How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Throughout my coursework new media technologies have been essential in allowing me to research, plan, create and evaluate my work. I have used iMovie to create a video about the technologies I have used and how they have helped me.
Photoshop and iMovie have been particularly useful for the creation of my work. Below I have demonstrated the ways that I have used them to develop my products.
I used photoshop to make the map slightly transparent and light in colour. I then edited the colour, saturation, exposure and brightness of my chosen photo of Jonny and used the quick select tool to cut out the section of the picture which I wanted to put on my advert. I then dragged the cut out image of Jonny on to the map and edited the size in order to fit an A4 page. Following this I opened the artist name font which I had also created using photoshop, and then used the text tool to write more detailed information. I used the quick select tool again to cut out an image of a star and inserted this on to my advert in order to create a star rating. Finally I found an image of the Twitter logo and edited the brightness in order to make it stand out; I then dragged this on to my advert, positioned it next to the artist's Twitter @. The screen shots below demonstrate the ways in which iMovie has been a useful technology. The software allows me to not only order and time footage, but also enables me to edit the colour and speed of each shot and use transitions in order to show different connotations within each shot, fit with the conventions of the genre, and make the music video more appealing.
Overall new media technologies have been hugely useful throughout my project and have helped me create products to the best of my ability. Without the development of Web2.0 and the creating of technologies such as social networks, smart phones, and youtube, it would be difficult to target my video at the correct audience as a lot of my research and feedback was carried out through these and without them it my audience would struggle to find out about my music video. These Web2.0 technologies allow me to directly acces my target audience and have helped me access a wide audience through sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In addition presentation technologies such as Prezi, Bubbl and Golgster have been very useful throughout my coursework as they have enabled me to explore ideas and present my research in an appealing way in order to make my blog more interesting and easy to understand.
What have you learned from your audience feedback? Throughout the planning and construction of my three products, audience feedback has been a great deal of help as it has aided my decision making and helped me learn about my audience in order to ensure that I was creating products which would be appealing to our target audience and promote the video successfully. Our target audience was initially thought to be just teenage girls, however my poll suggested that we should also aim it at boys as well; therefore we decided to aim our video at people of both gendersbetween the ages of 14 and 20. As I am in sixth form I can easily access many people who are within this group as I am able to speak to year 10/11 students and people within sixth form. As I was able to speak to many students I have received reliable, useful and encouraging audience feedback from my target audience; therefore allowing me to make the right choices and focus my products on this audience. When we first chose the song, we wanted to ensure that it would be enjoyed by our target audience, therefore I decided to put two polls on my blog in order to find out what genre of music the audience felt the song fits in with - this helped to ensure that our chosen song did belong to the genre of alternative / indie rock which we chose to look at. Soon after this I created a poll asking who our audience felt the song was most suited to; the results shows that the majority (10/11) of our audience felt that the song is most suited to teenage girls. However one person believed that both genders would like the song; therefore we decided to open our target audience from just girls, to both genders. In addition I decided to ask my audience for their views about the song we had chosen, and I constructed a video using Movie Maker showing their feedback about the song Like We Used To by A Rocket To The Moon:
This feedback ensured that we had chosen a suitable song which could be enjoyed by our target audience. The choice of song was essential for this project as it has to fit with our chosen genre of indie/alternative rock so that we can use the conventions of the genre in order to create a music video suitable for the song and the genre.
I have created a presentation which shows many other ways in which audience feedback has assisted the development of my products:
Throughout the creation of my three products I have learned that audience feedback is essential. A text is constructed by the directors and producers, but actually has no meaning until it is decoded by the audience. For this reason it is vital to constantly ask audience members for feedback about ideas, plans, products and decisions. An audience bring their own experiences, opinions and expectations to a video and therefore everyone interprets texts differently; I had to ensure that my products could be understood by my target audience and it is also important that they can be enjoyed by the audience as well. Audience feedback is the most efficient and successful way that I can make sure my products are as appealing as possible.
Web 2.0 has been essential in gaining audience feedback as it has allowed me to directly access my target audience through social networks such as Twitter and Facebook which are highly popular amongst people between the ages of 14 and 20. Therefore these sites have been very helpful throughout my project as they have allowed me to ask for feedback from people within my specific target age range. With the development of technologies, social networks have become a vital part of the marketing process of music videos within the music industry, as celebrities and record labels can quickly access a large group of fans in order to create an online 'buzz' about a product and therefore promote the video, artist and record label all at the same time. I have done this by uploading my video to YouTube and then posting the video and ancillary texts on both Twitter and Facebook in order to allow a mass audience to access my products and give me feedback about my work.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? In order to create a sense of cohesion between my three products - music video, digipak and advert - I had to include as many similar themes with each product as possible. It is conventional within the music industry to have some very clear similarities between albums, videos and advertising because this allows the target audience to connect to all three products and notice a theme throughout; this would enable an audience member to easily recognise the album in a shop or online, based on an advert they had seen. I have created a Prezi which shows the ways that I have made my three products connect:
In addition, I have also spoken to some members of my target audience in order to find out whether they believe my products connect and work well together.
This audience feedback suggests that I have successfully created a sense of cohesion between my music video, advert and digipak, as the audience members can see a clear connection between the products. For example all four people picked up on the use of the same font for the artist name, the use of maps within all three products, the guitar featured in the three products which shows that Jonny is the artist. In addition they also noticed aspects such as Jonny wearing the same clothes during the rain scene and in my ancillary texts, and the use of polaroids within the video and the digipak. Overall I feel that my three products work well together and have clear connections which would allow my audience to recognise that they are all related.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? This Wordle shows many of the conventions, artists and songs within the genre of alternative/indie rock... In order to ensure that my music video, magazine advert and album look professional and appeal to their target audience it was important that I looked into the conventions of the genre and chose whether to use of subvert them. Kaylee and I chose to create a video for the song 'Like We Used To' by A Rocket to the Moon which is usually throughout of as alternative/indie rock. I wanted to use the conventions of the genre, for example using a lot of natural settings and colours, showing shots of the artist singing and playing his instrument, creating a visual representation of the story the lyrics and music are telling, and also creating a storyline which our target audience of people between the ages of 14 and 20 can relate to and possibly seek advice from. I feel that by following these conventions I can encourage our target audience to watch the video as they will have some expectations of the video and can therefore predict some of the themes of the video and will hopefully choose to watch it based on it. In addition following conventions will help our video appeal to a wide range of people as a traditional storyline can be enjoyed by many, whereas a subverted plot may not appeal to a mass audience. Although using conventions has helped us create an music video which is appealing and easy to view, I wanted to avoid following all the conventions of alt rock videos and stereotypes of relationships This is because it could become quite boring for our audience as they are likely to have seen many similar videos before, and this would result in people choosing not to watch the video or turning it off if they became bored. For this reason I decided to include some shots which you would not usually expect in a romance video, for example when Jess puts ice cream on Toms face, this creates some humour within the middle section of the video where it is common for there to be a lack of entertaining and appealing shots. Using some forms of subversion helps to keep our audiences attention throughout the entire video. If I was to plan and create the music video again I may consider using some more subversion within our video in order to make it really unique and special. I am happy with the final product and I believe that it fits the genre well, however this could mean that some people may find it too predictable and would be more engaged by a quirky storyline or total subversion of the conventions. Comparing my music video with another within the same genre... In the presentation below I have looked at the similarities and differences between my music video and an already existing video; I have analysed some of the shots and discussed how I have used or subverted the conventions of the genre.
I have also chosen a one minute clip from our video and created a directors commentary looking at the forms and conventions we have used within each shot:
For my ancillary products I chose to use the conventional idea that alternative/indie rock bands focus on freedom and nature, in order to create an album cover and a poster style magazine advert which have clear connotations of the genre. I decided to use a map for the background of the digipak and album poster because this symbolises freedom and journeys. I also followed the convention of focusing on the artist by using him as the main focus within each of my ancillary products. In order to keep the attention on him I have used only one polariod photo on the cover of the digipak which shows him and his guitar as this quickly shows new listeners that his music is focused on his voice and his guitar. On the magazine album poster I have trimmed a photo of him using photoshop and overlapped it on top of a slightly transparent map; the image of him is the full vertical height of the poster and therefore the eye is drawn to him. By using large images of the artist and focusing on nature within my promotional products I believe I have successfully followed the conventions of the genre of alternative/indie rock. In the presentation below I have explored the conventions of a real advert and album; I have then looked at the ways in which my products use and subvert these.
In order to assess how well my ancillary products fit with the conventions of the genre or alternative/indie rock music, I decided to place my products in magazines which focus on similar genres of music. This will allow me to see if they looked as though they fit in, and yet still draw the eye. I have used 'Glogster' to present my product placement images and discuss how they fit with the magazines.
I have shown my video to two different classes; one group of 6th form students aged 17/18, and one group of year 7's and 8's. I decided to ask these different age groups in order to establish the ways in which people will interpret our video and the effect age has on how the video is received. I feel that this is important, as towards the beginning of this project I created a poll about target audience and came to the conclusion that our video should be focused at both genders between the ages of 14 and 20. Therefore speaking to people who are and are not within this age range will allow me to assess whether we have successfully made a video which will appeal our target audience. This is Vicky. She is 17 years old and likes alternative music. She enjoys listening to music through Spotify and watching music videos on YouTube. I was able to quickly get feedback from her as she could access our video through Facebook and then gave me feedback through chat. She felt that my three products work really well together due to the use of the map background and the font included in my video, advert and digipak. She said that she likes the storyline within our video and she felt a lot of sympathy for Jono. She also praised the editing and transitions within our music video as she said it flows well and although the storyline is fragmented it is clear what is happening and she found it easy to understand how the story was developing. She really enjoyed our video and felt that our chosen song was really catchy and enjoyable. This is Amber. She is 16 and likes rock music. She loves going to see bands and she prefers buying physical CD's to digital downloads as she likes to collect albums so that bands and artists can sign them when she goes to gigs. I spoke to her in person in order to get feedback. She really enjoyed our video as she loves the song and liked our choice of actors. She also liked the use of maps throughout all three products as she had never seen a product which uses maps before and therefore she felt that our products would stand out from others. She also said that the genre of music was clear from the moment she saw my digipak as she instantly picked up on the maps representing freedom and knew that the music would be indie.
I visited a lower school tutor group in order to find out what younger people think about our music video. Each child wrote down all their thoughts about the video and handed them to me, as I felt that this would give them the chance to give more honest feedback. The majority of the students first noticed the font in the title scene; they liked the "swirly" writing used for the artists name and song title. In addition many of them pointed out the use of pastel colours in the image of the map and said this was pretty and matched the music. One of the main comments which a lot of the students made is that the song is very easy to listen to as they described it as "cool" and "pretty"; this suggests that the song we have chosen can be enjoyed by a wide audience. Many of them gave all positive feedback and wrote that the shots flow well, the storyline is interesting and emotional, and that they liked the romantic scenes.
However some of the male students felt that the video was slightly dull due to the romantic storyline; however this was expected because our target audience is 14-20 year olds, so I believe we have created a product which is most suitable for this age range as some younger children seemed to find the video boring because they are not as interested in love and relationships and therefore can't really relate to the storyline. Therefore I feel that this feedback shows that our video is most suitable for our target age range. However I have also found out that all the girls in the class liked it, although they are only about 12 years old, the majority of the girls said that they liked the romance and some wrote about wanting a relationship like the couple in the video. This shows that girls younger than my target age range can still enjoy our video; this is possibly because girls mature more quickly than boys, therefore the girls found it easier to understand the storyline and the connection between the song and the shots, therefore meaning that girls younger than about 14 can still enjoy the video. Following the screening of my video, one of the students went home and watched the video again. She only realised the second time she watched it, that the new boyfriend is introduced during the bed scene. After she realised this she understood the storyline, as before she did not realise that Jonny was the ex and Tom was the new boyfriend. This could suggest that our video fits well with the genre as the story is not totally clear and obvious; whereas many music videos have a clear storyline and the audience can make assumptions about what will happen. However our music video subverts this convention as it makes the audience question what is happening in the video and there is the possibility of finding deeper meaning in many of the shots. This is a USP (unique selling point) of our video because the audience can watch it many times and not necessarily get bored of it because each during each viewing there is the potential to notice more details about the story and find deeper meaning within each scene.
