To the examiner,

Thank you for taking the time to look at and mark my blog, it is very appreciated!

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

The main media technology that I have used throughout all stages is Blogger. I used Blogger to post all of my work into one place and ensure that it was easy for a reader to track my progress and see the development from research and planning to the final construction and product.

Construction

Mind Map created by naomi.pierce with GoConqr

Research

The main media technologies that I used in the research stage was web tools to present my findings. I used a large amount of different tools as shown in the video above which all required different skills and worked in different ways. My main research method was to look into similar products and so youtube was very important so that I could look at music videos as well as google images for digipaks and adverts. I also used social media to research different artists and see how they present themselves online and what kind of image different genres try to create. Google was a very important technology to research necessary information.

Planning



Evaluation

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is very vital in the success of a product. Me and my group have carried out a wide variety of audience feedback to ensure that our product is successful and would be received well. We are fortunate to also be a part of our target audience and so didn't have to rely entirely on feedback and could make our own decisions that we knew the audience would still like but would also ensure all of our pieces were continuous.

Initial Audience Questionnaires

After establishing who our target audience would be, we handed out questionnaires to a small sample of them. The purpose of this questionnaire was to find out if our target audience was appropriate for our video and get some feedback on our initial plans. From this I learnt the types of music most people were interested in chart or pop music and like artists such as Beyonce and Rihanna. This helped me throughout the rest of my coursework because I then had a deeper understanding of the people we were targeting and was able to consider this throughout my work. I analysed a Beyonce music video in response to this to get a deeper understanding of what the audience would be interested in. This helped us to develop the idea of presenting our artist as someone just like the audience while also slightly glamorous because this is one of the main themes in her video. Getting feedback on our idea was also helpful because it meant that the audience had a part in the construction of our video and so it would be suited to them and they would be happy with it.

Focus Groups

We have carried out 3 focus groups to receive feedback on our music video. In the first, we presented our initial ideas to our target audience to see what they like and what they didn't so we could revise this before constructing our video. Our first focus group consisted of 3 boys and 3 girls so that we could get a representation of both genders to appeal to a wide audience, they were all students between the ages of 15 and 21 as we found most of our target audience would be.

First Focus Group

Our second focus group was to receive feedback on what we considered to be our final draft of our music video. We wanted to make sure that it would appeal to the audience and that there was nothing they didn't like. They gave us some minor improvements to make such as taking out a shot where our artist looked frightened. From their feedback I have learnt that even when you think something is complete there may be issues that the audience pick up on and you don't, this showed me the importance of getting audience feedback before publishing a completed version. We chose to only use 3 members of our target audience so that our feedback would be very focused, we chose 2 girls as they are the majority in our target audience.

Second Focus Group

We then carried out a final focus group following the improvements we had made since our previous draft. We chose this time to use 2 male members of our audience because we felt that we had a lot of feedback from females and wanted to ensure that our video would appeal to a wider audience. One of the males was also featured in our previous focus group because we wanted to ensure that he liked the changes we had made from the previous suggestions. In this focus group the video was very well received and there were no comments made for improvement. From this I learnt about the way in which our audience would respond to our video which was very similar to we expected.

Final Focus Group

I have learnt that focus groups are very important in the development of a music video and play a vital role in the collection of audience feedback. Throughout each focus group I learnt the improvements we needed to make to our products and developed a deeper understanding of our target audience and their likes and dislikes.

Artist Name Questionnaire

We wanted our audience to have an active role in the name for our artist. We obtained some initial feedback in our first focus group but wanted to develop this further. From this I learnt that the name of an artist is important to a high percentage of the audience, which I found quite surprising. Following this feedback we chose the name Sasha, we learnt that our audience would want a name that gave our artist a strong and fierce representation.

Our artist name

Digipak and Advert Ideas Feedback

We also learnt it is vital to receive audience feedback on our initial ideas, this is because if we had an idea and went through with it without feedback, it would be a waste of time if the audience doesn't like it. We showed a member of our target audience the ideas that we had and asked them to pick their favourite. They chose the pillow fight scene which was the one that we preferred as a group.

Advert Feedback

We also obtained feedback on the second draft of our adverts, we wanted to ensure that the one we chose to develop for our final product would appeal the audience the most. It was very important to get feedback on this product because it would be used to persuade the target audience to buy the album, if they did not like the advert this wouldn't be very effective.

Advert Feedback, Daisy.

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

The overall combination of our products is very effective to portray the desired representation of our artist and to show genre. The combination is also effective in marketing to our target audience and creating synergy between the products that the audience would begin to recognise and therefore creates a particular style and motif for our artist.

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

Within our products we mainly tried to conform and use the conventions of real media texts, we chose to do this to ensure that our products were as realistic as possible and resembled a real media text. We did however develop and challenge some conventions to ensure that our work was original and represented our artist as a unique individual.

Music Video





Leanne and I have created this directors commentary to explain some of the choice's we have made within our music video. We will talk through how some shots use, develop or challenge the conventions of real products and the dance-pop genre as well as the choices we had to make as the directors.

Comparison to a real music video

Nina Nesbitt - Way in the World is a music video that I analysed nearer the start of my portfolio. I have decided to compare this video to my final product to show the inspiration that we took from this and how we have used, developed or challenged the forms and conventions it uses.

Digipak



Advert

Question 1 - Advert Conventions from naomi_pierce

Production Diary Week 18

Social Media

Social media is aimed at a teenage audience, very similar to our target audience. Facebook is home to 1.591 billion active monthly users and twitter to 320 million monthly users and so my group and I thought them the ideal places to market to our audience. We have created both a twitter and Facebook account for our artist, this would be a place where our artist could directly interact with the target audience and share any news about her work. We would also like to use social media to portray our artist as an ordinary girl in the way that she interacts with her fans and in the messages and posts she makes.

We wanted to keep both pages continuous with each other and so used the same header and profile photo. We also ensured that similar posts were shared on both. This ensures that all members of the audience would receive the same information and that our artist's image is continuous.

Final Advert

We have made our final draft by removing the Winnie the Pooh pillow and editing the Featuring section. We have made the featuring section smaller and changed the colours to match the gold and white of the other fonts used against the black background to ensure continuity. We also smoothened the white background because the feathers were not visible as feathers and instead looked like small imperfections. I think that this draft is much more effective than our 3rd draft and will make an effective advert.

Focus Group

We have held another focus group with members of our target audience. We wanted to get feedback on our completed draft to ensure that it would appeal to our audience and to see what they liked or what they didn't.



From this discussion I have found that the target audience really enjoyed our video and we do not need to make any further improvements to it. The main points that stood out to me was that the audience really liked the build up of our video, which is important to ensure that the audience is gripped at the beginning of the video but doesn't lose interest as it continues. They also said they liked the colours in the video which is something we have largely focused on to add a fun vibe and portray the genre. All members thought that our video was very suited to the genre and liked the image we have created for our artist.

Advert 3rd Draft

This is our 3rd draft of our advert. I think that it is very representative of the fun side of our artist, it is also very memorable and can easily be related to our digipak. This advert fits the conventions of a real digipak advert because it includes a website, production logo, artist name, album name, release dates and featured tracks which are all important aspects. The photo used, with the black and white background, is also used on our digipak to create synergy between the two and ensure that the poster is recognised with the album to entice the target audience. An example of an album that is very similar to the poster and which we used for inspiration for this idea is Ellie Goulding Halcyon.

We used the fonts Cinzel Decorative Bold and Hind Medium throughout our advert to keep it continuous. These are the fonts that we used on our digipak so it ensures this continuity and synergy. To ensure this further we stuck to the black, white and gold colour scheme which gives a luxury and royal feel to the audience to present our artist in a fun and positive manner. We have decided that the Winnie the Pooh pillow distracts the attention from our artist and does not portray her in a sophisticated and trendy manner, we have therefore decided to edit this out. We also think that the featuring tracks section is written in too large a font as it is only extra information so we will make this smaller.