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

 Blogger:
I chose Blogger as a way to record my A2 advanced portfolio media project, because of the way media technologies can be incorporated with it easily. When using Blogger it is easy to embed videos from sites such as Youtube and Vimeo, you can also embed projects form other sites ie Poplet, Slideshare and Prezi. It is also easy to add pictures or links to other web pages to your posts. All of these features help to make the project more interesting and engaging for the user and means that they can interact with the page. This gives the audience a clearer idea of your thought process and enables them to view the thing that have inspired you first hand making it easier for them to understand the project. It is also possible to label the posts making the blog easy to navigate around.

Twitter:

Social media is a great way for producer of media to try and understand their target market. Twitter and other sites such as facebook give a invaluable insight into what is popular in today’s market, what sort of media the audience is use to and uses as well as their opinions and likes. Furthermore these sites can also help producers in the development stage of production. It is easy and requires no funds to post images or ideas on social media sites and ask for opinions, which is especially good for low budget productions where funding is minimal. Using these sites allows their designs to be viewed by vast amount of potential consumers who are usually happy to give unbiased opinions on the products.

Prezi:

Prezi was easy way to resent information in a fun and interactive way. The fact that photos and videos could be uploaded onto the ‘canvas’ meant that I could give visual aids to what I was saying as well as making it more interesting for the audience. The layout and ability to guide the viewer from one frame to the next as well as the user being able to explore if they wished to meant that the presentations were very interactive and engaging fore the viewer. Furthermore the design gave a clear and professional presentation that could be customised to suite your presentation I.e. my target audience Prezi uses image that relates to the topic and is eye-catching and fun. However the only downside to using Prezi is that I wished to provide links for the user to follow to give them additional information on bands or to take them directly to my sources of inspiration i.e. articles or blogs however Prezi doesn’t allow links so I was unable to include them in my presentations.

 

Photoshop:

Image: shows the different layers used to create the digipak many effects were applied and not all of them are going to be used. The only effects that are visible are shown by the eye in the left corner. 

Photoshop was extremely useful when I came to make my digipak and magazine advert as it enabled me to edit my products to a degree that wouldn’t have been possible in fireworks. I also used Photoshop to edit my drawings and create the style of illustration that now features on my products I wouldn’t have been able to create this style without the use of Photoshop’s layers and especially invert which made the outline of the image white and the background black. I used many effects including invert, which gave my image the white outline and black background to create the final image that is on the products. 

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

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is crucial when designing and making media products, that is because the best way to make sure an audience likes a product is to ask them and find out what their views, opinions and wants are for the particular product you are producing.

 

Throughout my project I have tried to refer back to audience feedback and use it to develop a product that audience will relate to and enjoy. During the process of making my products I have found focus groups to be an invaluable resource when gathering audience feedback. This is mainly because I can gather precise information and find out specific opinions and views as well as how they would change the products and what exactly they like/dislike. Whereas I found that questionnaires were more qualitative and thus they may answer my question but that doesn’t give me an answer and even with open questions the response is sometimes unclear.

 

Audience feedback has affected my product drastically and fuelled its development and construction. One of the main changes my audience feedback inspired was the change from using a coloured heart to using the black and white image that then became the theme.  The style and cover image was also picked by my target audience out of a 3 possible designs. I also gained feedback on what it was that attracted the audience to that design so that I could consider it when designing the magazine advert.  I learnt that they liked the fact that the image was easily recognisable and stood out against existing products. Whereas they felt that the sky design was too plain and was similar to many other existing products.  They also thought that the other two products failed to correctly express the band and didn’t represent the music.

One of the other key aspects to the music video that my audience feedback had a part in changing is the difference between the original idea of the girl and boy lacking emotion and being almost robotic and the final video where they are more realistic with emotions and have more relaxed posture is due to criticism by my audience. They felt that the song was very emotional and that having a emotionless relationship made no sense, they believed that the video should show the boy and girl in a more natural way so that it reflected the real relationships the song was written about.  I then decided to change my music video and that by having them in less rigid positions and showing their emotions that it would help the audience connect more with the song as well as making the video a better representation of the song. However I did find that as I had not initially wanted expressive people that the change to the video meant that they were no longer a great choice as they weren’t use to giving close up expressive facial expressions. Although by the time I had decided to change this most of the filming had already been done and trying to cast new actors was impractical.

Analyse of my misic video product in relation to the concept of audience

My target audience is teens and young adults aged roughly 15-24. They are typical of modern youth, media savvy, they are active consumers of media, computer games and fashion (on average they buy 31 albums a year!). Judging by Kerrang’s statistics there is a slightly bigger male market for rock/metal media/ merch (60% of consumers are males and 40% are female). However I didn’t consider the percentage difference to be big enough to specifically aim my product at a specific gender and instead I’ve aimed to make my product reach their expectations and appeal to today’s youth.. Rock is a relatively niche market but that has a passionate fan base.  Rock fans tend to keep informed of the latest news concerning their favourite artist many will use sites such as twitter to keep informed of what is going on in the rock music scene.

In order for me to create a successful product I had to follow Pluralists theory of supply and demand and find out what the needs and wants of my audience. From focus groups I found out that fans of ‘Mallory Knox’ wanted a video with a storyline and meaning compared to the more normal rock conventions of live performance based videos. This is due to the fact that although ‘Mallory Knox ‘is a rock band have adapted their musical style and have some aspects that you would more commonly see in an ‘indie’ band. This adaptation of having more serious and meaningful lyrics mixed with the traditional rock band sound has created an audience with different expectations and wants for the music videos that accompany the songs.

Therefore I would argue that my music video was made by and for an active target audience, which has been directly involved in the selection and consumption of media output. One theory that supports this view is Denis McQuail’s Uses and Gratifications Model. This model states that audiences actively seek media that caters for that person’s specific needs and wants. McQuail suggests that the reasons why people use media are: information; personal identity; integration and social interaction and entertainment. Most of these categories could be related to my music video in some way, however a more dominate gratification was providing audiences with a media product that helped in creating personal identity and integration & social interaction. This is entirely due to the narrative of the video and its depiction of emotions and actions of the ‘boy’ during the ending of a relationship. This enables the audience to gain insight into the circumstances of others and could reinforce personal values.

Andrew Goodwin’s theory of voyeur is evident in my music video and the audience is frequently put in the position of watching the couple during their emotional relationship. Especially during the beginning and end of the video where the bulk of the narrative is. I also used Goodwin’s theory of close ups to create a star persona.

Another theory that could be applied to my music video is Richard Dyer’s theory of utopian solutions. Although this theory only applies depending on how the viewer perceives the end of the video. The end of the video shows the boy and girl back together without anger looking at the stars showing compassion for each other. However this theory would not work if the viewer does not believe that the boy and girl are back together and that the situation is still not solved and that the video instead portrays the complex emotions of people in relationships. 

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

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

 The main purpose behind music videos, posters and digipaks is to promote the artist and to sell their music to a specific audience. One of the ways record labels do this is by creating an ‘image’ for the artist based on the wants of that specific audience at that moment in time. They then make sure that all aspects of the artist either create or enforce this image. Music videos are a good way of getting an audience to perceive an artist in a certain way; this is because they can control production as well as using post production effects to create something that gives the correct impression to the audience enabling them to create the ‘image’ for the artist. The same goes for the digipak and poster, house style is also important to create a link between the artist their album and the poster so that audiences automatically recognise and make a connection between the music and the products.

My research and planning was crucial in understanding what appealed to my target audience and what they wanted from a band. Based on the focus groups and research into existing artists I decided that I wanted to portray the band as a bunch of street wise misguided guys that were also honest faithful fun and slightly quirky. This would hopefully help to sell them to my target audience as it gave girls an aspirational boyfriend and boys would relate to the cool, fun, rocky side of the band. I aimed to portray this by using the combination of narrative and performance in the video. The performance side hopefully gave the audience a glimpse of the bands personality while there on trend clothing helped them to relate to the audience. In contrast the narrative side of the video was used to portray the emotions of the song and the more sensitive side of the band it also helped to give the band there quirky quality that makes them appeal to this audience.

During the development and production of my product I was very aware of the importance of house style and tried to create a strong house style throughout all of products. I did this mainly by creating a house style structure and following it during the production of my album cover and poster. I also tried to incorporate the house style in my video by using the same font and colour scheme in the opening words of the video.  

Overall I think that my products work well together to create a strong link between the music, artist and the products/advertisement .

Limited Edition Album

I have also considered how a series of special edition cases could be designed for the package of Mallory Knox products I have designed. A limited number of copies would be released in a book like form consisting of a hard backed outer with two disc trays and a leaflet that is part of the book. The other disc could be a number of things depending on what the band would agree to;

A selection of live songs,

A DVD showing them performing at a recent tour or of them doing the studio recording for the album,

Their personal mixtape with a compilation of songs that have inspired them.

As for the design of the cover the only image that would appear in it would be the grey heart image that features in the poster. The image would be central with the only text being the album name on the label of the bottle. The only change to the image would be a red wispy glow from the bottle. The spine and back would be the same as on the standard packaging. The protective sleeve would feature the same image on the front although the back would have the lyrics ‘wake up, stand up, I never could he said so we sang’ from Mallory Knox’s song Wake UP which links this album to their previous one instead of the list of tracks.

The leaflet would contain the lyrics to the songs in the album as well as photos of the band and illustrations in the same style of the one featured in the digipak.

Furthermore I would also screen print the design for the limited edition album to give the professional and quirky quality that would be applied to the standard digipak aswell as the matte finish and gloss and embossed effects (the back quote being both glossy and embossed).