Reshoot

Today we filmed a pick up for our aerobics scene. Unfortunately, during the hectic first shoot, we had not captured a shot that was good enough for the transition. We decided to change the idea of our transition from a continuity door edit to the lead girl putting her hands over her face and when she takes them off, she's in the next era. 

We were quite lucky in the fact that we only needed the one character for this as the preparation and organisation for the 80s shoot was extremely difficult and would be near to impossible to do again. Instead, we just filmed me running towards the door, coming through it, and putting my hands over my eyes and sliding to the floor.

Grace was actually ill the entire day of this shoot, so sadly she could not join us. She will help us edit it all and approve the footage, although we did FaceTime her so she could see what was happening! 

Ideas for our performance scene

Obviously it is now quite late to be filming a performance, but unfortunately due to January exams it was a necessary delay. As soon as our lead singer (Connor) recovers from the flu we plan to get going and film the performance straight away, which can hopefully be done in a day.


The idea for our performance is that we will film Connor in the previously established location of the living room, where he was seen cuddling with the girl. There, he will be on his own, watching the TV. He will change the channel, and then he'll see the girl go back throughout the ages, singing 'If Ya Wanna Come Back' to the TV as he watches.

We like this idea as it's a simple but effective way to have him directly singing at the girl without actually being included in the scenes. Also, as we currently have a lot of narrative footage, it allows us to film his performance and show the eras on the TV simultaneously so that we do not have to shorten our video by much more.

To do this, we have to finish and export our era sequences to DVD, which needs to be playable on a TV. We will then film Connor singing from a variety of angles, singing the whole song so that we can match up the right parts of the sequence to the right parts of the song.

We hope to film this  very soon as we need to get it done ASAP, but for now we're waiting in limbo until Connor recovers.

Research into Websites: Jakob Nielsen

"10 Usability Heuristics"
An article by Jakob Nielsen outlined the 10 Usability Heuristics to user interface design. This is just a suggestion of 10 guidelines to make a website easier for users to use: as I am planning on producing a website for my ancillary product, I thought research into this article might be useful. 

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"1. Visibility of system status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time."

After my website research, the element I found this related to most was the 'news' element on my websites. The website I create must, by these guidelines, have a news widget that is regularly updated to 'keep users informed about what is going on'. I could also put in a Twitter widget so users of the website can also see a live stream of tweets from the band members' accounts. 

"2. Match between system and the real world: The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order."

For this point, I think it shows how important it is that the website relates to the viewer. I think this will be appropriate as our target audience is a younger population and the band members themselves are young: this will make them more relatable and make the website more interesting for our target reader. We could also make sure that the website is bright, easy to read and uses lots of pictures so not to confuse the reader. I think the use of separate widgets on the screen will also be very useful.

"3. User control and freedom: Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo."

Although 'undo' and 'redo' is not relevant to the type of website I want to create, I think this point is particularly valid when thinking about how users will look through websites. It's essential that users don't get stuck on one page and find it impossible to move around the others. To combat this, I think a standard tab bar across the top of each page of the website that provides links to the other pages is both a practical and conventional idea. I think the website should also be set to open external links (such as social networking sites, maybe an external store etc.) in a new tab or page so even if the viewers get distracted by merchandising etc. they will still have the original webpage open.  

"4. Consistency and standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions."

The tab use on the webpage must be simple. Everything that ties in should be grouped together and laid out clearly on the page so the users do not get mixed up and confused. For example, if I made a tab for 'Gig dates', through which you could buy concert tickets, and then also put the concert tickets in the 'Merchandise' section, users may get confused about the correct place to buy them from. Instead, I should put the links to tickets on one page only, and then perhaps link to that page from the merchandising section. This provides the user with one clear route to their goal, without getting distracted by a confusing user interface. 

"5. Error prevention: Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action."

In a band website specifically, this could refer to several things but I think the most obvious is the shopping basket. As a website maker for a theoretically small and low-budget band, I doubt in my merchandising section I will actually be able to create a shopping cart, so it is likely that I will use external sources to help sell my items. This is actually commonly found across band websites: amazon, dftba as well as specific record label websites are all used to externally sell merchandise. Similarly, websites such as seetickets and ticketmaster often handle the sale and distribution of tickets rather than an in built widget on the website. This would help prevent errors, particularly on an amateur website, as they are much more likely to have a better error control. Also, this would promote sales as most people shopping online prefer websites they know/have heard of, that are verified and safe. 

"6. Recognition rather than recall: Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate."

Paths across the website should be obvious.  If someone rarely visits a band website, or has never visited one before, they should still be able to navigate their way through the website without hesitation. They should also be able to grasp all the necessary information without having to search for it: this could be done through use of a homepage with a news feed and adverts for the band's latest singles and announcements. 

"7. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions."

In order to do this, I reckon consistency across a website is key. Although I have already suggested that the layout needs to be simple and easy to navigate through, I think on top of this it should be unchanging. Obviously, with regular updates the content will change, but the layout should remain key at all times. This allows both the unexperienced user, who will navigate through the simple website, and the experienced user to use it with minimal confusion. This means that the experienced user will know which certain elements to check for updates from and it will speed up their interaction. 

"8. Aesthetic and minimalist design: Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility."

What this point is saying is that the website should not contain unnecessary information; although interesting to some viewers, it detracts from the important messages that need to be conveyed. I think what will help with this on my website particularly is small Twitter widgets and a link to the Twitter page: this allows interested users to click through and find the more irrelevant information tweeted from the band members, but also doesn't detract from the main purpose of the page. If the Twitter widget is headered with the Twitter icon, this would also stop people uninterested in tweets from reading that particular section of a page.

"9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution."

Although error messages are very unlikely to be a part of the website I'm designing, should it be a real, live website then errors are likely to occur. The fact there are no in-built shopping elements helps reduce confusion if there is an error, but it is understood that error messages should be clear and simple.  

"10. Help and documentation: Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large."

One page I could include on my website is a FAQs section. This could contain questions to do with ticketing, merchandise, touring etc and would allow the users to look up answers to any queries they may have. I could also input a contact page where queries could be asked.  

You Me At Six Website Analysis

Eye movement of participants when looking at websites

An article, published in 2006, suggested that when an audience read webpages their eyes travel in a typical 'F' shape. This means that websites have recently been designed to be very orientated to the left as the study suggested items on the right of the screen tend to be more ignored. 

We can see this to be true in You Me At Six's website, as the navigation bar is on the left and other items are in the middle, with the right of the webpage left blank. This means that the audience's eye movement would allow them to capture all the necessary information without missing anything. 

Potential band name

Obviously, as we are creating a new band for this project, it needs a new name. We have not settled on a name as a group yet but this is going to be needed for our ancillary products, which I have started designing with our original band name: 'The Vaccines'. This will need to be changed for my final design.

The band name I've recently come up with is 'Vago'. I first came across this when looking up the word 'slacker' in Spanish, but have learnt it actually means 'vague'. I like both these meanings for a band, and I think 'Vago' sounds even better. 

Album design #3

Another concept I had for my potential album cover is making the male lead like a ghost behind the girl. This is because in our video we have the girl running back through many different eras with the boy always watching but never seen: quite like a ghost. I've tried to show this with the image above, which I could easily adapt into an album cover if I decide on the concept for my final album cover.

Our performance part

We've had so many problems regarding getting our performance done. The plan, initially, was to get a band together and get them to perform our song, which we would film and cut inbetween the narrative scenes. However, this has proved difficult as all our candidates for band members have exams and other commitments at the moment or weren't available over the Christmas period, so we found that at this late stage trying to organise it now would be near to impossible.

Our The new idea is to finish editing the sequences of all the different eras and then export and download them: that way, we can hook my laptop up to a tv and play them there. Connor (our male lead) would then be alone in a living room and singing at the tv, watching me (the main girl) go back through the ages but be able to do nothing about it. This way the lyrics 'If You Wanna Come Back' are directly sung by the lead singer of our band to the girl, and they make sense. Also, this means we don't need a full band, can get an interesting bit of performance in and also use the technique of voyeurism in our video. We were also then thinking at the end he can see all the sequences rewind on the tv, which represents me going back to modern day, and I could then burst into the room for a reunion scene.

Album design #2

Another idea I had for my album art design was using double exposure. I wanted to incorporate both the boy and the girl in this design, and to do this I decided to use the girl's scared eye with a picture of the boy inside. As the boy, Connor, is also the main singer for the band this is useful because it will fit with the convention of displaying band members on the album cover. This cover could also be textually analysed, with  the boy being trapped inside the girl to mean that he is always with her no matter where she goes. This is a theme we have presented strongly in our music video, so I like that my album art could reflect that.

Alternatively, I could reverse the roles here. I could make the eye a picture of the boy, and have a photo of the girl visibly trapped inside: as she cannot escape in our music video, it makes sense if this was carried onto the album art. I could also experiment more with the photography that way, by having a photo of the girl miming with her hands against the iris and edge of eye, as if she's actually trying to force her way out but can't.

By doing this mock up I learned how to double expose and change opacities on Photoshop, which is going to be useful for my final design.

Album design #1

After doing some research into the digipaks, I tried to make a mock up of what mine would potentially look like by making some sketches and putting them into a CD case with a title on Photoshop. For this idea, I would dress up each band member (all male) in the female costumes the main character wore in all the different eras. This would be something unusual and abstract, but also use the convention I've found in my analyses of presenting the band members as the face of the album.

Digipak front covers

The Killers - Sam's Town digipak analysis

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One thing I found interesting in the digipak aside from that listed above was an insert. It advertised ringtone versions of the Killers' songs for the customers of the CD to purchase and download: this cross media convergence is something I haven't seen much of before in CDs, and it might be an interesting idea to incorporate it in my design too.