Thursday, 24 May 2018
Friday, 8 January 2016
Question 3- What have yopu learned from audience feedback
To improve our
promo and ancillaries, we gathered feedback from our target audience in
different ways. This was important in making our production appeal to the
target audience and follow conventions of the genre better. With each batch of
audience feedback we were able to improve our production in big and small ways
to overall make the quality better and more professional, which in turn made it
more appealing to our audience. We gathered audience feedback at each stage of
production and improved our work based on this feedback before getting more,
until we didn't receive any improvements from our audience.
One way in which
we gathered audience feedback was through Vox Pops. Vox Pops are used mainly on
the news, where a member of the public is asked a series of questions relating
to a topic and they give brief answers to each, these are then edited amongst other
people interviewed to get a general answer that represents the majority of the
audience targeted. This was effective for us as we were able to get a lot
of audience feedback on our final edit of the promo and about indie music
videos in general. We first used Vox Pops in order to get information on what
would be most appealing to the audience of indie music promos, asking questions
such as what is your favourite indie music video or what typical conventions do
you expect to see in an indie music video.
We found this very
effective in finding out what direction we need to take our music video and
what not to include which is why when we used Vox Pops again to get feedback on
our final production we received many good comments on the quality and style of
our promo, showing acting on the original feedback we gathered managed to work
at helping us create an effective and appealing promo.
To get audience feedback on the ideas for the promo such as our narrative ideas and Mise-en-Scene ideas e.g.: location of the beach and house, we spoke to our tutors and were given verbal and written feedback on where we were going right on wrong. At each stage of the planning we showed the tutors our plans on the narrative of the video, a girl leaving behind a hurtful relationship, which were constantly improving because we were told what parts of the narrative weren’t working with the genre. Other ideas such as Mise-en-scene were also criticised as either not being specific enough or not following the continuity of our video, which we then improved on so overall our whole promo idea worked together.
We used a Poll everywhere,
an online polling system when people text their ideas in, to get audience
feedback on our ancillaries. We designed 3 digipak and 3 posters designs that
we showed a class and then asked them to text their answers in. We found out
which design was most popular which we then produced on Photoshop.
Question 3
To improve our promo and ancillaries, we gathered feedback from our target audience in different ways. This was important in making our production appeal to the target audience and follow conventions of the genre better. With each batch of audience feedback we were able to improve our production in big and small ways to overall make the quality better and more professional, which in turn made it more appealing to our audience. We gathered audience feedback at each stage of production and improved our work based on this feedback before getting more, until we didn't receive any improvements from our audience.
One way in which we gathered audience feedback was through Vox
Pops. Vox Pops are used mainly on the news, where a member of the public is
asked a series of questions relating to a topic and they give brief answers to
each, these are then edited amongst other people interviewed to get a general
answer that represents the majority of the audience targeted. This was
effective for us as we were able to get a lot of audience feedback on our final
edit of the promo and about indie music videos in general. We first used Vox
Pops in order to get information on what would be most appealing to the
audience of indie music promos, asking questions such as what is your favourite
indie music video or what typical conventions do you expect to see in an indie
music video.
We found this very effective in finding out what direction we need
to take our music video and what not to include which is why when we used Vox Pops
again to get feedback on our final production we received many good comments on
the quality and style of our promo, showing acting on the original feedback we
gathered managed to work at helping us create an effective and appealing promo.
To get audience feedback on the ideas for the promo such as our
narrative ideas and Mise-en-Scene ideas e.g.: location of the beach and house,
we spoke to our tutors and were given verbal and written feedback on where we
were going right on wrong. At each stage of the planning we showed the tutors
our plans on the narrative of the video, a girl leaving behind a hurtful
relationship, which were constantly improving because we were told what parts
of the narrative weren’t working with the genre. Other ideas such as Mise-en-scene
were also criticised as either not being specific enough or not following the
continuity of our video, which we then improved on so overall our whole promo
idea worked together.
We used a Poll everywhere, an online polling system when people
text their ideas in, to get audience feedback on our ancillaries. We designed 3
digipak and 3 posters designs that we showed a class and then asked them to
text their answers in. We found out which design was most popular which we then
produced on Photoshop. This was effective as it was quick and easy to figure
out which design worked best with honest anonymous answers from our audience.
The feedback itself was only good at finding which design people liked the
best, not why they liked it or didn’t like the others, which would’ve been more
helpful if we’d found out that. However we did use a poll everywhere later on
to get more feedback on our ancillaries where we asked everyone to give
detailed feedback on why they liked each ancillary so that we could improve parts
the audience didn’t like.
We also used a focus group where we got a number of people of
different music tastes to watch the first cut of our video and then answer
questions on that. This was effective as we were able to get a range of
different answers in a short amount of time in order to get improvements that
we could make to improve the first cute to the second cut. The feedback was
useful in finding out which parts of our video were working and which weren’t from
circled answers to
Questions 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Facebook was used to contact Natalie Lungley, where we
messaged her privately through her public page about whether it was okay for us
to use her song for our music video. We also used Facebook as a means of
communication where we created a group chat and used it to discuss work and
arrange plans to meet. This was effective as it was a quick way to communicate
as a group rather than texts individuals, therefore being much quicker and
enabled us to be more organised.
We contacted her
through Facebook to see if she would give us permission to use her song.
YouTube was effective as we were able to skim through many songs in a short
amount of time that linked to each other. We also used Facebook as a way of
communicating as a group to arrange where we were at and where to meet, and
also a place to exhibit different stages of our production. Without Facebook it
would’ve been much more difficult to communicate as a group compared to if we
had just used text messenger or face to face chatting.
We used YouTube to explore other videos such as Lana Del Rey
and Twenty One Pilots as inspiration for our promo and gather ideas on where to
go from our starting point. I found YouTube more effective than if I had used
music channels as I could be more specific with my searches and look at what I
needed to.
The technologies I used to construct my promo were
programmes online such as Glogster, padlet and moovley which enabled me to
create online presentations to add to my blog as summaries of my research and
planning. Glogster and padlet are great alternatives to PowerPoint as they have
a lot more visual aesthetics that you can use. Moovley is an interesting way of
presenting your work in video/cartoon form making ordinary text much more
interesting to see.
I have learnt about composition and using a range of shots
including a lot of close ups and extreme close ups. This is to make the video
more engaging and interesting for the audience as the constant change in focus
and visuals keeps the audience’s attention. I’ve developed my skills in having
steady shots and straight shots in order to get a professional look to the
video which is important in how you present your media company. The editing
skills I have developed are cutting to the beat where the cuts are arranged
onto the beats in the instrumentals of the music, this is important in order to
make the music video flow properly and seem professional to the audience.
We also had to use an canon dlsr to film which was useful as
it had a range of functions and superior zoom to the iPhone we had previously
used. The function that we had used were mainly to focusing, switching from
auto focus to manual which created very effective shots.
I have also developed my Photoshop skills with adding colour
to black and white images to emphasise certain areas of the image which was a
key concept in the ancillary tasks. This emphasis on certain parts highlighted
the important Mise-en-scene in our video and where the audience should
focus. I also had to learn to edit the
shots onto the music in iMovie which was difficult to get perfectly lip synced,
which is why we took it in turns checking everything was right. Getting the lip
syncing right was important in getting the right professional look.
Other technologies used include blogger to post all of our
work, which were important in organising our work and planning, so that it
could be easily found. iTunes was useful in buying the song to get permission to use it and
having a high quality version to play when filming.
Overall the benefits of exhibiting our work online was that
we could get quick and easy feedback through texts on poll everywhere and
Facebook comments where the feedback would all be arranged in one place. If we
had used paper forms of feedback of would’ve been much harder to put together
the feedback and was more likely that we lost feedback.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillaries?
I believe our video, magazine advert
and digipak work well together as a whole in creating a full promotional
package. This is because all three of our products not only follow conventions
of the alternative and indie genre but link together through the same style of
the 50’s, and show the star persona of our actor, being glam and high class,
similar to Lana del Rey. The links between the poster and digipak are strongest
through the monochrome colours apart from specific areas which we wanted colour
to show, in order to emphasise them. However the links of these ancillaries to
the Music video is still just as effective regardless of the video being in
full colour because it uses the same style and props that are included in our
digipak and advert.
The three texts work very well
synergetically. The Poster has the same image as the front cover of the Digipak
in order to clearly link the two products with a brand image. This brand image
would be the same throughout all the merchandising for our artist for this
album and could be similar to their future albums as audiences like brand
images as it makes their favourite artists work more recognisable. The Digipak
and video are linked in many more ways. The image of the actor in her costume
from the video is used twice to create a clear link between the products whilst
many of the props which you see in the video are linked to the images shown
throughout the rest of the digipak. The three products are linked conceptually
through the idea of flaws and pain, shown specifically in the video through the
actor wanting to leave behind her past, and in the poster and digipak her flaws
are shown through the lack of colour in the visuals.
The video would be exhibited best
online on YouTube and social media where the audience would be able to find it
linked to videos from similar artists that they like or even specifically look
for it. However it could also work quite well on music channels such as Viva,
Kiss and Magic as they play a huge range of music genre, which would mean that
people outside of our target audience would see it and may like it. But the
downside to this is the audience would have to watch many other music videos
before seeing ours and may get bored waiting. I feel this the use of new media will represent the artist
well as it will give her the most promotion as it can be shared and viewed
quickly. The advert would best be seen online with new media such as iTunes and
on social media where nowadays people tend to go to buy music. If it was
exhibited in traditional media platforms such as magazines like NME, Q, and
Billboard as they show many different genres of music from rap to pop, allowing
audiences of other genres the opportunity to see our brand image or if it was
exhibited in stores such as HMV, it wouldn’t be seen by as many people and
therefore its purpose to promote wouldn’t work. However the digipak would be
better displayed in the traditional media platform of a music store or a store
in general where it can be bought in the physical form as this is a key element
as to why digipaks are so popular.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For this task we had to produce 3
promotional materials for an unsigned artist, as a group of 4, comprising of a
music video promo, CD digipak, and a music magazine poster. The purpose of
these is to promote and advertise the song and artist in a way that is
appealing to their and the genre’s audience. The promo itself is a music video
used to promote the release of the song and link itself and the artist to a
genre, ours being the Alternative/ indie genre so the music promo had to follow
the conventions of that genre. The digipak is a way of marketing the song as a
collector’s limited edition packaging so that rather than having a traditional
album cover, the audience gets even more features with the product, overall
making it more appealing to buy. We created a digipak that links with our music
promo and artist whilst following the conventions of the genre. This was to
make it appealing to the niche audience of the genre as well as being able to
appeal to audiences from other genres who may want to listen to the song, even
if it’s not in their preferred genre. The advert is used to promote the artist
and release of the song in a music magazine that has a larger, broader audience
so the advert must be able to be eye catching and appealing for people of
different demographics and psychographics, such as whether they like pop or
metal music or are from different socio-economic classes.
A music promo requires a repertoire
of elements if it’s to be successful. You must have elements of both
performance and narrative as both are important in making the video interesting
to the audience that are watching it. This also adds to the repeatability of
the video, which is important for audiences who would want to watch it more
than once. Music videos are adverts for the artists, not just for entertainment,
which makes them in a way similar to other adverts such as car adverts with
variety of shots, editing techniques such as specific cuts and transitions,
Mise en scene and sound. Narrative is the story line which illustrates,
amplifies or is a disjuncture of the song. Illustrating the song means the
narrative visually shows exactly what the lyrics say, amplification is where
the narrative follows the themes brought up by the lyrics, and disjuncture is
where the visual elements do not relate at all to the lyrics. This relates to
the genre as alternative/indie videos largely use amplification and disjuncture
in order to create conceptual videos that will interest the audience and have a
lot of relatable ideas and meanings. Our video is a mix of illustration and
amplification with some of the shots illustrating lines from the lyrics, such
as the shots of the actor lighting up a cigarette as the lyrics say “light up
another one”, and some shots just relating to the themes of leaving behind and
sadness. The narrative is also non-linear with it following the typical
chronological order of storyline, as ours jumps from the start and end
throughout the video. It is also an open-ended storyline as there is no
specific clear ending to the video. We chose to have a narrative like this as
it’s more meaningful as the storyline becomes much more relatable to more of
our audience by not being so clear cut. We linked our performance clips to the
narrative mainly in the illustrative parts of the promo in order to further
represent our singer’s star persona and image. This is conventional of the
genre as in many videos in the alternative and indie genre, such as tear in my
heart or high by the beach, use a mix of performance and narrative alongside
amplification and disjuncture.
Camerawork was important as using a
lot of close-ups and extreme close-ups that contrast with mid shots and long
shots creates a dynamic and interesting promo, with specific details
contrasting the large open shots of the location. Overall this makes it more
engaging to the audience watching. Another way of making it more entertaining
to watch was to have fast paced editing that worked well with the camera work
and editing it to make the cuts match the beats in the instrumentals in the
song. The Mise-en-scene used was mainly props and locations that fit the time
period that we chose, the 50’s, such as using old jewellery and furniture or
filming in an old house. Overall our use of this repertoire of elements made
the video much more entertaining and engaging to our target audience as it was
specifically aimed at them with us following conventions specific to the genre.
We used a normal Mise-en-scene that most people have seen and had an actor who
is normal looking; she did not look like a celebrity. This was all in the aim
of making the video relatable to the audience.
The hybrid Indie/Alternative genre is
broad in the musical/performance styles and sound. Music and the promos range
from soft acoustics of Mumford and sons to the soulful, energetic music of
Patrick Stump. It’s hard to pin songs and artists to this genre due to how
varied it is, and just as hard to explain specific artists styles based on just
stating the genre. The genre literally means the music is independent
and different, but because there's such a range of conventions throughout the
genre, it’s hard to explain exactly what the alternative/indie music is. Bands
that really adhere to these conventions are Imagine Dragons, with being
different and independent with their own style of sound and promo whilst also
being relatable to their audience. However, other artists do subvert
conventions, such as Twenty One Pilots as they are more electronic and punky;
bringing conventions from other genres to the alternative/indie genre. The
importance of this is that it is an example of how the genre evolves through
the bands own style bringing new conventions to the genre. This meant that for
my promo I was able to choose from a huge range of conventions that I use to
create an original, appealing promo.
Lana
Del Rey’s “High by the Beach” promo influenced our own largely because of
setting and style of the visuals which are 50’s glam. Del Rey wears a long
white dress and she walks about a setting of a house on a beach. This connotes
the promiscuity and stardom associated with the 50’s and Del Rey herself has a
similar star persona as top what we wanted to give our artist
Another
video that influenced us largely through visuals such as the camera work was
Goner by Twenty One Pilots. The promo is made up of close-ups and extreme
close-ups of the singer matched with specific lighting which is exactly what we
tried to do, however the lighting we used was much brighter in order to go for
a different style. Overall I feel these influences helped us achieve a more
engaging and exciting promo that looks professional.
Editing techniques that we used for
the video include matching the cuts to the beats within the instrumentals of
the song and using jump cuts. We cut all of our shots in time to the beats and
where the song has some double percussion beats we used jump cuts which
increased the pace of the video. This made it more interesting as for a slow
song we could increase the pace of the video. We also used overlay shots which
matched the beats also. This enabled us to use more footage and make some shots
much more interesting in contrast to if we had used those shots of their own.
Our
video is a mix of illustration and amplification with some of the shots
illustrating lines from the lyrics and some shots just relating to the themes
of leaving behind and sadness. The narrative is also non-linear with it
following the typical chronological order of storyline, as ours jumps from the
start and end throughout the video. It is also an open-ended storyline as there
is no specific clear ending to the video. We chose to have a narrative like
this as it’s more meaningful as the storyline becomes much more relatable to
more of our audience by not being so clear cut. We linked our performance clips
to the narrative mainly in the illustrative parts of the promo in order to
further represent our singer’s star persona and image. There are also three
performance settings such as the conservatory, the bedroom, outside the house
and the beach. The use of different locations gives a variety of interesting
shots that are more engaging than if we had used just one location.
Our Ancillaries were influenced by other
digipaks and adverts such as Lana Del Rey’s and Twenty One Pilots. Both of
these artists use shots of themselves or other people as the highlight of their
digipaks and posters and also use key images that fit with their star persona
such as locations, styles and symbols shown below. This influenced us to use
images of our actor face on and images and key props to build up a start
persona for them that fit with the style of our music video.
Our digipak uses shots of our
artist, most importantly the close up on the front cover and advert, which is
conventional with how artists like Lana Del Rey and Halsey use close ups and
mid shots on the front covers of their albums. This is because they want to
show off their star persona, creating themselves a recognisable image for their
target audience which is what we wanted to achieve. We also used a lot close
ups of Mise-en-Scene used to show the time period of the video, which is the
50’s, denoted through old themed props such as statues and jewellery. This is
conventional as props are key in many alternative/indie music videos such as
Twenty One Pilot’s “Stressed Out” where Big Wheel bikes are used as a
representation of childhood.
Theories that our video follows are
Andrew Goodwin’s Music theory. This includes how our video is illustrative and
amplifies the lyrics of the song. This is through the general amplification of
the lyrics but with specific lyrics, for example “light another one up” being
shown through lighting up a cigarettes. Our actor has a star persona that
matches with the style of the promo, being a 50’s pretty girl who’s suffered
heartbreak, which is conventional with most alternative indie artists having
their own star persona, for example Lana Del Rey with her “risk taking, pretty
girl” look and Tyler Joseph from twenty one pilot’s “Blurry Face” or balaclava
Look. This made our video more entertaining as the audience has a character
that they can relate to and identify and the video is clear in what it is
trying to show and communicate to the audience.
Monday, 23 November 2015
Development of Digipak Designs
Design #1
This was a basic design for our digipak. The shots were varied with extreme close ups to long shots. We decided that the outside of the digipak should have shots of the beach while the inside was the shots inside the house. We will be using the same typography on our digipak and advert as the one on our music video to create synergetic links. We were unsure of the long shot of the beach on the front cover of the digipak because although our chosen artist is an indie artist, she has a style similar to Lana Del Rey who is an indie-pop artist. Lana Del Rey commonly has an image of herself on her album covers in a similar way to pop artists.
Design 2
We chose to have the front of the digipak as a close up of our artists face because alhough this is not common for indie artists, it suited her style. The image is of the actress at the beach, while the back of the digipak is of the back of our actresses head. This creates an artistic image of a 360 degree movement around her head. The inside of the digipak has been changed to the beach and is one continous shot of the beach landscape. This has two sides of empty beach with our actress in the background on the third side. We also included an image of a ring which is significant in our video and the song is also called 'Gem' which provides illustrative links.
Design #3
Design #3
This design progresses to make all the images have a filter of black and white and this links to our music video idea. Most of our shots are of antique items and the actress has makeup relating to the 50s era and so the black and white filter relates to the theme of an older time period. We have used mostly close ups or extreme close ups which also relate to the shots used in our video while some sections still contain beach shots to keep a link with our second location.
Final Design
This design is very similar to Design #3 however we have just perfected the images used. We chose to only include one image of the beach as this is an important location in the video because it represents the actress escaping her situation of an abusive boyfriend and all of the gifts of jewellery he gave her however the beach is not the most important image from our video. This led us to include extreme close ups of antique objects on the rest of the digipak because these items are key shots in our video while jewellery is also extremely important. We decided to keep the image of the actress on the front of the digipak to keep with the idea that although the music is indie based, she still has elements of other genres in a similar way to Lana Del Rey and this suggests that the artist would be a key focus of the products created to showcase their look and style. The typography will be kept the same throughout the digipak and is the same font used on our music video and the magazine advert to create synergy. The black and white filter is still used because as stated for design #3, it represents the antique objects and older time period look throughout our video however we will give the digipak a pop of colour by keeping the red lips on our actress on the front cover. The red lips are a common theme throughout our music video, with extreme close ups of them miming and our actress also removes the lipstick in one shot to represent her removing the things she wore for her boyfriend. We decided that they also represent how the actress escaped to the beach wearing more modern clothing and so creates a contrast between the black and white vintage side of the music video and the more modern colourful side.
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