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.

Advert Feedback

When forming the first drafts of our advert we chose to create a wide variety. As the main aim of the advert is to entice the target audience I have decided to receive feedback from a member of our target audience. Daisy is 18 and enjoys pop music, her favourite artists are Ed Sheeran and Rihanna. I asked Daisy first to look through the adverts and say what she liked and disliked about them, I asked her to then choose her favourite after seeing them all. Her favourite was the final advert that we showed her and so we will develop this draft further based upon the things she didn't like about it.

Production Diary - Week 17

This week we have completed the final draft of our digipak! We have also created a tour poster and merchandise as add ons to create a deeper image of our artist. We have created a variety of drafts for our advert and are planning to get audience feedback to help us choose one to develop further into our final product. We are near completing all of our final products and I feel as though I have really progressed throughout the course of this work and I am pleased with the outcomes of our products so far.

Final Music Video

Following the feedback from our final focus group we have edited the shot where our audience thought our artist looked scared as well as the shot of her feet in the sea. As well as this we have changed the shots of our artist in front of a projector to shots of her in a recording studio. We think that this makes our video look more professional as we felt the projector shots looked very unplanned and did not fit in with the themes of our video.

Merchandise

We have created a variety of different merchandise to go alongside our album because we think that this is a very important part in the sale of an artist. We researched the merchandise of similar artists and common products included mugs, tshirts, hoodies, wristbands and hats so these are the products we decided to create for our artist. We also decided to create pillows because of the themes that run mainly in our digipak and advert but also in parts of our video of the pillow fight and having fun.

Above are examples of merchandise from Jess Glynne and Ella Eyre who are similar to the artist that we wanted to create through Sasha. It was interesting to look at Ella Eyre's merchandise because she is the singer from the song we chose so it was interesting to see the differences and similarities between herself and our artist. The merchandise for both of the artists was mainly black and white and they both included snapbacks and T-shirts however Ella Eyre had a much wider variety of merchandise. The merchandise were all related to the trademarks of the artist and their albums. Jess Glynne's merchandise featured the name of her most recent album "I cry when I laugh' and Ella Eyre's featured the logo from hers.

For the both of the mugs I used the name of our artist in the fonts used for our digipak and advert. This was to create synergy between the products and to identify the mug to our artist. One one mug I used the image of wings which is used on our digipak and represents our artist as innocent and angelic. On the second mug I used the logo from the front cover of our digipak to directly link them together and make the logo recognisable to the audience.

We decided that our artist would have 2 pillows, for one we used the image of our artist and her friend having a pillow fight with the 3D filter. This also directly links to the digipak and advert in which we have used this picture. It is also a product that our target audience would be interested in because it is stylish and represents our artist well. The second pillow is much more simple with the logo of our digipak presented simply with the name of our artist. This also represents the digipak and so also creates synergy, it shows the more simple, calm and elegant side of our artist and having this and the first pillow will show the two sides of her and appeal to a wider market.

We found in our research that hats were very common merchandise. We chose to create a snapback rather than a beanie or baseball cap because they are very fashionable. We wanted this product to be quite simple and chose only to write 'Sasha' on one side of the cap, this is because we thought that it would appeal more to our target audience to be simple than very chaotic. 

For our shirt we chose to use an image of our artist that we used on our digipak however we chose to add the 3D filter to it. This ensured that the shirt had an original image on it however could still be recognised as our artist and linked to the digipak. We also chose to write Sasha alongside the image so that people would know who the artist is.

Wristbands are used with most artists within our genre, we chose to use the colours black and gold like used in our digipak. We also used the quote 'Beyond imagination, Beyond Dimensions, Beyond Colour' which is used in our digipak to signify the link between the two. We ensured that this was quite simple in a bold font to draw in the audience.

Our final product was a hoodie, to link into the digipak we placed a print of angel wings onto the back of the hoodie. This was aimed to have the effect that the person wearing the hoodie would have wings to entice the target audience. It directly links to the wings that we used in the background for our digipak to create synergy.

Advert 2nd Draft

We have created some new drafts for our adverts by improving our original drafts.

We have improved this by adding more information onto the advert to make it seem more realistic.We have included websites, the production company logo, featured tracks and the titles 'DEBUT ALBUM' and 'OUT NOW'. These give it a more realistic look and ensures the audience know what the advert is for. We have also updated the logo to match our new draft of the digipak including new fonts and colour for 'Sasha - XO' and 'Beyond Colour'. We have stuck to the black, white and gold colour scheme because we feel this is very sophisticated and gives our artist an impression of importance. I think that this draft is effective because although it is simple it is very eyecatching and the audience will remember it and compare it to the digipak.

For our next draft we used the updated photo that we had edited for our digipak to make the background block white and black, we thought that using a photo from our digipak is important to create synergy and in the adverts that I analysed such as Lana Del Rey born to die the digipak and advert are very similar. We have also made this draft very similarly to our tour poster using the same themes and colours. We added a blue and red backing to 'The Debut Album' and 'Out Now' to match the images on our digipak however I think that this does not fit in with the advert so may need changing. 

Our next draft is based around our tour poster as well as the 3D/ holographic concept. We used a photo of our artist with the Holga 1 filter and added layers to the text 'The Debut Album Out Now' to mirror this. I think this has much more of the desired effect compared to using the text layers in our other draft because it feels more fitting and appropriate. We then used the colours black, white and red for our artist name, album name and featured tracks to fit this colour scheme and to ensure that they stood out upon the page.

I think that this advert is very representative of the fun side of our artist, it is also very memorable and can easily be related to our digipak. I think that the concept of the 3D/ holographic filters on the photo and titles makes it very original and would stand out to an audience, this also represents the deep insight that our audience will get into our artist's life. Using the white bar across the middle makes the titles stand out and draws the audience in. The inverted triangle then gives the advert a sophisticated and modern look while ensuring that the text is visible and can be read by the audience. Despite this, I think it is at risk of being too similar to the tour poster and so the audience may ignore it.

For our next draft we used the same photo with the black and white background however it is much brighter in this draft which I think is much more effective in representing our artist. We used the black, white and gold colour scheme that was used in our digipak but kept our production logo in blue to make it stand out. The title of the album is in our artists eyeline which we think draws attention to it despite it being in a smaller font than our artist name. The part of this advert that I think is quite distracting and lacks sophistication is 'The debut album out now' and I would tweak this going forward.

Final Digipak

We have completed our final draft. We kept the left cover, back inside and cover inside the same as our second draft because we thought that they were very effective. We have also added the barcode and future productions logo onto the back cover of our digipak to ensure it follows the conventions of other digipaks and is as realistic as possible. One major change that we have made is to change the style of the artist and album names, we did this to fit what we had made on the tour poster and advert. We think that these fonts are very suitable and stand out more, they symbolise the fun side to our artist. We then altered the left cover to fit this change, changing the fonts and colours to match how Beyond Colour is written on the front. To make the words more visible we also reduced the size of the wings to separate the quote. We added a website onto the left cover for our audience to visit.

Recording Studio

After reflecting on our previous draft we have decided that the shots of our artist in front of the projector do not fit in with the fun and positive vibe and look unprofessional. We have decided to instead incorporate shots of our artist in a recording studio. This is used in Kylie Minogues video for Loco-motion which similar to our video incorporates a very fun and lively vibe with shots of the recording studio.

This representation will show the down to earth side of our artist going to the recording studio and represent her love for music. We want to dress her in very simple clothing to show this side of her so we have decided to dress her in simply a cardigan and jeans with her hair down and very simplistic make up. As we do not have access to an actual recording studio we are going to use headphones and a microphone with a black backdrop to create the effect of a recording studio.

Tour Poster

I have created this video on animoto to show what our tour poster would look like on streets in New York, I did this to ensure that it would look appropriate if used. I think that it works really well and stands out well to attract our target audience. The video shows that our advert would work in many different places and I think that due to the dominant colours it would stand out to attract the younger generation. I am happy with how our tour poster has turned out.

Tour Poster Drafts

We have made 3 drafts for our tour poster, we ensured to include tour dates, the name of the tour and the name of the artist. We chose the tour to be a summer tour because it fits in well with the themes of our artist and links well with the music video which has elements of summer and fun within it. We chose to name the tour after the album to create synergy and ensure that the audience would connect the two products. We also ensured that the artist's name was evident so the audience would know who's tour it is. The first poster was made mainly by Sam, the layout is quite effective with beyond colour and the photo being the main focus however I do think that Sasha XO could stand out more. The colours do not fit well with the theme in which we have created in our digipak so in our next draft we decided to change the colours. We also found that the font was quite simple which is something we also changed within our next draft. The background photo is not very representative of our artists image and having fun so we would like to use a picture with a more positive vibe to make the tour seem more fun and enticing to the audience.

Our second draft was much closer to what we think our final product should look like. We used the background photo that I edited for the digipak. This creates synergy between the two products so that the audience immediately can recognise who the artist is. We kept 3D filter I had put on for the digipak because I think that this ensures the synergy is evident and also adds an edgy and recognisable trademark for our artist. We changed the colours of the fonts to ensure they matched the theme of the poster and I think that this works much more effectively. We also changed the fonts to a much bolder font and made 'Sasha - XO' the main focus so that the audience knew who the artist was.  We included a website link for our artist so that the audience would have somewhere to find more information. Our next step is to add the tour dates onto the poster and we would also like to change the font to make it more interesting.

For our final draft we used the font 'Cinzel Decorative Bold' for our artist's name, we think that this font is very bold with quite a girly touch to it so represents our artist s someone quite confident but still girly and trendy. We think this font works really effectively and would now like to incorporate this into our digipak. For the title 'Beyond Colour' we kept the font 'Hinder Medium' because we thought it was very simple but striking. We also reduced the size of the white rectangle and added a thin white border to give the poster a more sophisticated look. We finally added the tour dates onto the poster as a finishing point. We added an inverted triangle behind the dates so that the dates would be more visible and stand out and also to make the poster seem quite sophisticated. We kept the colour scheme of deep red, black and white throughout because we thought that this emphasises the sophisticated feel and also links in well with the 3D photo and the digipak.

Production Diary - Week 16

This week we have completed the final draft of our music video! We then carried out a final focus group to ensure that what we considered a final product would appeal to our audience and carry out it's desired effect. the audience really enjoyed the video although there are some minor improvements that we will need to make. We have also completed the second draft of our digipak which is close to now becoming a finished product and will also only need small changes, after showing it to some audience members they liked it but said that they weren't too keen on some of the fonts used so we will need to improve this in the future. We are hoping to have our digipak completed in the next week or 2 and to have improved our adverts further.

Digipak 2nd Draft

This is the 2nd draft of our digipak, as a whole I am much happier with how it looks and how there is continuity within it. We kept the inside cover the same and altered the shot of the legs to match it, we decided that the popart filter did not suit the image we wanted to create for our artist or the themes of our digipak. We added the same holga 1 filter to give it the 3D effect. We also added the same filter to the photo on the CD and front cover as we had used for the back cover to obtain this continuity, we added a tan to our artist and definition to her cheekbones. We think this gives a much more fitting image of our artist and makes her more appealing to our target audience. We changed the colour of 'Sasha' on the front cover to a solid black which we thought makes it more bold and stands out more as well as changing the font used for 'Beyond Colour' to make it stand out and more dominant on the page. Using photoshop I changed the background colours so that the top half is black and the bottom is white, this is representative of the different sides of our artist and how although she is angelic and good she can also be rebellious as well as fitting in with our colour scheme. We had originally planned for the left cover to include a personal note form Sasha to the audience however we thought it may be better to include a quote inspired by the album name. We added a photo of wings into the background to present our artist as angelic and free. We chose the quote 'Beyond imagination, Beyond dimensions, beyond colour' however we struggled to make this visible above the wings and have added a glow and shadow, although we think this doesn't have a very sophisticated and realistic look so may change this in our next draft. We are still yet to add the bar code and production logo.

Focus Group

We decided to carry out a final focus group on what we considered to be our final draft to ensure that our video works for our target audience and so that we can make any tweaks necessary. As a whole the feedback for our video was very positive showing that our video works well in drawing in our target audience. There were some minor improvements that we will take into account where they told us to add a filter onto the shot of our artist's feet in the sea and to add more shots of the pillow fight, we will make these improvements and carry out another focus group to ensure that our video suits the audience once these changes have been made.

Are there specific shots that you particularly enjoyed watching?
It is clear that our audience enjoyed the music video however we wanted to know what particular parts they enjoyed the most to see if it might be effective to add more of this. They pointed out that they really enjoyed the shots of the pillow fights, which Kiera later added made her feel very nostalgic and reminded her of good times she had when she was younger. We will now add 1 or 2 more shots in of the pillow scenes to ensure that this feeling is enhanced and kept throughout the video. They also liked the close shots of our artist lip syncing and the ways in which we had overlayed this, so we will consider adding more of this into our video.

Do you have any general feedback?
We asked this question so that we could see what our audience initially thought of the video as a whole. We found that the shots that stood out most were the colourful shots however we think that we managed to find the right balance of this and so do not want to add any more and overwhelm the audience. The projector shots were also mentioned especially the section when we alternated between different projections. The shot that stood out to our audience was the one of our artist with her feet in the sea, because of this we are planning to edit a colour filter onto this shot.

Could you identify the genre of the music video clearly?
Our audience successfully identified our genre as dance pop through the colours, costume and location.

Did you find the music video entertaining?
The audience identified our video as a 'feel good video' saying that there was always something happening which kept it entertaining. This reassures us that we do not need to add more shots to make the pace faster and more exciting and that we have used the right amount.

What do you feel the colours brought to the video?
Our target audience identified the colours as adding a fun and upbeat feeling to our video which fulfils our intention. They added that they represented different emotions which shows that we have successfully expressed positivity to the audience.

Did this take you to your utopian world?
We have successfully transported the audience into a positive and fun place as they all answered yes to this question.

Do you think there was enough lip syncing and was it to a good standard?
One concern that we did have with our video was that we hadn't got the ratio of lip syncing at the right balance however they said that we had managed to find the right balance. In terms of quality, we found that as a whole our lip syncing was very good, our audience made note of one shot that stood out where our artist looked afraid. After identifying this shot we are going to see how we can improve this.

Do you think that the effects suited the genre?
Our audience were very keen to talk about the colour effects showing that these were very suitable for our audience, they said that it gave the video a clubby feel and can be seen in other videos from our genre. They liked the typography effects saying that they're original, bold and stand out which reassured us that they were appropriate for our target audience and had the desired effect.

How did you feel about our artist?
Our target audience could relate to our artist saying she is very fun and what they would look for. Her costume was mentioned saying that although we went against the stereotype of women wearing very revealing clothing in some of our shots that this showed her as very independent and appealed to the audience.

Could you identify a specific narrative throughout our music video?
They successfully identified the binary opposition between day and night which we were concerned we may not have portrayed successfully. The narrative was also mentioned as 'the life of a teenage girl' which was very key to entice our audience by giving them an artist that they can relate to.

Final Music Video Draft

This is what we consider to be our final draft of our music video. We are now going to carry out a focus group to ensure that it is appropriate for our audience and so we can make any tweaks necessary to ensure that it is the best it can be. Overall, I am pleased with the outcome, I think that the addition of an introduction was very helpful in setting the scene for our video and using faster paced shots make it much more enjoyable to watch. The addition of lip syncing in front of the projector, pillow fights and more London shots have added more variety into our video to keep the audience entertained. We have also used more editing effects including adding more video text as well as colour effects which I think all fit well with the genre and add a uniqueness and positivity to our video.

Introduction

After collecting some audience feedback we have decided to create an introduction for our music video to set the scene for our video. Our first idea was to show our artist at a bar with a boy who is trying to take advantage of her to go with the theme of the song and lyrics. However this would be difficult for us to do as we couldn't find anyone who might be willing to play the male part.



I have researched into videos that have an opening and I would instead like to create an opening with titles as seen in Lady Gaga and Beyonce's video for Telephone. I think that showing shots of our artist at the beach with titles layered over the top would be effective in presenting the binary opposition that we hoped to create between the day and night because it is placed at the start of the video to show the start of the day. We want the start to be very calm and slow to contrast the upbeat nature of the song. The titles in the Telephone video are very bright and colourful however I think that our titles should be white and more simple to show the purity and innocence of our artist.