Our final website page

Here is our final website for Bela Walter we have created as a team on WIX.

http://aliciahatfield.wix.com/officialbelawalter

I am very happy with our final product; I feel it is clean and sleek and shows Bela's star image in an accurate, intriguing way. Sticking to our colour scheme of black, white and dark red has given the whole website a cohesive look which also fits with the colour scheme of our digipak. We also linked the fonts together using the same titles as her logo for her name which looks effective as it creates a fluid brand for her that her audience can easily recognise.

We focused mainly on images for her website, keeping the text minimal as we discovered by looking at similar artists this was the most effective layout. We also felt her audience would be interested and relate to her website more with an incite to her life style showing many images of her, including behind the scenes photos. This allows the audience to get to know her better and become more connected with her as an artist, increasing the promotion of her music.

I am very happy with the final result and think it goes well with the other products, including her star image and personality as an artist.

THE DIGIPAK

Here is our final digipak for Bela Walter, I am very happy with how it has turned out after many adjustments and concentration on detail. Im very happy I managed to get the 'Bela Walter' title I used on the website with no black background, I did this by googling how to get rid of a background and used the magic pen tool to highlight just the font, which I then transferred and scaled onto the front cover. I also created a black spine for the digipak which I copied the fonts onto and scaled them down. I also changed the lay out of the back cover, scaling Bela more into the front, cutting out the other two boys as they were detracting away attention from her. I think the images go very nicely together and it looks like a cohesive, final professional digipak which goes very nicely with our other products!

Our music video

Here is our final music video that we have uploaded to YouTube. It is so nice to see our final product complete and up for our audience to see after all this hard work!
I also linked this video onto her official website so her audience can watch it from there as well, which gives us more opportunity to promote her video and expand our audience.
I am very happy with the way we edited the video, first working as a team making decisions together on each clip and then having Jane take charge of the editing while Simon and I worked on the other products. All having an input into how the video was edited allowed us to all get our ideas and visions across which Jane then took into account when editing by herself. We paid great detail into making sure the video developed as the song went on, not giving away everything at the beginning, but instead developing our shots and the complexity of scenes further into the video. We focused on the bath scene as our main scene as we had a wide variety of shots to choose from, allowing us to start with this scene, having her around the bath and showing close ups at first, concealing the whole scene, which then developed into wide shots relieving the bath, which then developed to shots of her in the bath. We then chose to introduce the mirror scene as this broke the bath scene up nicely, adding a different red colour scheme to the video and making it look more diverse, this was then developed by adding the same scene but with our organza material blowing around her, adding a much more dramatic style to the scene. It was only at 1:35 that we introduced our third scene with a wide shot of her dancing against the black dark lit backdrop. And then to step up the pace of the video we started scattering close up shots of the chaise lounge scene which was a lot more diverse as we had our two boy extras in the scene as well. I feel this scene really broke up the video nicely as it gave a different more mature vibe to her but still fits in well with the same colour schemes. Our final scene we introduced at 1:52 was the balloon scene, we saved this one till last as it looked dynamic and visually aesthetic, this was very effective and tied all the other scenes nicely together. I think the way we have staggered our scenes shows a good understanding for how music videos should grow and progress to keep the audience interested and entice them into watching it again and sharing it.
I have loved working on this music video and am very pleased with our final product!

Working more on the website

We are constantly working on our products, improving little bits we feel should be changed in order to create the best appropriate products that we can. 

I looked back at our photos and decided to play around with them on Photoshop to make them look more edgy and exciting for our website backgrounds. 

Here I have zoomed in on this close up of Bela's face, I then copied the image three times, rotating the image by 90° every time, creating a square image made up of them all. However the way the image cut her body off looked a bit unflattering and odd. 

Therefore I looked for a new image which I kept long but multiplied it, creating a mirrored effect which I thought was striking and effective. 

I then turned the image to black and white and made it the background image for Bela's 'News' page on her website which looked a lot more exciting and interesting than just one plain image. 

We then also added to our merchandise on our store, creating this t-shirt with a mix of her image and her name font. 

Developing the Digi-pak

I then went back to our digipak which I felt needed further development

We then decided to make the images black and white to make them fit better together and make the digipak flow. We then thought it was a bit plain so went back to the original image of the shoes and cut out the shoes which were a burgundy colour, we then layered these over the black and white image to make the colour pop against the otherwise black image. We also re added the Sony Music logo which had turned grey, making it red again. We then also added the songs we were putting on the album with a few lines of detail about each song for the inside cover, like we had seen in similar artist's digipaks. 

I then from the bottom right image cut the background out of the original colour photo and placed this behind the black and white image of Bela as the colours went with the theme. I then swapped around some of the images and added more text, the back cover having the songs in big font and the 1991 title on the front cover. 

However I then asked some members of my class to give me feedback on the digipak and they thought this particular image did not fit as well with the other images as it's background appeared a lot lighter than the others. Therefore on Photoshop I edited the image to make it darker, however it also made her too dark which did not look good. I then undid this and used the magnetic lasso tool to highlight the background only which I then made darker, leaving Bela's body the original lightness. The image then fitted in a lot better with the rest of the images and looked very effective and flattering as the album cover. 

I then also received feedback from piers that they felt it might be more effective to just have four really good images instead of having six ones which could swamp the digipak with so much going on. Therefore I cut the two images on the left off, leaving these four which I agree looks much more effective, showing quality not quantity! I then also got rid of the BELA WALTER and 1991 titles as the black background took away from the image. I tried to choose a similar font to the one we have used on her website however I could not find a similar one so selected this bold title.  

Audience feedback

On Thursday Simon and I asked four students to view our products we have created so far in order to receive feedback and take constructive criticism to make our products better. I recorded their responses on my phone and then later combined the three sections and uploaded the feedback to my YouTube.

It was a very useful task as we showed them the digipak, then the website and then the music video to see if they could compare them and link the products together as we are trying to create a cohesive group of products portraying Bela's star image as an artist.

Our audience thought the digipak did not suit the rest of our work as we had used very different images and fonts making them look like two different brands. We have taken this advise on board and created a digipak that includes similar images and fonts to the website and has a flowing colour theme throughout.

They were more positive about the website as the felt Bela appeared the same here as she does in the video, showing who she is as an artist. However they thought the merchandise t-shirt with an image of Bela's face looked a bit young and wouldn't suit her actual target audience. I therefore have created a new T-shirt design with her name in the same font as on the website to make them look like the fit together.

This was a really useful process and we learned a lot from it, taking away some good advise so we can now improve our products.