Focus Group

Today my group and I got the chance to show the rough version of our products to a focus group. A focus group is a group of people that aren't biased toward or against the product, they can then give honest and helpful feedback to improve the product.




Here is a recording from the focus group meeting.

We started off by showing the group our digipak, asking them what they did and didn't like about it. They said that they liked the neon yellow colour as it was punchy and vibrant, however they said that the name of the band wasn't clear because the emblem is quite abstract and the band   We also asked what genre they thought the band fell under, to which they replied: Grungy, Grimy, heavy metal, punk etc. 

They essentially got the right genre straight away from looking at the digipak. They thought that the inside and back cover were really good at showing the darkness and the intensity of the band. When showing the website they thought that we should have more of a colour scheme to stick to. They mentioned that we could have the name of the band in the same font on the album cover rather than having the emblem of the band because it was not clear to them what the name of the band is. Also the font of the name on the album has to be changed but we already knew this beforehand so we know what to change and what font we want to use.

Screen recording of our website that we showed to the focus group.

Website conventions of our band's genre

My group and I have looked at a range of websites of bands that fall into the genre of electronic rock - the same genre as our track and the band that we intend to create through the promo package of 3 media texts. 

The reason why we are looking at these websites is to get a good idea of what conventions we need to apply to our own website in order to appeal to our intended target audience. 

Conventions of websites aren't actually too different from conventions of videos apart from the obvious technical conventions which wouldn't be used on a website as it is not possible. The symbolic conventions will stay the same however. For example dark colours will be used in a music video of the electronic rock genre, and those colours will be taken forward into the website as these colours connote danger and are moody - hence the target audience is appealed to them.

Examples of websites from the electronic rock genre:

The Prodigy's website at first glance may appear to be colourful and vibrant, yet the connotation is still anger and aggression due to the reds, oranges, and darkened yellows which signify anger. Apart from the fiery colours, the website is dark and moody - displaying striking album artwork and blunt, to the point titles for the websites various different features - as you can't imagine a band like the prodigy having a website that displays signs like "Hey! Welcome to our website!" as this kind of language is used on pop genre websites as this genre is less aggressive and intends to welcome the audience into their 'Happy go lucky' outlook to life.  

Die Antwoords website is brighter, yet displays the same connotations of abstraction and a disestablishment-style outlook. The artwork displayed on the website shows odd little creatures combined with graphic, phallic imagery. This signifies that the band is not accessible to youngsters, similarly with the prodigy, you wouldn't expect a child to attend a concert based on what you see and read on their home-pages, their target audience is from 18-25 I would imagine.

Crystal Method's home page is again brighter, yet doesn't display anything inappropriate or anything that would make you suspect that they were particularly anti-the system. I would argue that this band subvert the conventions of a classic electronic rock band's website, and therefore we won't be sourcing inspiration from this website as the band we will be creating is yet unestablished and therefore would need to adhere to the classic conventions in order to draw in the intended target audience.

Blue Stahli and Leftfield's websites are very similar and are what I would define as 'a classic electronic rock band's website'. Dark colours dominate the web page, with minimalistic, clear text in muted colours. Blue Stahli's web page shows a deer's skull in teh woods as the faded backdrop to the website - connotations of death and fear are portrayed and that element of danger is heavily enforced which appeals to the target audience of electronic rock.

Summary:

After researching into the genre conventiosn of Electronic rock band's websites it is clear that what my group and I need to take forward into our own website is:

- The use of primary dark colours

- Blunt, to the point text

- The use of secondary "firey" colours that connote danger and anger.

Audience feedback

I showed a late draft of our video to a few groups of people, and talked about it with them to attain some feedback that could potentially help get the video to a better standard.

enjoy.

Shoot Day evaluation

I have made a video evaluation for the day of my shoot, enjoy. 

Stills from the shoot day

Shooting Schedule

This is the shooting schedule we created for our shoot tomorrow, we will aim to stick religiously to this schedule as to maximise our time efficiency tomorrow, a copy has been given to our cast and crew so that everyone knows whats going on and for there to be no confusion as to where everyone needs to be at each significant time. 

Building the set

Digipaks and names

Today my group and I worked on the digipak for our music video, we also brainstormed names. We wanted to find a name that would be conventionally acceptable in the genre of the song we have chosen to make the music video for, something that embodied the angst and the grunge of the track, both phonetically and symbolically. We brainstormed various names, some of the favourites being: Plastic affliction, Twisted anarchy, and Tainted Torment. 

We started to picture each of these names on a digipak that would match the visual themes of the video, however none of them really fit - we felt the names were a little too similar to those you would expect from a death metal band, the prodigy's genre of music is big-beat/electronic rock and therefore doesn't entirely suit the names we came up with. I researched the synonyms of "affliction" and found the word "Crux" in the results. Crux is defined as follows: " something that torments by its puzzling nature; a perplexing difficulty."
We really liked this as the word phonetically sounds angsty and aggressive, with the inner meaning being quite edgy and dark it seemed like the perfect name for our band. 

So we set about designing the logo.

We came up with some initial designs for both the digipaks and the band logo:

A few of these designs really stood out to us, for example the album covers where we focused on people rather than a landscape or simply the band logo. The two best designs were: A man screaming to the left of the frame with the word crux vertically typed to the right hand side of the frame. And a chiaroscuro portrait of someone with their eyes closed, their face half in the shade with a tattoo of the word crux vertically typed down his face beneath his left eye.

The next job on the list was to create a stencil for the band logo which would be spray painted all over the walls of the grimy boys scene.

Overall my group and I were very satisfied at our progress with the band name and the digipak ideas.