What Should be Included on a Website?

Essentially there are a total of 12 different things that are, or at least should be included on a website.

•  A website must include an attractive, intriguing headline that will please the audience the moment they access the homepage.
• A website must also include a sub-headline that supports its headline. It should include a brief description of what is offered on the website.
• Thirdly, a website must include a series of tabs that redirect you to a different part of the website

1. For one, a website must include an attractive, intriguing headline that will please the audience the moment they access the homepage. 
2. Secondly, a sub-headline. What good is an amazing headline and a bad sub-headline. The sub headline should include a brief description of what is offered on the website. 
3. In addition, an adequate website must also include primary calls-to-action. Essentially menaing that the website must have a few (CTA's) in the main page that will direct people to places further down the website page. This is crucial due to the fact that the main purpose of a website is to intrigue people and make them dig further down into it. 
4. A supporting image is also critical in the making of a website. This is because the majority of people accessing it are most likely to be visual people, as most of the population in the world is. Therefore having an image or even a video that intrigues the visitor will likely keep their attention for longer. The use of the image should be quite intelligent, as it needs to capture the emotion and cause a certain feeling to the visitor, and simultaneously provide a visual description of what the website is offering. 
5. It's no good only telling the buyer what the website has to offer, it needs more convincing. Therefore it is also very important to let the buyer know that the content or product is worth their investment. That is the reason why explaining why it all matters is important. This needs to be done in a simple way, so keeping it short and keeping it in the language of the buyer is important.
6. Social proof is a powerful tool that indicates trustworthiness to an audience. Because by having positive comments and feedback to the website will convince the buyer that the content is indeed worth it. 
7. Navigation must be easy and accessible, therefore it is important to keep a clear and visual path in order to redirect the clicker into the website and making it easy for them to find exactly what they are looking for. It is often a good idea to include a search box for those reasons.
8. A good content offer using either a whitepapaer, ebook or guide only benefits the website because it generates more leads from the homepage.
9. In addition to the calls-to-action, the website must also include some good secondary calls-to-action. By having decent secondary CTA's, the website is able to offer additional content is case the visitor isn't interested in the primary ones. It is also important to give the visitors something to click when they scroll down the website. 
10. Give the audience some of the key features, so that they can understand more precisely what the website has to offer, and make them not waste their time on somehwere they wouldn't like to be. Once again, it is important to keep the content easy and simple to read. 
11. In the case that the visitors to the website are not ready ti buy, a website needs to offer a link to a resource center where they can learn more. This makes the website more trutworthy once again, and establishes that the website is for real about their products and also makes them look a bit more professional. 
12. In order to build a better first impression of the website it must also have a success indicator somehwere in it. Either including statistics of visitors or purchases from the website, or including things like awards to prove success.

Feedback from the AS students

We had a class where we joined with the AS students who have media at the same time as us and showed them our rough cut and asked them to provide us with feedback in order for us to improve our edit. I have filmed the feedback that we got from them.

In order to obtain individual answers we distributed sheets to the AS students with the questions in order for us to obtain individual feedback from each one of them afterwards.

Rough Cut of our Music Video

This is the rough cut we made of our music video. This was the one we will be presenting to the AS students in order to obtain their feedback.

Open vs. Closed Questions

 In order to write the questions to ask the AS students we had to first understand the difference between open and losed questions. We decided to write the same number of open and closed questions in order to get a nice balance of straight forward answers and longer opinionated questions.

Closed-Ended Questions

Closed-ended questions are questions that have a simple and quick answer. Essentially they can be answered with a simple yes or no response. 

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions are those that require a little bit more thought process in order to be answered. A simple yes or no would not work. These questions can be furthered answered with the additions of some reflection by the person responding. These questions can also include opinionated answers, in order for us to obtain individual feedback as opposed to overall feedback. They also give the respondent the control of the conversation.

Editing our Music Video

Researching the Conventions of a Different Homepage

My group is currently working on the music video of an alternative R&B artist, Spooky Black. While the rest of my group is researching about conventions of similar artists to spooky black, who are also artists of the same genre, I am researching about a completely different artists from a genre that will completely contrast alternative R&B. Therefore, I decided to research about famous pop/country artist Taylor Swift's website. Given that the two genres already are polar opposites, the conventions of the genres are also going to be completely different.

CONVENTIONS OF ALTERNATIVE R&B

• Regarding gender sterotypes, Usually, the male artists of this genre dress up fairly nicely and smart, wearing suits and other smart clothing set pieces. This can be seen with the famous R&B artists: Usher, Drake, and Chris Brown. However, depending on the lyrical context or sub-genre of the track, the artists may dress up quite differently, wearing baggy and swaggy clothes as it can be seen in many Rap music videos.
• As far as dressing codes for women are concerned, the same thing applied then to men. Women are either dressed up in very little and provocative clothing or in nice, classy clothing. The way that women are portrayed in the music video plays a hige roll on attracting the target audience for the genre which usually consist of men who are into sexy women.
• Now, regarding Website conventions they are usually quite simplistically laid out. Once again, depending on the aritst the website will either be quite classy or quite "swaggy". Two good contrasting examples are Chris Brown's homepage and Drake's homepage. As shown in the pictures below. 
• The conventions of R&B artists' homepages are not tha much different from the conventions of rap artists' homepages, due to the fact that the two genres don't differ too much from each other.

TAYLOR SWIFT'S HOMEPAGE

Taylor Swift's homepage is unarguably a completely contrasting artist to the R&B ones. This is mainly due to the contradistinction of both music genres. As it can be seen below, Taylor Swift's Homepage is quite colourful. It's not abstract and weird, it is exactly what is expected from a classic pop music homepage. It was laid out this way in order to attract the gigantic target audience that pop music consists of. As opposed to the other two R&B examples, Taylor Swift's website completely contrasts it due to the movement seen as soon as the website is opened on the homepage. If you visit the site ( http://taylorswift.com/ ) you can see that the main picture changes every few seconds. 

In addition, if scrolled down a bit further, the individual can see pictures and gallery photos of what seems to be her personal life, giving the large fan base the expectation that they are connecting with her in a way. These pictures include Taylor having fun with some friends, her youth, past shows she performed it, etc. Self centering herself in nearly all the pictures. 

Lastly, as far as dress codes are concerned. Taylor Swift's dress codes have both similarities and differences form the R&B artists'. It can be seen that Taylor is either dressed very classy and sophisticatedly (like some dress codes seen in R&B artists' pictures), or in a slightly more casual, yet fashionable way, which is usually how pop artists are seen. This is because they have a large fan base and they need to be careful with what they wear in order to portray the idea that they don't try too hard to look nice, but still look good in their casual clothes.

Why do Artists/Bands use Websites?

Websites are considerably important for the success of an artist. It not only helps their fanbase connect and be updated with the artist's life, but it also creates a certain professional vibe to the artist's image. Connoting that they are committed and serious about their careers.

Here are a few reasons why artists use websites:

• To promote themselves and their music, as well as selling tickets online for their performances.
• To sell and merchandise their products.
• To reach a wider audience, as in reaching an international audience as opposed to a national one
• It is easily accessible. They are able to utilize the internet in order to spread their image and make it easier for the audience to connect with them. As well as providing the audience with alternative social media networks where the artists can be found (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc..)
• It serves as a tool to research about the artist. Enabling the audience to understand their bio and background information.
• To connect with the fans and target audience, updating them with information, communicating and receiving feedback.
•  To create an image for themselves. Helping them become more official/professional as opposed to amateur. 

A few benefits of having websites for the artists include:

• It is a cheap alternative to put themselves out there and being reachable to an international audience. 
• It is easy and quick to update the entire world with what is going on with their lives, whether it is their personal lives or their professional lives.
• It is an easy way to put their music out there show them to the world 

Evaluation of the Shoot Day

The day before the shoot we thought about all the steps we would need to take when it came to filming. This was important in order to be organized on the shoot day. We decided on a time when we would start to film the studio sequences, and a time to leave the school and go film in the hotel room. We decided to start filming at 9:30 a.m. This was to leave us with enough time for the actors to eat breakfeast, get make-up, get dressed, and get ready for the shoots. However, we started around 30 minutes late, so we had to speed up the filming process in the studio in order to be able to leave for the hotel on time, since we had booked it for around 2:00 p.m.

Album Cover Shoot

We got Joe to come with us to the Odeon cinema at Guildford and took hundreds of pictures of him for our album font/back/inside right/inside left covers. We ended up picking these two pictures and working on them.

Front

After taking the all pictures we gave them to Lucas, a group member, who edited them and produced the album cover.

Back 

For the edit of the pictures we agreed that we wanted the font of the writing to be relatively sloppy, almost as if it were a child who wrote it. We wanted to create the connotation that the artist doesn't care what handrwiting his album cover has, therefore, intensifying the fact that all he cares about is this girl that he loves and whom he can't get, which is part of the lyrical context of the song in our music video. Later, we wanted him to be the main focus of the pictures. In order to achieve this we blurred out the outsides of the picture leaving him on focus and then went on to enhancing the linear and clear qualities of what wans't blurred out already, thus making him look "sharper" in the picures.

Suggestion for a New Element and Group Decision

We were advised by the media staff to add a new element to our music video, just as a plan B. We were told that we were limited with how much much we'll be able to plug in, maybe defeating our main concept of flooding the room with red lights. It's nearly impossible to have extentions for that many plugs.

 The suggested idea was to use various red light sticks that will be placed in a way that will make it look like a jail. And we could use this element to have one actor on one side and one actor on the other side. Furthermore the actors could even move them around as the video progresses.

Our group got together after being fedback and decided we did indeed need to add a new element to our music video just in case if it's too little. We came to a conclusion that we should not use the red light bars and instead add a shot of Joe (our main actor) lip syncing in a simple black background and him red lit. Furthermore, we will add a drawing element to every frame of the shot, adding this style of editing to our music video. In addition this simple computer hand drawing style will tie in with our idea of the font of the album cover. This is the font style we have in mind for our album artwork.

This is the style of editing that was described, except, it would be added on top of the recorded video frames.

Call List

This call list was made in order for our group members, as well as the actors, to contact each other when needed. Just in case that something unpredictable happens and we need to contact a member as soon as possible

Shot List

We made a shot list that would describe every single shot, in detail, we intend to use in our music video.

Group Feedback on all Members' Album Artworks

My group and I got together in order to feedback each others' album artwork and provide feedback on what worked and what didn't work. In addition this also shows our process of coming up to the final conclusion as to which album artworkis best and which one we should use for the artist. However, we are still likely to manipulate our the decided product in this video in order to improve it and better it in terms of the conventions of the Genre, alternative RnB.

 Feedback for my album artwork:

I got some positive feedback as well as some negative feedback on my album artwork idea. However, it still ended up being discarded because it wouldn't work. The reason why it wouldn't work is because of a few reasons, one because it would give too much away about the video. Eventhough it would be possible idea, maybe I would need to be more subliminal and not too obvious about the connections my album artwork had with the music video. A good example of an idea that links in the album artwork with a music video is Green Day's American Idiot song and album, where they show the album artwork in the music videos a couple of times. My group however thought otherwise and decided that we would be very limited to tweaking the idea afterwards because it would still need to be something part of the music video.

My Group Members' Ideas for the Album Artwork

Excluding mine, these are the other ideas that the rest of the group had for the algum covers, with annotations to explain them in further detail...

My Design Idea for the Album

I drew what I imagined would be ideal for the album artwork for our music video. I imagined getting one bit from the actual music video idea and put it on paper. The scene I chose to draw was the part right before the dancer leaves the room leaving the performer behind in the bed. The reason why both characters are shadowed is because the source of light is the rectangular object behind the bed attached to the wall and not from the camera's view, giving them a red outline. The setting of the artwork is located in the hotel room, of a shot centering the bed in the frame.

I wrote down some annotations on the bottom left side of the paper saying:

• It is important to consider the red lights hitting them from the opposite side of the camera, giving the red outlines, and leaving the side facing the camera shadowed. 
• The mood of the design is slightly depressive, which is the reason why the room is going to be generally dark and dim lit from behind. In addition the depressive mood of the artowork also directly relates to the lyrical context of the song which is about love and depression.
• The main colours in the artwork are black (from the shadows), and red (from the only light source).
• The link with the music video idea is the moment where the woman walks out of the room.
• I believe the mood of the track "Without U" is clearly portrayed, therefore going with  the conventions of the genre. Thus attracting our target audience.

Filming Roles

Our teacher handed us a paper with five different filming roles in order to assign each person in the group with. However, dince there are only four people in my group we had to discard one of the roles, which we don't believe will cause any issues. My group was relatively neutral to what they would get, therefore I was able to pick one of my personal interest. I chose to be the music video producer and was then assigned to do some research on the role and what my priorities and assignements are, as you can see in my post " http://gustavomellomediastudiesmrn4.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/research-on-my-roll.html "

The four roles we ended up with were
1. Art Director being Hannah Everitt. 
2. Camera Man being Lucas Smith.
3. Director being Kai Gillespie
4. Music Video Producer being myself

Production Schedule

This is a production schedule for my group and our cast in order to organise them and let them, and myself,  know when and where they should be.

Research On My Roll

Since I have been set to be the producer on the shooting day of my music video I needed to make some research on the role about what producers do. Very generally speaking a producer's role is to "make it happen".

 I will be overseeing all the areas of the shoot, as well as organizing telling people where to be, and when they will be needed in order for the shoot to go well and smooth. In addition I would have to make sure that everything we do is within our budget conditions. However this will not be an issue due to the fact that our school itself is in charge of the budget.

Gabriel Napora, head of a video production company quotes his job as "acquiring work, hiring directors and crew, making sure the creative [aspect] of each job is in line with what I want it to be, and just really taking the company on its course".

A considerably important aspect of this role is to ensure everyone is where they are supposed to be and getting everything organized in order to avoid any sort of complications during the shoot, thus making it all run as planned. I may also be in charge of formulating and handing out schedules for individual actors in order for them to know when and where they should be.

The overall job of a music video producer is to display visually an artist's work and supervise the entire process, including both the production phase and the editing phase.

E-mail to Joe Hellman (Our Main Actor)

So it has been established by the media department that we will be using Joe Hellman, our main actor choice, as the main performer in the music video as well as the date of our shoot, November 10th. Now we still need to confirm with him that he will be available at that date in order to give confirmation for the media department. We need to ensure that he has no coursework or tests or any other commitments to go to on that day. So I sent him an e-mail asking him to make sure that he will be free then. Here's a screenshot of the e-mail:

Meeting With The Lighting and Set Designers

Today we had two professionals join our class and sit with each individual group and listen to what we had in mind props-wise and lighting-wise. We used the same power-point we used for our re-pitch of our idea to Luke in order to portray the exact images we had in mind for our music video lighting-wise. We told him that we want to use a mixture of red and blue lighting when the performer is outside (primarily blue). We told him we wanted to use full on red lighting on the hallway however, not incorporating the actual red light source on the shot, so it would have to be away from the shot frame. We finally told him we wanted the room to have primarily red lighting with a very little bit of blue to create a nice subtle violet sort of mixture. Once both of us were on the same page he wrote down on his notebook every detail we told him in order to create a lighting set exactly the way we want it to be.

 After our lighting designer left our group we were immediately joined with the set designer. We had to tell her everything, and every little detail about the props and everything that will be seen on the set. We showed her our set design drawing of the bedroom which portrayed a fairly detailed explanation of what we wanted the room to look like.

We explained how we want it to be a modern looking bedroom as opposed to the stereotypical classic American motel room with the dirty vibe and peeling walls. We are going for a modern cubic look, so we showed her a few pictures of an ideal prop we want to use such as the chair:

She did say however that the chair would be an issue. It is a question of whether we can find one and bring it to school or not. This is because a modern chair like that one costs quite a bit, and no school would invest on such a prop just for a single group. So unless we are able to find someone who has one and is willing to take it to school, we will need to think about something else to use other than this. Lastly she took some notes on exactly what we intend to use and is going to work hard to try and make it all happen.