PHOEBE'S MEDIA BLOG

PART SEVENTY SEVEN

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

My group and I decided to create a multi-media video expressing how effective we found our three products in terms of achieving our goals. We did this because we felt as though, if we spoke about our music video at the same time as playing the exact part of the video we are specifying over the top, it would make more sense. When talking about Dyer's star theory, for example, we could edit in screenshots to compliment the statements we were making.

After we had filmed the video and we found that we had mentioned everything crucial this task, we discussed which parts of the music video would play over the top and the order in which the questions and answers would be edited in. India kindly edited the video together after our group discussion:

CONCLUSION:

I feel as though our three products have successfully linked together due to a number of factors. Firstly, the colour scheme remains simplistic throughout the music video, digipak (album artwork) and the website. The blacks, whites and greys made the products looked subtle, natural and well-suited to the indie-rock genre. In our album artwork, Francesca sketched out the images on a piece of white paper with a black pen, creating the initial idea for the monochrome colour scheme. We also feel that this mirrored the monochrome colour scheme (mostly greys) that we used as the website background and text. The idea of a messy sketch representing our album cover linked in with the naturalistic and rural feel of the woodland set in our music video, however, although simplistic, unfortunately the website differed from the music video and album artwork because it was very clean and sleek whereas the artwork and video were messy and organic. The idea of the messy, dirty campfire location in our music video creates a sense of originality and realism, giving us an insight into the boys' personal lives and what they get up to in their time. Similar to how we have personal information about the band on the website which is exclusive and specific to themselves as individuals. We also mirrored the sense of realism in the album artwork as the sketch looks like it could have been a rough scribble that one of the band did, linking back to the feel that the band are ordinary people like us. Dyers star theory states that an artist should be both obtainable and unobtainable. However, in the indie-rock genre, the balance is always somewhat lopsided because the band/artist, like ours, should be more obviously obtainable due to the fact that indie-rock is all about the music, rather than the star image, and therefore the people behind the music tend to portray themselves as ordinary.

PART SEVENTY SIX

What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

During the development process of our three products, I have found the feedback aspect extremely useful in terms of improvement and making creative decisions. The feedback has helped us create three products which successfully suit the indie rock genre and target audience.

We used a lot of online resources to record the feedback we were getting. Our main online resources we used were Blogger and Youtube. We would record different audiences and focus groups giving us feedback and would then edit the videos so that they were compressed down to the key points. From there, we uploaded the videos to YouTube. The Videos we uploaded to our individual YouTube channels allowed us to share the content with ourselves and also blogger, as well as other social media websites like Facebook where we posted the link to our music video, website and album artwork and our friends commented what they liked and didn't like about it. These online resources gave us a range of feedback from a range of demographics:

Presenting Our Initial Ideas To A Media Class

Initially, we presented solo pitches. I individually spoke about my three ideas which where all completely different. I had carefully crafted these ideas, thinking about the narrative, the target audience and genre. Blogger allowed me to record my ideas and communicate them to the class through text, images, music and videos. This visual aspect of the presentation helped me convey my visions creatively.

These were my three idea pitches:

Weezer - Beverly Hills

This idea was very rock based. It highlighted the hollywood lifestyle and the key themes of rock - sex, drugs, rock and roll.

Nick Mulvey - Cucurucu

This idea was very naturalistic and simple. It is a simple singer-songwriter acoustic song so a relaxed and fun song so I wanted to mirror these themes in the music video, The idea of youth and naivety. Being young and free, escaping from the boundaries of society - school, friendship issues.

MGMT - Electric Feel

My third idea focused on the idea of teenage rebellion. The song has an indie-pop feel and therefore I wanted to highlight key themes in the music video - alcohol, violence, rebellion, youthfulness.

Following the presentation, I recorded the feedback I received in a blog post:

Weezer Feedback: I was told that it would be difficult to represent the glamour of hollywood on a small budget because a red carpet would be difficult to recreate and the weather would be too cold to mimic hollywood's hot weather.

Nick Mulvey Feedback: As the beginning of the music video was supposed to be set in a classroom, it became apparent that in my college there were no suitable classrooms where the girl could climb out of the window and land safely on the ground. It was also apparent that using child actors was unpredictable and unreliable.

I was told by everyone in the class that the third idea was my best one because the band would be easy to cast as we needed four teenaged boys, and our college was full of them so there was a lot of choice. It also followed the indie-pop genre tightly, making it easy for me to stick to genre conventions throughout the making of the music video. i got a lot of positive feedback on this idea. People told me that they were impressed how the idea had developed from the innocent and young 'lost boys' of Peter Pan into the rebellious teenager roaming the streets. I continued to develop this idea after my initial pitch.

Pitching To Luke, The Creative Director

After being allocated groups of four, we chose two ideas which we developed. A main idea - (My idea) 'Electric Feel' by MGMT and (Fran's idea) 'Down By The River' by Milky Chance. We presented our ideas on Prezi and I created an additional pitch for our premium idea which I posted on my blog. Our Prezis included lots of images to convey our concepts with precision in order to receive the optimum beneficial feedback. However, unfortunately, we only managed to record one of our pitches to Luke, however we blogged feedback for the pitch we did not video. The pitch that we did manage to video, we uploaded to YouTube.

Main And Secondary Idea Presentations And Pitch

We presented to Luke our primary and secondary ideas. Luke decided immediately that our first idea was much stronger and more developed than the other one.

Despite this, Luke told us that the song 'Electric Feel' had been used in a Hurtwood music video three years earlier. He suggested that for the studio element, we should create something more dynamic and exciting, for example, projecting something over the top of the band as they perform. We suggested to project Peter Pan over the top because the theme of our music video was a corrupted version of 'the lost boys' from Peter Pan, however he stated that this idea seemed comical and didn't fit the genre. He explained that we did not have a license for shooting on the road and suggested shooting the band walking through a path in the woods instead, focusing on the idea of the dystopian 'after-math of a festival' set. He told us that, to link together the woods element and the studio element, we could also project images of the band playing in the woods swell as the studio. He decided that they could be projected onto tents made out of white sheets.

Developing Feedback Suggestions

We developed Luke's suggestion of the projections and I blogged a post on it.

he also suggested that we could project images of a time-lapse of London onto our tents in the woods, however we did not think this fitted the theme. Although we did later go on to projecting London onto the boys while they performed in the studio, but that was after much more feedback from different audiences.

Following Luke's vital feedback, we continued to develop aspects of the woodland narrative. Luke had suggested that we create different activities for the boys to do. We posted on our blogs different things that the band could do in the woods and the props that this would involve:

Luke's feedback suggested that we should develop our concept further and expand it to add a third element. He suggested that for a teenage band, primal focus would usually be (for any teenager) 'getting the girl'. He insisted that we should introduce a female figure, perhaps ethereal looking, to represent the natural world whilst the boys represented the urban world.

Eliminating the streets scenes and instead projecting urban imagery, we decided to include a studio element were we also used the London footage to project onto the band making the video even more visually appealing and exciting.

Animatic Storyboarding

We designed the animatic storyboard and filmed it on a cannon camera. We would swap sheets of paper each time we had filmed all of the shot ideas on one. Before filming the animatic, Matt told us that we should always cut on regular beats or else it would become very boring very quickly for the audience. Therefore, we filmed the animatic storyboard shots in time to the music so that we would only cut on the beat of the song.

Then we uploaded the finished animatic storyboard to YouTube in order to post it on our blogs.

Animatic Storyboard Feedback

Due to the fact that, at this stage, it was crucially important to gain an idea of the full music video concept, before progressing any further and going along with the music video shoot, we realised that we needed to get feedback on our animatic first. To make sure our target demographic (girls 15-25) understood the narrative concept of the video, we asked her a few questions in order to gain feedback from them. These were the questions and answers:

Screening Our Idea To Our Media Class And Media Teacher

While we were in the process of editing our music video together, we created a rough cut, which is the product we show to an audience to gain feedback before we create the finished product. If there was no negative feedback on our rough cut, we would have used that as the final cut. However, we did get some constructive criticism: We combined an audience of male and female teenagers, asking them both open and closed questions. We collected their feedback into a survey, getting clear responses from the correct demographic for the indie-rock genre.

The feedback of our rough cut was mostly positive. Luckily everyone said that they did not get bored. The feedback told us that the teenaged audience liked the pace of editing because it mirrored the pace of the song and linked in with the indie-rock genre. It became incredibly noticeable that they all enjoyed the woodland element of the video the most, all stating that they thought it was the most effective part.

As we received mostly positive feedback, there was little to alter, however we decided to correct aspects of the video with regards to the colour and the exposure. We made sure that the woodland aspect was given more air-time as it received the most positive feedback by the general demographic. This made our video more fun and energetic.

By colour grading the final cut, it brought out the fun and interesting aspects of the woods and made the whole video look more developed. It looked as if it could have been professional.

Group Pitch About The Album Artwork

We created a video and uploaded it to YouTube of the whole group deciding which album artwork design we liked best. In the end, we decided that we would involve different aspects off each into the album cover because we needed to think about the designs on the two inside covers, not only the two outside ones. Fran's minimalistic sketch seemed to fit the authenticity and organic vibe of the band.

Focus Group Feedback On Music Video Final Cut, Digipak And Website Rough Cuts

We hadn't yet had any feedback on all three products as a whole so we decided to hold a focus group. We asked a group of the target demographic a variety of open questions (in order to show that we hadn't lead them to answer in a certain way) and recorded the answers on a laptop as they were replying to them. Sasha recorded this information and upload it to YouTube.

Online Survey Feedback

We created an online survey and emailed it to a group of teachers and randomly selected students with links to the three products; the music video, digipak (album artwork) and Website.

Here are the closed questions we asked:

We also recorded the process of our decision-making in terms of questions:

Online Survey Results

Here are the statistics for the survey we conducted as part of our audience feedback:

Is the genre clearly "indie-rock" throughout the three products?

Yes	90%
No	10%


Do you think the overall style is appropriate for the genre?

Yes	100%
No	0%

Do you think the image presented is suitable for a demographic of teenage girls (15-25)?

Yes	100%
No	0%

Do you like the colour scheme?

Yes	90%
No	10%

Are all three products clearly linked?

Yes	70%
No	30%

Do the products look like they are for a new music artist?

Yes	90%
No	10%

Is the website easy to use?

Yes	100%
No	0%

Is the artwork on the album cover eye-catching?

Yes	80%
No	20%

Would you be interested in finding out more about this artist?

Yes	100%
No	0%

Were all three of the products interesting to look at?

Yes	90%
No	10%

These results really helped us to improve the aspects of our three products which didn't work. For example, 30% of our target demographic did not feel that all three of our products were clearly linked. We agreed as a group that the website may not have linked to the genre of the music video and album artwork very clearly because of the outfits the band are wearing in the website photoshoot. The naturalistic and artistic nature of our digipak and music video heavily contrasted the typical boyband poses the band performed for the photoshoot, appearing more as a young pop boyband rather than an upcoming indie-rock band. The clothes they wore included white t-shirts with logos on for example, Nike and Adidas. We recognised after the website was completed that we should not have dressed them in such clothing which showed branding and product placement as our band is not about the image and showing off brands but about the quality of their music. We may not have recognised this minor fault if it hadn't been for our online survey and audience feedback (mostly from our target demographic).

CONCLUSION