Social Network Pages

Social Media is one of the biggest forms of media nowadays if not the biggest. Social media is a great and free way to promote anything. We have decided to create a Twitter and Facebook page for our artist. Currently the page is small and lacks followers but we hope to increase the size of our fans. 

I created our twitter page which can be found by searching @RMasters_Music on Twitter - 

Twitter works by giving you the option to follow other people to keep updated on them and what that are doing on a daily basis, this gives fans more interaction with there fans. Our artist is up and coming so it is crucial that he keeps interactive with his fans and updates them with his work. 

The second social media we have created for out artist was the Facebook page which Liam has created. This is similar to the twitter page but Facebook has more registered users and the fans can comment on videos, pictures and voice their opinion by commenting on what the artist uploads. We have created this so we can get feedback off our fans.

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Contact Sheets

During my planning of the digipack I created a contact sheet to determine what photos could be used for my poster and CD cover. I made the images in thumbnail icons and printed them out to view them all quick and easy. I highlighted the photos I thought would be good for my digipack. I decided what photos 'looked good' by the angle of the shot and the contents of the image. Here is the contact sheets I used -

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Album Covers

Our next task is to create an album cover for our artist. Before I start to work on our album cover I will be looking at other artists in my genre and see how they display their album covers. Since dance music is not popular for albums it is hard to compare album covers. The dance music genre artists mainly produce singles rather than albums but I have come across a few albums I can take inspiration off.

One of the first things I have come across is that dance music albums dont tend to sell well as a hardback copy as the main source of selling is on Beatport and iTunes, this is for different reasons. Firstly the online downloadable versions are cheaper and easier to get than going out and buying a hardback copy. Another reason is the fact the genre does not have many artists producing albums but rather singles. 


The first album cover I have looked at is our songs original artist Hardwell. This is the album cover for his album that is due to be released on the 23rd of January 2015, it is titled 'United we are'. 

This album cover is very nice on the eye, it contains a mix of of colours in the background which work very well with the image of the artist. The album cover seems very basic but I think because Hardwell is the biggest artist in his genre he does not have to produce an exciting album cover since its going to sell no matter what the cover looks like. 

The thing I would take from this album is the simplicity of having the artist in the centre of the cover and a background to compliment what he is wearing (Colours matching). The artists picture has clearly been edited for him to look better and a bit cartoonish, I would take this into account when creating my own and maybe edit our artists picture with some sort of effect.   

The second album I am going to look at is Calvin Harris's 'Motion'. Calvin Harris is the most popular DJ and producer in the UK. This album debuted on the UK charts at number 2 and sold over 35,000 copies in its first week. This is what the album cover looks like - 

This is one of the most basic album covers i have come across, it is a basic background that supports the title name of 'Motion' as it is some sort of object moving. Then just the title of the artist and album in white bold text. I would want to avoid an album cover like this as its to basic in my opinion. I believe he has choose a basic cover for the same reason as Hardwell. 

Calvin Harris does not need an amazing album cover to sell it as he is well known and will sell his album based on his name and not the cover. I think I would have to create a eye catching album cover since my artist is not well known and would not sell his album based off his 'name'. 

The purpose of an album cover is to entertain the audience member visually and then draw them into buying the album. The Users and gratifications theory asks how and why media audiences will consistently seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. The idea behind the theory asks “Why do people use the media and what do they use them for?”, and it discusses as to how the users choose media to satisfy specific needs on a social basis, relaxation basis, or even a basis to escape from reality itself. This theory can be applied to album covers as it covers all of the users and gratification's, for example people may see this album and begin using it as a social talk point. This theory says the audience is active and intercepts media in there own way and questioning it rather than being passive and accepting the forced ideology behind it. 

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Album Review - Borgore - The Buygore Album

Today one of my favourite artists released his new 2015 album which is titled the Buygore Album. As its rare for dance music artists to release albums this was quite exciting and I had been looking forward to this album for quite some time. I purchased the album off iTunes for £5.00, it contains eight songs in total. The genre of this album is Electro house music/Dubstep and Big room house music (all sub-genres of Dance music). 

Borgore (Asaf Borger) is an Israeli producer and DJ who in the last five years has pushed and broken the boundaries of dance music as we know it successfully creating his own self titled genre of hard house, Gorestep. Borgore destroys dancefloors with his heavy bass and dirty lyrics that keep his consistently sold out shows in a state of energy and sweat. Borgore knows how to bring out the fun, crazy and wild partier in all of us, and he does it without the violent and dark thrasher lyrics typically heard from his predecessors in heavy metal and rock groups. 

Borgore might be one of the craziest live acts in the EDM scene right now, but he’s also known by those close to him as one of the hardest working producers, constantly trying new things and working on fresh music to push the boundaries of his genre and dance music even further.

Borgore is known for his unique sounds and being one of the most individual artists in his genre, this album only makes this argument stronger. This type of album is directed towards the american dance culture as this type of music is not very popular in europe. This is the second album of Borgore I have ever purchased and I was not disappointed with what I received. Each song is energetic, unique and great in their own ways. 

The complete track listing for BORGORE's The Buygore Album is: 

1. BLVKSTAR & Ookay - Blow Your Mind Ft. Borgore 
2. Borgore & Jauz - Lindsay Lohan 
3. Borgore - Cant Squad With Us 
4. Borgore & Dan Farber - Dolphin Attack 
5. Borgore & Dotcom - Nope Ft Shay Gray 
6. Borgore & Sikdope - Space Kitten Invasion 
7. Borgore & Riggi & Piros - D.A.R.E. 
8. Borgore - Set Free Ft Yael

I have already recommended this album to my friends who also like this genre of music. My favourite song off this album would be 'D.A.R.E'. Overall this album is great and another step into the unexplored parts of dance music and I believe the dance music scene will profit from this album and encourage more artists to start creating more uncommon and less generic music. 

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Final draft of music video

This is our final draft for our music video, It has took it many hours of filming and editing to create this video and we are very proud with the outcome. This video is all three of us combined we each edited different parts of the video. 

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Social Network Safety

As our group will be creating two different social network accounts for our artist we will need to go over social network safety as social network can be very dangerously used to attack, harass and hack people. It can lead to peoples personal information being stolen and their contact information being leaked. Their is also lots of viruses that people can trick you into clicking and downloading through social networks. I will be going over the best ways to stay safe on social network. Hopefully this will help our group stay clear of any trouble on our accounts. The following is a guide on steps to take to stay safe.

1. Don’t click on unknown links.

Sharing links via Facebook or Twitter is a common act, but avoid clicking on links where the destination website cannot be seen in the URL (as is increasingly common with URL-shortening applications such as bit.ly). These links can open you up to malicious attacks and place sensitive company data in a vulnerable position

2. Don’t share personal information.

Avoid including personally identifiable information when communicating online, such as date of birth, postal address, and certainly not bank details. Savvy online criminals can piece together information from different sites in order to steal individual identities and run up massive bills on company credit cards, or even create a fake passport in an employee’s name.

3. Set strong passwords.

Simple acts, such as developing strong passwords that are changed at least every 45-60 days, can dramatically improve IT security with minimal intrusion on time. Encourage employees not to save passwords on default settings when using the internet, as anyone who misplaces their laptop can make it very easy for the unscrupulous to access sensitive data.

4. Beware fake friends - Cat-fishing.

A common phishing attack that users are seeing occurs when criminals hijack social networking accounts and distribute messages to all the contacts in that individual’s contact book. Clicking on a message from a ‘fake friend’ such as this can lead to an external site that allows malicious code to enter your computer system. If you receive a message that seems out of character, always confirm who the sender is before opening to ensure this is really the person sending you the link.

5. Invest in security software.

Don’t cut corners when it comes to anti-virus software. You might think you’re being economical in the short term by simply downloading some free software online but once a malicious piece of software manages to enter your computer, it can cost a fortune to fix, and that £60 can start to feel like a bargain. There are also many free trails of software which can help out for months.

By following these steps we will ensure we are not at risk. 

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Artist Logo

Me and John had the task of creating the Artist logo, Firstly we looked at other major artists logos to get inspiration such as these: 

 

                                                 

As you can see the logos are not very thrilling and do not stand out much, the only thing that separates most of the logos is the font of the text and a few added effects. We took this into account and began drafting our first logo on photoshop, John came up with this logo as our first draft: 

We tried to keep the logo simple, but with its own type of style. After reviewing this with each other we decided to create another logo to see if we could create anything better. After another attempt we came up with this logo which was inspired from the hardwell logo. This is our official artist logo - 

We have used a simple style with our logo, we have kept the font consistent and the colour of the logo black. We decided to underline the logo with a line that comes from the beginning letter to give a nice effect to text.

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Social Network

We have to set up two social networks for our artist to promote him and his new music video. In order to create an effective social network I am going to look at some of the same types of artists social networks and take ideas from theirs as this will inspire me when creating my own. 

I will be looking at the artists - Martin Garrix, Hardwell and Armin Van Buuren social networks to get ideas for creating my own. 

The first artist's social network I am looking at is Martin Garrix's Facebook page - 

Martin Garrix's facebook page is very informative of his current goings on. He has a header of himself performing at EDC Las Vegas which is one of the biggest festivals in the world. This facebook page offers the user to view all of Martins photos and updates that he is posting. This page is very well done and gives everything the viewer needs. I would use our artists social network similar and update all of the fans of the current goings on and share photos.

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Thumb Nails

I have created thumbnails for my Digi-pack, this includes my CD cover/Album cover and tour poster.

Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words.

Here is the thumbnail for my Album cover, this includes my CD cover - 

The reason I did not sketch my thumbnails on paper is because I am much more comfortable using online drawing since I am more suited to using technology. I do not like sketching on paper since I am a bad drawer so I prefer to use computer technology for any sketches I create.

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Music video planning - Storyboards

As part of our groups planning we created storyboards to help plan our music video. Our storyboard should contain some of the following information: What characters are in the frame, and how are they moving? What are the characters saying to each other, if anything? How much time has passed between the last frame of the storyboard and the current one? Where the "camera" is in the scene? Close or far away? Is the camera moving?

Last year I did not create a storyboard for my video and this meant when it came to filming our video it was very chaotic and improvised, this time I have planned every scene out with the correct timings in sync with the song. When it comes to filming the video I may change some shots or scenes but these will be minor tweaks. Below are the first set of storyboards I have created - 

EDIT: I have finished filming of my music video. When following the storyboard I encountered some problems with shots and our actor John left the group so as a group we could not carry on with the narrative we planned out. I improvised some scenes in the video with feedback from my teacher who gave us advise on the ideas. My cousin who is studying media helped us out with the storyboard as she had lots of ideas that improved our video.

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