Final Digipak

Our finished advert

Our finished video

our finished video. finished it stands at around 1 minute 50 seconds.

Commentary/Vlog ~ Evaluation Question 1

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



Recorded Speech ~ Evaluation Question 2

(FINAL VERSION)

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

For our coursework this year, myself and my group were asked to create a music video for an unsigned artist with two ancillaries to go with it. We chose the song Hourglass by Joni Savero. The ancillary tasks were to create a digipak and advert to go with the music video. So we had to think carefully about what we did.

When combined these would demonstrate our ability to market a song, not as a single, but as an album, and that we understood that the task was to promote an album. Had we promoted an advert for a single, we would have been deviating from the task. We needed to create a star image in order to promote the single, by including a shot of the actresses on the digipak, we felt we were able to bring it together. As well as an image of an apple and the hourglass, to try and effectively combine our products. I think it was effective because, the audience may see the image of the girl, and instantly connect her to the song.

To make our digipak and advert we used software called 'Adobe Photoshop'. The design was very much inspired by our research into other digipaks of the genre, It was important that each of the products carried the same style throughout. Therefore we integrated the use of hourglasses into the digipak, and used similar colouring in both ancillary products. We used the same fonts on both, to help convey the same style. This helped to make it effective because it showed a link between the two products, and kept thing simple. With one font, it didn't overpower the advert or digipak.

For the front cover of our digipak we used the image of an apple, which we faded in order to create meaning, and the idea that time makes things fade, which effectively links to the theme of our video, and put the text 'Frozen Apple'; 'Joni Savero' a top of it, since we decided to name the digipak with another of his single titles. We used the colours of red, to promote the feel of autumn, when everything is beginning to die and fade, which was a theme within our video; time running out. Inside the digipak we combined images of the hourglass, with images of the 'angel' and 'woman' characters, with an portrait shot of the lead actress. This helps to make our products effective because it links back to the video, again this helps the audience to identify with the song, therefore helps to make it effective.

Our inspiration came from the title we chose for the album, and partially from the song title itself. We included a shot of the hourglass along with the shots of the actresses; we also tried to relate back to the lyrics, in order to create an effective combination of products.

I think that the combination of our main product and ancillary products are effective in marketing and promoting an album. On the advert we include social networking information for the user to get in contact with. We also included a series of shop logos that would 'distribute' our product. We ended up with three products that hopefully would appeal to our target market in the indie genre.

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(DRAFT VERSION)


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

https://soundcloud.com/am434/media-evaluation-q2

Question 2: Script (with images):

Part of our coursework this year involved us creating a music video as well as two ancillaries. The ancillary tasks were to create a digipak and advert as if we were marketing our chosen single. Therefore when combined these would demonstrate our ability to market a song, not only as a single, but as an album.

We needed to create a star image in order to promote the single, and by including a shot of the performer and actresses on the digipak, we felt we were able to bring the bits together.

To make our digipak and advert we used a software called 'Adobe Photoshop'. The design was very much inspired by our research into other digipaks of the genre, It was important that each of the products carried the same style throughout. Therefore we integrated the use of hourglasses into the digipak, and used similar colouring in both ancillary products.

For the front cover of our digipak we used the image of an apple, which we faded in order to , and put the text 'Frozen Apple'; 'Joni Savero' a top of it, since we decided to name the digipak with another of his single titles. We used the colours of red, to promote the feel of autumn, when everything is beginning to die and fade, which was a theme within our video; time running out.

 

(one version of the back cover)

For our back cover slide we kept it very plain. Not wanting to overwhelm the digipak with images, we started off with images on either side, and kept the middle plain with only text not wanting to go too over the top. We used the titles of Savero's songs and created a song list which links in to the other digipaks we have looked at, all of them have a track listing in some form.

 

(the original lyric idea - that we decided to go against) 

We wanted to include lyrics, but we were not sure whether we would be able to fit it on the digipak and not wanting to make it look like we were promoting a single, by just putting the lyrics to 'Hourglass' on the digipak, we scrapped that idea. Inside the digipak we combined images of the hourglass, with images of the 'angel' and 'woman' characters, with an portrait shot of the 'lead singer'.

Our inspiration came from the title we chose for the album and partially from the song title itself. We included a shot of the hourglass along with shots of the actresses, we also tried to relate back to the lyrics.

I think that the combination of our main product and ancillary products are effective in marketing and promoting an album. On the advert we included social networking information for the user to get in contact with. We also included a series of shop logos that would 'distribute' our product.

 

(an almost finished version of the advert)

XTRANORMAL ~ Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In this question we were asked to do as much audience research as humanly possible and a variety.

Prezi ~ Evaluation Question 4

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

 

          In this question we were asked to 'refer to all of them from the researching on youtube, filming, editing, audience research, pre and post production and then discuss and explain how they aided us in decision-making and being creative.'

Goodwin's Theory

Goodwins theory is based around eight different points when analysing a music video.

1. Links between the lyrics and the visuals. This means are there any on screen actions where the lyrics match them. There is often a similarity or direct contrast with what is shown in the video and the lyrics of the song. 

2. Link between music and visuals.

3. Genre characteristics. This means is this typical of the genre? is it conventional? an example of genre characteristics would be a conventional RnB video which would have loads of sexually attractive women dancing etc. Each genre holds it's own characteristics which we use to define them as being in one genre

4. Intertextual references. Are there any references to any other media texts or forms. Sometimes you will recognise the lyrics or visuals referring to another text within it. The reference to Rebecca Black's 'Friday' in Katy Perry's video for 'Last Friday Night' is a great example, as well as the appearances from other celebrities.

5. Notion of looking. Often shown with screens within screen, looking through telescopes. Also and most commonly, the voyeuristic treatment of the female body
 
6. Voyeurism. Ultimately record labels want to sell their artists and the best way of doing this (especially with female artists) is to show them throughout the video, usually in a provocative fashion

7. Representation of the Artist & Motifs. You may recognise certain characteristics throughout a number of the artist's music videos. This may be shown with their dress, attitude, gestures or camera work, editing and lighting. A lot of music artist's videos are directed by the same person each time.


8. Performance-based, narrative-based, concept based.

Our feedback questionairre

1.       Male          Female

2.       1-17          18-30          30-50          50+

3.       Did you like our digipak?          Y/N

a.       Do you think it would be successful?          Y/N

b.      Did you think the colour scheme worked?          Y/N

c.       Was everything placed well?          Y/N

4.       Would you buy the album just by looking at the digipak?          Y/N

5.       Do you think our advert is successful?          Y/N

a.       Do you like the colours?          Y/N

b.      What do you think of the picture?          Y/N

c.       Does it carry across a theme?          Y/N

6.       Would you be inclined to buy the album from the advert?          Y/N

7.       Regarding the video, was it successful?          Y/N

a.       Did you like it? Y/N

b.      Would you watch it? Y/N

c.       What has worked well?

8.       In your opinion what do you believe has been the most successful part of our media project? Why?

9.       Is there anything that could be improved if we were to do the project again? What?

Advert Analysis ~ Hurts

I liked the advert for the band Hurts. While being relatively unknown, their song 'Stay' was included in the TV drama 'The Vampire Diaries'.  The design was simple, and again very effective. I liked the use of black and white, which inspired an first draft of our advert, but in the end we decided to go with an more colourful design. The advert had the image as the background, which we liked. 

We took some inspiration for our advert, from the Hurts advert - mostly how stark it is, but also while stark and colourless, it is eyecatching, simply because it's not overwhelmed by images or text. 

Again the band have foregrounded their name at the top of the advert - as this was done in lots of adverts we decided to follow the same example.

The advert has a date at the bottom, unlike the Mumford and Son's album. They also have an url which people can go to, in order to find out more information.

Advert Research ~ Mumford & Sons

When our group began to think about lay out for our advert, we decided to start with researching adverts from previous indie bands. We came across the advert for Mumford and Son’s, which we liked as it was simple but effective. Mumford and Son’s are a relatively unknown indie band, and therefore it sort of made sense that we should take inspiration from it.

For our advert we took inspiration for part of the layout aforementioned advert which was for their album Sigh No More. We took inspiration from the main features of the advert, including the artists (or bands) name at the top of the page, with the album title just underneath it. This makes the artists name really stand out, and then helps to bring attention to the album name.

We included the titles of three of the tracks on the album, and seperated them with a line, much like in the Sigh No More advert. While we took inspiration we tried to make it different, we made our image the background with a soft autumnal red as an overlay. While the Mumford and Sons album looks as if it may have been it shot in spring or summer, we hoped to go for a more autumn like feel as autumn is the time when things are beginning to chill.

We have decided to include an twitter address and an email address @jonisaveroartist and jonisavero@lazrecords.com, this hopefully helps to bring about an accessability, as twitter is known for allowing fans to gleam their chosen artists tweets and may also help to promote our video were we to be distributing it.

Due to the fact he's an independent artist rather then a signed one like Mumford and Sons we also have the YouTube symbol, along with Twitter, Facebook and Amazon for purchases of the album or singles, that way it makes it easier for the consumer to understand that ‘Joni Savero’ is contactable on these sites.