Pop Website Research

I have researched into the top female pop artist and what there websites look like, so that I can create a website that fits our genre. Looking through these websites has pointed some things out to me that seem to be key to a pop website. 

1. The artists's picture must be on the homepage and in at least two of these examples they are the background of the homepage.
2. Hash tags are very popular and almost all celebrities/stars have them, so the artist needs to have a link to their twitter account in plain sight.
3.  Most of the websites are very clean with the exception of Miley Cyrus. But each is crafted to its specific audience and fans.
4.  Pop ups - Almost all of these websites had a pop up of the artists newest single.
5. The websites aren't complex, they are easy so they can be navigated around with ease to find what ever they are looking for.
6. Social media is a key part of music videos its a way for the artist to get known by more people and therefore most artists have at least 3 social network links on their websites.
7. The URL is almost always the artists name. 

More Album Art

We have decided on a name for our artist that isn't the original artist's name Icona Pop. As a group we decided on Xena as it is a shorter more pop style name. The style I have used her allows the image to be used multiple times and keep a sense of how important colour is to the video. I used a grunge style font to keep with the costume choices we made when filming. It also makes it more appealing to a younger audience. 

A lot of female artist have the name of the album as well as there name on the cover but use a specific font to make their brand more identifiable. In the cover I have created I have chosen only to use the name to establish her as an artist. Although the name of the album is included its a lot smaller than the artists name and it also is usually less visible. For example on the Jessie J album cover it is in white font below her name and on the Lady GaGa album it is placed on her glasses but neither of which draw a massive amount of attention to the album name. 

Glow Paint Outfit Ideas

Idea One - 

The way we plan to film this means that you won't really see a lot of the outfit the focus is more on the glow in the dark make up and how it looks against a black background. I think this outfit is more sophisticated and has class to it with the added jewellery to make an effect. Although personally I prefer the second outfit idea.

Idea Two - 

I like the idea that the outfit is all black but I feel that we should have some colour in the outfit as the video focuses so much on colour I think it would look in consistent. The best colour to use would probably be red, even if we use the darker red it will still stand out more than a just black outfit. The jewellery isn't so much of an issue and neither are the shoes all though as this is more fancy than the other outfits that we have used we want her to wear heels to compliment the outfit as well as to showcase how important this part of the video is.

Experimenting with Wix

Official Website for Icona Pop 

First I looked into the original website for the artist. Their website is very different to their genre of pop, the lack of colour and simplicity makes the website very plain. The homepage displays the logo for the group and a video to their new song. There is also links to a blog, their other music, videos, live and merchandise. I wanted to research into this so that I could see how the original artist portrayed themselves and how I would do this differently. This also gives me an idea of how to utilise the website to sell the artist and also make the it more realistic to an actual artists website.

Experiment Using Wix - http://nicolasuzanneevans.wix.com/iconapopdesign

Here is my initial design, this is my first time using the site therefore I did run into a few hiccups but having experimented with the designs I am happy that when I create the real website I will feel more confident. This is just a prototype of the home page. I have used a completely white background to hopefully make the colours more vibrant. I may not use this in my actual website as it isn't very eye catching as I hoped it would be. The image within the centre circle is a paint splatter which links to the key ideas we have in the video. I have also added one of my ideas for an album cover to this to promote it on the home page. I want to work on the logo more and make it more relevant to our genre. I liked the font choices I made as it is feminine enough to match the artist as well as matching the genre of pop. It also is the sort of font used for soft grunge.

Mood Board - I Love It Ideas

The general link I have realised within this mood board is that we want the video to stand out and be bright to match the song's pace and lyrics. The original video includes some of these elements but I believe that with the use of paint dust we are going make our key focus the colour. The makeup and costume used for our key singer should be bright but also reflect the personality she is trying to convey from the song/lyrics. The toy cars, woodland and clothing being thrown out of the window are all separate elements we are keen to include in our video. The toy cars and clothes are connected to lyrics which we want to develop and the woodland is the setting we are thinking about using as the bright paint would contrast the natural colours of the trees.

Audience Research

Here is a mind map of idea on what we should ask whilst doing audience research, we will carry out our research on teenagers aged 16-18 as this is the key audience that listen to pop music. We are drawing up a questionnaire that will cover the main questions and not be too long as we know from last year if the questionnaire is too long people are less likely to fill it in correctly or want to fill it in at all. We hope to be able to get an idea of what viewers enjoy in a music video as well as being able to get a general idea of what music people listen too. There will also be an aspect of the questionnaire that will link directly to our ideas to see if the audience think that it is a good idea for the genre and song we have pick as well as getting to know if they believe it will capture viewer attention and be unique. 

Music Genre - Pop