The above picture is the second state which the website was in. The first state (not worth posting) is just a blank white background. We decided to make the background black as it is a code and convention of rock music to have a darker set of colours, mixed with light colours on top to offer a contrast. The colour black connotes darkness, misery and evil. This is relevant to the genre as quite a lot of rock music has dark musical themes and dark lyrics, but also can have much lighter themes and lyrics. Based on the research on website homepages, having a black background is quite a standard code and convention for website design for rock bands.
This picture is of the 1st stage of development of the website homepage. This picture was included as part of the link to a video archive (would work with further development). We chose this image as it is a picture of the whole band together, so it is clear that the user is on the right web page. We decided to feather the edges of the picture as it makes it sit nicer on the page.
We put the text "Stentorian Video Archive" next to this image as, previously stated, it would be the link to the video archive, if the website were to be further developed. We mirrorred the text and offsetted the refelected text as we saw it on one of the website's we analysed as part of our research. This works well as it makes the website look a lot more dynamic, and the font we used looks professional, yet not too formal, although, we couldn't have used a font like we used for the title of the album as it would make the website look unprofessional and make it look like a novice website designer had designed it.
There is a subtle difference between this picture and the previous picture, this being that we placed a filter over the text. This filter gives the effect that makes the font look like it is a type of metal, which has been cut and slashed. This is a brilliant effect to have on the text. It gives the idea in the audiences mind that the music is rugged, raw and aggressive, something which audiences relate to rock music quite a lot, and a code and convention of rock music website designs is to distort text and sometimes images to make them look for organic and raw, which is a representation of the image rock musicians are trying to give. This is because rock music is suppost to be the 'real' music, and isn't suppost to be controlled by large media corporations and record labels, although from our research, we can gather that a large majority of major rock bands are controlled by major record labels, due to the major record labels having more power, money and resources than an individual record label.
This image shows the stage where we added the title of the album this website is currently promoting. The title of the album is "The Unseen", which is the album this whole project is based around. You can read about the band Stentorian, which we based this coursework around here. The title, The Unseen, is very fitting to the rock music genre as it can represent all of the corporate and government conversations which we do not get to see, which happen everyday. The font we decided to use for the title is professional, yet dynamic, offering a good blend of professional clear characters, while having small details and accents on the first letter of the words, for example on the U in Unseen, it has small parts coming off of it, making it more interesting to the eye. Again, we decided to put the filter accross the text as it gives it that same metal, rustic, organic feel, which is something which rock music represents, and tries to promote within the music industry.
The previous two pictures showed the development of the "Register for Email updates" page, which again could be made to work with further development. A simple hyper-link to another page within the site with the web page to fulfil the needs of a email updates registration page could easily be created. We chose to use the same font for the register for email updates section, as it keeps a recurring theme, which is very important in a promotion package like this, as sub-conciously the reader of these texts knows that it is the same package, and on a concious level, they know it is as they recognise it from the other texts. We also chose this as it is a formal, but not boring text which allows us to have neat writing, but still not have bland and uninviting text on our homepage. We reflected the text again to offer a recurring theme within the web page, as again it allows the reader of the text to know that they are viewing a media creation from the same promotion package, and it creates the recurring theme which offers an aesthetic appeal. We decided to place the filter over the text again, which again, offers the aesthetic appeal, and creates the recurring theme again, which allows users to understand the text more as they relate each text to one another, giving all the texts we have to create more of a context and appeal.
The previous 5 slides show the production and creation of the media player, embedded into our website. We decided to include this feature as 40% of our audience who filled out our research questionnaire agreed that a media player is important on a web page for a band. We created the music player with a selection of shapes, so this media player wouldn't be able to be developed further with the software we have at our disposal. We both feel that the media player is aesthetically appealing and, if it was a real media player would offer very easy use to our audience, the people visiting the website. The media player encoumpasses a volume control, which would use a click and drag control interface, which also has a visual display of how loud it is. These two parts of the media player are the strait line with the square on it, representing the volume control, and the square with the different sized half circle shapes represent the visual display of the volume. The triangle in between these two features the play button. If it were a real media player, when the user presses play, it will automatically change into a pause button, allowing the user to pause what ever media is playing at any time. Our media player is very dynamic in the way it would work if it were to be developed further as a real website. We decided to put the filter over the media player as well as it again offers the continuous theme, and is again, aesthetically pleasing. It also gives the media player in particularly a raw aggressive feel.
In these next few images, the main content of the web page is added. These are the images. We took several images for this coursework and selected the best ones to be featured on the productions. These images were taken by Sean Davies, and the band featured within the pictures are Stentorian, at one of their practise studio's. This is an image of Stentorians bass guitar player, Dan Linehan. We chose this image as we feel it encompasses an iconic rock stance (the foot on the amp, playing your heart out) and the positioning of the bass guitar in the foreground offers a great example of rock iconography. This is important in media texts as iconography helps to build stereotypes, which is what our audience base their views and opinions of media texts on. For example, if the person featured in the picture was in tracksuit bottoms and a pair of Nike trainers, holding a bass guitar, the viewer of the text would be confused as stereotypically, people who would wear those clothes would not be the musical type, whereas someone in a black T-shirt, wearing jeans is more the type of person that springs to mind when they think of a rock musician. The amp, which the subject of the image has his foot on, also offers iconographic value. A rock musician stereotypically has a large amplifier. The amp we used in the image was the biggest amp we could get our hands on, and we feel that the images came out very well, and the reason for it was because we had the right iconography to do so. The amp allows the user to understand that this is a gigging, recording, live band, which has technical equipment, so the user of these texts wants to maybe look them up, see where their next live performance is etc. The wires on the floor, along with some plastic bags, presumably for rubbish are iconographic and stereotypical of rock musicians. They like to release the image that they don't care about being neat and tidy they just want to play and create music which people enjoy listening to, so having their wires all over the place at practise isn't a big deal, as well as having a few small bags lying around doesn't either. As Sean is a photography student, he has access to a very powerful SLR camera, so we placed another filter over the lens, which gave the image a more darkened sepia effect. We both feel that this effect worked extremely well and offered good results to our media texts. The chandalier also helped add to this effect as it shone a different light down onto the images, which allowed us to experiment a little more with different filters and effects.
The second image we decided to put on the web page was this image of the rhythm guitarist, Mike Gaines. We decided to use this image as again, the guitar is in the foreground of the shot, and you can see the whole body of the guitar, including the detail on the scratch plate and control knobs. This particular guitar is iconic of rock music as it is a Gibson Firebird. This guitar has been used by many great rock guitarists including, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Brian Jones. Mike is in a typical rock stance again, having his feet spread wide, and in the flow of head banging. Mike's amp cannot be seen in this image as it has been cropped down to fit the size of the web-page, but the bass players (Dan Linehan) amp can be seen in the background of the image. This image has been constructed so that the audience of the text can, based on stereotypes again build up an image in their minds of what this band is about. We again have the wires all over the floor in no particular order. Mike's clothes are typical of rock culture. He has no designer labels, he simply has a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, this is typical of a rock musician as material belongings do not matter so much to them, stereotypically, so they are content with the clothes they have.
The next image we decided to include was this image of the lead singer Adam Campbell. We decided to use this image as he is swinging the microphone around, that is the reason you cannot see the top of the microphone, although you can see the lead which is it attached to. In the image he is looking away from the camera, this is because he is communicating with the band, as at this point, the lead guitarist, Ben Harris was soloing, so he was communicating with him when they should come back into the song they were playing. He is again, wearing jeans, although he has a jumper, it is iconic of rock musicians that they again, don't have all the designer labels under the sun, they just want to get down and play their music. The mixer and speaker which the band decide to play Adam through is not in this shot, again, as it needed to be cropped down so it could fit on the page, so it is again the bass players amp which is in this shot. This is iconic for rock music as rock musicians have loud amps, which are generally quite big. The chandalier in the background of this image gives a brilliant effect on the image as it shines a dimmer, but more orange light down onto the room, along with the filters used on the image, it created a very rustic and organic look, which is definately something which is iconic of rock music.
The next, and final image we decided to use was this image of the lead guitarist, Ben Harris. We decided to use this image as it has the same iconic rock stance as the bass player, the foot on the amp. The guitar in this shot is absolutely fantastic. It is a variation of a Gibson Les Paul guitar, many legendary guitarists have used this guitar including Jimmy Page, Les Paul and Eric Clapton. The turtle shell design on the guitar is brought our fantasticly by the lighting conditions and the contrast between the black and the design is really magnified. Ben is again, in stereotypical rock clothes, a black T-shirt and jeans, which is a stereotypical view, as not all rockers dress like this, but as stated before, stereotypes allow viewers of media texts to understand the meaning behind the text, without actually understanding what the creators of the text want them to understand. The amplifier which is in the image is iconographic of rock music as it is something which all rock musicians will have, so it helps to build up an image in the mind of the viewer of the text. Again the mixture of the chandalier and the filters on the camera lens blend to make a fantastic mixture of light and cast brilliant shadows and emphasis on the foreground of the shot.
The previous 8 images were of the construction of the index/navigation section of the homepage. We decided to make the index like this as it is slightly different to a standard index on a website homepage, but still offers great functionality, but I feel it sits on the page a lot more dynamically. We made this index by having individual text boxes with a border around it, and then slightly slanted them so the whole thing was on a slight slope, which gave the index a much less uniform look on the page. We chose the sections in the index carefully, we needed to cover a broad range of pages on the website in only a few boxes. We decided to have a homepage, a news page, a photo gallery, an on line shop, links to social networking sites, a gig list, a music archive and a video archive. This index would be on all of these pages when you navigate through the website, if it were to be further developed. The home page is featured so you can access the homepage where ever you are on the site. The news page is so that fans can keep up to date with the band, and see what they are up to. The photo gallery would be a place for photos to be uploaded, either by a hired photographer or fan taken photos. The on line shop would be there so fans could buy official merchandise. The links to the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, would be there so they could keep in touch with the band at all times, but could also be expanded to venues the band are playing at etc. The gig list would be there so fans could look at up and coming gigs and tours so they could see if they can make it to any of them. The music section would be an expanded version of the media player on the home page, where the user could select what songs they want to stream for free. The clips section would be short video clips of the band live, either from professional recordings or fan made recordings.
These final 2 images showed the final section of the web page being created. The banner. This is the very first thing our audience see when they log onto the website, so this is very important. The "Stentorian" writing is actually one of the logo's used by the band on their facebook page and youtube accounts, which they gave us permission to use. This font is again very good as it allows the user to be able to read the text easily, but still not be a bland boring piece of text. The union jack in the middle of the "o" in Stentorian also ties in nicely to our research as 20% of the people who answered our questionnaires said that they liked the union jack on some of the DVD covers we asked about. We used the same font to make the dot com part of the banner as otherwise it would look silly. We decided to put the filter over the text again as it makes the theme more recurring and the audience know that they are looking at the Stentorian website.
To find the final analysis of our website please click here.
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