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

Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Talking Heads

After we had finished editing ur music video, we found it very important to get feedback form our target audience. Luckily, our target audience was young teenagers and young adults, so we gathered up 6 volunteers from our Sixth Form, and asked them questions after we had filmed them watching our finished video.

We found this feedback very useful, as we wanted to know whether or not we had fulfilled the typical conventions of an indie pop video from people who had not been taught specifically what these conventions are.

It is important to remember that everyone has different opinions, and it was not the kind of music that everyone would listen to. However, the overall feedback was really positive and we were really pleased with it. Everyone seemed to like the setting and thought that the artist was suitable for the song and that the video overall looked good.

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

Overall, I think that our main product and media texts are very effective, as we gained audience research to find out key elements that they like, as well as choosing elements that we liked from our video. We looked in careful detail at our texts and video to make sure they were cohesive and in the end I am happy that we have made branding for an artist which is very recognisable and reflects the artists sound and look perfectly.

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

Because of my Blogger theme, I struggled to copy my first question from Pages to Blogger and keep it in the same, readable format. So instead, I have screenshot each page of the essay.

Finished Music Video

After much difficulty, we finally managed to upload our finalised music video to youtube. Sadly, as we had to convert it many times to get it into the right format, the quality of the video has decreased dramatically to our disappointment.

Album artwork

We found it very difficult to pick which image we wanted to use for our album artwork as we had so many strong images to chose from. And we liked every single one of them. At first, we were going to use the same image for the poster and the album cover, but because we had so many good images we wanted to use as many as possible. We made sure that every image we picked were similar though, to keep everything within a similar theme and make the artist's work recognisable. Whilst deciding on the final images, we kept in mind our target audience and were always questioning whether they would like the images or not. It was decided that our target audience would enjoy the simplicity of the images chosen and the link between the album cover, poster and pull outs, which makes the artist recognisable. 

This is the image we decided to choose for our album cover, as the silhouetted image with the guitar looks very indie, and the photo has an atmospheric feel about it. We also thought that it represented the look and feel of the video, as well as the tone of the song.

We found that layout was a way for an artist to be recognisable, which is why we used the same font and colour writing as we used on the rest of the images we produced.

We also noticed that a lot of albums include the apple logo at the bottom as a trademark feature, so we decided to incorporate this into ours as it would make it look as genuine as possible.

We decided on using this image as the back cover, as the positioning of the artist made it easy to place the writing. It continues the motifs well as she is almost silhouetted, and has the sea in the background. It is clear that both images were taken in the same location at a similar time. This image continues the indie pop theme as the guitar is very prominant in this image, and typically, the instruments played are featured in artists promotional work.

At first, we were going to use this image from the beginning of the video as our back cover as we liked the simplicity of it. However, the colours and tones of this image don't fit in with the rest of the promotional images so that's why we decided to use another one. As well, the writing chosen is in a different font to the rest of the promotional images, which doesn't fit with the motif of our artist. We were a lot happier with the other image we chose, but still liked this one. So in the end, we decided to use this image without the writing as one of our pullouts. We included a small detail on this which we didn't on the other which is the writing at the bottom 'courtsey of Mass Media Productions Ltd' which we should have included in our final edit but didn't due to the amount of room there was on the image, and the fact that we liked the simplicity of it. 

 This is our finalised version of the poster. The image is strong yet simple, and in our research we found that this style was often most effective. It has a strong link with the album covers, and represents the artists music well.

The only difficulty we had with this image is that it becomes rather blurry if you increase it's size too much, so it may not work as a billboard poster. We decided that it would be best to use this in a magazine or as a smaller advert. This suited the artist.

This is our first pullout image that will be in the album. I love the way it features the setting in the background behind the guitar, whilst in a car. These are the three main aspects of the video, so to combine them all into one image was ideal.

The second image we chose doesn't fit into the theme as well as the other images previously chosen. However, it made us laugh a lot, and represents the lighthearted and jokey style of the video. We thought it gave a litle insight into the kind of person the artist is, which is often what fans are interested in.

Again, the guitar is featured prominently to keep up the theme our artist has, as well as to maintain it clear that this is part of the indie pop genre. This probably links best with the motif our of all our pull out images. We thought that our target audience would enjoy this image as it makes the artist look down to earth, friendly and like she could really be your friend, which is often what teenage girls of this age look for in an artist. The more likeable the artist is, the more likely people are to buy the album. 

This image is also good as it shows our location, and where most of the filming took place. It looks great as it was a sunny day and I like the atmosphere created with this image.

It is not the strongest of images, however, as the colours and tones don't really fit with the rest of images. However, as a pullout, I think it works well.