EVALUATIONABIGAIL FIRTH

ANCILLARY TEXT 1:DIGIPAK FOR ALBUM RELEASE

ALBUM COVERTRACKLIST ON BACK

CD INSERTCD INSERT

ANCILLARY TEXT 1:DIGIPAK FOR ALBUM RELEASE

We used a mixture of typical aspects of a pop album and unconventional aspects.• An image of the artist or band is

very typical of a pop album cover alongside the name of the artist/band, especially on a debut album cover, as they would not be automatically recognisable by either. We used a group picture taken on the day of filming the music video, so the 1950’s style theme is present on all of the digipak/poster; it’s possible this would become the band’s ‘signature’ style as it is established on the debut album.

• It is usually expected that pop album covers are brightly coloured and stand out, but it is not uncommon for them to use a more dull colour scheme, with white or grey as a prominent colour.

Inspirations andsimilar cover art

It is also common to have the artists name in a large font or logo at the top of the cover. We chose black for the logo so it stood out against the grey, then red for the album title so it contrasted with the other dull colours on the cover.

ANCILLARY TEXT 1:DIGIPAK FOR ALBUM RELEASE

• For the back of the album, we used the same image as the front but created a silhouette, so it doesn’t take the attention away from the front. Furthermore, if there was a full image on the back it would’ve looked too crowded with the addition of the track list. We kept the band’s name on the back cover too, changing it to white and adding a barcode at the bottom too.

• To tie in the red used on the front cover, we used a red striped background and put the same black silhouette over it. We kept this fairly simple as it was to go behind the CD.

• We used some additional photos taken on the day of filming to create an insert for the album, using the same striped background, but adding different bright colours. This follows a typically pop theme and ties the music video to the album art, as it features some of the zombie cast.

ANCILLARY TEXT 2:MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT FOR DIGIPAK

Although most album advertisements use the album cover, we used the images from the album insert to make it more interesting. These images are brighter and more stereotypically pop, thus conveying the band’s genre more so than the album cover; however we kept the grey background.

We kept all of the text white, using the same fonts as used on the album covers, as this would be used as the band’s logo.

We stuck to most of the conventions of an album poster, adding the band’s name and album title alongside an image of them, and details of the album’s release. We also added a record label and website in a small font at the bottom.

MUSIC VIDEOOur music video conformed to many conventions of the pop genre, as the lighting and colour remained bright throughout, there was a set theme with a narrative, and the costumes and settings fitted around that. We didn’t follow some conventions often seen in pop videos, such as the over-sexualised women, as it would not have fitted with the song or theme of the video.In terms of editing, we kept it quite simple, using only straight cuts (as wipes and other transitions tend to look cheesy) and some slow motion and sped up parts to keep it interesting, but only where it would be appropriate to put them so it didn’t become overloaded with these edits.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

We tried to create a music video that complied with what our target audience said they looked for in a music video. We chose to use a comedic narrative, with some elements of performance, and put a large focus on the costume and setting, making sure it fitted the 1950’s era, all based on our customer survey, however a lot of these are conventions of pop videos.We received positive feedback from all of our target audience of young females, and additionally received praise from people outside of this demographic.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

The audience demonstrated their understanding of the plot line and seeing their own interpretations was interesting:“I actually really like the concept of the video. With the "nice girls" and the "bitches" and the contrast between the two. The way that in the end, the two of them end up basically being the same thing.”“The housewives are meant to be hopeless and everyone expects them to just cook and clean but they united together to fight off the impending zombie apocalypse.”“The plot showed the stereotypical world of a woman in a non-obvious way.”

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

The creative direction was also positively received.“The makeup on the zombies and them dressed in all black shows that they’re separate from the housewives and the hair/clothing on the housewives is very reminiscent of that era.”“The costumes were very realistic and appropriate to the era; the editing was creative and had a very professional feel.”“My favourite bit was the bit where the girls are running outside, but it's in slow motion and it's relayed. I just think it's a clever way of making an audience think about what's actually happening.”

USE OF TECHNOLOGIES

We used a combination of many technologies in our production. We used a Nikon P500 camera to shoot most of the music video. As it is relatively large, we kept this camera on a tripod and used it for the long and mid shots, as it’s wide lens made it more suitable for these shots, only occasionally moving it off for some close up shots. The close up shots of the characters fighting were shot on an iPhone 5S for a more handheld feel, often used in action films. We used an iPhone 6+ for the slow motion shots because of its high quality camera and slow motion feature, however the quality was diminished when we edited the footage in iMovie.iMovie 09 was used to edit the footage, as this is was the best editing software we had to hand. Although it is an older version of iMovie, it suited us fine for the type of editing we had planned, just simple straight cuts with some slow motion and sped up parts. Possibly as a result of the program being so old, or just because of an issue with the laptop, our final product could not be exported, leaving us no option but to film the screen in order to upload it to YouTube to share it. This also resulted in the film looking slightly jerky in some areas. If we were to create this again, I would ensure I was using the latest Mac operating system to hopefully clear up this problem.

USE OF TECHNOLOGIES

We used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to edit all of our images for the poster and digipak. This software enabled us to give the most professional result and was easy to use considering we were familiar with the program. We struggled when adding text to the images, so stuck to using the same logos on both products.The internet was our main source of research, using YouTube to find and analyse existing products, and eventually upload our own there. This made it easier to share our product with others. We used blogger to document the whole process, through planning, creating and evaluating. This was a simple way to present all our ideas through a combination of text, images, videos and PowerPoint presentations. We used SlideShare to upload PowerPoint presentations to our blogs, and SurveyMonkey to conduct an online survey, which made gathering information about our audience much more efficient. We could reach a wider audience than we would if we had used a paper survey and the results were easier to analyse as the data was already organised for us online.