Band Website

As well as creating the "Digipak", music video and creating merchandise for my fictitious band - I have decided to create a website for my band.

The first thing to do is investigate other bands - and the way they are presented on their websites. 

My first example comes from "pop punk" superstars Green Day. This is a band with a huge and dedicated international following. They have had UK number one albums and millions of further worldwide album sales - as such they have their own web team with a large budget to create their website.

As you can see from the screen cap above - Green Day's website not only showcases their social media presence (The Instagram feed in the sidebar), but acts as a fan cub host as well (with membership clearly being offered at the top right of the screen - under "JOIN GREENDAY.COM"). This is a very slickly designed website - evidently made by professionals and not the band themselves. The aesthetics are based around the band's most recent albums ("Uno!", "Dos!" and "Tre!"all sharing similar designs, as can be seen below)

As a comment on the bands intentions - the most prominent feature of the website is the merchandise - the immediate post being an advert for their latest product and highlighting its eligibility as a Christmas present. Note also in the tabs in the website they have options to view 'pics' - an easy way of baiting younger fans of the music who want to concentrate on the band's look.

Obviously for my website I cannot create a website to this quality - and not only that, the website is very appropriately designed to the band's genre, with striking visuals and very loud and typically punky fonts. 

As a second example - something a lot closer to my own tastes and fictitious band's genre - 2 bands, Los Campesinos! and Slow Club.

Los Campesinos! are a band who have accumulated a mid sized following after a reasonable run of success in 2007 with the release of their debut album "Hold on Now Youngster!" Slow Club are a boy girl duo who make sickly sweet acoustic songs, as well as full blown heart wrenching cry along anthems. As you can see below - there is a world of difference between not only the content and aesthetics of the Green Day and the two band's websites - but a difference in overall aim.

Los Campesinos! use the popular microblogging platform Tumblr as their main website - the Tumblr tabs visible at the top right hand side of the screen cap below. 

There are quite a few advantages of using Tumblr as a main website - rather than a standalone website. Firstly, for smaller bands - you do not have to worry about registering a URL - however, you also have the freedom to use a custom made URL via tumblr (the usual format of tumblr URL's are x.tumblr.com - however, as an example - Los Campesinos! have used loscampesinos.com as their URL). Another bonus is the ease of interaction - with an 'ask' feature available at the top of the page - meaning fans can send in questions directly to the band - who operate the website themselves - that in itself being another benefit of using Tumblr, it is incredibly easy to use - even to custom HTML, so bands can use it to get closer to their fans (below is a picture of larger canadian band 'Tokyo Police Club's' website)

(As you can see, it also has the Tumblr buttons at the top right hand side)

Los Campesinos!'s website works as a not only a bulletin board for gigs, releases, and other things that fans might find interesting, but also as a bang blog - where the band can interact with fans at a personal level (for example - just below where the above screen cap cuts off, is a question sent in by a fan about the subject of one of the songs. unfortunately due to the nature of it, I cannot provide evidence for that)

This level of social interaction - which is what popularised twitter, with the ease of access of contacting celebrities, is healthy for a band website - and helps promote the band as it's own culture, rather than ostracising potential fans by bombarding them with cheap merchandise opportunity (not the merchandise being cheap, that's very far from cheap)

Slow Club's Website, although not a Tumblr, works very much in the same way as Los Campesinos!'s - the two bands are close, and used to host their websites from the same place. The way Los Campesinos!'s website worked, was as a main band blog, and a sidebar - linking the user to blogs for every member of the band.

As can be seen above, the Slow Club website has a simple design. It's informative - immediately the first thing the user sees is a list of tour dates, with ticket links accompanying. The band take shape as the header image - recognisably to a fan of the music, but not to say someone who was not familiar with the band's look.
On the left hand sidebar, There are 3 icons - Rebecca, Charles and Slow Club as a band - matching the former Los Campesinos! website.
As a general rule - Slow Club are a quite media savvy band, Rebecca of the band has thousands of followers on twitter and uses her online presence to promote her own band (for example, she tweeted enough about Daniel Radcliffe that he heard about it, and starred in one of their music videos)
I feel however, for my band - the Slow Club website is far too simple, however the Los Camp! website is hugely stylised - and although would be easy to HTML by someone who knew what they were doing - I really don't have a clue what I'm doing.

However - I do have (limited) experience of building interesting layouts on tumblr (usually very unsuccessfully), and I feel this is my best route at creating a website - Not only in ease, but as a real website, it would be very easy to publicise, and I would have complete creative control as an artist - and would be able to have direct contact with fans, or soon to be fans.

Music Video Style FINISHED

When analysing a pop video it is important to consider the technical codes which are used to construct the video itself and the representations inherent within it.

CAMERA WORK - As with any moving image text, how the camera is used and how images are sequenced will have a significant impact on meaning.

CLOSE UPS - because of the size of the screen music videos will be played on, different shots are used - and there is generally an abundant use of close ups. Also, it creates a sense of intimacy between the artist and the viewer. 

A good example of a music video that follows the generic technical codes of a music video is Coldplay's "Violet Hill"

The video is performance based, but via a range of post production effects, framing and pop culture references a memorable video is created. 

Below are a series of screenshots from the video itself. The first shows a close up of a drum, taking up roughly half of the frame in the foreground, but shows Chris Martin lip syncing in the background, but also taking up the other half of the frame. The video constantly cuts in time with the music, and moves the band around - emphasising different members with each shot - in the second screenshot we see the emphasis shifting to the drummer, with Chris Martin and the guitarist of the band in the background and midground of the shot respectively.

The latter two screenshots show the band as silhouettes atop of a mountain, and the band performing the song in the same location, but as a midshot.

These shots and colours are very much a hark back to music videos of the nineties, specifically the stylisation that The Stone Roses used in many of their music videos, for example the video of "I Wanna Be Adored" (1991) contains a shot virtually identical to the third screenshot above.

The Coldplay video also plays with colour and focus a lot, and is consistent with the use of close ups. Although very much a gimmick, the use of a magnifying glass to confuse the shot of lead singer Martin is effective in contrast to the rest of the video (flickering between Black and White, and a warm colour scheme).

This style of shot is not uncommon in this video, with close ups and extreme close ups of the band to build a sense of intimacy with the band - every member is presented in this way at least once.

The use of a dark background and dark filter brings attention to the band members.