Entry Week 6

Over the past week we have achieved so much in such a small space of time, and we are really beginning to see our band and video come together a lot more.

On Monday we researched the history of music video's starting from back in 1984 when using magic lanterns Edward. B. Marks and Joe Stern created what can only be described as shadows on a wall oppucined by music, ending in 2000 when the controversial Robbie Williams released Rock DJ which was banned in several countries due to it's graphic nature. I created an organised prezi presentation to document this in a timeline.

Another part of our assignment is to create a website, so I began researching Indie Rock band websites. I began with the Arctic Monkey's and documented my findings on a powerpoint - the main thing I found was that the band love to please their fans with countless features which have been tailored to aid fans enjoyment while on the website. I defiantly want to replicate the fans comment section on my own website as it seems like an essential when dealing with a large fanbase.

We have actually finally decided on our band name this week - The Secret Nothing's. It was a tough decision to come to as all 3 of us in the group had different idea's, but in the end The Secret Nothing's seemed like the most appropriate choice. One of the main reasons we thought so was because it had the word 'The' at the front, which seems like almost essential when naming a indie rock band with all the big bands having it in front of there names.