Production Meeting: Website design

WEBSITE

Below is an animoto showing the different website designs that the group came up with. From these, we decided that we wanted to base our website design upon Juliette's 2nd flat plan, as landing pages are quite common for indie-pop bands, and also because the styling is quite minimalist and would be synergistic with our album cover.

We decided to style it similarly to the 1975 website, with a collage-style of several pictures on the page, with a simple navigation bar. However, we want these images to lead onto more content/pages, such as biography and the gallery, but we wanted some content visible on the home page. We don't yet have a defined colour scheme, but it will have to be synergistic with the album cover. 

Also, rather than just having images that lead to other pages, we wanted to have a navigation bar as well, in order to make the website easier for the audience to interact with.

The 1975 landing page. The home page is a collection of images in a newsfeed style.

Ed Sheeran's Landing page

The landing page for 5 Seconds Of Summer.

As well as having biographies and news pages, we also wanted to have a merchandise page. This is because it is conventional for a band website to have a store, where purchasing opportunities are available for the audience, as this provides more income for the record label, and if people buy the merchandise and use/wear it, they would then be promoting our band as well. 

The store page on 5SOS's website

The 1975 store page

Production meeting: Album Design

To this meeting, each member of the group brought ideas for both the album and website design.

Below are some of the ideas from our group:

Audrey's design was to have the band members against a swirling background, with each of them quite vibrantly dressed, connoting the indie-pop genre. The bubble-text font above also looks quite fun and upbeat, so would also further reinforce the genre for the audience.

My designs were to either have the 4 band members on the front, with a block-font of the band name, or having the instruments as the focal image of the cover, with the microphone wire creating the band name.

From these, we chose Juliette's second design (see Ju album 1 (bottom design) or Ju album 3), using just the band logo, with a solid background and no pictures on the outer cover. From our research, we decided that this was the best suited for our genre, as it is typical for indie bands to draw a focus to their music rather than to their image, as well as keeping the band's name in focus on the cover, and therefore more memorable to the audience.

We modelled this off of albums of artists like Daughter 'If You Leave, and The 1975.

For the back cover, we decided that we wanted just the track-list, as is conventional of our genre, drawing on inspirations such as The 1975 (left) and the XX (right), though we hadn't decided if we wanted it in the same font as our front cover, as this could be hard to read for the audience.

FONTS
Juliette also brought font ideas to the session, having tested them out on photoshop before, and from this we decided that we wanted to use the 'Little Sparrow' font (far left) for the band logo

Fonts that we chose from

We chose Little Sparrow because we thought it connoted the indie-pop genre well, as did our target audience.

Steal-O-Matic

In order to create our steal-o-matic, we had to compile the videos from each of our references (which we had discussed in the group meetings previously), as well as videos for each of the different eras we had decided on at this point (Ancient Greek, Viking, Victorian, 50s, 80s and present day). While not completely how we would edit our actual video, this allowed us to demonstrate our general idea of a studio-based production with a performance bed, a dance sequence (shown by dancing through the ages at the end) and different costumes, all similar to what we wanted to do with our own video.



After completing our steal-o-matic, we asked for feedback on it, which we received:

In her feedback Miss B stated that:

- There was a microphone in media that is similar to the one used in 'Fred Astaire', so we could use that to connote the indie genre of our band, as it is unusual, and has a slightly vintage look.

- The jump from pop culture references to historical eras was too complicated, so we should re-consider our era choices. Miss B suggested 50s, 70s, 80s, 90s and Modern. We decided to follow this advice, as it was not only less complicated in the timeline of the music video, but it is also easier to source props for these eras.

- She also asked whether I would be the main character, which was being debated within the group. We reached a decision that in order to decide, we would audition myself and an external actor (Jacob) to see who was more suited to the role. 

I personally would prefer not to act as the lead character unless it is necessary, as it would give me less of a chance to take the role of director or camera-operator. Also, I did not feel that I fit the image of an indie band's front-man, and would not feel as comfortable performing as the lead. 

4 Key Decisions: Artist

Our band name, Sticky and The Melonheads, was decided after Juliette had suggested it during a group meeting (her father having made a joke about naming the band). We thought that the name was a perfect fit for our band, as it is quirky and has a very indie feel to it, similar to that of Smashing Pumpkins (rock) and Catfish and The Bottlemen (indie rock). We came to the decision that our band was going to be an indie band because our core target audience are indie fans, with our record label being an indie label, and the track being of the indie-pop genre, so it made sense for us to construct an indie band.

We decided that our band would have two men and two women based on the fact that our group has three girls and one boy, so while three of us were playing the band, at least one of us would be behind the camera. The lead boy would also play the character in the couple through the ages, as it made sense with the lyrics because he is talking about the woman, and also because it reduces the number of external actors needed. Also, we decided a mixed gender band would be good as there are fewer of those than all-male bands, but mixed gender bands are still quite popular, so while we meet a gap in the market, there is a shown demand for it.

Band line-up:
Audrey - Guitar
Chrystal - Bass
Brandon - Drummer
External actor - Lead singer

The band members were decided based upon a group discussion of who wanted to play each roles. Audrey and Chrystal said they would feel most comfortable playing guitar and bass in the band, and I'd prefer to be the drummer rather than the lead singer for various reasons, i.e. for comfortability and brand image, so we agreed on getting an external actor to play the lead singer, and Juliette would play the lead girl.

Band Inspiration

In order to get an idea of what image we wanted to construct for the band, we researched bands of a similar genre, such as Everything Everything, San Cisco and Daughter. We found that most of the bands have quite a casual look, with skinny jeans and often bright t-shirts/dresses. Figure 1 shows this, with the entire band wearing t-shirts/shirts, looking very casual.

4 Key Decisions: Track

Track: Shut Up and Dance
Original Artist: Walk The Moon
Track owner: RCA Records (SME subsidiary)

We chose this track, one of Juliette's original choices, because of the upbeat, unique sound, which connoted the indie-pop genre, also helping it stand out in the indie music scene.

We chose this rather than the conventional indie-rock genre because indie-rock saturates the indie music genre, so this track would be more likely to stand out. The upbeat nature of the track would also help to ensure that during filming we don't get overly sick of the song, as it is quite a feel-good track, whereas (as discussed) we thought that we would have gotten tired of an indie-rock track far quicker, which would have made us less productive during production.

The song has multiple elements to it that would allow us to make an interesting music video. For example, from about 1:48 to 2:04, we thought that we could have a possible dance sequence of the couple through the different eras, having introduced the characters and had them get together/shown they were together previously in the video. We also decided that we could have the female lead lip-syncing lines that are meant to be said by her, such as 'Don't you dare look back'.

The different instruments in the song also provide us with the ability to create a performance bed of our band, with bass, drums, guitar, and the lead singer, all of which we can access. We left the synth out as it would have created too many members, and would have been more difficult to 'play' convincingly.

This track would appeal to the target audience as it is part of the indie genre, so this track was found to be suitable. As well as that, all four of our group are part of our core and secondary audience, and though our music tastes vary, we all liked the song. This makes it easier to figure out how to market the band and song to the audience, as we are part of it and can figure out what would appeal to them/us.

The track is owned by RCA records, and we'd therefore need permission to use it. In order to ask permission, we sent them an e-mail, shown below.

Although the e-mail was sent, there was no reply from RCA records stating their acceptance or rejection of our request. We therefore have to continue with our project knowing that this may affect our project when uploading it to YouTube.

4 Key Decisions: Record Label

We decided that a UK indie label that is a branch of Sony Music Entertainment would be best to choose, as it is similar to most of the other indie-genre artists we researched, like Walk The Moon, Everything Everything, Pegasus Bridge.

Notes from one of our group meetings

We thought that, in a hypothetical situation, our label would sign artists similar to those that are listed above, as well as other up and coming UK indie artists.

Due to our band being of the indie genre, they would not sign directly to Sony Music Entertainment, but it is conventional for Sony to sign artists to their subsidiary, niche labels, and then move them to the mainstream labels if they are successful. Being a branch of SME would also allow our record company to have a larger potential marketing reach, although still relatively small due to this being the debut album of our indie band.

The name of our record label has been decided as 'Husky Records', as the name seems professional, unique, while also connoting the husky-voice quality that is often utilised in indie songs, therefore connoting the genre.

4 Key Decisions: Audience

Originally we decided that our core audience would be 13 to 25 year old indie fans, but realised that this limited us too much to be our core audience, so we then decided that fans of the indie genre of all ages and genders would be better to use as a core audience, as it is very broad and would target the largest possible number of people who might be interested in our band.

Our secondary audience of 16 to 25 year old indie fans was helped by our original idea of an audience of 13 to 25 year olds, but was also chosen because we are that group and it would therefore be easier to understand the needs and desires of our audience. Again, it's not gender specific, and they are indie fans. Also, because this age group is one of the most prolific music consumer groups, they are among the most likely to listen to our band's new single.

Our tertiary audience is 13 to 16 year old indie fans, as this is the age where a lot of people begin experimenting with their music tastes and discover the indie genre.

Production Meetings

Our group production meetings have been scheduled for every Tuesday and Friday during shared free periods, and we also utilise breaks and lunchtimes when something needs to be sorted before a production meeting.

Our first group meeting was used to decide our audience, track, record label, and artist:

It was easiest to target an audience in which we were included, so we said indie fans would be good to target for our audience. Having decided audience, we went through each of our possible track choices and talked about what music video ideas we had for them, eventually deciding as a group that 'Shut Up and Dance' by Walk The Moon was the one which we agreed best suited the audience and our own ideas. From here we looked up what the record label for Walk The Moon currently is, and then looked up similar artists' and record labels, in order to inspire our own record label idea. We then looked at artists of the indie genre to see how their image is constructed, i.e. for promo shoots, album covers, and started to get an idea of what how we wanted to construct our artist to target a similar audience.

Next meeting

During our next meeting, we came up with further influences for the music video and the band image. We used Juliette's original idea for the music video as a foundation, and then began talking about what more we could do with the track. Eventually we came to the decision that the video should follow a couple through the ages, based on the line 'born/bound to get together' and also the mention of 'discotheque Juliette'.

The sheet of notes from our production meeting

We agreed that shooting in the studio would be the best idea for our music video, as it would allow us to have more control over our shots as composition and lighting wouldn't be affected by the weather or parts of an outside setting we wouldn't be able to change (i.e. brick colour, cars, other people). Having decided this, we thought of different videos which were studio-based, and so wrote down San Cisco's 'Awkward' as an influence, as the video is studio-based and has a very minimalistic set.

 (Above: San Cisco's awkward, one of our influences)

Continuing from the last meeting, we thought of more artists and bands that we would want to style our band similarly to, so bands like 5 Seconds of Summer and Everything Everything were decided as bands that would influence our band's constructed image.

Finally, we started to decide what eras we were going to use as we followed our couple through the ages, choosing 5 as a reasonable and manageable number to shoot.

The meeting after

The eras we finally decided on

In this meeting, we finalised the eras that we would use to portray the couple's 'love through the ages', taking into account Audrey's suggestion that our original era line-up was too focused on the late 19th and 20th century to be said to connote a soul-mate storyline, so a new selection of eras was chosen to try and anchor this concept.