Saturday, 24 January 2015

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

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

Research and Planning
We used a variety of different new media technologies when doing our research and our planning. We used the following websites.
Google was useful for basic researching, when finding preexisting bands and music groups, and useful for finding a genre we wanted to work in.
Realtime Board was useful for presenting what we had found in our research. we used this when doing advanced research.

We used sites like Facebook to communicate with each other while making creative decisions while constructing our music video. We had a group chat, to make and discuss important creative decision.


Whilst researching we used a variety of websites. We were able to present our research though means such as prezi's and realtime boards. This was useful as we could present our findings easily making it obvious what we were researching and what we found.

Planning we used similar techniques as we did for the research but for the evaluation stages, I used a large range of new media technologies like slideshare, realtime board, prezi and word documents.

Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our target audience was teenagers between the ages of about 12-20, we aimed to appeal to both male and female. Someone from our target audience would typically be an 'emo' or 'alt' meaning alternative, as they typically like more niche music, We dressed our singer in clothes from store such as 'Killstar' and 'Drop Dead' which gave our target audience something to relate to. Our target audience are people that like rock and pop-punk music, the kind of people that stereotypical like reading comic books, films and spend a lot of time on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube.

Audience feedback is very important for the media industry. It is useful so they can see what audiences do and don't like, which means they can apply how they majority feels to new products and make people want to buy/watch these products more meaning they make more money as well as giving the fans what they want. With Web 2.0 it is very easy to collect audience feedback it's as simple as liking a page on Facebook, everyone has the chance to comment on a post on any social media, meaning everyone can get their views across, sites like YouTube have got both 'like' and 'dislike' buttons allowing people to share how they felt about the product. On Twitter hashtags are great for seeing what people are talking about and how they feel, the media industry can just check the hashtags for their products making it easy for they to see what their audiences think of their products.

At different stages of production we got feedback from various people so we could see what they thought we should change and improve.Perhaps the most critical piece of feedback would be the feedback we received on our pitch, this was when our product was merely and idea, this meant it was straight forward to change what we could and take on the feedback and improve our product before even creating it. After we presented our ideas, and we got feedback which we will used to improve our ideas to help us reach our highest potential. We had to put more focus on our costumes, and research how current alternate artists dress and how we can use their styles in our music video.We also needed plan and find our props making sure we have the appropriate props for the genre we chose.The main thing we have to improve is our story line/concept because we don't really have a narrative yet, so we need to make make a narrative so we don't have just a performance based video.
This lead us to research further into costumes and props used in other alternative rock music videos and what was on preexisting websites and digipaks, meaning we were able to have a more realistic and desirable product. We also received feedback later in the process, after our first draft, we were told we should make our website more full and more colourful, making it more pleasing to the eye and also to edit the content like the tour poster that I then took and improved, making it fit with the colour pallet we had chosen to use, the tour poster makes the whole tour page on our website.

We collected audience feedback here is an example of some of our feedback.

Tim Simpson
·         What genre are the products?
Rock
·         What did you like and dislike about the products?
Likes: camera work, likes the narrative sequences, reflective of the target audience
Dislikes: close up of lead singer, erratic movements from band members, abrupt ending
·         Who would say is the target audience?
16-25 year old who like alternative rock music
·         Would you watch the music video again?
yes
·         Based on the music video would you buy the single?
No not a fan of the song  
·         What story line is the music video portraying?
The narrative feels like she is being chased by the unknown   

Annabel Hand
 What genre are the products?
Alternative rock
What did you like and dislike about the products?  
Like: different range of shots, what the band members are wearing, and location of film.
Dislikes: dislikes the close up of lead singer, needs more shots, abrupt ending.
Who would say is the target audience?
14 – 20 year old
Would you watch the music video again?
Yes I like the song
Based on the music video would you buy the single?
Yeah I would
What story line is the music video portraying?
The singer being chased something that we don’t see .

Caitlin Small
 What genre is the product?
Pop punk
What did you like and dislike about the products?
Likes: transition between performance and narrative, Liked the setting in barn and woods, like the song
Dislike: main singer breaking eye contact in close up shots, guitarist didn't look like he was playing the guitar, woods went from POV shots to still shots.
Who would say is the target audience?
12- 15 pop punk fans  
Would you watch the music video again?
yes
Based on the music video would you buy the single?
No
What story line is the music video portraying?
She is running away from the past


From our feedback we can see that the most common that people disliked was the close ups and how we framed the lead singer. and the abrupt ending, we could make the ending round better. Everyone seemed to understanding what the narrative was about, which was good because we achieved what we wanted to.

Monday, 19 January 2015

Evaluation Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We created a music video, digipack and website for the band Animal Silence, our band was an Alternate Rock band, we had the theme of the woods throughout all of our products, our video featured a girl running through the woods and the band was in an open barn, which fit well with the kid of out door theme. The digipack featured a picture of the woods and a sofa outside with the woods behind it. The website also had a picture of the woods in the background of most the pages. It was obvious all our  products were connected through the use of recurring themes, such as the woods and the colour scheme we used, we mainly used a combination of 4 colours, black, grey, red and white. These colours our common throughout the rock genre as a whole, meaning when people saw the colours used on the website and digipack it was obvious what genre we were working in.


Like the bands in this prezi we too made sure all our prodcuts linked, we used the same house font in both our website and our digipack our website have the font.



The woods featured in the music video are also seen thoughout the digipack and website. The colours used in all our prodcuts also clearly let you know what genre we are working in and the same colours, red, white, black and grey are featured accross all our products.



Social Networking. 
Bands and artists use social networking for a number of different reasons. It can be a form of free advertising or a place for fans to talk about the bands. Social Networking such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr and often used by bands, the bands we researched like Paramore had Facebook pages, Twitter pages and an Instagram account.






Paramores Twitter












Paramores Facebook











Paramores Instagram












A good use for social networking is spreading the word about a band or artist. We created a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so we could post updates about what was going on with Animal Silence our band. We used the same photos for both the headers on Twitter and Facebook, the picture contains the woods which is a running theme featured thoughout all of our products, this clearly shows that all our products are connected and it makes it easier to identify these pages belong to us. The facebook contains our album cover again signifying that it belongs to us and again reenforces the running theme of the wood and nature. The facebook and twitter pages both contain links to our website and our music video so people can watch our video and easily access our website. There are also links to these websites on our website so you can easily follow and like our pages.


 

Synergy
 Synergy is where multiple for of media and comanys work together to sell a product. We used this in our website. We made a store page where we were able to sell products for our band that we had created, we also made a button that allows people to buy our albums on itunes. You can also download the music off our website. There is a link to ticketmaster on the tour page. There is the option on our website to join our fanbase which will allow certain perks and emails when there are updates with the band, like new music or a now video. The music video will evident on both the homepage next to the new album.