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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m17cQu3Zd9E

This is the final version of our Digipack which contains common conventions’ of a Digipack of the Hip-Hop genre - Band/Artist logo, the Title of album, Barcode and Track listings. We have gone for a theme of street art which is used throughout all of our three pieces enabling the audience to be able to easily identify that this a part of the bands release of the song creating a band image. The Digipack contained elements such as… which the audience felt worked well. We used a simple background of a street with graffiti then used Adobe Photoshop to add effects which our audience felt was simple yet effective.

This is the final version of our Magazine Advert which contains common conventions of a magazine advert of the Hip-Hop genre. - Band/artists images, reviews and ratings from Music institutes and quotes to attract and lure the audience. The text also fits with the Digipack as we have used a rounded graffiti font on a plain white background to contrast the text. We did this so the text would stand out and grab the attention of the reader.

The combination of all three of our ancillary tasks are effective and compliment each other as they all use the street art theme, so they work well to promote the band. The most effort was put into the Music promo as it was time consuming to film, edit and add effects. Although the most effort was put into the Music promo all three products work well and do their intended job of being a promotional package for an album release. Due to using the same theme throughout all three texts this enables our target audience to associate the three texts together.

To promote the band’s album release of these materials would need to be exhibited by our target audience and this could be efficiently done using traditional media as well as new media. The traditional methods would be using a music channel of similar genre, a magazine advert and a Digipack which can be purchased in a record store or online. The main two channels suitable to promote our music video would be 4Muic & MTV due to promoting songs of similar genre. 4Music is available on Free view, Sky & Virgin Media so this would target a large audience promoting our track to a large audience. The music channel 4Music doesn’t cater for specific genres although MTV Base specifically promotes R&B and Hip- Hop tracks so this channel will be more specific and be aimed at our target audience.

When publishing our Magazine Advert we felt to publish it with Vibe Magazine as it’s specifically a Hip-Hop magazine so our target audience are more likely to become aware of the band and track. New Media such as the internet is used to promote music videos and it would heighten the audience and be more widely available as websites such as Facebook, YouTube and iTunes which offer services that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at the user’s leisure which allows a more convenient approach.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When constructing our Media Productions the feedback from our audience feedback was beneficial as it helped us when it came to producing our media piece. The information helped us to meet and full fill the needs of our target audience.  We used different forms of audience feedback such as questionnaires, video interviews using ‘PhotoBooth’ and social network sites ‘Facebook & YouTube’ to gain feedback. Facebook and YouTube were the two most successful methods of gaining feedback as it could be completed at the convenience of the audience unlike the interviews using PhotoBooth. Facebook was also ideal as a large proportion of our Friends on the social network site where also our target audience as they fitted into the age category.

The questionnaire helped us gain information surrounding our Music video; this helped us to gain what the audience felt would be most fitting in terms of location, costume and effects. It also helped us to identify what our target audience would be for our media production.  This not only helped us to gain information but meet the consumer needs in terms of what they felt made a good music video.

Age:    0-12   13-18   19-24   25+

Gender:    Male      Female

Favourite Genre:    Hip-hop   R&B   Pop   Rock   Dance   D&B   Metal   Alternative   Other

What do you feel makes a good music video?    Performance   Narrative   Both

What location would you pick to film a music video?   Rural   Urban   Stage   Club   Other:

How do you purchase your music?   ITunes   HMV   Video2mp3   Other:

What is your favourite music channel?   4Music   MTV   Viva   Kerrang   Scuzz   Starz   Other:

How often do you listen to music a day?   Less than an hour   1Hour    2Hour   3Hours   4Hours   5hours

What do you feel makes a good music video?  

What is your favourite Music video?   Why?

This Audience research was a vital element to complete before constructing the final products, as we were able to find out what the audience prefers and look for when it comes to these products, and from this questionnaire we found the following information:

These pie charts helped us to establish the target age group and gender; a fitting location; whether or not our production should contain narrative; performance or both; and how our audience purchase their music.  This has helped us to plan our music video as we can now identify what our target audience wants to see in our music video.

Final research had to be undertaken so we could obtain the audience’s response on the completed music video, this enabled us to learn whether we thoroughly researched around what the audience needs were. A method we used to find out the audience’s response to our completed music video was to post it on YouTube and ask for any feedback, where we received comments about the music video. As well as the comments we received on YouTube there was also 7 likes.

When using YouTube to conduct Final Research we encountered problems such as not being able to use the website at school due to it being blocked by an administrators account. This restricted us from obtaining feedback from our fellow students at school so we missed out on getting vital information about our production. This could have affected the amount of comments and likes we received on our production which will result in less feedback to help us improve our production as well as we potentially could.

To gain my feedback we posted the video onto a social network website to help us gather more information as the 3 comments on YouTube weren’t detailed enough.

We posted our media production on the social network site Facebook and asked for feedback after watching the video as we had already created a questionnaire and needed more final research. The benefits of using Facebook were that the majority of friends we had on the social network site were also the age group that fitted our target audience.  From this Audience Feedback we can identify that the audience felt it was slightly out of sync and the typography was out of frame in some places. This feedback has helped us to improve our video by correcting these errors in timing.

Throughout the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages we used media technology for numerous methods. When we came to picking an artist/band for a media production we used www.unsigned.com to prevent us from breaking any copyright restrictions we would come across whilst using signed artists. This website enabled us to search for artists of our particular genre, read about background information concerning the bands history and then contract the band when it came to producing our media production to the one of the bands tracks.

When searching for an artist under the R&B/ Hip-Hop genre we came across an American Hip-Hop group called ‘Inflowential’. The information on unsigned.com allowed us to research the bands tracks by using www.youtube.com to listen to various tracks the band has produced. We then used social network sites such as www.facebook.com and www.myspace.com  to find out information regarding the band such as how they came together. There were various ways of contacting the band in regards of asking for permission to use their song – Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. To present a more professional approach we decided to email the band with the email address provided on unsigned.com.

Inflowential’s presence on the web has allowed us to research into the band and contact the band to gain permission to use their material.  The band have pages on various social network sites and there presence on these sites shows they are making use of new technology in todays world. New technology has allowed us to find a suitable unsigned band; research the bands background information and then contact the band to gain permission to use their track. The new technology which has allowed us to do this is Unsigned, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

YouTube is another new technology which enabled us to research in the Hip-Hop genre and look at similar bands. By watching these videos we can identify common conventions used in these videos and hopefully we can take inspiration from these elements.  By watching music videos by artist such as Rizzle Kicks, Ed Sheeran, Kanye West and other Hip-Hop artists we can look at the camera work, mise-en-scene, editing and representation of the band then incorporate these elements into our production.

Music Videos that have inspired us:

Rizzle Kicks – Down With the Trumpets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ip8OsExLJs

Ed Sheeran – You Need Me, I Don’t Need You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXvzzTICvJs

Kanye West – Good Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEKEjpTzB0Q&ob=av2

As well as taking inspiration from professional music videos created by signed artists we decided to look at past media students work who produced music promos for Inflowential. ‘http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXMfkbJYm9w’ this video by students from London was an example of a video that A2 students had to produce. After watching their production I was able to analyse their video then criticise on areas of their production. This helped me to make sure I didn’t make the same mistakes when it came to producing our music promo. Without YouTube I would be unable to identify these poor areas in this production or be influenced by professional music videos and use there elements in our production.

Other Technology used:

Video Cameras - We used Sonny handheld video cameras to film the music video, then we used the cameras memory card put it into the iMac to import the footage.

Camera - We used the same Sonny video camera as a camera to take still images of various locations for our ancillary task of producing a Digipack and Magazine advert. 

iMac - We used the iMac to edit the footage for a music promo

Software - We used a variety of different software types such as iMovie and Final Cut Express to edit the footage we had and then add effects. We used Adobe Photoshop 2011 to add effects to the pictures for our ancillary tasks.

The Internet - We used the internet to research music promos using the sites www.youtube.com and www.vimeo.com. We also used various online editing websites such as www.picnick.com and www.dafont to find suitable texts to use for our ancillary texts. We also used a wide range of social network sites for our audience feedback www.facebook.com and www.youtube.com this helped us to gain peoples views and opinions of our target audience.

 When it came to filming our media production we have progressed from the previous year and from our preliminary task. We learned how to use more effective camera shots which would get everything in the shot and would what angle would look effective. We also had the Golden Mean and the Rule of Thirds to consider when filming.

When it came to editing I developed my skills as certain aspects such as lip syncing and timing the music with the right verse.

Audience Feedback

Album Cover Research

Pitch



Methods of Audience Feedback

There are many methods we could use when getting audience feedback, instead of writing down views and opinions we can use different innovate methods which involve using technology.

Filmed Interviews - Using Photo Booth on the iMac's we can film the response of our Audience to gather there views on different conventions we used.

Social Network Sites - Using Facebook or Twitter we can post our Music Promo on these websites and see people’s comments and responses if they like the video or re-post it.

YouTube - Using YouTube will allow us to receive views and comments from people around the world so the feedback will be mixed views as it isn't specifically aimed at our target audience.

Questionnaires - Using questioners is a traditional method to gather written information which can be later put into graphs or pie charts.