Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages

Final Music Video

Final Website

http://ezmak1.wix.com/ezmak2

This is a link to my groups final website. We believe that it commits to many conventions to our urban genre that we have chosen. We have taken a lot of conventions mainly from hip hop and rap genres as I analysed hip hop/rap artist websites which I used a lot of ideas from them. For example Waka Flocka and B.O.B.  
We've added links to social media and was able to add in our groups music video. All the photos in the Websites were taken by our group. We chose these photos because they fit to our product genre. 

Digipak Final Product

This is our final Digipak. We like this version a lot better, this is because it is consistent throughout, this is due to there being a reoccouring theme within each of the covers. We used the photos from the outside photoshoot in each of the covers to be able to utilise the brick background, we feel this allowed a sense of continuity within the digipak. Also the font is consistent throughout using the same font for everything rather than using different fonts within certain parts. The colours on this version of the digipak is a lot better than the previous, we can see that the colours are a lot more brighter and vivid. As opposed to the previous digipak where it had very flat colours and was dark. This version also uses the money image more conservatively as it is only slightly visible and isn't used in a cheesy way.

Digipak Preliminary Final Product

This is the first Final Digipak product. However due to our group discussion we decided that we wanted to change this quite heavily. We felt that it wasn't as well edited as we would have liked the back cover to be changed and edited to look more professionally done. The font was different on all of the covers, this doesn't create a sense of identity of the brand that we could have. We felt that it seemed quite rushed and was an over use of money within some of the covers. Therefore we wanted to clean it up and create a sense of identity.

Creating the website #14

Update: I created a smaller banner which enforces a sense of continuity between my pages, i did this by keeping a similar background but making the words 'ez mak' the main image.
I also added more photos to the photo page gallery. As I mentioned in the last update, Wix has a weird automatic photo cropping system for the galleries and resizes the images automatically, however because this is the photo gallery I still used most of the photos we took in the photo shoot and if people would like to see the full image they can just click on them.
Next I hope to do a audience feedback to finalise my website.

Creating the website #13

Update: After a photoshoot i was able to finally change a few things to the website. I changed the main homepage banner at the top but still kept the same kind of colour scheme, I was able to co-ordinate with my group sucessfully to discuss what font to use and ended up using one called 'Phosphate' which was a stock font in photoshop. We believe it does the job and has the sharp gritty kind of look we were looking for. I was also able to add more photos to the homepage gallery, however because the images were so big, some of the photos do not come up well due to Wix's fixed cropping of how the photos show, I had to use the photos that fit right and discard some of the others.
Next I hope to be able to create a smaller banner with just the 'EZ Mak' words to create continuity between pages.

Creating the website #12

Update: I recently started the improvements of the mobile counterpart to the website. I initially thought that everything done on the computer part of the website would transfer seamlessly onto thw website counterpart, however it seemed a little out of edge and not to the same quality to the computer website. Therefore I have started on this. Also I feel as though it would benefit my work as it would show that I have an understanding that not all of my audience want or can browse the web on their computers and therefore go to their phones. I hope to be able to create a similar browsing experience and I can in comparison to my computer website.
I hope to be done with both versions of the website in due time.

Creating the website #11

Update: I have changed the photo at the top of the home page to be edited a little differently, having a less obvious black and white gradient. I was finally also able to find a way to size the resolution of the photo to be enlarged in Wix without it being distorted, this allowed me to actually make it into a banner. I also added a social media bar to the navigation bar. this was a convention i found from looking at other websites.
I was able to add a few more new articles which are in chronological order to encourage continuity. However the scheduled photoshoot is still yet to be commenced therefore i have used a couple stock photos to fill the headline place.
I hope for my group to be able to achieve the photoshoot and finalize the website.

Creating the website #10

Update: I have decided change a few things on the website home page. I have added a banner which shows our artist, this is a convention I found from looking at other websites by the same type of artist, so I have decided to add this. Also I have decided to move the navigation bar down under the banner, this is because it is more practical and allows for easier navigation. However I have only changed this for the homepage and the navigation bar will stay at the top for the rest of the pages and there will be no banner for other pages.
I hope to be able to completely finish the website by adding more pictures and more news.

Creating the website #9

Update: I have added a small shop window on the homepage to show some advertisement for the merchandise on sale. I have found that it is a convention for artist websites to have a shop in many of their pages, nearly all of their pages, so i have decided to implement this.
I have also added a tour date page, however because we don't have any actual tours I have put all the tours as sold out to avoid any buyers.
I hope to be able to finish the website very soon.

Creating the website #8

Update: some new changes on the website, I have decided to enlarge the name 'EZ Mak' this could help show the significance of the name and allows it to stand out a lot more than it had. i have also brought it slightly down to be able to put a banner at the top for some social media links. I have also added the chat box at the bottom on the screen. I have done this to allow a more 'interactive audience' and create a closer link with the listeners.
From the second photo we can see I have made some additions and changes. I have added the comment box below the news to assume a more interactive audience, the box contains more social media links. I have also decided to get rid of the music box which used to be on the right of the screen to now become a social media and mailing list box. All the changes I have made allow a perspective of a community and more interconnectedness through the media.

Creating the website #7

Update: We have decided to change the website background, this is because we thought that the other background didn't fit in with our group and the diamond background went with our branding that we wanted for our group. I have also added a few more pieces of merchandise to the website, these include: A cap and a Hoodie. We still have no photos to put up for our homepage slide but we hope to have the photoshoot done soon and upload some photos within this month. We also hope to be able to finish the whole website and publish it this month.

Creating the website #6

Update: I have added some photos to the website shop and updated the shop so it is functional, the slideshow at the top of the page shows some of the current items in the shop so it is asthetically pleasing and give the shop more content. I have also updated the cart page and added a shopping cart button which links the shop to the cart so customers can 'pay' I hope to be able to update the news and home page soon.

Creating the website #5

Update: Created more merchandise for the EZ Mak shop, I decided to make 2 types of headphones for the shop to give a feel of availability and flexibilty to the 'brand' this makes it seem more prestige and allows me to 'charge' premium prices. I will update the shop soon and hope to be able to put up the digipak and sell it as an album soon.

Creating the webiste #4

Update: I Have now added the Merchandise store to the website, currently I have created 5 products all with the same Diamond logo on it and I am calling it the 'Diamond' collection for obvious reasons. The products I have created are simple but affective as they highly relate to the music genre we have chosen. There are conotations with urban music and 'urban' style clothes. For example Beanies, small pouches and wrist bands, these are loosely linked because it its part of the urban music culture and are seen a lot on hip/hop artists.
I have chosen to create the Diamond collection because we had decided that it would be EZ Mak's (our artists) symbol, as documented on my first website creation post. I hope to be able to create more merchandise for the page and update the slide show on the photo above ^  

Creating the website #3

Update: I have started to add more content to the website. For example I have created some "latest" news such as: a debut single and a merchandise sale, I hope to be able to create a page dedicated to merchandise to show what is 'on sale' I will be able to do this by creating some artist merchandise through editing photos with Adobe Photoshop.
The current video on the page is not our finished music video product but we hope to be able to upload it within the following weeks.

Creating the website #2

Update: We decided to revert to our original layout choice, we have also decided to keep the background for the webstie, this is because we believe it fits in with our music genre.
The old website layout did not seem to fit our music video genre and felt more like a rock/alternative style, this one looks more hiphop and urban which is what we are aiming for.
We also like the slide show in the front of the page which would be very eye catching when we get some photos on to it.

Video Stills

The video files were too big to directly upload to Blogger so I decided to take stills of some of the clips taken from our video shoots in a few locations. These are mostly party shots as that is the main location we wanted for our video. I have chosen to use these specific stills because they show good camera work and shows some common themes within our genre we have chosen. For example, blur shots, Alcohol and Dancing.

-Elijahn

Creating the website (Process)

I will be uploading a step by step process of the creation of my groups website.
I will be documenting any major changes that may happen and upload update photos of it as time goes on.
We have chosen to use this page layout for now. We are still yet to decide on a font so I will be keeping this Default font temporarily. The diamonds across the page were chosen to be our groups symbol as it has links towards their music genre.

-Elijahn

One problem we solved

During filming we realised that, with our song choice we had a hard time creating shots which fit well with our song.
Our original song choice was a remix of Lady Gaga's song 'Applause' however we had a few problems with it. For example, the song had quite a bit of profanity in it and if we cleaned out the profanity from it by putting in silence or scratches to fill the gap it ruined the song. Therefore we changed the song all together. Our current song that we are sticking with is an original by the group we are filming called 'Money flow.' The genre has changed from a rap/hip hop style to an afro beats tune. We believe by doing this it will help ease our production hopefully make it suit better.

Update: The change of genre allowed us to edit the video more successfully and change seemed to be the right choice to make.

-Elijahn

Filming and phtoshoot progress

Update on progress:
Currently we have filmed in 3 locations and have gotten enough shots to be able to start our drafts and editing. So far we have shots of parties and some shots which show the main character lip-syncing and dancing. My group has come together to try and film together to be able to work on the filming and so far we have some material we can use. We also made sure to try and get some pictures of the settings and parties to try and see if we can use them within our other parts of production such as the website and digipak. So far we still believe we need more pictures to be able to make something worth while. However it is still possible for us to make a start on both other projects.

^screen shot from Whatsapp (Iphone app)

-Elijahn

Font Mood board

This is a font mood board that I had created to allow my group to attempt to choose what style we wanted on our products or just to give us an idea of what type of font we may go for. Here i have put together fonts from 2 different websites, and tried to get more gritty or more 'modern' looking fonts to try and link it back to our music genre.

-Elijahn

January Schedule

This is my groups January schedule, Ive decided that most of the work on digipak and website, would be done during the weekdays during school so we would be able to discuss our changes (if any) with eachother while working on the both so we wouldn't run into many problems during the process. Also as usual most of the editing and filming of the music video would be done in the weekends as that is typically when we are all free.
We are also planning to do a photoshoot to be able to get photos for the website and the digipak.

-Elijahn