Wednesday, 20 April 2016
Sunday, 17 April 2016
Friday, 15 April 2016
Evaluation Question 1
1. In what ways did you use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Thursday, 14 April 2016
Evaluation Question 2
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?
Whilst I was in the process of both planning and producing my final media products I tried to be constantly aware and remind myself that although I was making 3 separate products they must all work well together because essentially they are there to promote the same song or album and also represent the artist as a brand and therefore the audience must be able to link all 3 separate products back to the same song and the artist which I tried to do in many ways.
One of these ways was by creating a logo/font for the artist which, in my case, was made up of the name and the song title. I used a simple font and changed the colour so that it was in white as I felt this still adhered to the minimalistic style I was aiming to create as well as making a change from black, I also decreased the opacity of the font so that it created a faded effect to the writing which I think worked really well and enhanced the slightly overcast weather that is captured within the image that I have used as my main image on the front cover of my digipak (Ancillary text 1) and my promotional magazine poster (Ancillary text 2). I made sure that this logo/font appeared I created appeared and was dominant in all 3 products: I made it prominent on the front cover of my digipak and on my promotional poster but at the same time, I ensured that it didn't distract from the images which I wanted to be the main focus of both ancillary texts which is another reason why I chose to use the opacity tool on Photoshop to decrease how bold the font was. Because my artist 'logo' was simply made up of the repetitive use of a font, I chose to carry out this font throughout all the text on both of ancillary texts in the hope to create a great sense of continuity and create a theme throughout my final products. I also chose to put a screen at the beginning of my music video showing the artist name and the song title to introduce the video but also so that the theme continued into my video and did not solely exist in my ancillary texts.
I know that this was successfully done because it was picked up on my my target audience when I conducted audience research in order to gain feedback on my final products.
Another way in which I feel that I created continuity throughout my products was by shooting the photographs that I used for my ancillary texts at the same location I filmed my music video as well as use some stills from my final music video so that the mise-en-scene was consistent throughout all my products and the audience was able to recognise the mise-en-scene from the video and then link it back to the ancillary texts and bring the 2 products together. I feel that my outdoor, open, rural location that I used to both film my video and shoot images to use in my digipak and promotional poster successfully represent the freedom that comes along with childhood and also made my themes of nostalgia, childhood and innocence much more obvious for the audience.
It also acts as another point of recognition for the audience because they may have seen the video and not taken notice of the artist name or song title but then see the promotional poster and recognise the model or location and be able to link the two products back to each other.
My target audience felt that the colour scheme that was present in all my final products was a great feature that created continuity and fluidity throughout and this too was thanks to using the same location throughout my products. On my digipak, the grass acts as the background for the text to stand on and the bright colour from the actors jumper contrasts with this and stands out from the background. I also used this as the image for my digipak so that I was able to create continuity throughout these products too.
The idea of using a plain background for contrasting colours to stand on top of is continued on the back cover of the digipak where the black brick wall acts as a plain background and the rest of the things in the foreground are in contrasting colours which enables them to stand out from the background. The colour black from the brick wall is then continued onto the two inside images of the digipak as these are long shot images of the location that I edited black and white.
Another way in which I created continuity throughout my products was buy abiding to conventions that I had researched from real media products.
Digipak
Front cover: I wanted to create a minimalistic style throughout my products so I only chose to include, in my opinion, the most important conventions which were a main image and the name of the album and the artist.
Back cover: I included a track list, a main, image and barcode and also included the small details of copyright information and the logo of the record abel as I thought that this would contribute to a professional finish.
Poster:
I included a main image which links to my other products so that it is clear what product it is promoting. I also included pull quotes which look like they are from magazines that cover the genre of music that my chosen song fits into. I included social media links for my artist which are very important in nowadays when creating a brand image for an artist because of how widely used social media is used. it was also important that information about where you can stream the song from because streaming is dominating the way that audiences consume their favourite artists music. I also included the important information of the song name and artist name as well as the release date of the song.
In conclusion by conforming to conventions I feel that the outcome is a professional looking product that I would expect to see for sale and the responses from my audience feedback on question 3 agree with this point.
Whilst I was in the process of both planning and producing my final media products I tried to be constantly aware and remind myself that although I was making 3 separate products they must all work well together because essentially they are there to promote the same song or album and also represent the artist as a brand and therefore the audience must be able to link all 3 separate products back to the same song and the artist which I tried to do in many ways.
One of these ways was by creating a logo/font for the artist which, in my case, was made up of the name and the song title. I used a simple font and changed the colour so that it was in white as I felt this still adhered to the minimalistic style I was aiming to create as well as making a change from black, I also decreased the opacity of the font so that it created a faded effect to the writing which I think worked really well and enhanced the slightly overcast weather that is captured within the image that I have used as my main image on the front cover of my digipak (Ancillary text 1) and my promotional magazine poster (Ancillary text 2). I made sure that this logo/font appeared I created appeared and was dominant in all 3 products: I made it prominent on the front cover of my digipak and on my promotional poster but at the same time, I ensured that it didn't distract from the images which I wanted to be the main focus of both ancillary texts which is another reason why I chose to use the opacity tool on Photoshop to decrease how bold the font was. Because my artist 'logo' was simply made up of the repetitive use of a font, I chose to carry out this font throughout all the text on both of ancillary texts in the hope to create a great sense of continuity and create a theme throughout my final products. I also chose to put a screen at the beginning of my music video showing the artist name and the song title to introduce the video but also so that the theme continued into my video and did not solely exist in my ancillary texts.
I know that this was successfully done because it was picked up on my my target audience when I conducted audience research in order to gain feedback on my final products.
Another way in which I feel that I created continuity throughout my products was by shooting the photographs that I used for my ancillary texts at the same location I filmed my music video as well as use some stills from my final music video so that the mise-en-scene was consistent throughout all my products and the audience was able to recognise the mise-en-scene from the video and then link it back to the ancillary texts and bring the 2 products together. I feel that my outdoor, open, rural location that I used to both film my video and shoot images to use in my digipak and promotional poster successfully represent the freedom that comes along with childhood and also made my themes of nostalgia, childhood and innocence much more obvious for the audience.
It also acts as another point of recognition for the audience because they may have seen the video and not taken notice of the artist name or song title but then see the promotional poster and recognise the model or location and be able to link the two products back to each other.
My target audience felt that the colour scheme that was present in all my final products was a great feature that created continuity and fluidity throughout and this too was thanks to using the same location throughout my products. On my digipak, the grass acts as the background for the text to stand on and the bright colour from the actors jumper contrasts with this and stands out from the background. I also used this as the image for my digipak so that I was able to create continuity throughout these products too.
The idea of using a plain background for contrasting colours to stand on top of is continued on the back cover of the digipak where the black brick wall acts as a plain background and the rest of the things in the foreground are in contrasting colours which enables them to stand out from the background. The colour black from the brick wall is then continued onto the two inside images of the digipak as these are long shot images of the location that I edited black and white.
Another way in which I created continuity throughout my products was buy abiding to conventions that I had researched from real media products.
Digipak
Front cover: I wanted to create a minimalistic style throughout my products so I only chose to include, in my opinion, the most important conventions which were a main image and the name of the album and the artist.
Back cover: I included a track list, a main, image and barcode and also included the small details of copyright information and the logo of the record abel as I thought that this would contribute to a professional finish.
Poster:
I included a main image which links to my other products so that it is clear what product it is promoting. I also included pull quotes which look like they are from magazines that cover the genre of music that my chosen song fits into. I included social media links for my artist which are very important in nowadays when creating a brand image for an artist because of how widely used social media is used. it was also important that information about where you can stream the song from because streaming is dominating the way that audiences consume their favourite artists music. I also included the important information of the song name and artist name as well as the release date of the song.
In conclusion by conforming to conventions I feel that the outcome is a professional looking product that I would expect to see for sale and the responses from my audience feedback on question 3 agree with this point.
Evaluation Question 3
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Emily, 18, Female, Non-media student.
This piece of audience feedback also comes from a non-media student who falls in the perfect target audience for Tom Odell's music because of her age and gender. Reinforcing what the feedback from Kate said, Emily has also picked up on the fact that my main themes throughout my final products were to reflect childhood and I also like the use of the word nostalgia as I think it perfectly describes the feeling I was trying create in all my products and is a word that I had not previously thought of. Emily thinks I have done this through the colour scheme and the the model that I used on all 3 of my products.
She has also recoginised the fact that I have continuously the same font on each of my products allows them to relate on one another.
Again, the fact that Emily has recognised all of the features that I purposely included in order to represent the theme of childhood through semiotics and signs shows how successfully I have used them because Emily is a non-media student and therefore her understanding of a digipak and a promotional poster will not be as thorough as that if a media student, however because I have represented my themes so clearly they are still noticed and the fact how much they all work together is recognised.
This piece of feed back comes from Hannah, a fellow media student who therefore, has a much deeper understanding of the purpose of both the ancillary texts as I think that, especially with the digipak, an audience of non-media students would not be familiar with an album cover being set out in this way as I was also not familiar with the term 'digipak' before studying it in media. Another thing that a non-media student would not appreciate is the smaller details such as the smaller conventions that you do not really pay attention to but are actually really important in order to make a product look legitimate, examples of these include the barcode, the logo of the label and the copyright declaration that is in small print at the bottom of the back cover. Hannah comments on my creation of continuity throughout all of my products and the fact that I took stills from my video, which she has seen, for some of the images in my digipak and also I have taken shots from the same location as where my video was shot in order to create continuity through my mise-en-scene (something that I don't think some one who hasn't studied media would pick up on.) as well as also creating continuity through using the same image as the main image that represents all 3 products.As I predicted, Hannah has noticed that on my poster I included pull quotes so as to make it look like the album had been reviewed by some established magazines. I thought carefully about which magazines to include quotes so that I made sure they were quotes from magazines that attract audiences of this genre of music in the hope that this may attract more attention from the main target audience and also may establish another audience that thought they might not be interested in Tom Odell's music before seeing that it is music that is recognised by the likes of 'Q' and NME magazine.
Phoebe was the final person that I asked for audience feedback and I chose to ask Phoebe so that I had an equal ratio of feedback from both media and non-media students. Like the rest of the people I received feedback from, Phoebe is also the main target audience that I feel would listen to Tom Odell's music. She too, picked up on the fact that the main thing that links al 3 of products together is through the colour scheme and she said that it is the grass (mise-en-scene) that especially links all 3 of the products together it is prominent in all 3 of my products. Unlike anyone else that I asked for feedback from, she picked up on the fact that I have used pictures of trees for the 2 inside images on my digipak and then for the front cover of my digipak and my poster I have used a picture of the girl in my music video, looking out into the distance where it looks like she is looking at the trees and this brings together the whole digipak as image relates to the others in one way or another. She thought that the way the writing on the back cover of my album was aligned to the left was really effective and the fact she picked up on this was interesting as i was heavily influenced to do this after seeing it done on Tom Odell's real album showing that I have effectively conformed to conventions and recreated this idea very well.
The opinion of the
audience, I think is the most important when it comes to creating products that
have a sole purpose to be enjoyed and consumed by the audience that you have
had in mind whilst making the final products. In my case, my target audience
was quite broad a I think a wide range of people would enjoy listening to the
genre of music of the song I have chosen. I think that because the artist of
the song, Tom Odell. is only 25 years old himself, he would attract a target
audience of young girls as many of his songs are themed around the emotion of
love and heartbreak, something that attracts a wider female audience than male
audience as girls tend to be the more sensitive gender even though the artist
behind the song is in fact male. in juxtaposition, I also think that Tom
Odell's music would attract an audience of women between the ages of 35-50 as
these are the generation before the teenagers and therefore are the mothers of
the teenage girls that I previously said would be one of Tom Odell's target
audience. The reason I think that women of this age would be an audience for
Tome Odell's music is because he addresses issues such as heartbreak, love and
lust, all themes that are typical of the pop-genre of music, an these are
things that women of this age feel that they have lost touch with whereas the
other target audience of teenage girls will be experiencing these emotions for
the very first time and therefore, as the mothers of girls this age, they may
want to be able to relate to some of the emotions that their daughters are
experiencing as it has been a while since they experienced it themselves and
also, social attitudes towards things such as teenage relationships and sex
will have changed dramatically in the 20-30 years since the older generation
were teenager.
The theorist that links in here is the audience theorists
Blumler and Katz who suggested that one of the needs an audience has,
'surveillance', gives the audience a better understanding of what is going on
society and the world around us, I also think that it relates to the second
need which is 'personal identity' and this one suggests that being a subject of
the media allows the audience to confirm the positioning of themselves in
society and their identity and that when we, as an audience, consume a product
that we can directly relate to we feel gratified.
As the producer of my media products is
was important to me that my audience too felt gratified and
fulfilled with my products, and most
importantly, that my product appealed to them as my target audience. After
considering who the target audience of Tom Odell's music would be, I decided
that when I as collecting audience feedback on my final products that these
would be the groups of people that I would collect feedback from.
Because one of my target audiences is
teenagers, I thought that I would ask for feedback via text messaging and
social media as these are the platforms that teenagers are most active on
whereas, for feedback from my older target audience I did receive some feedback
via text message but I also received some written feedback as well.
The main things I hoped to learn from my
audience feedback is how well all 3 of my final products worked together,
therefore, I answered this question before answering question 2 as I realised
that the information I would find out in answering this question would also be
helpful in answering question 2 as well. I also wanted to find out how overall
appealing they found the product and whether after watching the video they
would be compelled to listen to or buy more music by this artist. Finally I
wanted to find out how effective my use of semiotics, mainly through costume and
styling, and how well my main themes of childhood and innocence and growing up
were represented in this video.
I also feel that it is good to get the opinion of people that are my age and do not study media because I feel that they will watch the video with the mindset of someone who is just likes this genre of music. I feel that this opinion represents how the majority of people will watch music videos and like how i watched music videos before studying their deeper meaning throughout my advanced media portfolio.
I predict that the feedback I receive from people who are media students will be much more critical and technical as they have a deeper understanding of target audiences, demographics and what conventions and themes these certain audiences look for when selecting which music they listen to or which music videos they choose to watch. This feedback will also be helpful as it will be more specific and their critique will allow me to know where there is room for improvement in my video and also which areas I have done well in.
Kate, 18, Female, Non-media student
The reason I asked Kate if she would mind giving me some feedback on my main final product was because she fits into the target audience that I discussed earlier on in this post, a teenage girl who understands the current societal views on the theme of current pop songs such as Tom Odell's music which are relationships, young -people, sex, etc. By getting her opinion and feedback on my product I would be able to conclude whether or not I had successfully created a product with a specific target audience in mind and whether or not my product actually appealed to this audience.
This piece of audience feedback is really useful to me because Kate has picked up on the fact that I styled the actors hair in plaits and put her in girly clothing in the hope that it would represent a childlike character and from this I have learnt that I accurately and effectively used semiotics (signs and symbols) and stereotypes because Kate does not study media so therefore she is not aware of theses technical areas that she has picked up on which reinforces how accurately I have created and represented stereotypes and my use of semiotics.
She has also commented on how well I have managed to create a story based on the lyrics of the song and she said that this helped her to feel more involved in the story as it made it much easier to watch because the visual moving image matched well with the song she was listening to. This tells me that I have connected well with the target audience as I have created a product that they feel they have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the song which is thanks to how well the footage I have created links to the lyrics of the song. It also tells me that I have understood the wants and needs that this audience has and that I have presented my video in a way that the target audience like, understand and feel they connect with and follow throughout the whole duration of my video.
I also feel that it is good to get the opinion of people that are my age and do not study media because I feel that they will watch the video with the mindset of someone who is just likes this genre of music. I feel that this opinion represents how the majority of people will watch music videos and like how i watched music videos before studying their deeper meaning throughout my advanced media portfolio.
I predict that the feedback I receive from people who are media students will be much more critical and technical as they have a deeper understanding of target audiences, demographics and what conventions and themes these certain audiences look for when selecting which music they listen to or which music videos they choose to watch. This feedback will also be helpful as it will be more specific and their critique will allow me to know where there is room for improvement in my video and also which areas I have done well in.
The reason I asked Kate if she would mind giving me some feedback on my main final product was because she fits into the target audience that I discussed earlier on in this post, a teenage girl who understands the current societal views on the theme of current pop songs such as Tom Odell's music which are relationships, young -people, sex, etc. By getting her opinion and feedback on my product I would be able to conclude whether or not I had successfully created a product with a specific target audience in mind and whether or not my product actually appealed to this audience.
This piece of audience feedback is really useful to me because Kate has picked up on the fact that I styled the actors hair in plaits and put her in girly clothing in the hope that it would represent a childlike character and from this I have learnt that I accurately and effectively used semiotics (signs and symbols) and stereotypes because Kate does not study media so therefore she is not aware of theses technical areas that she has picked up on which reinforces how accurately I have created and represented stereotypes and my use of semiotics.
She has also commented on how well I have managed to create a story based on the lyrics of the song and she said that this helped her to feel more involved in the story as it made it much easier to watch because the visual moving image matched well with the song she was listening to. This tells me that I have connected well with the target audience as I have created a product that they feel they have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the song which is thanks to how well the footage I have created links to the lyrics of the song. It also tells me that I have understood the wants and needs that this audience has and that I have presented my video in a way that the target audience like, understand and feel they connect with and follow throughout the whole duration of my video.
Emily, 18, Female, Non-media student.This piece of audience feedback also comes from a non-media student who falls in the perfect target audience for Tom Odell's music because of her age and gender. Reinforcing what the feedback from Kate said, Emily has also picked up on the fact that my main themes throughout my final products were to reflect childhood and I also like the use of the word nostalgia as I think it perfectly describes the feeling I was trying create in all my products and is a word that I had not previously thought of. Emily thinks I have done this through the colour scheme and the the model that I used on all 3 of my products.
She has also recoginised the fact that I have continuously the same font on each of my products allows them to relate on one another.
Again, the fact that Emily has recognised all of the features that I purposely included in order to represent the theme of childhood through semiotics and signs shows how successfully I have used them because Emily is a non-media student and therefore her understanding of a digipak and a promotional poster will not be as thorough as that if a media student, however because I have represented my themes so clearly they are still noticed and the fact how much they all work together is recognised.
Hannah, 17, Female, Media student
This piece of feed back comes from Hannah, a fellow media student who therefore, has a much deeper understanding of the purpose of both the ancillary texts as I think that, especially with the digipak, an audience of non-media students would not be familiar with an album cover being set out in this way as I was also not familiar with the term 'digipak' before studying it in media. Another thing that a non-media student would not appreciate is the smaller details such as the smaller conventions that you do not really pay attention to but are actually really important in order to make a product look legitimate, examples of these include the barcode, the logo of the label and the copyright declaration that is in small print at the bottom of the back cover. Hannah comments on my creation of continuity throughout all of my products and the fact that I took stills from my video, which she has seen, for some of the images in my digipak and also I have taken shots from the same location as where my video was shot in order to create continuity through my mise-en-scene (something that I don't think some one who hasn't studied media would pick up on.) as well as also creating continuity through using the same image as the main image that represents all 3 products.As I predicted, Hannah has noticed that on my poster I included pull quotes so as to make it look like the album had been reviewed by some established magazines. I thought carefully about which magazines to include quotes so that I made sure they were quotes from magazines that attract audiences of this genre of music in the hope that this may attract more attention from the main target audience and also may establish another audience that thought they might not be interested in Tom Odell's music before seeing that it is music that is recognised by the likes of 'Q' and NME magazine.
One way in which Hannah told me I could improve my products was by adding more to both of the discs as she feels that they look unfinished which would be something to consider however I feel that this shows that she has not recognised another one of my main themes which is minimalism as, in my opinion, I though that this would add to the theme of innocence that I was trying to create as well.
Phoebe, 18, Female, Media student
Phoebe was the final person that I asked for audience feedback and I chose to ask Phoebe so that I had an equal ratio of feedback from both media and non-media students. Like the rest of the people I received feedback from, Phoebe is also the main target audience that I feel would listen to Tom Odell's music. She too, picked up on the fact that the main thing that links al 3 of products together is through the colour scheme and she said that it is the grass (mise-en-scene) that especially links all 3 of the products together it is prominent in all 3 of my products. Unlike anyone else that I asked for feedback from, she picked up on the fact that I have used pictures of trees for the 2 inside images on my digipak and then for the front cover of my digipak and my poster I have used a picture of the girl in my music video, looking out into the distance where it looks like she is looking at the trees and this brings together the whole digipak as image relates to the others in one way or another. She thought that the way the writing on the back cover of my album was aligned to the left was really effective and the fact she picked up on this was interesting as i was heavily influenced to do this after seeing it done on Tom Odell's real album showing that I have effectively conformed to conventions and recreated this idea very well.
Finally Phoebe said that the font I have used, although it is quite plain and simple, is still effective as a font on my media texts because it works well with my theme of minimalism and suits the emotions and feelings I was aiming to create. She concluded that it is because of the images I have used and the use of the same font throughout is the main reason why all 3 of my products work well together and therefore she shares the opinion of the 3 other people I have gotten feedback from and the fact that they all share this opinion means that I have effectively created continuity throughout all 3 of my final products and that I was successful in ensuring that all of my products work well together.
Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Evaluation Question 4
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
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