Work on the Website (Ancillary)

The print screen below shows our initial work to the website ancillary task. We have decided to use the website creator http://editor.wix.com as we did last year for our AS thriller coursework.

Although only a 'Home' page is necessary for the Ancillary task, we've decided to develop a 'Photos', 'Videos' and 'News' page additionally, to include more content.

Note: This image was taken a week ago, so drastic developments/ improvements have been made. The point we're at now are that we have almost completed the website and will putting images of the finished product, along with the website link on the blog as soon as it's ready.

Textual Analysis: The Kinks Website Homepage (Ancillary)

This is the official band website for The Kinks (http://www.thekinks.info/) created by 'Copyright © 2011 Universal Music Strategic Marketing. All Rights Reserved.'

In context, at the time The Kinks were producing music websites were not used by bands and artists; as online digital marketing did not yet exist. This is a very up to date, modern style of marketing for The Kinks with a purpose of 'celebrating 32 years of greatness' as stated underneath the band logo. Not with the sole intention of advertising the band for recognition, as the band broke up in 1996 due to commercial failures.

Theory
Aspects of  'Pull' media marketing is demonstrated through links to external social networking sites. Fans have the choice whether to click on these links and personally contribute to the marketing of the band, simply by pulling information towards them. Facebook option to 'like', and 'sign up' for twitter is an example of this demonstrated on the website.

The previous point links to Uses and Gratifications theory (McQuail), as fans will voluntarily enter the website for 'informative' purposes to satisfy their curiosity and general interest. For social reasons they may want to identify with others around them and gain a sense of belonging by visiting the website and joining fan pages and following them on twitter for 'integration and social interaction'. Or it could be purely for 'entertainment' purposes. Incorporating this into our own ancillary website it is important to design it in a way to attract and intrigue audience interest.

Graphology 
The Graphology of this website shows that it is a multi-modal text containing photos/ images and text. It has been designed to be 'user-friendly' whereby everything is done to stand out bold, without containing heaps of information. This has been done to immediately attract viewers.

The images used on the website are all suitable for the genre characteristics of The Kinks, demonstrating a rock band genre. Images such as the band logo's, Gibson guitar, album/ single covers and the use of individual band member photos show direct links between the genre and visuals.

Bold and larger fonts are used for the band name and other text that suggest importance, such as the band member 'Ray Davies' and the song name 'Waterloo Sunset'. A hierarchy of importance is therefore used, which should be considered carefully with the text in our own ancillary website.

Marketing
All the band members are shown together above The Kinks logo. This to create band recognition and identification. Close ups are used of each individual band members face, to reinforce audience awareness. In turn showing direct links between visuals and text. Synergy is created here with the website and various album covers, as the band are mainly shown together on the front covers, accompanied with band logo/ name to provide additional promotion.

Music industry features are shown frequently. Direct links to external social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. As previously stated, this provides fans opportunity to get involved and keep up to date with updates and general information regarding the band. Links to media playing websites such as YouTube to provide visual marketing.

Advertising albums and merchandise to persuade audience to purchase such items. All with a purpose to advertise the band.

Direct links to additional pages on the website to provide a greater depth of information i.e. 'News', 'Photos' & 'About The Kinks' to allow viewers to be more interactive. These all demonstrating aspects of web '2.0 interactivity'. Whereas the home page gives little information, there are other pages that give viewers the option to seek out information further specifically to their liking.

Textual Analysis: The Kinks- 'Lola' Single Cover (Ancillary)

Typography:
The typography of the band and song name are both the same font size and style; however they both contradict each other in colour in order to establish a clear difference between the band name and song title. Comparing this to some other of The Kinks single/ album covers, there are clear alterations made with the font styles in each. This represents their 'indie' band image, within pop culture in the 1960's. No band logo is apparent in this single cover, which is something we would like to incorporate within our own single cover, to create synergy.


Synergy:
Synergy is created to a certain extent in the graphology (Images) of The Kinks single covers as they all consist of all band members featuring as the center of attention within the image. However, as previously stated the font and style of the text in the band name and title changed frequently from CD covers and magazine advertisements etc (Demonstrated within the 'Day's' single cover). The Kinks band logo had also changed throughout their career (although one isn't included here, two additional examples are shown), to be more fitting to the the style of their music/ albums at that time.

Theme:
Image and record label shown in black and white, representing an old fashioned theme, and linking to an alternative/ rock band genre (dark in it's style). The band name and song title are the only things presented in colour, to contradict the black and white background and show links to an additional pop genre.

Design:
All band members are stood in line facing the opposite direction to the camera. Creates an element of mystery as to what they're looking at, contributing to the mise en scene. Additionally to this, they all appear to be wearing suits, suggesting that this was a popular style for men in the 1960's, linking again to the pop genre. We intend to be wearing suits within our media production, to resemble a similar style and genre to The Kinks in the 1960's. The design of the cover itself appears to have a screwed paper texture, again contributing to it's old fashioned style.

Industry features/ logos:
Record label PYE is included. Taking into account that technology was limited within the 1960's and not as developed as present day; therefore online marketing techniques have not been included. This single cover is very basic in terms of industry features compared to artists/ bands in this era, as digital marketing didn't exist. As we intend to incorporate a modern twist into our ancillary products, we intend to include some of the following into our single cover:
-QR code
-Website link
-ITunes logo
-Spotify logo
-Online Review (NME)

Sizing Hierarchy:
The sizing hierarchy defines clear importance within a single cover. In this case the band members are the center of attention, covering majority of the cover to create band recognition. As this is a multi-modal text, the font size is the second largest item to appear on the cover to link the band members to the name of the band. This is in order to create band identification, contributing to it's marketing.

Filming Photos

Shooting Schedules

Risk Assessment

Audience Feedback

In order to gain an insight into our target audiences initial opinions of our music video, we showed them a first draft of our production so far. They then gave us a list of strengths and weaknesses in order to help us improve our production editing:


Areas of Success:

- Good attention to the pace/tempo of the music in the cuts at the very beginning (editing techniques).

- Good choice of location and proxemics due to the idea wanting to represent a 1960's era but with a modern twist, (represented in the mise-en-scene).

- Good range of camera shots/angles.

- Extremely enjoyable so far.


Areas of Improvement:

- Ensure the song is in the highest quality of recording.

- Some footage is slightly over exposed which needs to be edited by adjusting the brightness.

- Continue to build on the narrative which plays to the actors' strengths.


Consideration of Comments:

As a group we will take on all the comments that our target audience have given us. We are aware of the amount of editing that needs to be done, especially adjusting the lighting in a few of the shots. The audience feedback has been extremely beneficial because as a group we now know what we are doing right and what needs improving in order to gain marks for achieving level 4.

Editing Issues & General Information: Updated

As previously mentioned on my previous 'Editing Issues' blog post, I stated that in an attempt to edit our footage using 'Adobe Premier Pro' we were going to transfer the footage from 'Windows Movie Maker' into a full video format and then try uploading that onto Adobe; with the hopes that Windows will have self-corrected our footage from being corrupt. This has proven successful and we are now able to edit using the more advanced Adobe editing software again.

Due to us having no other choice but to upload our entire footage onto 'Adobe Premier Pro', as a whole video format, we then incurred the process of cutting the video down into the individual shots needed to begin editing each shot in sync with the music. Once this was completed, we then had issues trying to shorten our jump cuts down, to be in time with the instrumental guitar beats at the beginning of the song. We eventually overcome this problem by slowing the footage, along with slowing down the song both by 60%, to therefore cut each jump cut precisely in time to the instrumental.

The stage we're currently at, is waiting for the next available day to complete our filming. This is proving difficult as we need to film on a day that everyone is free and the weather needs to be remotely the same as our first successful day filming... The weather hasn't been entirely on our side this last couple of weeks, which of course has put us further behind. We hope to complete our filming over the half term break, when we have more time available.

Callum, Georgia, Oli & Jem.