Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I decided to make a private Facebook group in which i posted all of my work (main text and ancillary texts) and asked the people subscribed to the group to give me feedback. I asked the respondents what they liked about the video, what the bad points were, and how they could be improved.
I had quite a good response from the Facebook group with the members giving me detailed feedback.

ANCILLARY TEXTS

Digipak feedback

I asked my target audience for this feedback before i completed my coursework so i could go back and correct anything they said i should change.
The feedback for the colours and fonts i used was very positive. i learned that i should trust my colour choices and continue to use them in my other texts.
I also learned from this feedback that my target audience enjoy the simplistic nature of my product they say it is 'easy to read' and 'effective'.My target audience also showed that they are taking a preferred reading towards my texts as they have picked up on the 'bohemian' nature of my product. They all said it was 'appealing to the eye', this is what i originally set out to achieve when creating my digipak, i wanted it to primarily look good.
I used the feedback to adjust my original design by changing the line behing the dreamcatcher so that it didn't look off centered.




Advertisement Feedback

The feedback for my advertisement was again very positive, my target audience focus group picked up on the continuity of my colour scheme and noticed the simplistic style again.
They also complimented my graphic design saying that it looked very 'professionally done'.
Judging by the responses, my target audience are looking at my texts in a purely visual way, in a way that does not convey too much meaning but is pleasing to the eye.




MAIN TEXT

Judging by the feedback for my main text the audience have really caught on to what i was trying to achieve  they comment on the 'mixture of inner city montage and linear storyline' which is primarily the intention for the video, to create contrasts.
I am happy that my target audience also picked out the psychedelic imagery as i wasn't sure whether it was clear enough.
Our focus group was carefully chosen to include people who regularly listen to the music featured in our music video, therefore the majority of them took a preferred reading and described it as 'cool' and 'obscure'.  Some of the respondents were more detailed in their responses and others less so. I presume this is because some of the members have a lower cultural capital and may have found the video confusing in parts.
We had told our focus group before the video was completed how obscure it was going to be, therefore they may not have been as shocked as they maybe would have if they didn't know what to expect.
Overall the use of audience feedback helped a great deal in many ways, it boosted our confidence when getting positive feedback and also gave us constructive criticism on how to improve our video, it was an eye opening experience and really gave us an insight into our target audience.

Evaluation - Question 1

I have created a Prezi powerpoint to display and explain how my media product uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions of real media products.

Evaluation - Question 2

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

For my A2 Media Studies coursework this year I was asked to create a marketing package which included a music video for a relatively unknown artist, a cover for its release as part of a digipak and a magazine advertisement for the digipak.

When creating the ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement) i kept to a distinct house style, exemplified by the clear continuity in colour scheme and focus on the imagery of the human eye. Originally this was the house style me and my partner were going to continue displaying in our main product (music video), but after successfully creating the ancillary texts me and my partner decided on a radical change of our music video as our peer group commented that it may have been too disjunctive.

Question 2 from bbbbaldwin

Evaluation - Question 4

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

RESEARCH AND PLANNING

When researching the specified genre i was going to be working in i made use of several programmes and websites including the video hosting website YouTube and the music streaming service Spotify. I used YouTube in a number of ways, firstly i used it to watch other music videos made by artists in the same genre as my chosen artist. It allowed me to find the videos with ease by using the 'similar videos' feature and helped me gain new ideas and inspiration for my own music video. Secondly i used YouTube as a social network to find official band profiles and also to upload my own videos to share with my target audience and peers to get opinions on my animatic and rough video ideas. The evolution of Media 2.0 allowed me to find more personal material like fan-made videos and other A2 media students' videos which also proved to be a good source of inspiration and ideas and allowed me to look further into genre conventions.

Without the use of my iPhone 4S the pace in which we  planned and eventually filmed our music video would have been a lot slower.
I was able to phone people to arrange casting meetings and audience focus groups as well as researching my genre of 'dance' music on the go without the need of being sat at a desktop computer.
The evolution of communication technologies became hugely evident when i was able to organise a 'group chat' in which i was able to arrange a chat with several people at once to arrange filming times.

Perhaps the most important website of the whole media studies course is blogger.com. It enabled me to compile all of my research and planning in one singular place in an easy and understandable way. The fact that we could access blogger from home was a huge help, it meant we could do media work at home   very easily. Without the use of blogger to electronically store my work online i think I definitely would have misplaced work as the mass of the workload is too big to keep on paper. It also allowed me to display my work in an interesting way by embedding pictures and YouTube clips into my blog posts.

I only used Adobe Premiere twice in my research and planning. Firstly i used it to edit our Busted music video reproduction and secondly i used it to compile our animatic storyboard. I did this by firstly drawing pictures of what i wanted specific scenes to look like and then using a scanner to transfer them on to the computer and finally compiling the images in the correct order and in sync with the music.
It was difficult to use at first but i quickly became familiar with the software. Using the software in the research and planning stages made it easier to edit our own music video as i had already had some practice.



PRODUCTION

A piece of software that was very useful in the production of my digipak and my advertisement was the Adobe Photoshop graphics editing program. It allowed me to digitally manipulate my images in a professional way, similar to what would be seen in real media products.
I made particular use of the brightness/contrast tools to make my photographs seem more vivid. I also made use of the opacity and layering tools so i could layer my images on top of each other allowing them to blend together, this effect was key to my digipak design. The software also enabled me to cut sections from one photo and paste them on to another photo, i used this to take the eyes from one photo and merge them with another photo to create the focal picture of my advertisement. The tools featured in the program shaped my design slightly because my knowledge was limited although the presence of those tools sometimes enhanced my creativity.
Photoshop allowed me to create professional products which could easily be used in the real media industry. Without the use of this program my designs would have suffered and i would not have been able to digitally design my ideas. The software was a little difficult to use at first as some of the functions are complicated to understand e.g. the organisation of visible layers.

To take the photos for my print production pieces, i used my Nikon D3100 DSLR. It enabled me to take high quality photographs in which the quality would not be lessened when digitally transfered to the computer via SD card. When shooting the photographs i made use of the Macro setting to take crisp extreme close ups. I used an 18-55mm Nikkor lens which allowed me to experiment with different shots and the auto focus feature came in handy when i needed to take a picture quickly. Using my DSLR was of a huge help and really made my product look professional. When comparing the photo quality to other cameras, the DSLR stood apart from the rest.

To film our entire music video we used a Panasonic Full HD video camera. It was very easy and simple to use and it had a rotatable screen making it easy for over the head shots and shots that were lower than chest height. The widescreen lens allowed us to capture more action and the 1080p film quality really added to the professional feel.
Without the use of a digital video camera uploading the images to the computer would have been tedious, the SD card made it so much easier.
We didnt use a tri-pod when filming our video because we wanted a more handheld feel but we experimented with the tri-pod and it worked very well with the camera.

After filming our music video we uploaded all of our shots to a piece of software called Adobe Premiere. After we imported all of our clips we imported an MP3 of our chosen song. After had the song on the timeline we could then start importing our clips in order, Premiere made this really easy because the timeline showed us the timings and we could zoom in to see more finer details. Once we had established a followable narrative we could start playing around with the in-programme effects such as 'colour replace' and 'multiply'. Some of the effects worked well but others seemed to have little to no effect. We also used the programme to visually manipulate the green screen and superimpose images on to it. This was quite tricky to master and some times the chosen background would blend into our cast member infront of the green screen, which gave us an undesirable effect. We originally had some ideas that we had intended to use that the programme would not allow us to do which overall may have impacted on the effectiveness of the visual effects in our music video.



EVALUATION

The use of Facebook focus groups as an evaluation tool was very useful, it allowed me to share my product with people from my target audience and to get constructive feedback and feedback in general. It was very quick and easy to set up a Facebook group and i had a really good response from everyone. Facebook also allowed me to see other peoples A2 media products and help them out by giving feedback.
Without Facebook it would have been a lot harder to gather opinions and to spread my message to a mass audience.







Overall i think the technology I have used have both helped and hindered me, in some cases such as the use of the DSLR and the HD video camera it most certainly aided me in my production and the use of an iPhone was hugely helpful with organisation and planning. On the other hand some of the software we used e.g. Photoshop and Premiere hindered my creativity by limiting some of the effects i could use. Media 2.0 was a huge help in both the research and planning stage and the evaluation stage, it is a way to contact a mass group of people and upload your own products for everybody to see which otherwise would be impossible.

Final Music Video

Lip Sync

Originally we were going to use our lead male part (Jordan) to lip sync but due to Jordan's busy schedule we had to change our lip-sync-er to another male. The next most available person was Billy which worked out well because he is very confident and was more than happy to be filmed lip-syncing. This could make our video feel a bit disjointed at times but we don't think it will effect the overall impact of the video as a whole

Dance Scene

Today me and Nancy decided to change the sparklers that we were going to use for the dance scenes/performance in our music video to glow sticks. Partly because firework shops are not open any more because bonfire night has passed. And also because we could use glowsticks indoors to achieve a more dark setting.