Media Evaluation

http://www.slideshare.net/nmack2/media-evaluation-7602929

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Audience Feedback

I constructed a list of questions to ask my focus group about my music video and ancillary texts. Here are some examples of the questions i asked:

1. How old are you?
2. What gender are you?
3. Is this the type of music you would listen to?
4. Whats your favourite genre of music?
5. Did u like the video yes/no and why?
6. How could i have improved it?
7. Does the music video sell the song?
8. Would you listen to it again?
9. Would u purchase the song?

Here are some of my results just to show examples:

The reason i asked this question was so i could know whether the music video was a success or not and what could i improve either way.

I asked this question as i think this is the most important question due to the fact that the music video was made in order to sell the song and promote the band.

I asked this question so i could see how the diffrent ages within my focus group may effect or reflect their opinions on the video.

Our music video

 (please note this is their own song and was written together as a group)

Hair, makeup and costume of members during video shoot

I decided to dress all the members the same throughout the music video as i thought it would indicate a sense of group identity and loyalty. In addition to not favour one artist over another so it was best for them to have a uniform.

This screen shot was taken from the actual music video as we have no pictures of them all together wearing near enough the same thing. The two girls either side of the girl in the middle are wearing exactly the same thing, however the girl in the middle is wearing something slightly different. The reason for this was to make her stand out more as the main artist within this shot as she was the one singing. but i decided to put them in more covered up clothing to shed a good light on them and for them not to be recognised as sex symbols but recognized for their music and natural beauty. I decided to put them in silver sparkly clothing as i thought it brought them out more as a band.

Hair, Makeup and costume used for ancilliary texts

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This is Danielle. With danielle we still kept to the original idea of wearing a dress. However this time she wore a lace dress as we thought it was more sexy but in addition formal and classy. The reason i chose this outfit was because it would attract a male audience which is what i didnt really want my band members to be seen for but within media i learnt it is important for women to look sexy in order to sell themselves through their femininty. I decided the laze dress was sexy as it showed some of the skin (arms and tops of legs) which may make the male audience show more attention. In addition the dress is tight fitted showing off her body and curves but not showing off too much. I decided to put natural makeup on her as i didnt want to set a bad example to the younger members of their audience.

This is Paris. Again we decided to put her in a dress, a short tight fitted dress to show off her curves and body, to attract males attention. The reason we decided to use this type of clothing for our ancilliary text as they are most likely to see the adverts and digipak before the actuall music video so its important we make a good first impression and if this means dressing them in sexy clothing to attract the male attention we will do so, even though i dont agree with it, i thought it would be better to follow the conventions of media to get the band somewhere and recongised.In addition this shows girls you can be any size or of any body shape and still look good. I am promoting the fact there is no particular way women should look everyone be who you want to be and dont follow the media of promoting the idea women should be really skinny and model like to get somewhere in life. Again i done her make up natural to set a good example.

This is Shamah the replacement band member. As she never showed up to photoshoots due to personal circumstances we had to use screen shots of the music video for our last resort as otherwise we would have nothing else. I am going to talk about this more when i come to the next entery of costume and makeup for the music video as it is the same outfit.

The reasons why I chose these designs for my digipak

firstly the reason I chose these images of the girls for the front cover was because it showed clearly each of their faces which would be good for band recognition. In addition they all look formal so its not creating a bad look on these artists and they are not fulfilling the stereotype of women being seen as sexual icons within the media. However the girl at the end i decided to show bit of cleavage as i think it may attract a wider audience and through my market research i learnt this is the best way to grab attention even though i don't fully agree with it i thought it would benefit my band. I decided to do the cover black and white as i though it may look different to the rest on the shelf and it follows a uniform as my advert and back cover are also black and white so makes it easily recognisable to my audience, standing out from the others on the shelf. I put the tittle of the band big a clear so audience are able to recognise it on the shelf. I decided to separate the band members to bring them out individually and show they are unique even though they are apart of a band. I added a "number one" sticker on the CD cover to promote it to the audience, as a consumer of music i know myself when i see the number one selling sticker or number on album sticker applied to the album or single it makes me more tempted and interested in buying it. I lastly put the title of the single "Addiction" big and clear so my audience are clear on what the single is of.

I decided to use this as an inside cover as i think the background image follows the idea of the song being about addiction and love. I took a close-up shot of the couple to portray the idea of love and affection. I decided to keep the inside in colour as i thought it would be different and bring out the digipak more rather than it being all in black and white. I think this shot also looks more professional in colour as opposed to it being in black and white. I lastly added the lyrics over the image for the audience members to study the lyrics in case they are not entirely sure what it is about or even for them to have fun and sing along. I got this idea from other examples of digipaks in which i will include in my late entries.

I decided to use this as the other part of my inside cover. This is where my cd will sit. I created this on Adobe Photoshop. Again i decided to use an image of the couple showing affection by him grabbing her knee. As it is the man who is addicted to the girl. I also kept this in colour as i thought it would break up my digipak making it look more interesting. I made it look more life like by darkening the background as if it was shadowed and brightening the circle to distinguish the diffrence between cd part and the background image. I used this as said above to reinforce the idea of addiction and go with the theme of the song.

Lastly I decided to use this as the back cover as it didn't have all three band members on the back so thought it wouldn't be a good idea as it would only be promoting two of the band members maybe giving over the false idea that these two are the main characters. I in addition again put the name of the song on the back cover to promote the single. I then blurred the name in the background crystal blaque as it was okay to do so on the back cover as the audience would have already known what it read due to the name being clear on the front cover, however again if i put the title like this on the front cover it would be hard for the audience to understand what it is saying. I decided to put it in black and white again as part of the "Uniform" of my products and i thought it made it look different and more professional.

                    

Digipak

FRONT COVER

INSIDE COVER

 CD HOLDER

                                                

BACK COVER

Marketing Aims of Digipak

Marketing Aims

Target Consumer- Our product is mostly targeted at teenage and young girls. The reason for this is because the lyrics in the song are most likely to relate to this age group. I say it would target mostly girls due to the lyrics again and the fact they are female artists however it may attract male attention to due to the make-up and costume of the girls throughout the images used on the digipak, so its likely to target a wider audience.

Unique Selling Point- I think what makes my digipak diffrent from others on the market is that the artists displayed on the front are girls of a young age as oppossed to other artists from older age groups.This will help other young artists to do the same and help the band to become recognised. In addition all the images throughout my digipak are not displaying women in a negative light such as "sex symbols" so this will create a positive impact on the audience. However in comparisson to other digipaks the girls on the front cover are half naked and showing flesh in able to attract the attention of the audience.

Attention/awareness- I have created an advert to advertise my digipak to my consumer audience. As my target market are mostly aimed at teenagers and young adults i will put the poster in places that the may visit, such as colleges, shopping malls, high schools etc. However this may make me be limited to a certain target market. So to increase sales i would display the advert in shopping malls as it will attract more attention from diffrent audiences.

Interests- Our target market will be interested in buying our product as it has been conducted from the same age market as them so audience and artist are able to relate to eachother. In addition as I have previously mentioned above my Digipak doesnt contain any explicit images of the female artists therefore creating a positive impact on the audience. In addition i am going to make my digipak stand out from the others throught a diffrent black and white colour scheme.

Desire- our target market will purchase our items because we are going to start off by selling the items at a cheap and affordable price creating popularity and awareness of our product. After it gains popularity we are then going to increase the price. The fact that the artists are also from the same age group as the target market it will create a bond between artist and audience.

Action- The action that we are going to take into marketing this product will be very different compared to other products on the market. Many free promotions will be used to expose the band and gain awareness which will lead to popularity. So we will invest into free promotional CD’s with a quick preview of the track we are selling. We have also created an interview with the band so we are able to publish it on the internet allowing the audience to have a clearer insight into what the band is all about. I am also going to create an advert to promote my digipak and display it in places my target audience are most likely to visit.

Product- Digipak

Price- We are going to sell our CD at a reasonable price as it is new to the industry so therefore need to be aware that if the price is high on a unknown artists CD people will not buy it. The pricing scheme that I think we should use here is “Penetration Pricing” ( this is when the price starts of low and once it is recognised in the market we will increase the price along with the increase in sales)

Place- Our product will be sold through many different organisations and businesses such as HMV, other music stores and supermarkets such as ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury’s etc. We will also distribute it through online shopping websites such as Amazon, iTunes etc.

Promotion- We are going to promote our products through adverts and other sources of media. This will help to mass expose our product. We will also use social networks to help promote it as the target audience that use these sites are in the same field as those that will consume our CD.

Print Screens of Digipak back cover

Here I edited Paris's photo in photoshop to make it look more professional. I started with skin smoothing then cutting out her picture then finaly brightening it. I decided to use this photo of paris as you will later see, I wanted to use a facial image to put in the background of the back of my digipak.

Here I again skin smoothed her image and cut out the background. I also lightened the image making her stand out more. I decided to use her as the image that stood out from the page in contrast with fading Paris's photo so she blends in with the background. The reason I decided to use her as the main image was due to the fact I recognise her as the main singer as within the music video she is the singer in the middle and the two remaining singers are standing at her side. 

After combining the two images together and adding edits this is my final back cover. The reason i never used it as a front cover was due to not all band members being on the front as it would not sell the band as three members but two. In addition to this the fact that the name of the band isnt clear enough for a front cover, it needs to jump out at the audience and be diffrent to others on the shelf. I put a bar code and "Song BMG" logo to make it look more realistic.

The Replacement Artist

During the shooting of the music video we had a couple of issues with one of the artist's as she was not always available which caused a delay to producing the music video. So we decided to replace her with another Artist in beneficial of our music video.

The old Artist

The New artist

Video shooting and location (2) Tv studio

    Here we used Filter lights. We used white film to make the scenes of the music video look more real and professional. It also helped to brighten up the artists, portraying the idea that they are "star" like and famous.We didn't use colour film such as red or blue as we thought this may contrast with their skin complexion, so instead we just used the white film to make it look more professional and famous like.                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                     

Here we were testing the focus and positioning before we actually started to film. This was could as part of our preparation regime as when we was testing out the shots there was a lot wrong with the positioning and focus, so it allowed us time to sort it out before the artists had arrived. We decided to use the white background instead of the green screen as whilst looking at other examples of a2 music videos with green screen they tended to look un real and less professional than the plain white screen.

Here one of the media students were setting the white balance on the camera. we did this to remove any unrealistic colour casts. We wanted the music video to be bright and meaningful so we though using mostly bright whites would help portray this and wont look too over the top.

Here is one of the artists in action. I took this picture as it shows the mis-en-scene of this part in the music video. We used a white screen due to the reason above. We also used the lighting at the sides of the screen to get rid of shadows. Here the camera man is getting a mid- close up shot of the artist. The reason we got different shots of the artists was to make the music video have more variety and making it look more professional.

  

 Here again are all the artists in action. This time the camera man is getting a low angle shot of them making them look superior and making them achieve the look of having a higher status than the audience, as we would be looking up at them. We got the artists to look down at the camera creating eye contact between audience and artist.                                           
          
Overall the reason why we decided to use this as our location and just use a white background was to bring out the band as opposed to anything else going on within the background. We thought by doing a plain background it would look more professional and bring them out more.                           

Evidence of organisation skills

Here below is screenshots from my Blackberry phone, in evidence of organisations skills of the video shooting. This shows the groups i created in order to keep in contact with the members from my group and the band we was shooting for. The "Crystal Blaque" group includes all the media students and all the members of crystal blaque. I created this specific group so we could all negotiate meeting times and places together in one conversation, its like a chat room. I created the "Media" discussion group to talk to my team members personally about our media work or plans for our music video.

 Below is a print screen of my calender. It is showing me on what date and time I have to attend shootings. It also notifys me if a shooting has been cancelled. This was really handy within completing our music video as we could make a date and time when we were shooting and it would send to all members within my team and crystal blaque electronically without having to tell everyone individually.

This print screens below shows again the time and date aswell as how long we will be shooting for, this is shown from the bar charts below.

Luckily enough for us everyone involved within producing this music video had a Blackberry phone so it was a cheap and easy way of communicating and negotiating with eachother. Below i have included a picture of a blackberry phone for those that may have not came across one before. They are mostly aimed at business people due to the function of the organisation applications and teenagers due to the free chat with friends.