Note To Examiner

Note to examiner:

My brief was to create a promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
- a website homepage for the band;
- a digipak for the album's release;
- a magazine advertisement for the digipak.

I created an indie music promo video, digipak and magazine advertisement. I worked with my partner Rhiannon. This is her blog:

http://rhiannonmillarda2mediastudies.blogspot.co.uk

Please use the labels on the sidebar to easily navigate my blog.

Evaluation Q1 - Final Draft

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

My partner Rhiannon and I created a director's commentary of our music video to discuss the ways in which our video did this:

Evaluation Q2 - Final Draft

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


Transcript:

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

The brief was to create a promotional package for an artist’s album release. This includes a music promo video, a digipak, and a magazine advertisement. To create a successful promotional package, synergy should be present across all three products. Synergy refers to the interaction and similarities between two products to give a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. Within this brief, the synergy ties together the video, digipak and advert, to sell them as one product. My partner and I prioritised synergy when creating our promotional package to ensure it was successful.

Throughout my partner and I’s research, we discovered that the advert and digipak of a promotional package usually have more synergy than the promotional video. This could be common iconography and illustrations across the products, colour themes or images. For example, Ed Sheeran’s use of mathematical symbols across his advertisements effectively promotes his brand and creates synergy across his products.

We adhered to this convention by creating synergy between our digipak and advert. The most obvious link between the two was the photograph used, both featuring a light in the same location. This unique way of presenting text was highly effective when presented to members of our target audience, who responded with feedback such as ‘I would buy this album’. 

We also used the same font for the words ‘the heydaze’. This was a scratchy font that represents the conventions of the indie genre. Throughout our RMA research, we found that indie promotional packages typically use dark grungy themes. We chose this scratchy font to adhere to this convention. As the name of the band, these words were important to highlight to viewers. We used this font, with the words in a specific layout, to create almost a ‘logo’ that would provide synergy across the products.

The combination of the ancillary tasks and the music promo video is important as together they create a whole promotional package that is sold as one product. Therefore we created synergy between the main and ancillary tasks through creating similarities in the products. Specifically, the video opens with a shot of a tunnel and the words ‘the heydaze’ writing themselves across the screen. For this we used the same location as the photograph in the ancillary tasks, and the same scratchy font. Using this as the opening of the video created almost an introduction to the music video that solidifies it as being part of  the promotional package. 

Overall the combination of our main and ancillary texts worked well together to promote the album. We incorporated synergy and links between the music promo, digipak and advert to ensure the worked together as one promotional package.

Evaluation Q3 - Final Draft

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the entire process from researching and planning, to production of our media products, we used a focus group to gain insight from our target audience. Every initial idea and draft was presented to a small group of people, who gave us their thoughts on it. We asked them for positive feedback, so we knew what our target audience would think, and improvements, to ensure the products were tailored exactly how the audience would like them.

I created this video using PowToon to show what I have learnt. (You may need to pause on each screen to read the text).


We presented our final promotional package to our focus group, as well as other members of our target audience and our music video actors, to gain a range of opinions and thoughts on it. 

Music Promo Video
I asked these people four questions about the music promo video and filmed their responses:

1. What type of audience and what age range do you think this music video is targeting?
2. Is there anything that could be improved in the overall video?
3. Would you watch this video again? Why?
4. What did you think about the balance between the performance and narrative parts of the video?

Ancillary Tasks

I asked the same people some questions about the ancillary tasks and wrote down their responses:

1. Do you think the ancillaries relate to the music video?
2. How successful are they in persuading you to buy the product?
3. Would you say there is brand loyalty/continuity throughout the three products?
4. What aspects of the ancillaries work best?

1. Do you think the ancillaries relate to the music video?

2. How successful are they in persuading you to buy the product?

3. Would you say there is brand loyalty/continuity throughout the three products?

4. What aspects of the ancillaries work best?

Evaluation Q4 - Final Draft

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

Evaluation Q2 - 1st Draft

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

Transcript:

The brief was to create a promotional package for an artist’s album release. This includes a music promo video, a digipak, and a magazine advertisement. To create a successful promotional package, synergy should be present across all three products. Synergy refers to the interaction and similarities between two products to give a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. Within this brief, the synergy ties together the video, digipak and advert, to sell them as one product.

Throughout my partner and I’s research, we discovered that the advert and digipak of a promotional package usually have more synergy than the promotional video. This could be common iconography and illustrations across the products, colour themes or images. For example, Ed Sheeran’s use of mathematical symbols across his advertisements effectively promotes his brand and creates synergy across his products. Similarly, the Arctic Monkeys use a waves illustration across their products that is now associated with their brand.

We adhered to this convention by creating synergy between our digipak and advert. The most obvious link between the two was the photograph used, both featuring a light in the same location. This unique way of presenting text was highly effective when presented to members of our target audience, who responded with feedback such as ‘I would buy this album’. 

We also used the same font for the words ‘the heydaze’. This was a scratchy font that represents the conventions of the indie genre. As the name of the band, these words were important to highlight to viewers. We used this font, with the words in a specific layout, to create almost a ‘logo’ that would provide synergy across the products.

The combination of the ancillary tasks and the music promo video is important as together they create a whole promotional package that is sold as one product. Therefore we created synergy between the main and ancillary tasks through creating similarities in the products. Specifically, the video opens with a shot of a tunnel and the words ‘the heydaze’ writing themselves across the screen. For this we used the same location as the photograph in the ancillary tasks, and the same scratchy font. Using this as the opening of the video created almost an introduction to the music video that solidifies it as being part of  the promotional package. 

Overall the combination of our main and ancillary texts worked well together to promote the album. We incorporated synergy and links between the music promo, digipak and advert to ensure the worked together as one promotional package.

Evaluation Q3 - 1st Draft

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the entire process from researching and planning, to production of our media products, we used a focus group to gain insight from our target audience. Every initial idea and draft was presented to a small group of people, who gave us their thoughts on it. We asked them for positive feedback, so we knew what our target audience would think, and improvements, to ensure the products were tailored exactly how the audience would like them.

We presented our final promotional package to our focus group, as well as other members of our target audience and our music video actors, to gain a range of opinions and thoughts on it. 

Music Promo Video
I asked these people four questions about the music promo video and filmed their responses:

1. What type of audience and what age range do you think this music video is targeting?
2. Is there anything that could be improved in the overall video?
3. Would you watch this video again? Why?
4. What did you think about the balance between the performance and narrative parts of the video?

Ancillary Tasks

I asked the same people some questions about the ancillary tasks and wrote down their responses:

1. Do you think the ancillaries relate to the music video?
2. How successful are they in persuading you to buy the product?
3. Would you say there is brand loyalty/continuity throughout the three products?
4. What aspects of the ancillaries work best?

1. Do you think the ancillaries relate to the music video?

2. How successful are they in persuading you to buy the product?

3. Would you say there is brand loyalty/continuity throughout the three products?

4. What aspects of the ancillaries work best?

Evaluation Q4 - 1st Draft

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

Final Digipak - Audience Feedback

Focus Group Feedback:

Final Digipak

Digipak Production Log

Final Magazine Advertisement - Audience Feedback

Focus Group Feedback:

Teacher Feedback:

Final Magazine Advertisement

Magazine Advertisement Production Log

Final Edit - Audience Feedback

I played the final music video to our focus group, some of our actors, and some people within our target audience and asked for their opinions on the video.

Transcript:
Will: I like it. It's good. I think the storyline makes a lot of sense (...) when we were filming it I was confused as to what was happening because it was here, there and everywhere, but when its all put together (...) it makes sense. I like some of the transitions, I like the camcorder bit where it looks like you're recording through a camcorder, and then it goes into a shot of the picture that was taken, it sort of zooms in, and I thought that was really clever. (...) I like the way it sort of flips between the story and the band, so you get the sense of the whole thing, that its a music video and a story at the same time. I thought the editing was good quality, the lip syncing was good, as in it didn't look fake (...) yeah, I liked it in general.
Ben: The video looks really good (...) When we were filming it was only small sections at once but now the whole thing has come together it works really well. I especially like the bit (...) where the shot was going around Will in a circle and its really clever. (...) its awesome.
Zoe: Well I like how it kind of jumps between shots, so you'll have Will, and then you'll have the band, and then you'll have Will again, and then like his memories and everything (...) I think my favourite bit of the video was when he looked at the photo, and then it almost like zoomed into the photo, so you see the memory of it, and when it was actually 'made'. I like how it wasn't just on one thing, it did have a story to it, as well as being a music video, so you had like the music side, and then you had the story behind it, and that was what I liked about it.
Chloe: So I really liked the flow of the video, I think everything interlinked really well, the narrative and the performance is something that is seen a lot in the genre of indie and alternative and I think it's something that just resembles the genre well.
Zach: I really like this video. Its very engaging to watch and the video fits the song well. The old fashioned camcorder section is really good because it looks different to the rest of the video and its also very good editing.
Izzy: I really liked the video, I thought it was very engaging where you were switching between the shots of the band and then the shots of the story but equally you didn't like lose the flow of the story. I also liked the variety of shots you used like going through the photo, and the circling round, I thought it kept the video really interesting.
Charlotte: I really liked it, I loved how the performers looked like they were actually singing and they looked like they were fully involved in the story. I loved the editing, it was very clever, it all flowed really nicely together, and it really suited the style of the song, along with the themes.

Final Edit

Editing Log