Evaluation Q2 and Q3 draft

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

There are many aspects in creating a house style. Some of them include the use of fonts, colours, as well as the layout. In order to illustrate the association between the products, these elements of the products must be consistent all the way through the music video. For example, the use of the same fonts throughout the different products demonstrate that they are all connected rather than being individual pieces. All the products work together in order to promote the artist and album.

 

Throughout my products, direct address was constantly used to create a connection between the artist and audience. This is considerably important for the pop genre as it heavily relies on the audience to maintain their interest to the public. Therefore by using direct address which gives the audience the sense that they are interacting with the artist, suggests that the artist concerns about their audience.

 

A music video primarily functions to serve the purpose of entertaining the audience and bringing them pleasure. It may also enable the audience to become familiar with the artist, particularly with performance based music videos as they are able to visually see them perform the song. In addition, music to some people may even be a way of escaping their problems and so this could then create a new purpose of more than just entertainment and instead help them cope and relax. Nevertheless, the main aim of music videos is to satisfy the audience in some way which is provided by in my music video especially in terms of mise-en-scene.

 

Firstly, a lot of positive emotions are displayed throughout the music video. For example, the facial expressions of the artist displays happiness and the costume features a smiley emotion which both reinforce the positive mood within the music video. In addition, the different coloured backgrounds used during the course of the music video may also contribute to the positive effect generated.  The colours I used were bright and varied with the use of both primary and secondary colours such as yellow (primary) and purple (secondary). The range of ‘pop’ colours used create a cheerful atmosphere. All of these features function to entertain the audience and bring joy to them whilst watching the music video.

 

Similarly, the purpose of the digipak is also for enjoyment as listening to the songs creates pleasures for the audience. Furthermore, the audience may feel satisfied in a way to be able to physically own a copy of the album which is considered to be more meaningful than an online download. This may be due to the inclusion of certain features such as the ‘Thanks to’ which creates a distinction between the two formats of the album.

 

On the other hand, whilst the main intention of music video and digipak is to entertain, the magazine advert serves a different role that is considerably important and that is to promote the artist and album. The magazine performs this function by including the necessary details for the audience to make sense for the advert. The essential details included on the magazine advert are the artist name, album name and release date. Other less important but useful information include the format of the album (e.g. digital, CD) as well as the songs featured in it which are possibly known to the audience.

 

For both the digipak and magazine advert, I used the same background to create a consistent theme. This background consisted of the lyrics of the songs in the album with the song names being highlighted in different colours. This created a theme amongst the products which effectively demonstrates to the audience that they are related and are promoting the same thing. Additionally, another consistent theme I used was the display board held by the artist which was used on the magazine advert and front cover of the digipak. This was also seen in my music video where the artist held up the lyrics. The use of this display board acts a message being conveyed to the audience by the artist which creates a connection between them.

To create consistency among the products I used similar fonts in the music video, digipak and magazine advert. There were a couple of fonts I chose to use on my products which I chose from the website ‘dafont’ as there are many unique fonts on there that are appropriate for my products. For the artist and album name I used a font called “DJB HOLLY JOLLY B’GOLLY”. I thought this font was very suitable for my products as it is bold and fitting for the pop genre due to it being rounded which gives off a friendly look. Another font which I used a lot in my products was “A little sunshine”. This font was also rounded and bubbly but it was less bold which made it suitable to use as it complements the artist and album name. All the fonts I used were sans serif fonts as the appearance of the fonts make them more suitable for the pop genre due to them being less formal and traditional which serif fonts may appear to be.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The target audience for my music video are mainly young females. They are most likely going to be in the social grade E as they are probably still in education.

 

Feedback is an important process that allows you to get an idea of what people think about your product so that you can make relevant improvements to it. The way in which you gain feedback is also important as different types can be informative in different ways. For example, using surveys is one of the best ways to get a range of quantitative and qualitative data. Furthermore, the respondent’s answers are anonymous meaning that they are more likely to be truthful which can produce more useful feedback for me to act on.

 

I received feedback for my music video through the survey I created on SurveyMonkey. In this survey I included a range of questions which were quantitative as well as qualitative to ensure that I had a variety of answers to look at. Some of the quantitative questions required the respondents to rate certain aspects of the music video. The use of a rating question ensured that the question wasn’t leading the audience to answer in a specific way as all the elements of the music were treated equally without hinting which one may have been slightly better than others.
As for the qualitative questions, the respondents were asked to comment on the strengths, weaknesses and more specifically what improvements I should make to my music video. This allowed me to get a detailed response of my music video which would help me to make useful improvements to it. Similarly, the way that I phrased the questions asking “Which features do you think needs improvement?” rather than “Do you think the editing needs to be improved?” is much less suggesting which means that the answers are likely to be more of a true reflection of their opinion.

 

I gathered from my audience feedback that the use of props is a strength of my music video as it is appealing. In reaction to this I created more props which were used in the second video shoot. I also found that the positioning of the artist being in the centre throughout the music video was uninteresting. Therefore, to improve this I positioned the artist so that they were on the left or right side occasionally. Another issue brought up by my target audience is the use of transitions. Some of the transitions I used in the first draft seemed to vary too much which made it look slightly unorganised. As a result, I decided to use the key frames to change between the scenes with the artist appearing on and off the screen. To add variety to this I made the artist appear form different directions –from the left, right, bottom.

 

I made use of the comment feature on Blogger to obtain feedback for my digipak and magazine advert. This allowed people to comment freely on what they thought of my products which is an easy method of getting qualitative data.
I acknowledged that the quality of the temporary image I used was poor in quality which was also mentioned by some of the audience in the feedback I got. I therefore took new photos in the studio which were in much higher quality than before to replace the original one.
From the feedback I received, I found that the first draft of my digipak was relatively simple and lacked some information which makes it look less like real world products. After acknowledging this I made a few additions to the digipak whilst keeping the original layout as this was liked by my audience. For example, I added a special edition label on the front cover, a ‘Thanks to’ page and details on the CD. As for my magazine advert, I learnt from my feedback that I should add more reviews to make it look more similar to real products.