Research on website design

Before we can create our own website homepage, we first have to research the main features of a homepage and find out what is essential to include.

• Text
  -Background does not interrupt the text
  -Text is big enough to read, but not too big
  -The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear


• Navigation
  -Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
  -Navigation is consistent throughout web site
  -Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are, what page of the site they are currently on


• Links
  -Link colors coordinate with page colors
  -Links are underlined or bold so they are instantly clear to the visitor


• Graphics
  -Buttons are not too big and an eye sore
  -Every graphic link has a matching text link
  -Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colors
  -Animated graphics turn off by themselves


• General Design
  -Pages download quickly
  -Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
  -Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages

Next, I focused more specifically on what to include for a music artits' website. To do this I looked at many singers official websites including Jazmine Sullivan and Beyonce, and found that they had very similar features. On each homepage they had the artists picture at the very top of the page and had a horizontal menu bar beneath it, they had news about the artists recent accomplishments and upcoming events and most included a recent music video. Furthermore, most homepages also included links to: video's, pictures, a biography, events, news and a blog. Therefore, these are all things that we must take into consideration when creating our own website homepage.

However, after considering whether to create a website homepage or an advertisement, for example a poster, we decided to produce an advertisement as it would be much less time consuming and would help to promote the CD.

editing

We have started to edit the first 30 seconds of our music video which invloves one of our dancers which messes up the dance routine due to her thinking about her releationship with her boyfriend. Our group has also decided to enhance colour to this using filter effects, brightness and contrast, it has high key lighting effect with a red tone. this has created a sepia effect in which our film look old as if we were refering to past events. We used close ups from our footage as it allows the audience to focuses on the main dancer as its a major part of star vehicle.

Also we have edited the main dance routine, using straight cut transitions which features 3 dancers this will match the rest of the choruses throughout the song, this will create an emotional atmosphere as she is talking about her relationship with her boyfriend.

Today we have also logged and captured our footage of Castlefield where our two actors are having a discussion over a table we are now in the process of edting this and putting it on our timeline.

What we have done the last couple of weeks

Throughout the last couple of weeks our group has been in Manchester looking for better locations in order to shoot our production.

In the half term week we have filmed our dance production in the Zion arts centre with the help of to female dancers. This went really well and we managed to get all the types of shots we wanted including:

• dolly shot
• Medium shot reflected in the mirror
• high angled
• low angled
• close up
• feet shot
• medium shot
• dolly shot 360

However, before we filmed the final production of our dance we came into collage and

filmed a preliminary version this was to make sure that our shots were perfect and we new exactly what we were doing. We will be posting some of this on our blog at a later date to show our improvements throughout the course.

Our group then went into town at 7.00 in the evening to film the main parts of production which involved a number of people. This was really hard to do as we had to make sure the lighting was good and we could get clear shots. It was also every important that we did`t get any shadows of us filming as this would look unprofessional.

Now we have returned to collage we have started editing our filming and getting most of it on the time line.

In the next couple of weeks we aim to make sure we are doing really well with our editing and if they are any shots we need to redo making sure we get them sorted.