The website

This is the link for my website, will take you straight to my site. Use the simple navigation across the top to select through different pages.

http://michaelsleftshoe.wix.com/the-beach-boys

Ricky Lawrence

Just an idea?

During our own time at home, one of the group members happened to see the Coldplay music video for Paradise, and shared it with us with their idea. There is a scene in the video where the elephant is holding cardboard with writing on it saying 'para-para-paradise' in time with the lyrics.

We took inspiration from this and decided that we could put that into our video, we wouldnt do it to go in time with lyrics but we used it as a photo to be used for either digi-pak's or websites.

As you can see each band member has a differnt board saying a differnt part of the band name, then we were sat in order so the boards would read 'The Beach Boys'. I think that this would be quite a strong photo to use as a front cover on the digi-pak or a main photo on the website, it would just require some editing and then it could be used.

Ricky Lawrence

What are you wearing?

These are the photos of the other band members outfits, as you can see they both wore jumpers and trousers too so we looked similar but not the same. Although we wore different clothes i still feel that it looks good that there is a difference in each outfit as it makes each member induvidual.

Ricky Lawrence

What am i wearing?

This is the outfit that i decided on to wear for the photo's of our band, i feel that it looks smart, but it doesnt look TOO smart and directed as there is no blazer and the other band memebers would be wearing similar clothes but not identical. It was good in the end that we decided to wear smart clothes as this meant that i wouldnt have to worry about wearing clothes that were too modern for the band and looking completely different to the other band members.

Ricky Lawrence

Sophie's outfit for the video

this is just a casusl outfit chosen by Sophie it shows how it was just a normal day out for the couple and that it should look like just a spontaneous filim of their day. The coat was wore as it is late on in the year and the weather may not have been great. As you can see from the picture of the weather that it wasnt great so it was appropiate to bring a coat too.

Ricky Lawrence

Nice outfit

For the music video i decided to wear just casual clothing so i wore a plain black t shirt, and jeans, this emphasises that i (the boy in the video) am young and that i dont really pay much atention to what i am wearing, also the style i wore and the particular way i wore the jeans and trainers was seen on The Only Way Is Essex so this also emphasises that i am young as i am being inspired by what i have seen on the T.V shows.

Ricky Lawrence

The use & merging of other images

For some of our photo's it was just impossible for us to have taken them, e.g. i wanted a shot of a festival crowd but taken from the view from on stage, obviously we would never be able to recreate this so i had to take the photo off of the internet, but then i would edit my photos (which we had taken ourselves) into or onto the photo making them the main point and the internet picture would just be used for the photo background.

Ricky Lawrence

Are you copying me?

As a group we come to the decision that we would be happy to share images and use the same images if we had to, for the site we could have the same photos, for the Digi-Pak we could have the same photos too but we would have preferred it if we didn't have the same photo's for the same things, e.g. matching photo's and matching front covers. We felt that as we were all a part of the photo's and a part of taking the photo's that we should all be able to use them. Although we were using the same photo's we have all edited them differntly, and we took a lot of photo's so we were able to mix it up a bit between eachother too as we may all like different ones.

Ricky Lawrence

What is the Mac doing?

Throughout the whole process, my group has faced many of problems to do with our Mac working efficiently. To start with we faced problems such as the laptop just not working properly it kept shutting down occassionally, then iMovie was playing up, when were editing our clips from our filming they would be corrupt when it come to play back and it would just switch to a black screen, eventually we thought we had overcome this but then we had saved the video and opened it up when we returned to it the same problem was just occuring again, and this repeated to happen all of the time but with different clips. The next problem to occur was one when we had started our video editing again to try and overcome the last problem, and then in an unnexpected event the power cable got pulled out of our laptop meaning that the whole machine shut down because out laptop wouldnt not work without the cable as the battery was fried. In the end we decided that we could upload our video to YouTube after editing it all but before saving it, it took forever to do and then once we had done it we watched it back and the problems had occured again, and the resolution and quality of the video was considerably less than what it was on the machine its self.

Ricky Lawrence

Where's the song?

On my website there is one thing that i have missed out which i really wanted to put on it, and that was a soundtrack for background music, the song i had chose for this was Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys, but for an un-aparent reason this wouldn't work so i could not do this. I feel that not only would the song have given the website an edge compared to others it would have made it more appealing to an audience, and also it would have made the site that bit more professional but this feature would not work for me so i couldnt carry this out.

Ricky Lawrence

My website

For my website i decided to still use a sort of beach themed colour code, i have a Blue background surrounding the page, the main window in the middle is a yellow Background and then i just have any writing or images over the top of that.

For my front page i decided to keep it fairly simple and not go over the top as personally it winds me up when a page is over loaded with things as you end up clicking on things by accident. I have a band photo in the middle of the page, and the the bands name and a little quote, then on the following page which is the Gallery, i have all shots of the band that we had taken all along a slide show effect, then there is the The Band page, this is just a page about the band showing new information, un known information about the band members, and the story behind The Beach Boys, then my last page is the Contact Us page, this just has a form where fans would be able to contact the band, and they would see the mail and could reply.

Ricky Lawrence

Starting my website

For producing my website i will be using Wix, it is an online service which allows to completely create your own website. You can either start from blank and completely desgin yourself a website or you can look through a wide range of well ordered templates and choose one and then just edit it.

I decided to go with the 2nd option and edit a template, i got my template from the Music & Entertainment heading within the templates page, i will completely change this around, changing things like; fonts, colours, patterns, photos, pages (adding or removing them). This is the template i chose.

Ricky Lawrence

Some examples of our band photo's

These are some example of the images we took where Sophie would have given us strict poses and positions to be in, as you can see these photos look professional and you can tell that someone one has directed the band where to be and what to do. I like these photo's but at the same time i do also like the look of the natural photo where the photographer just takes photo's whilst we are doing our own thing.

These are two of the photo's we took with the 'natural' effect. In one of them we are playing around on the keyboard whilst singing just being together as a band having a practice, this would be good to use as viewers would see how the band is more than just a band and that they are friends. The other photo is taken as a back stage photo before the go out to perform.

We also decided that we could take photos of the band and then edit them onto new backgrounds such as concert crowds, bill boards, posters, etc.. so these photos were just taken in the school corriders and against walls without any Mise-en-scene really taken into consideration.

Ricky Lawrence

Band photo's

For our band photo's we obviously had a wide range of options/styles/conventions to use or follow, we decided that we would take plenty of different photos which would give us a range of different images to choose from when it come to producing our websites, also this would mean that there may be the chance of different group members liking the look of different images which could lead to us not all using the same photo's.

We discussed the issue of using the same pictures and we dont mind the fact if we use the same photo's as there will still be some different ones used and our websites will differ from eachothers as we are all making our own one, and we may also edit photo's differently.

We decided we could take photo's of the band as if they were on a photo shoot, so they weould all be set up in positions and doing certain poses, the photographer (Sophie Harten) would decide on those positions and poses. We could also take photo's of the band in an 'unexpected/natural' way, we could have them singing on stage and get some action photos, or we could get some photo's of them as if they were just together playing around singing and playing on the instruments.

Ricky Lawrence

Draft Digi-Pak's

When designing my Digi-Pak i need to make sure that the one i finally use is the one that i feel 100% certain that i want to use and i am happy with. I need to take into consideration the fact that i cannot use photos taken by other people from the internet so if i have no pictures of my own available to be used i will have to use Photoshop and create a colour pattern that matches The Beach Boys and falls into the beach category, and also at the same will be atentnion grabbing.

Here are just 2 examples of drafts i have done, i like them both but the problem being with one of them is the fact that i did not take the photo, that makes that photo of my use as i am not allowed to use it. The one that i hae created myself using Photoshop clearly represents a beach, and the colour pattern shows the sea, the waves breaking, and the sand, another good point of this is the fact that it would straight away stand out to the consumers and would catch their eye and make them look at it.

Ricky Lawrence

Creating my Digi-Pak

As part of our coursework we need to create a promo digi-pak for the bands album/single, whilst doing this i am planning to stick to original ideas, i will use a beach based photo as a bacvkground or i will use beach colours for the background creating a warm feel as well as grabbing the consumers atention at the same time. I will use a Italic font as this matches previous albums and i feel that this is the best suited for the band, e.g if i was doing a rock band i would use bold font to make a statment with all corners on it instead of curved letters. 

This shows when i was looking at the selcetion of italic curved fonts whilst trying to make my decision, i like all of them but obviously i can only choose one. In the end i decided to go with Harlow Italic, when using this i will make it bold so it looks like bubble writing and will clearly stand out on the front of the digi-pak cover.

Ricky Lawrence

Looking at previous Beach Boys albums

This was done purely for inspiration, these are some previous examples of Beack Boys albums, cleary as you would expect they have a beach theme, whether is a beach landscape photo, or surf boards, or sun set, this is good as this gives me a clear path to follow when i am designing my digi pak.

I made the chouce that with my digi pak i will have to use colours such as yellows and oranges as they are related with heat so they are warm colours like the sun set. I will be taking time to look through my own old personal photos for nay beach landscape shots or i can try and use Photoshop if i need to in order to completely desing a image or colour pattern.

 

Ricky Lawrence

London Zoo

After queuing we had got our tickets and had got into London Zoo

We got straight into the zoo and had a look at one of these maps and then planned our day.

after looking at this we decided that our best option would have just been to start at one point of the zoo and to then go around the zoo making our way through all of the enclosures seeing all of the animals and getting all of the filming done that we wished to have done. Scattered all around the zoo were these maps so we could make sure we were heading in the right direction as we were making our way around and that we werent missing any of the attractions or events that were on E.G. the penguin show. 

Overall the zoo was a successful day for filming, we filmed in nearly all of the different animal areas so this gave more than enough different clips to choose from when it came to us editing our video.

The only thing that could have been changed about the day was out of our power, and this would have been that the animals would have been more lively as quite a few of them were just laying around and not doing much, but this wasnt too much of an issue as the focus on the filming was me and Sophie being the couple.

Ricky Lawrence

Bike hire

After walking around Regents Park for quite a bit we decided that out best option would be to ask a member of staff for guidance towards to the bike hire, he pointed us in the right direction and we were on our way. Although we had to go out of the park to get the bikes it turned out that they were conveniently quite close. The first bike point that we got to only had one bike left in it and the machine for it was broken so we then had to ask somebody else and go find another bike point. When we eventually got our bikes it cost us £1.00 for hire which allowed you to have them for as long as you want up to 30 minutes, if you were to go over that allocated time then further prices would be added. Fortunately we only need the bikes for a short period so we got them and headed back to the park to get some filming done.

Ricky Lawrence

Regents Park

As a group we decided that we didnt want to limit ourselves to doing all of our filming in one environment, as a result of this we then went onto Regents Park, conviniently it was only around the corner from London Zoo but we still had a fair bit of travelling to do as where we wanted to film was at the other end of the park. We felt that by filiming in the park it would emphasise the couple being together and being out on a day out to London. In the park we wished to film scenes of the couple just walking around having fun, riding on the Bikes through the park, having leaf fights, having picnics, and riding across the lakes in a Padlow, we decided to start making our way towards the bike hire and film anything of the couple together on our way.

Ricky Lawrence

The Days Weather & Travel Cards

Today we decied to go up to London in order for us to get the majority of our filming done. Although the weather wasn't great it was in fact the best day of the week on the weather forecast so this made us decide to go today before the weather had any real opportunity of it getting worse.

In order for us to get up to London we would have to take the train but as we were planning to go arouns London on the bikes, go to the Zoo and go into one of the parks we decided that out best option would just be to buy a travel card which would allow us to travel around London all day.

Ricky Lawrence