Music website analysis - Eminem.

Eminem

http://www.eminem.com/

When deciding which artists' website to analyse, I took into consideration who can be considered unqiue and different. I picked Eminem.

His website gives fans and his audience a chance to connect with him on a personal level and find out more information on his tour dates, newest videos, newest songs and merchandise. There are many tabs on the website in order for fans to see a range of information on Eminem; News, Music, Events, Videos, Forum & Store. When scrolling over these tabs they turn red so you know which one you are about to click on.

The background on the website is a picture of Eminem himself, with his back to the camera, looking over a city. This can express his dangerous side in which can be seen in his music when he raps and the messages he tries to portray.

There are videos on the homepage of the website, showing a video that is quite recent with comments. This shows how Eminem/his mangement team inform fans of what he is up to and give them a chance to comment on it.

Further down the page there are news updates, also keeping fans updates on what he is up to. This shows the link between fans and Eminem. Below every video there is evidence of convergence as there are links to twitter, facebook and google +.

Examples of digipaks.

As you can see in this album covers, the main focus is the artist and there isn't much text on them. This is what I have done in my digipak. It engages the audience as its eye catching and straight to the point.

Analysis of my digipak

This is the digipak I have created for the performer in my music video, Jester. I have named the album by the artist name as I feel rap albums are normally short and simple album names and get straight to the point to what it's about. The main focus of this picture is Jester himself, and is in the center of the album cover...
I have used bold fonts to stand out to the audience and a small amount of text so the album is not covered with writing which can be off putting for audience as they normally want to know who the artist is and get a feel of it.

The back of my digipak is contains another picture of 'Jester' and a track list, which is normally seen on digipaks. I've added a barcode to make it look more realistic and copyright information at the bottom, which is again seen on album covers.

My digipak

Analysis of an artists poster work - Eminem

Audience feedback & changes made

When we were editing, we had various members of the classes in our years look at our footage to see what they felt could be improved. Below are the list of things we were advised on and how we changed them:

1. Make the edits cut in time to the beat of the song. This is often seen in rap videos as the beat of the song is the main aspect of it and is normally heard throughout the whole music video. This made the editing process much longer yet had a better effect on the video at the end.
2. Use different footage instead of the same over and over again. When filming, we filmed at different locations, yet not the locations I wish we had filmed at. The locations are what I personally feel have the let the video down and made it less professional. However, when editing we tried to use different locations we filmed at to make the music video more interesting and different.
3. Not too use too many effects. In rap videos, effects are not used throughout the video as the message of the video is harder to get across if there was, as the audience would concentrate on the effects. Rap videos consist of lyrics with meaning and ideas so we ensured we didn't use many effects so the audience could hear and visual what is being said properly.

Problems that occured

• Due to our group having different timetables, we found it difficult to work around each other as many of us have weekend jobs and long hours. During school hours, our frees were not the same between the 4 of us and later into the term, one member of our group had to leave due to personal reasons, which meant between the 3 of us we had to ensure we could meet up. We could have tried harder to meet up after school yet with the work load from other subjects taking up all our time, this made it harder for us to get as much filming as we could done. 
• Our performer does go to our college, yet outside he also had many other things he was doing. We did consider this before we asked him to be in our music video but ensured us he would try to be available as much as possible which he did so. Due to his confidence and the fact he was not camera shy at all, we did not need to film as much as he was getting the performance right the first or second time around. Yet we still filmed more just incase we needed it.
• Disagreements within our group did occur yet I tried to listen to the other members of my group as much as I could to ensure everyones ideas were heard. Not everyone in the group put in the same amount of effort and I personally felt I was up in my frees and any spare moment trying to edit the footage and blog about what we had been doing. Overall, we all pulled our socks up to ensure our final product was successful. 
• Due to our teachers introducing us to a new software, FinalCut Express, we were ensure on how we would get on with editing. We used iMovie in year 12, so this software was new and complex. However, when playing around and reading up on it, I found ways to experiment and make our music video more realistic. The lip syncing was easier and this helped to make our music video look good.