A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation- Question Two (Part 1/2) - Our Three Texts

To maintain the bands image we have used the visual style that Bloc Party is often recognized for; using conceptual photo art for our album cover; the image of a Peace-lily with a silver glow around it is the kind of conceptual art Bloc Party is known to show on their album covers by fans. Also the minimal features seen on their digipaks is something we maintained to keep up the band's appearance.

The use of dark and light tones in each of the texts is consistent throughout our pieces creating a distinction through appearance, colours and imagery. We used this as a way of making it clear that the texts were representations of the same band and its products.

The Website is set as a base whereby consumers can be kept up to date with Bloc Party's tour dates and new releases. The synergy between the website and the digipak is for promotional reasons, raising awareness of the new release and what its digipak looks like in store. 

 The use of dark tones and light is consistent through each of our texts. These similarities are used to allow for consumers to identify them as texts advertising the same product. All texts are working towards promoting the product, 'Luno'. The Website raises awareness with online images, and an advert located on its hompage and even a sample of the song that can be played on the music-box, on the same page. The Video works on creating a memorable appearance for the product by presenting an innovative narrative alongside fast paced editing and visual special effects. The digipak is designed to be noticable in store through its black background that has a glowing peace-lily placed in the centre of the front cover, intending for it to stand out amongst other CD covers. 

 

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation- Question One- CD Cover

This is our CD cover for the song Luno by Bloc Party. We tried to keep it similar to CD covers that Bloc Party have previously made   

Advanced Portfolio Evaluation | Question One-Website | Will Collier

We are making a music video of the song 'Luno' by Bloc Party. We also have to make a website and CD cover for the band. This is a screen grab of Bloc Party's Website (Left) and the website we made (Right). I think the website both develops and challenges the typical conventions of this genre.

As you can see from the official Bloc Party website, the layout of the website is very simple, with a main banner at the top and a smaller, less obvious banner underneath with sub areas of the website.

 It also has main sections in the middle of the website with a small amounts of text; the sections include news and information about albums and buying their songs. Overall the website is rather minimal, it has the key features expected on a music website but the design is very simple. Because the website was so simple we wanted to add lots of features that wouldn't be found on Bloc Party's official website.

On our website it is more vibrant and there is less 'empty space' in our website. We tried to keep lots of things from the official website in our website. Some of the features that we kept were the banner at the top leading to the different sections of the website, the news feed and the image of the album/song cover.

      







As you can see these are the aspects of both websites that are similar, we didn't want to make a completely different website, we wanted to keep some of the features that are seen as a convention of a music website.

As-well as keeping some features the same, we added and created different things on our website that may challenge the conventions. We added features that made the website more interactive and fun for the   audience. We also added a tour dates section so people can easily see when Bloc Party will next be touring; we decided to place the tour dates in that position because it is directly under the image of the band and after seeing that the eyes are directed in that direction.

Another thing we did was created and added a play box. This would allow the audience to listen to the latest Bloc Party songs. The final small thing that we did was add links to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. This isn't a typical convention that you would from the indie-rock genre because...

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question One (Part 2/3) - Digipack

Our digipack uses a similar layout to one of Bloc party's previous Digipack designs. Screen grabs below:

From looking at previous Bloc Party Digipack designs we noticed that the use of conceptual imagery was a convention commonly found on Bloc Party's album covers, a convention also found in their music videos. So we incorporated this convention into our Digipack. Using a layout similar to one of Bloc Party's previous digipak designs we decided that since the conventions of conceptual imagery and minimalistic design are consistent throughout their products that keeping the digipak layout consistent would be appropriate to maintain a precise image for our band, making it easier for our target consumer to identify our product based on appearance. Screen grab below:

The way in which the text on the back-cover of the digipack is laid out in a way not commonly seen on digipacks but is however seen on previous Bloc Party digipaks. Also, there is no image of the band on the digipak; another aspect of the minimalistic designs of Bloc Party's product packaging, breaking conventions of generic digipak designs which do show the band. 

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question One (Part 1/3) - Webpage

Our webpage for the band "Bloc Party" uses conventions commonly expected from websites. Conventions such as the use of a Banner at the top of the page that displays links making it easy for consumers to navigate through the website. Screen grab of our Banner below:

Bloc Party's official website appears minimalistic, displaying a few links placed to the side of the page or across the centre. Their site also features images from their official musivc videos too, referencing different text forms that their product is presented in. Screen grab below:

We decided that to properly advertise Bloc Party we would need to add extra features to our webpage. Features such as: The playbox where Bloc Party consumers can listen to samples of the band's music, which could be used as a way of advertising new tracks that Bloc Party produce and we also added images of the band; such as a group image showing the band members. This is so the audience can put a face to the artists behind Bloc Party's music. Screen grab below:

We have used these conventions because they are what a consumer expects in a webpage of this genre. Our aim was to make the webpage more appealing to our consumer audience by using conventions expected so that they would feel more comfortable with how to navigate and who they were supporting. We also included Tour Dates so that consumers can see dates and locations for Bloc Party's gigs and concerts around the country.

Final CD Cover

This is the front and back of the CD cover. We made sure we kept our CD in a Bloc Party style.

Final Website Design

This is the final design for the website, we made the main page in photoshop and when finished imported it into iWeb.

Website Update- Shawn And Will

Here we have added in these side banners. We made them in Photoshop and they were designed to fit the techno-trance convention commonly used in Bloc Party's style of music. 

We have also finished the Hyperlinks for the symbols such as Facebook, Twitter and the links on the banner at the top of the web page.

This is the start of the website, most of this website is made on Photoshop and then copied and pasted into iWeb. We tried to base the website on the music video as we didn't have much to go from on the original Bloc Party website; www.blocparty.com as the band have split up.
We designed a Tour Dates bar so you can see when Bloc Party are playing their most recent shows. Then the CD Cover of "Luno" was incorporated .
Underneath the tour dates bar, there will be a play bar so you can play Bloc Party's new songs.
here will also be images on the filming behind the scenes and images of the band members.

Second Shoot

The second music Video shoot will be on Sunday the 11th Of December.
We Will be filming the narrative element of our music video, The narrative for our music video will be about a teenage girl splitting up with her boyfriend and going into different rooms into her own house, whilst changing from room to room a different memory will occur, going from room to room the memories will progressively dawn on the girl, then she realizes what she has done wrong.
We have booked the relevant equipment for filming. 

First Shoot

Our first film shoot which was shedueled on the 26th of  Novemeber on saturday was aborted because of unreliable actors and band members. This also meant that we had to change the setting for the band which was originally the basement of the house. We then asked the permission off the Drama and Theatre Studies teacher, asking whether we could use the thearte for filing instead. We then filmed on Tuesday the 29th of Novemeber, We tried to create a very minimalistic setting because of the original setting, with dark lighting, with the four piece band in the centre of the stage with a spot focused on them:

We thought this was the best way to recreate the ambient setting.
We also had problems with unresponsive actors so Me and Will had to cover in the band.

Editing The CD Cover.

This is the Photo graphic image that we started off with. A plain lilly with lighting behind the camera creating a shadow in the middle part of the flower, this lighting reflects the image of bloc party very well; plain, this the shadow creates a sinister sense and gives the album cover a mysterious feel.

 Then using the Magnetic Lasso Tool i wet round the contours of the lilly making it really neat to place onto our CD Cover.  

 This is the flower after the magnetic tool has been used, we made the stem shorter so it looked neater and more professional.

As the lilly is the main centre peace we added outer glow, we also added inner glow so that it looks more natural and realistic. it makes the feel more mysterious. it also makes it look like the light is reflecting on the lilly and through the leaves. 

This is the final image of the lilly.

This is the final front cover, back and spine:

Shoot Number 1!!!

On Tuesday 29th November we executed the first shoot for our 'Luno' music video. We began the performance part of our music video. We set up in the Gilly Archer Theatre, using the room's built in lighting to set our scene. We placed our band in a spot light in a dark hall; giving an isolated, dark feeling to the mise en scene (a convention commonly used in Bloc Party Music Videos).

Below are some of the shots we captured during our first shoot: