Note to Moderator

Dear Moderator,

Thank you for taking the time to read and mark my blog. I hope you have enjoyed looking through the journey we have taken from our very first bit of research to our final product and evaluation along with our; website and DigiPak. I'm sure you can appreciate the time and effort that has gone into my coursework and hope you enjoy marking it as much as we did completing it :-)

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Extra video for website

To add to the realistic experience we made an extra video which included me singing and playing the piano. Further research of current artists such as Eliza Doolittle made us note that they use shorter snippets of film footage. This enhanced the website by giving the fans a taster of the artists repertoire.We felt including this was essential as it would make our website more authentic.  

We found that Dillon had done live lounge style session to her song 'thirteen thirty five' seeing as we were using that song for our video it was really helpful that we had actually found it, Our video is only a snipet of the song because the original is around 4 minutes long and there's no need for us to create that one long and thought it would look more effective as only a snipet of the song.

bleep outs

Lila Eden - thirteen thirty five

Digipak

FINAL DIGIPAK

I would say this is my favorite image for the digipak. I just think it really suits our artist, I love the whole antique theme with the candles and sepia effect on the image. The images were taken when we were doing our final part of filming, on this section we were just filling in missing sections from our video and improving some parts where i could have performed a little better or the camera work just didn't really work. The setting was in the bath with candles around me with dim lighting it worked really well. We had taken other images that you will be able to see from my post from the day but me and Faye decided we like this one the best and the tone fitted into the digipak, We were trying to decide between this one and one that had a more cold effect but this one was rightly the winner. We edited this image using Faye's phone which was so quick and easy but so effective!

This is our center section of our digipak where the disc is held. We didn't want to use another image of me but we wanted something that matched and still suited the digipak. We chose this image as we had taken it from when were filming at the beach, mainly because its just a really nice photo and simply looks nice in the middle of the digipak and breaks up all the images. But also because it then incorporates another thing from our video, as it incorporates our beach filming section. The image is also quite blurred so we like the fact that you can tell that its at the beach but it doesn't draw a lot of attention from the other panels of the digipak.

This panel was our part we wanted to use to add in our message from our artist to the individual buying the album, When we were looking at other artists albums they always add in a little message that link their album or what its about to their fans. To do this we used our first song called 'lost thoughts' to link that we wanted our fans to 'get lost in the album' so used the song title to incorporate this. This image was taken same time as the last panel again with the whole antique theme which i think really reflects out artist as a person and maybe her interests and how shes interested in things that aren't main stream same as her music. I think this image is really effective because the songs on her album sound like they would be quite reflective and deep thoughts and my expression is quite deep and the reflective part comes in because of the mirror.

This is our back panel for our digipak, We made this from scratch. I was looking at other artists websites came across lady gaga's 'artpop' where she has a similar thing to the circle section but hers were distorted images and segments to the circle were slightly out and misshaped; so from that found a website which created collages in different shapes and then used pictures which linked the 'Adam and Eve' theme of our artist we already had pictures we were going to previously use on our website but had decided against them but then was able to use them on this! i think it all works really well. To choose the artists songs i went onto Wikipedia and typed in Adam and Eve and took words from how they were describing the story to create the titles of the songs. Then to finish it we added the bar code and disc symbol.

For our front panel, We knew we wanted something effective and memorable. When we were looking at other artists a lot of there's have some kind of link to their album name or theme so we knew we wanted something to link. Because of our whole thing of 'Adam and Eve' we wanted something that could link with that, We started googling images and we began thinking of ideas like me reaching for an apple in a tree, biting into an apple in a forest things like this. But i was looking through Iggy Azaleas instagram when researching other artists social net workings and there was a photo of her holding a butterfly over her eye we replaced this with a leaf and created our front panel!. Once we had taken the photo we then edited it, after looking at the other images we both just knew it should have been black and white and i think it fits really well.

This image also adds to our whole vintage effect of the digipak, I think costume and hair also helps add to this because of all the pearls and beads used on my top with soft curls in my hair looks quite vintage, it all fits nicely together The editing of the photo again was simply on Faye's phone although the photos were taken on a professional photography camera Faye uploaded the photos to her phone to be able to add them to the computer we were then able to edit it on her phone and this effect just work so well and adds to the vintage effect of it all. I really like the angle of the shot because its like a head on over the shoulder which works really nicely with the mirror and reflection, my reflection is quite shadowed and dark which i think fits our whole ambiance and feel of our artist and her album.

Final website

http://claudiaburks.wix.com/thegardenofeden

The website was more my job although Faye helped me a lot! and we worked as a team on it, picking colors and saying what worked best. I suppose you would say created the website and me and Faye are proud of the final product :-)

 So this is our home page, we used a similar image to our album cover without the same edits and a different background we done this on purpose so it all links in together. By using this image it gave us some color to the main page and meant we could have a color scheme that all worked. We used the plum on my lips to match the tool bar and background colors. There are 7 links on the page & a social networking bar so 'fans' can click straight on them and will take them to Lila Eden's pages.

Gallery page: where you will find pictures of Lila Eden. I added some photos from my life so there's some from when i was younger, on holiday, friends outings; we also added in things like crowds and some quotes just too make it look more like an artists. When looking at other artists websites they all have a little section saying something about themselves so on word i typed out a small section that i made up about 'Lila Eden' and then saved in paint to make it a photo and added it to the gallery.

 Contact us: for this page we added a phone number, email, address and a Google maps to make it more interactive and realistic. This page isn't really that interesting but every artists website has one, so is important to have it. When i first done this page it was just very basic because i hadn't realized you could make it like this with a template available from wix, I think this one make it looks a lot more professional and glad the way the page turnt out.

 Video: our video page features our music video for thirteen thirty five and then another video we made especially for the website. The second video is 'live lounge' style video and makes it a bit more personal the song used is the live version of thirteen thirty five and we created a small snipet of it with footage. Along with the videos i added Dillon's music from sound cloud to be more realistic.

Live: making this page was probably the most annoying, because for the page the dates section i copied the style from ticket master and had to crop and change each date  to match our website although there's not a lot of dates they all kept on re sizing themselves and changing position! but eventually i got all fixed once i had got a hold of it. I added in a buy now button from the website which also links the user to the shop page and allows you to add concert tickets to their basket.

 Shop: This page has all our merchandise on, at first this page i just really couldn't get my head round it, i couldn't work out especially how to add it all the page because you have to add it to a collection which i obviously didn't get! but i got a hang of it and can do a lot with it now, which I'm really pleased about and felt like I've learnt a lot. The shop page is a typical lay out if you click on the item you can it to your cart and then pay at the checkout which everyone will be able to use.

The naked truth: This page is a special order for our artists album! I got this idea from looking on Birdy's website, i think it makes our website just that even more bit professional and have an edge! the page only took me about 15 minutes to set up and i added buttons such as the available on itunes, buy now and the filling out of information just small details like this is why i think our website is really effective and realistic as i had tried to the think of all the little things to make sure everything linked together.

Stages of designing our website

To create a website to support our artist we looked for a free web builder that gave a professional finish. Our requirements led us to choose 'Wix' as this allowed us to choose the style without the need to code the website in HTML.. Although we had not used this web builder before we spent time getting used to the range of facilities that it had to offer, thus gaining confidence with the package.To deepen my knowledge I watched the help videos and used

these to test various styles We were able to browse templates and choose one that we felt would compliment and enhance the style we were looking for.

We decide to have a background theme that reflected our artists name and researched paintings entitled 'The Garden of Eden'. We particularly enjoyed the Flemish artist Jan the Elder Brueghel and decided to use his image.When it was set we decided as a background it did not enhance the webpage and so we continued to look for a more 'edgy' image. Having chosen this image we decided to check whether we had the right mix and sought opinions of our peers for the most appealing image. We used this feedback and tried this image as the background for the website. When we tried the more colourful and modern image we felt it detracted from the purpose of the website due to the fact that it overpowered the writing and would have been difficult to navigate the webpages easily.

We continued our search for a background and found a woodland scene. Unfortunately we were unable to resize the picture within the web design package as the image was too small and when it was stretched to fit it became pixilated and unrecognisable. Although we had found one that worked (above, pink, purple, orange sky) we then added Lila Eden written in many different fonts but we feel it just didn't work at all. So again began redesigning.

As a team we discussed our choices so far and decided to look for a water based image as this was a setting included in our video.As a still this image looked fine but when it was stretched as a background the water looked distorted and the background was dull.

Our final choice was using a single picture that Faye had taken and we were very pleased with the outcome. We came to this decision after viewing other artists and decided that in most cases they include a background image of themselves.The image of myself was a high quality picture and therefore there were no problems with the size and pixels.

 Key features of the website is for fans to find gig information, shop for merchandise, look at photos and listen to the music. We needed to make sure that the site was easy to navigate and used buttons and hyperlinks to transport visitors around the site. We felt that it was important to have the links to social media sites as this is now an expectation from a younger audience. We included Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. As merchandise is popular with fans a button was inserted and it was essential to have a secure sections with buyer protection and for this we chose Paypal.


At the start of this project there was not a clear direction that we had chosen. When we sat down and focused on some of the ideas we had researched we found a clear direction that linked together and then most the ideas fell into place. We needed to examine and explore a wide range of images and styles to be creative and decided on our direction.
Once collated and organised I was able to edit the site by changing and adding additional pages and information. I also tried a range of previously unused fonts and colours. The outcome of creating the website from scratch is that  I became a more confident  user of the web builder software and this led to increased creative output.

Twitter and Facebook

along with creating an instagram which i have previously written about we also created a twitter and Facebook! keeping fans up to date and involved is a key part in an artists image and life because without their fans they wouldn't be as successful and fans love knowing what their favorite artist is doing, wearing and thinking. So only seemed write that we created one.

Through setting up the Facebook, instagram and twitter it allows the artists to reach out to their target audiences same as ours can. Because our target audience is around 15-20 year olds these are the main people that would be using the social networking sites so allows us to reach out to our target audience and make more people aware of artists.

Setting up the accounts also helped with the making of our website because of the icons on our home page of the website it allowed us to add the accounts to website which is a main part of an artists website and feeds from their social networking are added to their websites. So when a 'fan' now visits our website and say wasn't aware that our artist was on one of the social networking sites then they can simply click of one of the icons and will link them straight to Lila Eden's fan pages! also the you tube link is linked to our video although this is on Faye's account it still works as a link and takes them to what would be her video.

Email to artist

This was an email to Dillon our artist contacting her for her permission to use her song. We found the email on her official website but we received now reply from her but if any problems occur we will simply have to change the song and use what was our 2nd choice.

After our 4th filming

This is just a little collage of photos we took whilst we was at the beach and is something that we again could look at using when creating website and digipak. I really love the bottom right picture and could definitely be used as a panel in our digipak.

So this was our beach filming the setting for this was just perfect. The time we had went meant that the sun was still out and bright but wasn't too powerful, the natural lighting really enhanced all our shots.We filmed at southend beach as is the beach that is closest to us and we are most familiar with.It was an extremely productive day and we managed to get all of the footage we planned for, we film a large chunk of the lyrics. Although it was a really nice day it was still so cold! walking through the water and cold sand didn't really help either but the footage we gained from this again was all worth it and was such a large chunk of our video. We planned our hair and make up to create a floaty and effective look and we definitely reached this we were really happy how the dress fitted so nicely with the footage. The only problems we had was that we couldn't get the tripod to steady very well but we tried our best and used the stairs to create a flat surface and Faye eventually just bega holding the legs of the tripod which worked pretty well. but apart from that it was a really productive day and we got all our footage within an hour and a half.

New merchandise

We re looked over our merchandise because we thought we needed to make a few more products and realised that we actually didn't like it anymore, So we began changing it it.We thought the previous one just looked unprofessional and not something that fans would actually want to wear. So we began creating a logo for our artist and we got inspiration from Lady Gaga's art pop album art, although hers was a different style with distorted sections, different images and her within the image. We re created this using pictures we previously were going to use for our website and apples with added effects which put all together with a collage program and a black background. I think the finished products are really effective and just work really well they also present what our artist is like. Within the merchandise we have; posters, towels, mugs, lipstick, knickers, hoodies, eyelashes, baby grows, bags, women's top and vest, men's tops. I think making such a varied amount of merchandise means there's something for everyone at affordable prices. We created lip stick and eyelashes especially because within our video i am wearing lipstick and eyelashes in 90% of the shots so we wanted to make it a trade market thing with our artist. Were really pleased that we did re design the merchandise and didn't just leave it because i think this line gives us much more of a professional finish and helped within our website and didgipak.

Storyboard

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'Filling in the gaps' kind of filming

So when we re watched our video and what section were up to we realized which small gaps we are missing and could be improved on. So we wrote out in a word document which lyric we needed, time in the song it is.

This filming we filmed again in Faye's house, her mum loves candles and small home features so her bath worked really well with what we wanted, there was small tea light, large and small candelabras and a sculpture. When starting filming we had sat down together and watched a lot of different music videos a lot of the emotional videos included the same settings as our; forest, beaches and one we had not included bedrooms but one that stood out and realistic we could use was a bath. So then from that because a lot of our footage has been very low key we added candles and it all just fell into place and just worked really nicely.

When filming we made sure we were very careful with the candles making sure we didn't burn ourselves or set fire to our hair!we kept the camera away from the water and if it came close held it very tight with strap available. With this filming we were cautious and aware of everything

Only problems we had when we were filming is that because we had actually run the bath i was sat in it got so hot in the bathroom that it made it harder to breath so lip syncing was a little bit harder to do, you'll see in our bleep out video how i run out of breath. But we got all our footage and that is the most important thing.

Video so far

filming 4

Beach filming – 4th session from fayefletcher

After our 3rd filming

This was our 3rd lot of filming! for the first section of the day it took us back to south weald where we had originally filmed for our practice filming. We decided to use our part we had filmed and edited for the 'cha cha cha' part of the song as it worked so well and looked so effective. We both agreed how much we liked it for the section of the song, but we also agreed that it needed to be re-filmed especially as i had had all my hair cut off and would no longer have fit with the video. For the section we wanted to use a different outfit and we had a few possibilities but we wasn't sure but we put this one on and it worked really well and was happy how it looked on camera. The only problems we had was the weather! it had been previously raining quite a lot and made the ground around where we were filming very slippery but also added some fun to the filming, where we had filmed was quite sheltered by all the trees so the ground was okay which was very lucky.

This section was the last part we filmed in the day it was really quick and easy to film so we left it till last. We filmed this part just to add some cool effects to the video and fit with the alternative music. This was for our concept section of the video if we included it in the video. We wanted to create a mysterious feel to this part of the video so with Faye's shisha pen she blew smoke out in various styles and captured it with different shots and angles.It only took a short time period therefore it won't be too disappointing if we don't use the footage.

'now you see me, now you don't' which would be the narrative section of the video. We wanted to film someone younger and in this case it was lucky that Faye knows someone close to her family who was willing to take part. We saw a John Newman video and this is where we found our inspiration... The theme of the visuals was to link with the lyrics - 'gone to find a place for us to hide' - where Faye would be the mother and Georgia would be the child. Therefore both of them representing the thirteen and thirty five year old in the song. The filming didn't happen how we had pictured it to. It was a lot harder to find a suitable location and even though we had one planned, there were a lot more cars parked around and just didn't have such a good effect. However, we will keep all of the footage because it isn't too bad and once it's edited, it could look better.

Other artist website research

Website analysis from fayefletcher

Merchandise

 After researching into all different artists websites we found that majority of websites had the artists merchandise on the last couple of pages. The merchandise is available all year round which allows fans to buy it ready for if they go and see the artist in concert or just to collect because of their interest in the artist.
 we looked at pricing and design in particular with the merchandise. We felt some of the pricing was unrealistic and varied a lot depending on the popularity of the artist, because of our artist not being as main stream and probably not as popular as someone like Beyonce we made our merchandise a lot more realistic and done a small collection instead of everything from t-shirts to pens etc... We settled with doing a woman's and mans t-shirt, a key ring and a tote bag.                                                                                                                          

woman's and men's t-shirt = £22.00

            tote bag = £10.95
             key ring = £1.25

 We chose these prices because we feel they are reasonable because the design allows the customer to wear it whenever they want because it doesn't have anything obvious that makes it look like a t shirt you would wear only to a concert. The key ring is very reasonable price and allows everyone to be able to buy something if they want to. The tote bag is a bit more expensive because we noticed that the tote bags on other artists website are more highly priced than imagined so we initially just followed the trend on this one.

We created our design basically from our artist name. Her name is Lila Eden and so from that we thought garden of Eden, to then Adam and eve (now the name of our fans) and then the apple from Adam and eve.

With this we then googled apples - we didn't like the original

picture of just plain apples because it just would not have looked good on the merchandise. We then googled drawings of apples which came up with more

artistic photos and think it suited our artist a lot more. Once we had found the image we wanted to use we found pictures of plain key rings, t-shirts and bags then simply used word to layer them over the top of each other, i chose word to do this because word now allows you to change the color/shade of the image so for ours i used a more cream based to add an old effect to it. i chose to this because i think it matched with the fact that Adam and eve is a exxxxxxtremley old story and wanted to add the vintage effect which is popular with our target audience.

Instagram

Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users.Initially a purely photo-sharing service, Instagram incorporated video sharing in June 2013, allowing its users to record and share videos lasting for up to 15 seconds. The addition was seen by some in the technology media as Facebook's attempt at competing with Twitter's Vine video-sharing application

 
We created an instagram for our artist Lila Eden, we uploaded photos that showed our artist and gave her some personality. We edited photos using the different filters available from the app. We think making the instagram makes our artist more real as a lot of celebrities have instagram to keep their fans updated and be able to show their fans their interests and some of their personaltiy.

What's next

Current video and feedback

After our 2nd filming

This was our 2nd lot of filming. When we first picked the location we hadn't actually visited it and couldn't view it on Google maps as it was a rooftop. But the location was actually perfect for filming and looked so effective on camera. The footage we got for this section was for the ending of the song where the song becomes to evoke more emotion. We decided the rooftop for this section because its a lot more dramatic than our other setting and meant we could have a view, multiple settings + shots and the wind blowing in my hair to add to the effect. It all just worked so well and we were so happy with the footage once we had uploaded it.

We used a brick wall, storage box, rubbish heap, stairs and edge of the roof as all our settings we didn't not like any of the setting we used which was just so successful.

The problems we had with  the setting was that although the outfit looked really good it was really cold as you can imagine mid December outside in a mesh dress with no coat wasn't really very ideal but i'm glad i went through the cold because the footage we got was really good. The stairs that we filmed on were also very slippery so we really had to be careful of this but nothing went wrong at all just that it was cold! 

some of the images we got from the filming come out really well! and could be something that we look at for using on our digipak or website.