After creating the band and putting them on various social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook, we chose to have a photoshoot of the 'actual' band to have profile pictures and photos for the digipak.
This required research into band photoshoots, clothing, poses and the like. Below are the results.
Firstly, I looked at poses and drew some rough sketches illustrating the variety. Purple are Mallory Knox, red are The Blackout, green are the Coronas and blue are Hurts. Through my research, I have discovered that pockets play an important role- members are commonly seen with their hands in their pockets or belt loops. I can only assume that this is to make that photo plus its subjects more interesting (less passive) and in some in cases, assert the 'manliness' of the members. It could also be interpreted as showing relaxation and carelessness. It is a challenge to see an image of a contemporary band without at least one member having their hands in their pockets.
We decided to take photos of our 'band' in a different style, using the school stage in the canteen and the old parking lot to create an indie vibe. Below are the fruits of our labour.
By comparison to the others, this shoot was a complete success. We had one girl and three guys in the band, making it more conventionally indie. Clothing-wise, (Emma wore her favorite Smiths t-shirt) everyone wore something that they already owned and would wear normally. To make them all look 'cool' and slightly blasé, we asked our members to bring sunglasses- I think Emma's 'Lennon' ones work very well. Conall and Emma brought their guitars and we borrowed a bass and drum set to make 'the band' look more realistic. Although we shot mostly inside the canteen (some of the dining tables are in the background) I think the images look fairly realistic, even though most of them couldn't play a tune.
Here, we posted tweets and uploaded images, making the band appear as real as possible. The effect of this the breaking of the fourth wall between audience and production interaction. 'We' can now interact with the audience- they can tell us what they want, like, dislike and so on, with the second party being able to react directly, without the need of a middleman. Sometime however, this can go wrong and the interaction can go too far- see Jimmy Kimmel's 'Celebrities Read Mean Tweets' segment on YouTube.
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