Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

This is my answer for my Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

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Evaluation Question 3: What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

This evaluation question asks: What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

Throughout my construction of my three products, I conducted many forms of audience feedback to gain insight in how my target audience would be attracted to a product enough to consume it. By conducting this research, we would be able to create an effective promotional package for our artist.

We started off our research into our audience by asking questions to a random sample of people, trying to understand the mainstream genres of music, why music videos are important and gaining the general reasons for watching music videos to truly understand how to allow our audiences to consume our promotional package, making it effective for our artist.

Our questions were:

1. What makes an artist memorable?
2. What genres of music do you listen to?
3. Do you watch music videos?
4. What platforms do you use to watch music videos?
5. What is your favourite music video?
6. Why?

These questions enabled us to gain enough information about our target audience in order to construct our music video to the standards and expectations of our target audience.

We also created a survey on surveymonkey to gain information from the public who were not in our video to see if the answers from the video differed from the survey.
These were our results:

The majority of people who answered the questions were around the age of 17-20 years old, which is the age group we were targeting aiming for as our audience.

The majority of answers for this question was female, and we were targeting our music video towards females as it is a pop video about a relationship, and so our answers from this survey was very helpful in providing information about our target audience.

Half of our answers for this question was Pop music, and we also had 20% of answers for country music, which is the two genres of our music video. This allowed us to gain more knowledge of our target audience. 

The answers from this question allowed us to create an effective image for our artist, we were able to use their answers and develop our artist into effectively conforming to our audience's expectations.

The majority of answers showed that the public do watch music videos, and so our target audience would watch our music video.

The answers from this question gave us an insight into why the public watch music videos and the impact a music video could have on the audience.

This provided information on the platforms the public watch music videos on. Our most popular answer was YouTube, with 100%. We also had an answer for Television, which shows that people watch music videos on many different platforms, and so it provides many ways our music video can be consumed.

By using this question, we were able to gain information about the music videos our target audience watched. This worked in our favour for some of the answers were based on Taylor Swift, who was a big inspiration throughout our project, and by comparing their answers to the answers they chose in the above questions, we were able to gain a full idea of our target audience.

During the construction of our music video, we decided we needed the target audience's feedback in order to make our music video a success. By doing so, we created a rough cut of what the music video looked like so far, and asked the audience two questions: "What Went Well?" and "Even Better If?" These two questions allowed us to gain information about the aspects of the music video which our audience enjoyed, and particular features which the audience thought could be improved.  

This video allowed us to gain information from our audience on what went well in our video, and we gained answers such as the speed of editing was very good, the lip-syncing and the background. One really good thing about the answers our audience gave for the question "Even Better If" was that we already had those ideas in mind and we had already filmed that footage which would suit the audience's answers, and so we were overjoyed with the feedback we received. 

After our final music video was created, we decided to conduct another audience feedback video to see if our corrections fit with our audiences expectations. By creating this audience feedback, we were able to see if our audience enjoyed our finished music video.

We used the helpful advice from the audience feedback for the rough cut to make a better quality final music video which will suit our audience's expectations. 

We then created the next part of our project, which was the digipak. We asked for feedback on our digipak, such as what did you like about it? Did it fit with our music video? Would you be able to recognise it as our artist straight away? 

Most of our feedback was very positive, such our use of the tree image which fit with the nature location of our video. We wanted the album to fit with the name, Ordinary Situations, and so the nature effect worked well, which our audience noticed and enjoyed. One piece of criticism was that the front of the digipak did not automatically relate to our music video, however it still worked in our favour. 

The positive feedback was:

• Effective use of images
• Memorable
• Helps to understand the narrative
• Effective however simple design

We also asked for feedback from our audience on our artist's magazine advert. 

The feedback we asked for was how to improve the album and what was successful about the album, such as picture placement, colour scheme, font and text placement. We gained positive feedback on it, such as it related to our digipak and it would be recognisable. Also that it was memorable and it had consistency throughout our promotional package. 

Through our use of audience feedback, we have learned how to make our promotional package effective for our audience enough for them to consume it and enjoy it. 

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts

This is my answer to my evaluation question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts, which i answered through my use of a website called Popplet.

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Constructing the Magazine Advert

We researched into magazine adverts and what type of information needed to be included in the advert to make our advert look professional and like a real magazine advert.
We used Photoshop to construct our advert, and we decided to use the same image of the tree as was on our front and back panels of our music video for we thought it would be familiar to the audience and they would be able to recognise that it would be our artist's advert. We also used the same font for our text as it would allow consistency throughout our digipak and magazine advert.

We then included the artist's name, and we decided to make the advert look popular and give her an "up-and-coming" vibe and so we also added other information, such as "Brand New Album."

We then added ratings from magazine companies, such as NME and Mojo, to make the advert look successful and professional, and to catch the attention of the audience, as they will want to know more about the five star album.

And this is our finished Magazine Advert.

Constructing the Digipak

This is our finished Digipak 

We used a digipak template to understand the placement of the photos on the digipak, and we had to manipulate all of the photos in our own way by the use of photoshop.  We had to create different photos for each panel to make a successful digipak. We wanted the front and back cover to smoothly connect and so we used the same image spaced over both panels. By doing this, we used the correct measurements for each six panels, and we connected the front and back panels together with a 1cm to the width for the spine of the digipak. 

We also created 11 songs for the back of our digipak to create the feeling that it is a full digipak, and we decided to make the title of the digipak one of the songs on the back, like what most digipaks have.  We also got an image of a barcode for our digipak to make it more professional and make it look like a real digipak. 

This is the font we decided to use for our digipak as we wanted a font which could be blended into the branches. However, once we tested out our idea we decided it would be best if the title would be just below the branches. We thought this font would be most effective as it has a tree branch effect to it, which is the focus of the front and back panels. 

This is our information page for our artist on the inside of our digipak. We researched about digipaks and looked into the information that goes on the artist panels. We decided that using a white background and the side of the tree like the front and back panels would be effective for our information page as it is subtle and it gives consistency to the digipak. 

These three images are on the inside pages of our digipak. They were all manipulated on photoshop with the vignette filter to create an effective tone to our photos.  The middle photo was manipulated to make James fade out of the photo by placing an exact photo over the top containing only Kendall in it. This creates the effect that James has left her life as their relationship is over, which would be effective for our audience. 

This is our finished digipak. We had to flip the three images at the top to make the upside-down so that it would create a perfectly presented digipak.  We then placed a cd holder over the middle photo to make the digipak look real, like it was ready for the cd to be placed o the digipak.

Magazine Advert