Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In terms of ancillary feedback, we sketched out our main three ideas for our magazine advert as a small poster and then used the website ‘Poll Everywhere’ in order to gain feedback on which magazine advert design looks the most effective. The website 'Poll Everywhere' is a very effective method of feedback because we could use a large group of students aged 16-20 from our target audience to vote for their favourite poster meaning that the poster will be catered towards our audience and what they like and dislike. The only downfall with the bar chart form of poll everywhere is that the members of the audience cannot comment on why they like one poster more than the other or whether they liked certain aspects of two different posters. However the bar chart is a quick and easy way of discovering the most popular poster design and we can develop it further by asking members of the audience after the poll. To conduct the poll, we labelled the three designs and attached them to a board. We then set up the poll and asked a large group if people in the room to text in either A, B or C to the poll and vote for which poster looks the best. Poster A received the most votes with 50% and so we used this as a basis for the development of our magazine advert:



We used ‘Poll Everywhere’ again for the next piece of feedback on our ancillary tasks. We used a ‘comment wall’ and asked the question ‘What are your opinions on our digipak?’ Again we attached the image of the digipak on the wall at the front of the room and asked the people in the room to text the number with comments about what they thought about our digipak. The comments were all very positive with the most popular comment being about the use of selective colour. The red lips stand out dramatically against the black and white filter while other comments were about the typography looking effective. This form of 'Poll Everywhere' is more useful because the audience can comment on what they think about the digi-pak and this way we know exactly what is working well and we know exactly what we need to improve:

I wanted more in depth feedback on both the digipak and the magazine advert and so decided that the best way to do this was to post both images of the products onto a social media site. I decided to use Facebook because it is the most popular site which meant I would receive a lot of feedback. I asked our audience to post in the comment section their opinions on the ancillary tasks.

Posting on a social media site resulted in being an extremely effective way of receiving feedback from our demographic. Because the people commenting were my Facebook ‘friends’ they were aged between 16 and 30 and this was the target age range for our product. Using Facebook also means that I have taken the audience habits of my psychographic into consideration because Facebook is an extremely popular method of communication and sharing data by our target age group and Facebook is place where they explore new products and videos. The overall reaction was extremely positive with repetitive comments about the black and white filter, the selective colour and typography as well as comments about the interesting images used on the digipak. There are also repetitive comments about how eye catching the two ancillaries’ are, which a very good piece of feedback because the purpose of the magazine advert is to advertise. There is also one comment about the images creating a clear selling point which is helpful feedback coming from our target audience. From this feedback it is very clear that our demographic enjoyed the two products and it is also clear that the two products possess effective synergy, mostly linked by the use of filter, selective colour and typography. One downfall of using Facebook was that the people commenting were my 'friends' which meant they could have been biased however they could comment whatever they wanted and because some comments were repeated it suggests that this is an honest answer and lets us know that this aspect of the digipak is successful because it has been mentioned multiple times.

We posted the three versions of our music video on YouTube and this is useful in attracting the target audience because our music videos appear in the ‘suggested’ section to the right side of the screen when the audience is viewing our artist, Natalie Lungley’s, music. This means that the audience who is interested in Natalie Lungley’s music will notice our music video on the page and may be interested in viewing it. We also received a comment on our music video on YouTube from a person who is impartial to the school or my media course and this comment is incredibly positive and compliments our camerawork and editing. This is important feedback because it suggests that the production is appealing to an audience other than students at school. The image also shows the amount of views received in just under a month which is a positive indication that the video is successfully being noticed by YouTube users.

Overall I feel as though we have used many forms of feedback during the different stages of planning and developing our three music promotion products. The feedback has proved to be incredibly helpful with our development and how we have improved the products. All of the audience who we have asked have been aged between 16 and 30 meaning that we have successfully gathered feedback from our target audience and catered our product towards our selected demographic. The methods of getting the feedback have also been aimed towards the correct psychographics and socio-economic class. The importance of gathering feedback from the correct target audience cannot be under stressed and we think that the results of our various feedbacks can be seen to be acted upon when viewing our three final products.

Facebook feedback from Dsquared, a Web Software Engineer company:

One of my Facebook friends saw the ancillaries that I posted on Facebook and he works at a media company. He messaged me asking if I wanted any feedback from him and his co-workers at the Web Software Engineer company:



He mentioned that there were a few things that could be improved in order to make the ancillary tasks more effective. He asked if our typography had different weights and I replied that we had added a drop shadow to the texts in order to make it more bold against the background. He then mentioned that I could use the clone stamp tool in order to make the background more blurred and darker so that the text would not need a drop shadow and would still stand out. These were some of his messages:

Below the image on the left is our original ancillary Magazine advert and then the image on the right is a quickly made example that Jason and his colleagues created to explain what they meant about darkening the background and using the clone stamp to remove the window frame:

 

It was interesting to receive feedback from someone who works in a media based job and who has extensive knowledge of how to use software such as Photoshop because we received a piece of feedback that we had not received in any other method. It proved that posting the ancillaries to Facebook was a great way to receive feedback and not just on the post asking people's opinions. Facebook proved to be an effective way of catching people's attention and getting a great range of responses about our products, while even though Jason was a Facebook 'friend' his work colleagues helped to explain and edit the feedback whom I do not know and so the feedback was honest and effective.

Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Created with Padlet
 
Created with Padlet  

Screencast showing aspects of editing that went into creating our final music video:

    Screencast showing aspects of editing that went into creating our final ancillaries:

 
We used iMovie to edit the production again this year because it was easier to edit straight away rather than learn a completely new program. Since using iMovie last year there have been significant updates and lots of new professional features have been added such as the ability to choose how long overlay shots fade in and out for and the opacity settings have been refined so that the shots blend better together now. We took a different approach to editing this year by putting the whole song onto the project first, along with a video that was the same length of the song and then cut the one shot on the beat and then replaced all the cut sections. This made it easier to move shots around because you could tell how long they needed to be when selecting them- this made for greater accuracy with lip syncing which overall made the production more effective. One problem with iMovie is that it doesn’t have all of the professional tools that other editors like Premiere Pro have, such a selecting singular colours, objects and a timeline with multiple streams of video and audio. We have developed our editing skills this year even though we used the same program, because we developed faster, more accurate and efficient ways of organising the shots on the timeline that allowed us to edit much faster. Because we were able to edit our production so quickly we were able to act on audience and teacher feedback quicker and we had more time for improvements. This meant that we had time to improve the production twice so there are three cuts overall.

A MacBook Pro was used to edit the production, which was a benefit because we were able to edit outside of lesson and school time. Using a Mac made our group more productive because Mac OS X is much easier to use and faster than Windows, and because it was a member of our group who owned the Mac we could keep all of the files on it without worrying about losing them or someone else moving them. For the ancillaries a member of our group had their own Microsoft Surface 3. It has direct pen interaction that allowed us to edit the images far more accurately using the touchscreen. Despite the Surface running a low powered Intel Atom processor we were able to run multiple layers and intense effects on Photoshop without it slowing down too dramatically, which is an issue we had with the school computers. We were also able to install custom typography onto the Surface, which meant that we could use it on both of the ancillaries and the video. We could not use the group member’s Surface to edit the music video because iMovie isn’t available on Windows 10, and the processor isn’t fast enough to handle professional video editing- also pairing the slower processor with only 4GB of RAM, there would’ve been significant slowdown in response time which isn’t good during video editing.   

Examples of more diverse and inventive shots, due to the use of two different cameras:

The above shots were filmed using an iPhone and this allowed us to get closer to the objects and move the iPhone around to make it pan around the object.

The DSLR camera and tripod were helpful when filming extreme close ups of the lips and shots of the actress when she is sat still because it helped us make sure that the shots would not be shaky and the actress could move around the frame or stay still rather as opposed to the iPhone when we could move the shot around the object instead.

To present all of our blog work this year, we created two blogs to makes it organised and easier to navigate. On one blog we would create our individual posts and then use the HTML links on these posts to put onto the pages on our main blog. The tabs used were ‘Home,’ ‘Preliminary,’ ‘Research,’ ‘Planning,’ ‘Production’ and ‘Evaluation’. These tabs were a very effective way of organising our work so that it was easy to navigate and find certain posts because the links in each tab redirected to the posts on the first blog. This meant that the work could be done in any order or I could add any posts and the main blog will still be organised. Blogger also allows you to embed videos and has a useful feature that allows you to embed a YouTube video while still on your Blogger post. However one downfall with Blogger is that it is very difficult to post photos to accompany the blog post you are working on because they do not stay in one position and you cannot manually resize they to what you desire as you would be able to in a Word Document. In order to use Blogger it is necessary to have a Google account. This also links any services owned by Google to you account for example YouTube. This became very useful because to use any Google services, I only needed one account and could log into Google with my Blogger and YouTube accounts readily logged in and available.

 

Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Link to watch Moovly video on YouTube

Our music video would be exhibited on multiple forms of media. The first being the website YouTube as this is a very successful form of promotion and a video can easily gather millions of views. Elements of the website, such as the suggested menu on the right hand side of the viewer's screen, means that our target audience will be met because the suggested videos link to the style of the videos the viewer has recently been watching. YouTube is now commonly the first place a person will look to when they want to hear a new song or see the promotional music video. This is because it is accessible to many people because it has convergence; it is a website and it is also an App so can be used on a huge range of technical devices making it available to everyone. It is also free, incredibly easy to use and quick to look up music on. This makes Youtube a logical choice of exhibition.

We would also use TV music channels such as 4music or Kiss to promote the music video because although our music genre is indie, it has a lot of pop conventions combined with it making these channels appropriate to target the right audience. Although this is not the most popular form of discovering music, many people use the music channel as you would a radio while at home for background music while with friends and so would still be an effective way of exhibiting both our song and video to a wider audience listening to the top charts.

Another way of exhibiting our music video would be through social media, most popularly Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Facebook is commonly used now to view a wide range of different videos and what a users friend 'likes' will also appear on their newsfeed too. Instagram and Twitter work in a similar way however there would be two ways that these social networks would work. If our production team created an account on these networks specifically for the artist or the new single, we would post a clip of the music video or an image of the digi-pak or poster with a link to the music video to be viewed on YouTube. This is a form of convergence and links a lot of the forms of exhibition together because one media company can use another to promote different forms of a product and this in turn benefits both companies.. The second way that these sites would successfully exhibit our products is by the users of these social networks 'tweeting' or 'instagramming' about our products which their friends or followers would also see. This would be an effective form of free advertisement. In many ways new media, such as social networking, is more effective than traditional media because it is so accessible, anywhere at any time. Traditional media such as adverts and billboards are still an effective marketing tool and can prompt consumers to look into the products using new media after seeing it on traditional media. New media allows consumers to be connected with each other at all times and also connects them with people all over the world meaning that there are higher conversation rates about products. Another advantage of new media is that it can cost very little for a company, especially in terms of social media.

In terms of our magazine advert, it would obviously be displayed on the pages of a magazine however could be effectively displayed in a similar way using traditional media such as a billboard at train stations or road sides. The dig-pak would be exhibited in a high-street shop such as HMV which is well known by consumers to distribute the latest albums or singles. It would also be distributed on websites such as Amazon, Play.com and Google Play where the consumer can purchase a physical or MP3 version of the music or iTunes, Microsoft Groove and Spotify where the consumer can listen to the music for free or pay monthly to listen to a wide range of music on the go. 

Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A promotional music video is designed to promote the song and get the audience to buy the album or single of the artist that will in turn expand the artists profile and get the artist more exposure. They are commonly used to invoke a reaction to make the audience remember the song. A video can be used to make the audience understand the message or narrative behind the lyrics of the song or can be used to showcase other talents of the artist e.g. acting/dancing. There is a whole repertoire of elements that create an effective pop music promo:

• Performance or a narrative as the basis for the visuals
• Performance is commonly the artist singing with a band or back up singers and dancers, dancers introduce a fun element and entertains the audience
• Narrative is not as common in pop videos as other genres but can be used to help the audience develop an understanding of the song
• Camerawork keeps the audiences attention with changing shots and angles
• Conventional shots include close ups of the artists face (promoting the artist and making them more recognisable to the audience), long shots of location, mid shots of the artists in the location and extreme close ups of props
• Effective editing with the shots cut to the beat
• Short shots to keep the audience looking at the screen
• Actors or the artist acting because pop usually adheres to popular culture, teenagers and younger audiences are influenced by costumes, makeup, dance moves
• High key lighting or coloured spotlights, colours used in costumes, props or background stand out even more (bright colours match the fun and upbeat nature of pop)
• Locations are varied but commonly urban or in studios with backdrops of unrealistic places

Katy Perry is a prime example of a pop artist who consistenly uses extravagancy in her music videos in terms of bright colours and costumes. Her videos are usually thoroughly choreographed usually with back up dancers such as in the video 'California Gurls:'

Editing Techniques

When editing our promo we did not want to over complicate the look of the editing because our chosen track is so simple and slow. It was difficult to edit the shots in the beginning because the shots became long due to the slow beat of the song but when we used the drum beats in the background in order to cut to the beat, it made the shots shorter and flowed with a much better pace. It allowed us to keep audience interest more easily. In our first cut of our promo, there were a lot of close ups or mid shots of our actress miming which were very long and this caused the audience to lose interest:

However in our second cut we re-filmed shots of our actress miming and these included long shots, mid shots, close ups and extreme close ups to get as much diversity and interesting shots as possible. We also made the shots shorter and filmed a lot more visually interesting shots of extreme close ups of antiques and jewellery. In our final cut, we preferred the shots used so that they all had a similar style and this made all the shots fit better together.

There is a point in our chosen track which is a period of 30 seconds without any singing and in our first and second cuts this bored our audience and we considered cutting it out however instead we decided to shorten the shots which made them quicker and included a lot of abstract shots to keep the audience interested. In our final feedback the comments on this section were much more positive. In terms of transitions used, we used mostly straight cuts however to add more interest we included some overlay transitions. These were an extreme close up of the actress miming overlaying a long shot of the actress on the beach. The other overlay used is an over the shoulder shot of the actress overlaying a shot of the beach.

We kept the use of any effects, transitions and cuts very simple because our song is very simple and it creates harmony between the two. This is very reflective of the indie genre because conventionally the songs are humble and about personal experience and they reflect this in their music promos. They do this by using natural locations and simple editing in order to allow the audience to focus on the songs message rather than extravagant editing, locations or costumes. We introduced the beach location at the very beginning as a hook however then we included many shots of the Victorian era house location to make the audience wonder how the beach will be incorporated. We then had shots of the woman changing her clothes and walking out of the front door. This then introduces the shots at the beach to indicate that the woman has escaped her life at home and is at the beach to have fresh surroundings.

 

Performance & Narrative

We attempted to keep a simple balance between the amount of shots expressing the narrative and the performance. We decided to include both aspects because our artist is an indie artist and it is conventional to have simple performance in an indie video of the singer miming on their own or the band performing in a small bar however we have used conventions of pop or R&B videos as well and so we thought a subtle narrative would also add more interest and depth to the video and also help the audience understand the lyrics of the song. The performance in our promo is purely miming and we did not use a band, back-up singers or any other things which distract the audience from the actress.

This was to be consistent with the simplicity of the video and we used many different types of shots from extreme close ups to long shots of the actress miming in order to keep the performance visually refreshing for the audience. As previously mentioned, indie music promos conventionally do involve a band in their performance but are usually performing to a small audience to show the humble nature of the artist because it is something they do to enjoy, not to sell out arenas. Our song is very slow and we decided that using a band in our performance shots would not have looked right, we decided that the video would only have one actress because it links to our inspiration Lana Del Rey who is an indie pop artist and commonly only uses herself as the key focus in her promos. E.g. 'Young and Beautiful':

In terms of narrative we were influenced by the song's lyrics and we deconstructed and annotate these lyrics to find metaphors and hidden meanings. As a group, we determined that the song was about a woman who has been in an abusive relationship. It is not completely clear whether she has just told the boyfriend to leave ("Come away honey, just leave") or whether he has just left her and she is talking to herself or giving another person advice. We created a narrative for our video using this basic idea. We decided to have one of the earliest shots in the promo of the front door open to represent the boyfriend having just left her:

We also had shots of the actress removing and putting on different pieces of jewellery all the way through the video and also removing her lipstick and high heels to represent her trying to remove anything that the boyfriend had given her or anything she wore to please him:

There is also a mid shot of the actress removing the new costume out of her wardrobe and this represents the look which she really wanted to have but never wore because she was trying to impress her boyfriend with the glamorous clothing, makeup and jewellery. There are shots of the woman walking down the stairs and out of the front door and this is the part of our narrative which represents escapism. The idea was that the woman was leaving her glamorous and materialistic house and possessions and instead escapes to the beach where she could be herself and breathe without having to act or look a certain way.

Some aspects of the video are illustrative for example when the line "So light up another one" is sung, there is a shot of the actress lighting a cigarette or when the line "Come away honey" is sung she walks out the door and escapes to the beach. However the majority of the video is an amplification of the lyrics because we have taken the main concept from the lyrics and exaggerated it to make it into a narrative.

Ancillary Task Feedback

I posted on the social media website 'Facebook' in order to gather feedback on both of my groups ancillary tasks. This images below show the mount of 'likes' the post received and the comments on the photos:




The results of this feedback are extremely positive. Some repeating comments are about the effective use of selective colour, the black and white filter, the typography used and that this creates a clear selling point and displays the style of the artist well. The feedback shows a very positive reaction and indicates that our ancillary tasks have strong visual synergy with one another.

'Gem' - Digipak Final Version

Final Production Vox Pop

Final Production Vox Pop