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

When creating my music video, magazine advert and digipak I ensured I followed a ‘house style’ so that my products will be easily identified by its target audience which means that my products will be successful as they would have caught the audience’s eye.

My music video has the purpose to entertain its audience by highlighting freedom and happiness throughout, meaning not sitting around wasting time but living life to the maximum. This brings a good and energetic vibe towards my music video, due to the music also being of a fast tempo. The fast tempo throughout the music video is highlighted through the editing; each cut made in the video has been cut to the beat of the song making the music video look more interesting and appeal to the target audience. This also helps to represent happiness and freedom as its constant cuts moving on. The artist I chose will help to be successful as she is young and has great talent in both acting and dancing, this will help make sales and promote the album.

I believe that my music video is successful as I planned before shooting which enabled me to make sure I had enough footage that I could use. I also practised shooting before shooting on the day; this enabled me to have a steady hand when shooting with the steady cam. Lip syncing was essential in my music video as many shots are of my artist singing to camera; therefore I had to edit my clips in order for the lip sync to match the original soundtrack. The visuals shown on my video are of a high quality which also contain effects to make the footage stand out even more. When watching my music video, as it is of a pop genre it does make the audience wants to dance as there is an upbeat fast pace tempo encouraging the audience. To conclude, my music video follows the conventions of a typical pop music video, therefore I believe my video is fit for purpose and would be successful.

The purpose of the magazine advert is to promote the music videos album and the artist through her image. I believe my magazine advert represents the artist’s image and highlights happiness as expressed in the music video as the images used are of the artist happily smiling with a good atmosphere. Equally the colours used also represent this, initially I was going for a gold and black theme however I then noticed that this didn’t necessarily fit in well with the pop genre, therefore changed the colours to a more girly and feminine colour; pink. I strongly believe that pink was the right colour to use as my music video is mainly aimed at girls and pink tends to be a more feminist colour. I made my artist black and white as I believed that by already having brightly coloured text to attract the audience, the image would stand out more if it was in dull colours. I have also included reviews relevant to the genre, such as ‘Top of the Pops’, by having reviews encourages the audience to buy the album as ‘Top of the Pops’ is well known the audience already.

The digipak I created also maintains to portray the pink house style with a variety of photos of my artist either in black and white or in pink. The name of my album ‘Y.F.H – Young Foolish Happy’ reinforces my theme of happiness – as teenagers should be living life and not holding back onto grudges etc. Each page of the digipak features a type of line, this is either two lines crossed over each other or either two lines next to each other, and I have included these as a unique touch to each page which is consistent throughout.  

All three of my products have a symbolic relationship in common which relates to one another, this is due to the fonts being used throughout and the colour scheme. I have used pink a lot, which allows the audience to distinguish between other pop magazine adverts and digipak and even music videos. This is because my music video also has a colour scheme of pink ranging from the costumes and make up worn and the colour corrections on each clip.

Transcript: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Gathering audience feedback was a fundamental element of my production process, as it allowed me to see what I was doing and what I need to improve in order for my products to be at the best of my ability and as successful as possible. It also ensured that I was creating a product that would successfully meet the needs and expectations of my target audience.

The target audience for my products are females aged 15-25; there is also a secondary audience of males aged 17-25 as there are some male pop listeners. My artist ‘Pixie’ is a young teenage girl living life, I have made her image happy by making sure she is seen always smiling or laughing, I applied an outer glow to some of my images which made the images appear more innocent but lively due to her facial expressions i.e. smiling.

I made sure to gather audience feedback for my products throughout the project, as this would allow me to make necessary changes which would benefit me as I would be able to improve and make the products as professional as possible. I generated this feedback in various ways, I asked the people who was going to be in my music video to give me feedback on what they thought and any ideas they think would be better. I also created a survey using Survey Monkey, which allowed me to write my own questions and then share with whoever I liked. I was able to ask different types of questions such as open and closed and leading questions. I shared my survey with my Facebook friends, I received over 65 surveys. Examples of questions I included are; “Does the editing in my music video fit in well with the beat of the song? If you can see anything that would need to be improved, please explain” and “How would you rate the different aspects of my music video?” By asking these questions guaranteed that my target audience would give me accurate feedback to my music video which would allow me to see if it is successful or not.

I found that some feedback was more effective than others, for example asking a media student for feedback was more effective as they knew exactly what type of feedback would be effective; colour correcting was a key feedback from media students. A question which I got a variety of answers was ‘Did you understand the narrative of my music video? In your opinion what do you think the narrative is?, after asking this question I realised that some people may not understand the question as I was receiving mixed responses. For example some people understood that the question meant what did narrative mean, so they’d give me a definition ‘Narrative is the story of the music video, what you were trying to get the audience to understand’, this was a good response however it didn’t answer what I wanted to know but highlights that the person researched what it meant. Another response was ‘I don’t know’, this may be due to some people not actually knowing what narrative meant.  However overall most of the respondents understood the narrative of my music video and even over complicated it by trying to explain a story and applying the lyrics to it as well.

When asking for improvements on my music video I received quite a few mixed responses, some said that I should improve the lighting and contrast, miming and the transitions was too quick into the next shot. I believed that this was successful feedback on improvements as many people mentioned the same thing, I have improved my music video and followed the advice from the feedback given and applied it.

The most positive feedback that I received was my editing; as it was to the beat of the song and the shots weren’t on screen for too long, they kept cutting back and forth this is typically found in music videos which make them a lot more interesting to watch.  My different type’s camera shots were also another strong element of feedback from my target audience.

By asking quantitive and qualitative questions along with opinions allowed me to receive a variety of responses, which allowed me to improve my products in order to fit the genre appropriately. By gathering feedback online through a survey allowed me to get a lot of responses whereas if I was to interview people I wouldn’t have received as many improvements. For my survey I received over 65 responses, this for me was beneficial as I was given appropriate feedback which I then applied to my music video. Therefore in my opinion the more people you ask for feedback the more improvements you get which will help improve. I went through all my responses and noted down which improvements were suggested the most, for example colour correcting.

I organised a focus group with media students to gather feedback on my magazine advert and digipak, I did this by printing out my products and then filming the conversation the group were having were they talked about the elements they liked and what needed improving. The focus group was successful as they gave honest improvements and suggestions, and they were able to expand on their ideas, whereas on the survey there was a word account which didn’t allow the respondent to reply more than a certain number of characters.  I also went round asking people for feedback, I did this by asking them questions related to all 3 of my products. I found that by asking the questions myself and letting them answer the question allows them to develop more on their answer as there isn’t a limited amount. I find that this type of way of gathering feedback is a lot more successful than just gathering audience feedback through surveys and questionnaires.

All the feedback received helped me make certain decisions on all my products. For example in my magazine advert, having the black and gold colour scheme didn’t fit in well with the genre, therefore I had to come up with another house colour to follow. Feedback has also effected the audience’s interpretation of decoding the messages behind everything; in my survey it is clear that the audience have understood my message of my music video of having fun. 

In conclusion after carrying out different ways of gathering feedback I have learnt that a focus group with media students is more effective than having a survey which can be for anyone to complete. This because I noticed in my feedback which ones had the understanding of the project and tools for improvements. Whereas with a no media student they would just assume that everything is good. For example a non media student wouldn’t pick up on colour correction. When creating a survey, I think it would be more appropriate to have a question such as ‘Are you a media student?’, as this would enable us to distinguish responses which would be more beneficial as there would be advanced improvements such as contrast and lighting of the videos. Finally, I was open to feedback; I made as many improvements as I could, in order to have a successful product.

Transcript: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

Over the past years digital technology has become more widespread and affordable to the audience allowing them to have more opportunities of distributions and sharing. Before we never used to have access to a digital camera, making filming a lot more complicated as you wouldn’t be able to playback the footage shot on the day, whereas now we can afford digital technology such as the Canon 550D DSLR, this camera allowed me to shot my music video and playback footage to make sure that I had captured everything I was hoping to capture. I also had the ability to use manual settings, where I changed the movie record size to 1280x720 with 50 frames a second; I also changed the shutter speed to 100 as it is always best to shoot with the shutter speed double what the frames are. When shooting, I also made sure the ISO was set to 400 and the aperture to 4.5, this made the quality of my video clear when shooting outside and inside.

Before beginning anything, I created a blog on www.blogger.com, this blog was so that I could keep note of everything I did during the process of creating all 3 products and the research and planning involved. I was able to upload and show different skills and formats of my work instead of just having a word document with everything on it. This blog allows me to have a range of formats making my work more creative. I found that using blogger to keep my work was very useful as I used it for my AS coursework also, therefore I had no problem with it for my A2 coursework. However as in my AS coursework I didn’t usually use videos, I noticed that if I uploaded a video directly onto blogger, the quality of the video was very poor. I found a solution for this and created a free vimeo account where I could upload my video and have a high quality outcome if I exported the video correctly. Blogger wouldn’t allow videos over 100MG, which is another reason why I couldn’t upload my music video straight on. Other ways in which I was able to upload videos was by uploading them onto YouTube, however Vimeo was better as the videos where in HD and looked a lot more professional when uploaded onto blogger.

I used the internet a lot for finding information for my research tasks, websites such as Wikipedia which was my key resource along with YouTube. I used YouTube a lot before shooting and editing my music video. This allowed me to understand what is needed in a music video in order for it to be successful. When watching different music videos I was looking at the different types of camera angles and movements used which I then implemented in my music video. For example the constant uses of close ups of the main artist was quite popular in many music videos.

Many of the presentation applications which I used for my AS coursework before and after creating my magazine, I have used for my A2. For example, Prezi and Microsoft PowerPoint where key presentation applications which I used for the planning stages. This is because they were easy to use and the information displayed looked interesting. Prezi is web based, which allowed me to create presentations which looked entertaining. It allowed me to paste in links from YouTube and then embed the whole presentation onto my blog. Microsoft PowerPoint was used a lot throughout both courses. I found that using this programme made my work look more organised. This is because I had the Text Box and Shape Tool which I could use to move around and place where I wanted. For example when analysing similar products such as magazines adverts I was able to point at the certain information which I was talking about. I created a SlideShare account which is a digital documents library which allows you to publish and share presentations and then embedding the code onto blogger.

Collecting audience feedback was essential for the music video. I created an online survey using www.surveymonkey.com to collect audience feedback for my draft music video. Survey Monkey allowed me to display different types of questions, for example an opinion based question and a rating scale question. In order to get useful feedback, I sent out my survey to over 100 people on social media sites such as Facebook, and collected 68 responses in total, with useful feedback and possible improvements. When I had a sufficient amount of responses I generated the responses and uploaded graphs/charts of the responses onto blogger.

When shooting photos outside for my AS magazine I used a Cannon 5500 1.8f 50mm lens which blurs the background and focuses on the model. I also used a Cannon camera when shooting photos inside, when editing the photos I used Adobe Photoshop, which allowed me to remove the background. This meant I was able to put my photo on a different coloured background. This is similar to what I did for my A2 magazine advert and digipak; however I didn’t shoot any photos outside. I created my magazine using Indesign; this is the software that is used to make real magazines. By using Indesign it enabled me to use tools and features that would allow me to produce a successful magazine. Compared to Photoshop the text wrap on Indesign is a lot better and easier to use, by using text wrap it allows you to have text going around an image and it fills in all the spaces available leaving you with no uneven white gaps. When creating my digipak, I used Adobe Photoshop to edit my photos and then I used the ‘place’ button in Adobe Indesign to place the photo in and work with the text wrap tool when adding all the information. For example with the fan message, I used the text wrap tool and the text wrapped round the image and looked professionally done.

I created my magazine advert using Adobe Photoshop; I thought this was appropriate software to use as the images used included a lot of editing. For example my main image consists of at least 5 layers which all have a different effect to it, one effect used was an outer glow. I used an outer glow to make the image stand out more and look eye catching as it is already in black and white. Along with the main image I have also included two other photos of the main artist; they are in the background at the top of the page. I have put a pink window on these photos in order for the images to blend in with the rest of the colour scheme. I have also used a lot of shadows to make the text on the page stand out even more. The artists name ‘Pixie Lott’ consists of an inner shadow against a pink background. This makes it look like it’s been cut out of the background making it stand out the audience. I applied the same skills from my portrait magazine advert and implemented it on a landscape version. I included lyrics for the song into the background of the magazine adverts, and changed the opacity level down so it wasn’t too bold on the audience which makes the information in pink stand out. The final touch to the both portrait and landscape magazine adverts was to change the hue/saturation. I changed the hue to -36 making the bright pink into a more smooth and calm colour and brightening the advert to +12.

I used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 when editing my music video; this allowed me to cut shots to the beat of the song using the Razor Tool which then allowed me to rearrange them into different orders. I used this lot with all the different dance routine clips due to having shot in various locations. I used a lot of transitions in my music video, the dissolve transition was used a lot throughout which would fade into a different clip. This transition is used in professional music videos also. When colour correcting my music video I found that using RGB Curves improved the lighting and exposure of the video making it look professional. As my digipak and magazine advert follow the colour scheme of pink I used the fast colour corrector to change some of my clips to pink in order for it all to blend in together. I changed the hue angle to -16.5, balance magnitude to 67.58, balance gain to 20.00 and balance angle to -27.9. This gave me an outcome of a soft pink over the clip making the whole video flow well together.

Draft Music Video

Music Video 3 from Juliana Mariz on Vimeo.

I have created another draft video of my music video where I finished the video with appropriate clips. 

Magazine Advert Landscape #3

I have continued with making changes to my magazine advert as there is always room for improvement. I thought that there was too much white gaps in the background therefore I added the lyrics from the music video and lowered the opacity. I also thought that there needed more of a black tint to the advert, so I added a few more black rectangles. 

Magazine Advert Portrait #3

I have continued with making changes to my magazine advert as there is always room for improvement. I thought that there was too much white gaps in the background therefore I added the lyrics from the music video and lowered the opacity. 

Digipak

I continued to improve my digipak, I thought that it was pointless having the first double page spread as it was only referring to one song and not the whole album.