Futher development of the website

After receiving audience feedback from a few friends I went back to our merchandise as they said having an image of Bela on her t-shirt made it seem like she was appealing to a younger audience of around 13. I also wanted her other audiences to want her merchandise, appealing to an older, more mature audience of 18-30. Therefore I took a screenshot of the BELA WALTER title from her website which I then applied onto her black t-shirt.  

  

I then cut the two words apart so they would fit nicely on the top and scaled them to fit on well. I then used the eraser tool to rub the opaque black background away, leaving just the font in front of the t-shirt.

I think this t-shirt fits a lot better to her older audience and I could see her fans buying and wearing this t-shirt at her concert as a band tee, representing her. I like the simplicity of just her name as it is not as obvious, but a more subtle style of advertising her brand and music. 

Making our digipak

Simon first created a digi-pak with the images taken from the extra photo shoot to see what it would look like to have an 'all attitude' image digi-pak, which did look professional and all the images fitted nicely together. However we felt we should also incorporate images from our original shoot in order for our products to look good together, this was also influenced by audience feedback we received, where they told us the products did not fit very well together as they were producing mixed messages of who Bela was.

Therefore we created a new digi-pak together mixing our photos from our original shoot from the music video day with photos from our most current shoot, in order to portray a mixture of elegance and class, with attitude and edge.  

 I found this template of a six image digipak which I uploaded onto Photoshop to work with so we had the correct scale and size for our photos. 

 We then started selecting images that we thought would be appropriate for each panel. I also edited some of the images to look better on the frame, for example for this image I used a black colour to fill in the floor to give a more glossy black look, removing the original matte black floor which did not look as nice. I then selected the part of the image I wanted to have, making sure it was a square so it would fit inside the template. 

I then pressed 'Ctrl T' to scale the image to the appropriate size and fitted the images into each box. 

We had a shuffle around of the images and changed quite a few as we went on. We then also added a bar code to the top right image as this was to be our back cover, we then also used the title that we took a screenshot from her website 'BELA WALTER' as we wanted to keep a consistent theme throughout her products. However we did not like having the black background of the font, but we were unsure how to remove it so scaled the title down and but it at the bottom, next to a Parent advisory label.  

 We finally came up with this selection of images for her digipak, but were still prepared to go back to it and work on it more as we felt it looked a little unfinished, and we also still needed to add in her songs and a few extra touched. However I do feel this was a good starting point as the images fitted a lot better together and portrayed a wider style and image of who Bela is as an artist. 

Another photoshoot

 

After having a go at designing our website and digi-pak we reflected on our products and decided we needed to do another photo shoot of Bela against a black backdrop. We felt she needed to show more edge and attitude in her expression as all the images we already had from the filming day were quite soft and vulnerable. We therefore wanted to have a mix of our original pictures and add in a few new ones to show more attitude to Bela to fit with the music video.

Here are a selection of the pictures taken that we thought were good and could use with the other images and create a cohesive product. 

 

 

Working on the website

This week I have been continuing to work on our website for Bela, trying out different fonts, colours and images. As we took so many pictures it has been difficult to cut it down to just a few that look good together and make everything coherent. However after trying out a few different images on the home page, along with a slide show, we decided we wanted to record some moving images of Bela and cut them together to play in a loop as our main page as this is a bit more exciting and shows her personality more, enticing the audience to look into more of the website. We will record these images on Monday and take some more pictures to pay around with for the album cover and digi-pak.

I have also been creating some merchandise on Photoshop, I found images of a black t-shirt which I used as a base for the garment. I then selected some pictures of Bela to use and using the magnetic cutting tool cut her body out of the image which I paced onto the top, I then scaled the image and edited it to look like it was printed onto the top. I have tried out a few different styles and will get some audience feedback to see which people like most.

Original T-shirt

Using the magnetic cutting tool to cut out her upper body

Copying the image onto the T-shirt and scaling it to an appropriate size for the T-shirt

I then lowered the opacity to make the image more subtle and fade into the T-shirt to give a more stylistic, glamorous look. However I then decided it looked a bit odd as I cut her body off drastically at the torso so her body was awkwardly floating in the middle of the t-shirt.

Therefore I then went back and cut out her whole body, however the photo we took cut out the very bottom of her feet so I had to place the image right to the edge so it didn't look weird. I really like her strong stance in this image as it is empowering yet feminine and sexy which goes with the theme and style we are going for.

Here are the two black t-shirts that I will choose between, I am going to show an audience similar to her target audience and ask for their opinions and then choose which is better from their comments.

I then added a Merchandise page to the website and created a collection for her items, including a shopping bag and links to paypal with prices. I uploaded both t-shirts but will choose one to keep and create a few different items for her. 

 I priced the cost of her t-shirt at £18 because her audience will be willing to pay this amount online or at a concert as they want to feel connected with her and will see it as being linked to her.
However I will only create a few items for her merchandise page as she is an upcoming new artist who is not as established as say for example Beyoncé who has many items, but is more like Iggy Azealia who only has two items on her merchandise page. 
 

Researching Our Target Audience

Here I have created a Prezi, researching similar artists to Bela like Rita Ora, Iggy Azelia, Azealia Banks and Rihanna. I have looked at their target audiences by going through their websites, fan pages and forums, reading comments of fans and finding out who they are.

Creating our website

I uploaded the photos I took from the shoot day, however realised I had taken all the pictures on the setting RAW instead of JPEG so I had to convert each picture which was very time consuming and annoying. After converting them all I saved them into folders of videos, stills, best. I then used Photoshop to edit the best ones to upload to our website.

I then started making the website on WIX.com, I created a new template and changed the colour scheme to black, grey, red and white. I then trailed out using a slide show as the front cover which I liked.

Evaluation of our shoot day

Jane and I have recorded this video to evaluate our shoot day, answering 15 key questions about the day. This was a useful task as it made us reflect about the shoot and realise what went well and what we could have done better.