White Light // Music Video

DigiPak Final Design // Campaign

Here is the front and back cover of the dig-pak:

 And this is the inner-lay and the CD holder of the digipak: 

Nevaeh Website // Campaign

Link:

Evaluation Task 4 // Conclusion

By using digital media technologies, I have used technological convergence to ensure that I have produced three products as a part of a successful campaign. My use of of the semi professional camera (Sony FS100) during the production of my music video and the use of Adobe Premier Pro and Photoshop has enabled me to become a prosumer, which is a creator of media products to near a professional standard. 

The use of Premiere Pro Adobe software has taught me how to select and organise a music video to a very high standard using semi-professional media equipment. I have also bee able to share ideas and research global and industry standard products. Digital technology has made available to me opportunities to upload, share and distribute my products using YouTube as a free broadcast platform.  It is also very accurate so we can look at the statistic and see who is watching our video, where they are in the world and the most viewed moments of our video.

I have also used different softwares online to gain feedback from my audience this includes websites such as OnlineQuestionnaires.com. These skills learned on this course have enabled me to gained experience not only as a user of digital technology but also to become a producer as this is important to understanding the media in an online age. 

Henry Jenkins liked the idea of a 'participatory culture' and most specifically how the internet has brought it to the forefront through offering opportunities for regular audience members to produce and upload their own products. By the use of apps such as YouTube, Premiere Pro and photoshop consumers have now turned into prosumers because anyone can upload a video to the internet for the world to see. I have become a prosumer by creating my own music video and editing, producing etc this all in a group of prosumers all my age.

Here are some examples of when I have used digital technologies (software and digital) in this course:

Evaluation Task 4 // Directors Commentary

Evaluation Task 4 // Introduction

Intro to Task 4 from Grace2133

Evaluation Task 4 // Script

Script task 4 from Grace2133

Evaluation Task 3 // Conclusion

I have learned from my audience feedback that I have constructed an intended star image and an effective campaign.  My target audience has informed what went well, for example, they liked the fire   element in the video and the use of the dancers, as well as area’s for development.  If I was to make any future changes to the campaign I would edit the website and have more audience participation in such as a twitter feed with her mentions in, instagrams photos where fans have met/seen her in concert, I think these would just make the website more interactive and show that se appreciates the audiences participation. 

Taking note of the audience feedback I understand how the audience inform me the success of  the campaign is and indeed allowed me time to make adjustments to the campaign before it went to distribution.  Audience feedback is important market testing in post-production to see if I created the right star image and marketed this purposefully.  As Henry Jenkins informs us that we live in a ‘participatory culture’,  where fans and audiences are important in circulating meaning and the strength of media messages.

I also recognise that my audience has engaged with the meanings in my music video in different ways, bringing their own contexts to the reading of the star image – what Hall argues is reception theory.  I can understand how my audience can either reinforce or challenge intended meanings in the text.

Evaluation Task 3 // What Have I Learned From My Audience Feedback

Evaluation Task 3 // Focus Groups

We set up a focus group to comment on our website and video. This was good because it gave us the feedback that we needed and we were are able to make the changes to the website that we want and feel would make the audience happy.

Website Focus Group:

Video Focus Group:

Evaluation Task 3 // Questionnaire Results

A questionnaire is a good way to contact large numbers of people quickly, easily and efficiently. They are relatively quick and easy to create. Once finished, the respondent does most of the work they are also easy to standardise as everyone answers the same question.

Our questionnaire got answered by 10 people and here are their answers:

With this feedback I can see that we were able to create a video that our target audience would watch (19-25). I can see what parts of the video our fans liked the best and what they thought of our artist and the dancers. We were also able to see what people thought our artists star image was the results were 89% - Indie, 33% - Girl Next Door, 11%- Controversial and 22% - sweet. This means that our video for our campaign has worked because we were aiming for our star image to be "Indie and the Girl Next Door". 

Evaluation Task 3 // Questionnaire

Questionnaires are a great way to get feedback from your audience. I created a questionnaire so I can email it out to our target audience and get feedback on our video, I designed questions that are easy to answer and will help us get good audience feedback.

TThis is the email I sent out with the questionnaire. I linked the video so people can watch it first and then answer the questionnaire:

Evaluation Task 3 // YouTube Statistics

We are collecting audience feedback to see how our audience liked our video and who was our main audience to view it. The first statistics that we looked at was from YouTube, this was because YouTube is mainly built around collecting data and statistics. We do this to see if our estimations for our target audience have been correct and to see what parts of the video the audience liked best.

Here are the main statistics we got from YouTube:

Geography: I can see here that most of our views have come the UK (81%). However, we can see that our video has been viewed in multiple countries which shows that are video is global and is being watched around the world.

Where Is It Played: Our video is mainly played through the playlist that the school put it on. Although we shared the link on Facebook we haven't had many people look at it through external links, I think that this is due to the fact that our video was unable to play in mobile format.

Demographics: Here we can see our demographics, we have 47% male and 53% female, this is interesting because we were thinking that our video would have a mainly female demographic but the male section is almost half! However, this demographic was only for the month of January. 

I managed to find the overall YouTube demographics of our video, here we cans that the female views have gone up significantly because they are now 61% whereas the males are 38% so our target audience overall is as we expected. However, something that caught my eye was the age of our viewers, 28% was 13-17, 43% was 18-24 and 20% was 25-34. This shows that we have a variety of ages watching our video and could be classed as our target audience. Originally we wanted to aim our target audience at 18-25 year olds and this was the highest percentage that we got so therefore that means that we have reached our goal with the age of our target audience.

Most Viewed: Here we can see that we have several points throughout the video that have been viewed the most, however the highest section that has been viewed it is in the screen grab below. This is a close up which may show that our audience likes to see the artist's lip-syncing, this means that the dancers aren't the audiences favourite part of the video and they prefer to see the artist singing. 

Overall I think by looking at YouTubes statistics, we can see that we have reached our target audience  predictions which means that our video has achieved its goal in being part of the campaign.

Evaluation Task 2 // Conclusion

I have been effective in communicating the star image as a part of a campaign – considering the distribution of the product and the brand image.  Ultimately the brand image I wanted to promote was an alternative/indie and organic artist.  This is important for any campaign or concept for example, in the campaign for example this could be compared to actual artists like Lorde.  Emily Teadrake from Polydor records argues that the pitch for any concept had to be consistent and marketable e.g. making of the Ellie Goulding music video was key to the success of her song.

Second, I feel that I have given the campaign a unique selling point through the star image.  The star image I have promoted is organic, indie and alternative.  A unique selling point used in a  coherent campaign will provide different opportunities to market the star image.  An audience who is able to spread word of mouth about a publicity campaign can ensure success through the engagement with the  text as a form of online media – helping spread, circulate and distributing meaning amongst fans.

Finally, I have technically delivered a coherent looking campaign (dig-pak and website) through the use of image and online social media.  The music video promotes a release from the album release whilst the website acts as an effective online toll which helps distribute and promote meaning for a fan base.  The circulation and spread of meaning by the intended audience helps with co-option (Boyd)  amongst the fans and aids me with the marketing and promotion of the album.

Evaluation Task 2 // Star Image & Branding

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

Evaluation Task 1 // Conclusion

Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something.  Conventions can be used, supported, reiterated.  They can be challenged to deliberately brake and/or  subvert conventions, for example a convention that we used in our digipak is to have the name of the singer bigger then the album now, this draws attention to their name and makes them more recognisable. 

In evaluation of the question set I feel that I have drawn on the conventions of media products in my own campaign.  This use of these conventions is evident in the construction of my own products, for example, having a graphic website homepage with the artists name on the page. This is supported by my own research into websites because almost every website I looked at had the artists name in big on the home page of their website, they also had a logo or a photo of the artist so they become recognisable. 

At the same time I have sought to develop and been able to challenge conventions, for example, I have put a personalised message on the inside of the digipak, most artist don't do this, however I felt that as our artist was unknown a little note inside thanking the fans would add a nice touch and help the fans to connect with her.  The reason why feel that I have achieved this is to differentiate my product in a competitive music industry market and I have attempted to challenge audience expectations, bring something new to the media forms.  Media Conventions are ultimately relied upon for communicating the right message to the intended audience, but also deviate from these expectations helps sell the star image that I wanted to promote. Audiences produce meaning from the interaction of the conventional material in a text, and their understanding of conventions, for example in my website design the audience said that they liked the photo of Neveah but thought that buttons were to big so we went back to re-draft it and make it so the audience would want to interactive with it.

Evaluation Task 1 // Digi-Pak

With our dig pak we have gone with the typical conventions so we have the titles of songs, the name of the artist and the album, the record company, website, bar code and details. We have also decided to have the singers face being shown throughout the dig-pak so the audience can get familiar with her face and her branding.

Tove Lo and Foxes are artists who I took inspiration from because they both are upcoming and relevant and they both have their face on the front of their dig-paks so the audience can see who they is. We can see this with a lot of new artists when they release an album so this is something we wanted to do with our artist since she was new and upcoming. 

I like how all the names of the artists are one of the main focal points on the dig-pak cover because this will help to get their name/brand well known. Foxes and Tove Lo also use quite bright colours which will stand out amongst the most other CD digipaks.

We want to make our dig-pak organic and indie to represent our artist. This will be her unique selling point and hopefully make people want to buy her album.

Here are our rough drafts that I drew up:

These rough drafts were a good starting point for our digi-pak however we chose a different direction to take the cover as we wanted it to be more about the artist then the design. But this was a good start to help develop ideas.

Evaluation Task 1 // Website

Music websites are supposed to provide information in a entertaining and engaging way. They are there to help promote the star image and create an online community or fan base. A homepage needs to be interactive and help to navigate to other parts of the site.

For our website we decided to stick to the most common conventions of a website, these included having a homepage with social media tabs on, photos, links to music, tours and news. Because our artist is a new upcoming indie artist we didn't want to have a website that was to confusing for new visitors. Having a website that is graphically interesting but not to hard to figure out is what my aim and hopefully we would have achieved that.

A homepage design that we looked at for inspiration was Tove Lo's:

A convention of a website is to have a photo of the artist (as seen in Tove Lo's) so therefore that whats I did with ours:

We have a music page on our website where you can go and listen to her music linked from Spotify this makes it easier for new fans to listen to her music:

















Tove Lo also has her music linked to her website fro Spotify so this shows that this conventions is normal of websites.

We have tabs and social media links so fans have easy access to everything the artist has to offer and the artists star image can seem approachable:

Tove Lo also does this and so do multiple other artists so therefore it shows that this is a common convention to have on a website. However, Tove Lo doesn't have her social media at the top of her homepage (you have to scroll down) so therefore she may seem less accessible then our artist:

We also have a mailing list so new fans can sign up for emails and updates. This is a normal convention to have so fans can stay updated with tours and merchandise.

Evaluation Task 1 // Music Video

In What Ways Do Your Media Products Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products? 

"Conventions are like a language, which when shared operate by means of conventions. They are often not written down but are hidden or unspoken rules that we learn to accept and recognise"

Music Video

A music video is one of the best way to promote an artist and a brand. As our video had a solo artist we decided to use close up shots of her which would make the audience get familiar with what she looks like. I did this with everything element that we had in our music video:

I decided to use a close up for each element to keep our music video consistent and makes the audience able to recognise her face. This also is good position for the eye to focus on her because it is using the rule of thirds so therefore the eye is drawn to her face and it makes the video look more artistic because its not an obvious head on shot of her face.

In my video I used a wide, mid, close and tracking shot for each element. So therefore we stuck to the normal conventions for a music video in terms of camera angles. However, we did try and make our tracking shots more interesting by moving the camera over her body or the dancers bodies instead of their faces which you would see in a typical video.

A music videos function is to promote a specific single (or album), promote an artist and creates a star image. We were promoting a solo artist so we would have close up of her and although we did have dancers we chose to have more shots of the singer so the audience can get familiar with her. I had her lip-syncing because this is a typical convention in music videos that we decided to stick to and not go against it. 

A video that is similar to ours in terms of shot angles is Selena Gomez's "Good For You' video. She has close ups, mid shots, wide shots and tracking shots. The only aspect that she doesn't have it the dancers. Selena's video is similar to ours because you can always see the face of the artist, although we did have dancers so we had to cut back to them often, every time we would see our artists she would be lip-syncing to the camera (which is a typical convention of music videos).

A convention that we included to give our video an extra element was adding a performance where we have a boy and girl dancer. I had them in each of our elements to match the singer however, they didn't lip-sync they only danced. 

Our video was loosely based around the film The Fifth Element so therefore we had symbolic projections of the elements. This helped to give our artist a very organic star image and make her look more indie then mainstream. 

Using just projections breaks the conventions of most music videos because most videos would only have a snippet of projections in the video but to challenge these conventions and to make them stand out against other videos of our genre. 

I made the video quite artistic to enable our artist to have a organic and original look to her. The genre of music also does not really lend its self to typical upbeat colourful videos so therefore I think that our video worked well with the genre and style of music. 

I used the conventional technical codes of camera angles, sound and framing it was our lighting that was more un-conventioal because our video was quite dark and mainly lit from the projections. 

Our video is the same length as most must if a bit shorter. So I don't think that it really challenges any conventions because most music videos are around 2:30-3mins long. 

Selena Gomez's video length:

Our Video length:

However, this article "Music Video Length" states that the ideal length of a video is 3-3:30mins long so if we were to analysis our video in terms of statistics then our video would challenge conventions because of how short it is. 

I found it hard to find a video like ours so therefore this may show that our video challenges conventions and is new and interesting just how we want our star image to be for our artist.

Draft Digi-Pak Desgin // Campaign

Before (Rough Draft 1):

With this draft I thought that there was too many pictures of her on the dig-pak so I played around with different image

After (Rough Draft 2):

This is my draft dig pak. We did a shoot the other day with our artist and I think that the photos came out really well.

However, I like my dig-pak front cover and back cover but I am struggling to get the insides right. I have tried multiple different designs but haven't managed to find one I like.

With the front and back pages I thought that have the back and an image of her back is quite powerful and I added all the barcodes and the record company.

We also decided to change the name of the album because Nevaeh spelt backwards is heaven so naming the album heaven was a good idea in theory but when I put it on the digipak it didn't look very effective so I decided to change it to "See Me Now" which is the 3rd track off the album.

Before:

 After: