RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT - Developing skills in Adobe Flash

Today I developed my software skills by viewing tutorials on how to create a simple text animation in Adobe Flash. I learnt this skill in order to create a small movie containing of animated text which I then added to Adobe Dreamweaver for my website.
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/ross_tony/Animating_Text_01.php

To create the text animation I had to duplicate frames in Adobe Flash and convert them into a flash movie to create the animation. After using the tutorial I found this fairly simple to create and therefore will continue to use tutorials for any future help.

From the tutorial I also learnt how to export Flash documents to enable them to be inserted into Adobe Dreamweaver and work accordingly.

Here is the text animation on my website, each screenshot shows the before and after of the animation which shows it works in Adobe Dreamweaver.

DEVELOPMENT - London time

Today me and the rest of my group travelled to London to complete our principle photography. We undertook filming at the following locations:

• Bexleyheath Train Station
• Borough Market
• Embankment
• Millennium Bridge
• London Eye
• Trafalgar Square
• Charing Cross Bus Stop

Throughout the day I was responsible for setting up the camera when we was filming and ensured that each of our models were starting in the right position and directed them. This ensured that the timing was correct and that we filmed the shots that we planned to do on our storyboard.

I used the list that I have previously shown which Kate and I created which set out the locations, shots and the mise-en-scene. I took a copy of this plan with me to London to ensure that we filmed all of the shots and everything was done as we planned.

I was also responsible for the casting for our filming. I found a boy model we could use for our video and arranged the time and place for them to meet to ensure they were available and turned up at the set time. This ensured that our filming could be done because without our boy model the filming could not happen.

DEVELOPMENT - Group Meeting

Today Kate and I had a group meeting to discuss our ancillary tasks. We both showed each other the progress of our tasks to ensure that the style has been kept consistent. The style we identified at the beginning of this project was a colour scheme of black, white and #75858F. We compared our print work we have undertaken so far and gave eachother feedback for improvements.

This is a page of my website

This is a page of Kate's album Digipak

The styles of the work we have already undertaken for our ancillary tasks link together as the house style has been kept the same. The next step for our group is to establish a main font style that will be used to display the name of the band. Once we have, we can use this font in our work and compare our products to ensure they link together appropriately.

DEVELOPMENT - Final design

After sketching two different designs for my website, I analysed them in order to choose which one I would use when I began to create my website. However I realised that neither of them consisted of all of the typical conventions of a band website and so I felt they were not suitable for my ancillary task. For example on the band page I designed I included tilted images of the band down the right hand side, however after undertaking more research into existing band websites and looking at my previous findings I identified that this was not a typical convention and neither were some of the other features I had planned to include.

Therefore I went back to the findings from my research and I have created a new plan which I am going to use as the final plan for my website.

Here are my previous findings from my research:

The most common pages on a band website are:

• Biography/History of Band
• Gallery/Images
• Music/Video
• Tour/Gig Dates
• Recent News
• Blogs/Forum

Font style/size/colour:

• Different font sizes are used to distinguish headings, sub-headings and the main text.
• Most common font colour is white because most band websites of this genre have dark backgrounds
• Iconic fonts are used for the band name

Examples of multimedia features that i discovered on band websites are:

• Videos
• Flash Slideshows
• Music Players
• Interactive Menus

I have created four pages for my website which are home, biography of the band, gallery and latest news. Each of these pages come under the list of common pages found in a typical alternative rock band website. Another common page for a website is tour/gig dates, however instead of creating a page for this I have included a feature of dates on the home page which states the date, location and the ticket availability.

Home page plan:

'The Band' plan - Biography of band

Gallery Plan:

Page showing larger view of image:

These are my final designs for my website. For each of the pages I have considered the elements that I discovered are conventional in existing websites and have implemented these into my own work.

There is an interactive menu on every page of the website because this is a consistent feature on each of the web pages in order to create a mesh structure. The menu is interactive because it consists of rollover buttons which allows the user to interact with them by hovering over and clicking on them.

I have included a flash animation on the header of the web pages, in addition I have included flash slideshows on the home page and the gallery page. This provides a wider range of methods of displaying information and images which makes it more appealing to the audience.

I have also included two videos on the home page and band page which shows behind the scenes footage of the new music video that will be released soon.

I have used an iconic font for the name of the band to differentiate it from the rest of the text and to follow the conventions of a typical band website. I have also used larger fonts to distinguish between the headings, sub-headings and the main text.

 This is an improvement from my previous plans and so I will use these as a guideline for when I start creating my website using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3.

'News' plan:

DEVELOPMENT - Website Plans

Here are the plans for each of the web pages within my website. Whilst planning and designing each page I had a list of the conventions I discovered from my previous research on existing websites and implemented these into my plans.

I also needed to ensure I considered the style that me and the rest of my group have identified for each of our ancillary tasks and therefore made sure the colour scheme and font styles are within this style. Therefore each of the web pages will have a border with the colour we identified in our style which is a grey/blue – code for this colour is (find code)

Home Page:

Here is the plan for my home page. I have included a header which will consist of a header, image and beneath it there will be a navigation menu consisting of rollover buttons.  The header will have a black background and white font which considers the common style of existing alternative rock websites and colour scheme identified in our style. The navigation bar will consist of rollover buttons to ensure it is interactive. The rollover buttons will have a black background and white text and on rollover will change to a white background and the blue/grey text.
Using my results from my research I identified the common pages on this type of website and therefore chose to create the following pages:

• Home
• Tour Dates
• Band Biography
• Blog Posts
• Gallery

Therefore on the home page I have included features for these pages, for example my home page will consist of a list of tour dates but the page will consist of all of them in more detail. I will also include a feature on recent news and the user has the opportunity to read more and link to the article of the stories featured.

I will use a sans serif font for my sub headings and main text which will ensure it’s clear and the user can read it easily. My colour scheme is black, white, blue/grey, however I have included red to ensure there is a colour which stands out because if I kept my web pages this colour throughout this may come across slightly dull and boring. I have used white for my font colour because this stands out the best on a black background and this was the most commonly used colour for text in existing websites.

In addition to the rollover buttons in my navigation menu at the top, I have planned to use text hyperlinks which ensure that the user can use a range of navigation methods making it more suitable and easier to use.
I have ensured I have included a range of multimedia features in my website to ensure it appeals to my audience and this will keep them interested throughout it. My home page consists of a flash slideshow and video. These are some of the features I discovered that were used in existing websites so I have implemented these ideas into my own work.

GALLERY PAGE:

This is the plan for my gallery page. The header from my home page is the same on this page because this is a constant feature throughout my web pages. This means my navigation menu is on every page in the same position which achieves a mesh structure because the user is able to navigate to any page in the website from anywhere on the website.

I have included an image slide show and hot spot images which when they are clicked on it links to a larger view of the image.

This web page uses the same border, header and background colour to ensure the layout is consistent throughout to follow the conventions of a professional website.

BIOGRAPHY PAGE:

 

This page also has the same header, navigation bar and border as the previous two plans. On this page I will include a biography/history of the band and will therefore consist of text about their history and facts about them. I will also include images of portraits of each band member and an image of the band together to enable the user to learn about each member.

The text section on the left hand side will have white Arial text which is the same as the previous font style I have used for the main text. I have also included a red stroke around each of the images to make them stand out more and reinforce the house style of my website. I have also tilted these to create a different way of viewing the images which makes the page more appealing to look at.

RESEARCH - Researching Kings of Leon's history

I undertook research on the history of Kings of Leon and looked up their biographies to obtain information about the band. This is for the page I am including on my website which is specifically about our band. I found out information on the band members and their history from where they have got to now including their past success from their hits in the chart and their recent albums.

I looked on several websites to obtain this information which I can then use to create my own biography for the band we have created as the new Kings of Leon.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_Leon

RESEARCH - Existing band websites

I have previously looked at the typical conventions of band websites, however I decided to look at websites again in more detail to ensure that the website I am designing and creating considers these elements.

For example, I looked at the different navigational tools that are used which I identified to be rollover buttons and text hyperlinks. In addition, a typical convention of this type of website is the navigation bar is located at the top of the page and is kept consistent throughout the different web pages.

Text hyperlinks are also a common type of hyperlink that is used, for example Kasabian's website uses text hyperlinks for their navigation at the bottom of their web pages. Using a variety of hyperlinks improves the navigation of the website and creates easy accessibility for the user when moving around the website.

CONTENT:

I also looked at what information is usually included on a band website. I therefore looked at what pages they usually consist of and looked at their content. By accessing a variety of band websites I found a variety of common pages:

I have identified the most common pages on a band website are:

• Biography/History of Band
• Gallery/Images
• Music/Video
• Tour/Gig Dates
• Recent News
• Blogs/Forum

Undertaking this research into web pages has improved my knowledge of what information a band website should consist of. I looked at several website and these were the pages that were commonly used. Therefore I will consider my findings when designing and creating my own band website.

FONT STYLES, SIZES AND COLOURS:

I also looked in to the fonts that are used for alternative rock and Indie/rock websites as this is the genre of the website I am creating for my ancillary task.

For font styles I looked at the following features:

-Sans or sans serif fonts

-Iconic fonts used for band names

-Different styles for headings and main text

In both of these examples the most common font colour is white and this is the case for the majority of the websites I have looked at. The reason for this is because the majority of them use dark coloured backgrounds to reinforce the genre of music, therefore a white or light coloured font colour is used to stand out on the background.

This is shown in these examples:

http://www.biffyclyro.com/

http://www.franzferdinand.co.uk/shows/

http://www.thelibertines.co.uk/

Font Sizes:

I also looked at the use of different font sizes and why they are used. I established that that on most of the band websites I have looked at, they are used to differentiate the headings, sub-headings and main text. This makes it easier for the user to understand what the headings are and creates a more effective layout. Overall this technique improves the users understanding of the information which I think is an important aspect to have for this type of multimedia product.

I also looked at the different multimedia features that are used to present information about the band. Using multimedia features improves the interaction that the user has with the website, in addition it grabs the user's attention and keeps them interested throughout all of the web pages.

Examples of multimedia features that i discovered on band websites are:

• Videos
• Flash Slide shows
• Music Players
• Interactive Menus

DEVELOPMENT - Bus Stop Advert Template

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT - Bus Advert Plans

RESEARCH - Existing bus adverts

 I researched existing bus adverts to identify their key conventions in order to design my own bus advert for our band. It is not common for alternative rock bands to be advertised on a bus or at a bustop, however I can analyse their typical style, colours and format.

Here is some of the existing bus adverts I have looked at for my research:

After looking at different bus adverts these are the conventions I recognised:

-Fairly plain with a small amount of information, they state the main details

-Large text to stand out

-Either contain just text, or an image/logo as well

-Not a particular colour, several of the existing bus adverts used different colours e.g.blue and white backgrounds and orange, pinks and reds for the text colour

Any images that are used are completely related to the topic of the advert. In addition, the colours used are based on the topic of the advert or if its a business its the colours that they associated with themselves. For example the EasyJet advert uses orange and white because this is the colour of their logo.

.

I am also creating a bus top advert as part as my ancillary task and therefore I also researched existing bus top adverts to identify their key conventions.

Bus stop adverts have similar conventions to a bus advert as they contain little information and achieve advertising by stating the key details.

They also use the colours that are associated with the business or the topic of the advert. They use large text to make the key information to stand out the name of the business or brand is shown smaller. Therefore for my advert I would put the name of the band smaller than the text stating what is being advertised which is going to their new single.

I will use colours associated to the band and the colour scheme that me and the rest of my group has established for our ancillary tasks. These are dark grey/blue, black, white and red.

Each bus stop advert always consists of a logo and a few tag lines. Backgrounds are usually fairly plain, even if the background is an image.

PLANNING: Creating a schedule for principle photography in London

Before our group undertakes our principle photography in London, Kate and I used our storyboard to create a schedule for our filming. I created a list of all the shots that we need to undertake in this location and together we created a table which stated the location, the type of camera shot and what is happening in the shot. This enables us to know what we will be shooting when we go to our different locations which will save sufficient time and make sure that nothing is forgotten.

This also enabled me to plan our routes to get to each of the different locations which will make sure we know exactly when and where we are going, therefore no time will be wasted from a lack of understanding during filming.

Here is part of the schedule that Kate and I created for when we go filming up London next week.

DEVLOPMENT- Website

Today I fully completed two of my web pages within my website. These pages are my home page and the band's biography.

I created a slideshow using Adobe Flash which consists of three images for a new album box set, new merchandise and a quote from Kerrang Radio magazine. In addition, I completed the featured articles on this page which consist of text hyperlinks to the 'News' page.

Additionally by obtaining my results from researching into Kings of Leon's history I could rewrite the biography and create a fact file about them. Plus, I imported a video which shows the behind the scenes of their most recent music video (my main text).

DEVELOPMENT - Editing of our principle photography begun!

Today Vanessa, Kate and I started editing our footage from principle photography. We grouped our footage together into folders so that it was all organised accordingly. We had specific folders for the different scenes throughout our music video, and within these we created additional folders to group together the good and bad footage so that we knew which clips should be imported into Adobe Premiere Pro when we began editing.

Today we completed the editing of one scene of our music video, this included cutting and cropping the footage, however we have not added any transitions yet. We have not completed our principle photography yet, we still have filming to undertake in London, however as the editing can be done non-linearly we could begin editing one of the middle scenes in our video.