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

I believe that our video, digipak and advert use traditional forms and conventions of real media products. By which I mean I believe strongly that they stay within the realms of existing products that are already available on the market and don’t go as far as challenging any real conventions of current media.

However this isn’t to say that we don’t advance on them, or change them slightly. It’s a bit more like we’ve tweaked the forms and conventions, as opposed to of actually done anything else to/ within them.

As I’ve addressed in a previous post (codes and conventions of electropop) ‘electropop’ as a genre has codes, forms and conventions that all artists who fit within this genre seem to apply in a variety of different way across a wide range of their media and marketing products. I believe that our products are no different to what is currently out there, they simply mirrors pre-existing products.

When it came to creating a digipak I chose to do this as a solo effort. This was a decision I’d made prior to a specific song or genre being selected, or even being placed in a group. I did this because I believed that once I had done substantial research into the genre I would be working within I thought that my knowledge and understanding of this area would of been sufficient enough to allow me to work within the codes and conventions of the genre reasonably effectively, as well as allowing me to try and display my knowledge of Adobe Photoshop.

Once we had selected a song we obviously knew it would be important to gain a basic understanding of the genre we were going to be working with. We delegated jobs for each group member, and created mini groups of 2’s within the overall group. This was done in an attempt to gain as much knowledge of the genre in greater detail yet still allow us to gain the understanding and knowledge that we needed relatively quickly. I imagine this tactic isn’t too dissimilar to that of a real advertising and marketing company when starting they begin their research/ are in their research stage.

So anyway, basically we were split up and given a specific area to research. Electropop as a genre is hard to categorize, by which I mean it is hard to see a specific group within society that would listen to this type of music, compared to say heavy metal music, when you think about that genre a generic image of a heavy metal fan springs to mind quite quickly and therefore you know the rough boundaries of your audience. This wasn’t the case when it came to generalising an audience for electropop which then made our job a lot harder. We had to basically build up a data base of knowledge and use it to create our own target audience, once we had done this we then had to justify why we had selected these people as fans of electropop, what was it about their role in society, their attitude and opinions on a diverse range of issues and topics which made them electropop fans.

The 1st place to start was to assess current electropop songs, videos and advertisements to see the type of people we were dealing with and to see how they chose to portray themselves in society. This had to be done individually as pictures, videos, and songs effect everyone differently, so by doing it as individuals it allowed us to get a wider scope of understanding, once we’d assessed a couple of videos, adverts and listening to lyrics from a few songs we pooled our ideas together into a tight data base of information that we would use as the foundations of our project.

The areas we looked at were; the artists image (how they dressed, and why they chose to dress in this way). The history behind the music (where the artist’s inspiration stemmed from) how their inspiration had effected them (how had their inspiration effected their music, sound and lyrically) iconography (things you would associate with the genre and artists within the genre) what the iconography had been influenced by (childhood, their favourite artists when they were growing up). Once we had began to research into these areas, the haze that had once surrounded our genre began to fade and it became clearer what we had to do.

The Beginning.

How our media compares to existing media products, conventionally.

The images on the left are from the original video to Kickstarts – Example and the images on the right are from the video we made, you guessed it. Its compare and contrast time.First off we should start by looking at the opening shot. A medium shot of Example’s feet. I think it’s fair to say our opening shot isn’t the same in terms of the shot itself. However in Example’s video he is tapping his foot to the beat of the song, and in our video the imagery is changing positions to the beat of the music. Obviously this isn’t a huge similarity but it is clearly a subtle code/convention that we’ve followed within our music video. This isn’t just the case with our video or Example’s video either as the video for Flashback by Calvin Harris uses a similar technique at the start of the video when he is flicking through photographs the shot changes range (each shot of the photograph becomes closer with every beat from the song).Within the 2nd shot of the Example video a variety of different legs/feet are shot from the same distance in a selection of locations. The shots change to the beat of the song. This scene is quite similar to our video as we went for theme that was pretty much the same. We found that it worked well with the genre and song itself due to the up beat tempo of electropop. However in our video we had to leave blank space as we didn’t think the software we were using would be able to process a full screen of layered clips and therefore we didn’t want to slow system down trying to process this. Taking that into account I believe that our video is equally if not more effective when it comes to these 2 scenes and comparing them to one another.The next 2 shots are pretty similar too. The split screen effect. I think this shot really works with this song specifically, I think this because it really reflects the lyrics of the music. It talks about there being a rift in their relationship so what better way to shoot the shot. By making the scene a clip of the couple with a clear division, contrasting the unity of a relationship that is usually symbolised as a bond, being as one. To then take that idea and split the shot up reflects the rift and division in the relationship itself. There is a real sense of awkwardness created within this scene and I believe it works well in both videos to really portray what is taking place and going on with the couple at that time. I think that is achieved well through facial expressions and therefore I believe that the official video is stronger than ours in this particular scene as there is a close up shot of Example’s face, which captures his emotions better

For the remainder of our music video we continued to match themes that featured within the original video as we found that it reflected the lyrics well and had the right kind of vibe going on, by which I mean the way in which we filmed our video was similar to the way in which the original video was filmed as it suited the music genre well and ultimately appealed to its target audience well.

These are various other screen shots from the video that follow a similar theme to the official example video.I think that although our work does clearly follow a similar structure, we haven’t copied anything from the video itself as we have varied our shots more and opted for different shooting techniques in a selection of scenes which make our video unique and different from the official video.As you can see in the 1st 2 shots; in the official video the camera is shot is a close up shot of Example and his girlfriend, this shot is good in the sense that it captures facial expressions and emotions, and the blank background which is shot in shallow focus really helps draw attention and foreground the faces which in turn really adds emphasis to the characters. Whereas in our scene the couple are shot sitting together in a similar way but from a medium shot. By doing this it allows us to capture the background, the background is in a strange way symbolic as there is a real sense of parallels. These lines could tie in with the two of them acting all couple like and suggest that when relationships are like this, they’re pretty straight forward. This would also tie in well with the song itself as he sings about the contrast between when things are good and when things are bad within a relationship. The 2nd set of shots are relatively similar. I think that the official video shoots this scene better they include more things within the shot seem to follow a strict pallet restriction when it comes to use of colours. This isn’t the case with ours as we have a lot less going on and have quite a simple layout. In our defence we didn’t have a vast budget and nor did we have the best software available to produce our video, but even if we had I don’t think our shot would of been as good as the official video’s shot.In the final set of shots we have gone for the opposite effect as the official video as in our shot we try to capture the happy side of a relationship and show the good things that it brings, we’ve done this by showing smiles and shot it against a yellow/ cream and warm looking background. If you then compare this to Examples video this shot has clearly been done with the intention to show the bad side of the relationship. The close up captures emotionless faces that are once again seen in the foreground against a blurred blue background, by using by this creates a sense of coldness and isolation. Overall I’m pretty pleased with how our video finished as I think that, after using data and our audience research we found our audience and targeted it well. I think that we did a really nice job when editing and that overall the video represents the genre well.

So once the video had been filmed we then went onto creating a digipak and advert, I did this as a solo effort for reasons I have previously mentioned within this powerpoint and also on my blog. The 1st place to start was with the advert. I began with research into existing products from artists within a similar genre to the music that I was working within. By doing this it really helped me build up a good understand of the typical codes and conventions of an electropop advert, this thereby created a set of guidelines, or specification you may call it. By using this I had boundaries to work within by making sure my advert was unique yet still had a similar theme to the adverts that are currently in use in the real world. I started my designs by drafting out an initial plan and layout of how I wanted my advert to look.

The advert

This was my 1st layout design. I created this from research based on current designs. Although I quite liked the basic design I just thought that there was something lacking, and overall not quite right about this draft.

I then took my existing design layout and compared it to current adverts, by doing this it allowed me to look and access what needed improving. I kept the slated text as I believe it is quite effective and overall had a relatively professional look to it.

Once I had got a basic layout decided on I then moved on to finding appropriate imagery, costume and location for the shoot. As well as finding a suitable text design for the cell lines/mast head. Again I found the information I would need to take on this task from my research so it became more a case of trial and error than anything heavy duty.My basic research showed that I would need a font that I would need to use would have to have an 80’s theme to its design without looking dated, so quite a ‘retro’ style. I experimented with a number of fonts as the final one that I selected would feature on my digipak too so it had to work well with both of my products.

This was the initial font I looked at. Although I quite like the font in general I don’t think it suits the genre that well. There are aspects to it that I quite like and that I believe could have a certain element of electropop to them, such as the sprawly writing looks quite energetic and dance like but overall I don't think it has that much of an electropop feel to it.

This is the 2nd font I looked at and I actually quite liked it. It was relatively similar to the existing font the Example uses on his adverts/ digipaks and therefore it would appeal well to my target audience. However once I experimented with the font on the finished advert I found that is wasn’t as effective and didn’t really look like I had thought about the design much so I decided against the idea.

After looking at the font I had previously tried out I decided I wanted something a bit more hard hitting and something that was more effective. I decided that an army style font may be appropriate as camo print and the A team were quite in, in the 80’s however, after feedback from my audience through several facebook comments I decided that this font wasn’t appropriate enough and therefore took the aspects I liked from the previous 3 fonts and finally found my ultimate font.

The font seen below was the font I decided to stick with. I believe it tied in well with the codes of conventions of not only electropop but also conventions from the 80’s. I found that the neon sign appearance of it really added to retro feel and captured the essence of what the music is all about. I also found that is worked well on both the album cover and the digipak cover.

PhotographyAs a group we booked out time in the photography studio using digital SLR cameras. By doing this it meant we had a more professional approach to capturing the right kind of image for the album artwork and image of the artist himself. it also allowed us to use Photoshop to place the artist within scenes/situations or on backgrounds that we believed were appropriate as we knew that this type of music tended not to have a specific location that could accurately reflect the genre within an image.

Notice this is quite a bold and old school design. The image is quite a statement and the font is pretty retro. Again the image is on a plain back drop as is the case on the majority of album covers I analysed in research stages of the course.

This image is a still shot. With no real background. However the simplicity of the image contrasts well with the bright and bold font. The black and white draws attention the text which tells you a lot about what the music may be like without actually hearing it.

From research into designs of existing digipaks and album adverts we decided that we needed an image that was quite striking, something that took the genre seriously and reflected the artists attitude towards their music. Therefore we decided that the images needed to capture a degree of seriousness to them (as seen in pre-existing album covers).

These are just a sample of some of the photos we took. I believe that the pictures we took are different to that of images used on existing products as they are from more of a medium distance shot instead of the frequently used close up shots that are seen on a variety of different forms of media. We tried to get Tim to create a selection of different angles to insure we had a wide choice of images when creating the digipak.We had to make sure his costumes fitted with the music’s codes and conventions. We did this relatively easy. Knowing that this genre of music appealed to a younger generation, 14-25 years old. We stuck to mainstream fashion labels such as topman to ensure he was fashionable yet subtle and to make sure he suited the music genre effectively.

How my digipak weighs up to existing productsThe 1st place to start is obviously the title. The intention of a title is to make the artist’s name bold, and thereby grab a potential audiences attention, yet it has to reflect the music genre. I think that my digipak does this well. As you can see the existing product has quite a retro design to it. This is the same with my design. The font looks quite 80’s and has been designed this way/selected to feature on the album cover because it represents the generation in which most electropop artists will of grown up in and therefore taken a lot of their influence from.The next thing you notice about the album covers is the use of imagery. As I spoke about in the previous slide, we deemed it crucial to get an image that was serious as it shows how the artist takes his/her music seriously. As you can see on the existing product his facial expression is bland. There is little emotion captured on it, therefore symbolising he is serious and his music isn’t a joke. I have selected a picture that I believe has exactly the same effect. I’m pleased with the outcome of this image as I think it works well and accurately portrays the genre.

I also noticed the subtitle (album name) is quite striking. Although it is fairly simple I believe that the use of colour, or lack of it in this case really contrasts with the black background. It draws attention and adds emphasis to the words. With my product this is slightly different as I have the sub title at the bottom of the cover and I have it much bigger and bolder. I believe that although the design is very different to that of the existing product, it has a similar effect and arguably does the job as well.

I believed that using a bright and bold background would be a more accurate reflection of the music genre and its style. However this isn’t the case with the existing product. Maybe this is where my product and the existing one differ from professional to amateur. However I believe that if my product didn’t have a bold and colourful background it would not only be harder to tell what the genre as but also it wouldn’t look as good. With the close up shot used on the existing product it creates a striking image, this isn’t the case with a medium distance shot (which is what I used) so if I had kept a plain background I think my final piece would of looked silly and overall looked very amateur.

Comparing adverts.The design on the left is my finished piece, and the design on the right is an advert for Example. This is my analysis, comparing them to see the similarities and differences.I tried to follow all the codes and conventions, as well as all the knowledge I have gained from existing product research. The 1st thing that I noticed about the Example cover was the background and its use of colour and imagery. As I’ve already stated in a previous post I believe that the imagery and colour used reflect the style of music, it creates a feel good, happy vibe for the advert. This seems quite the opposite to my design which uses a dark backdrop. I think that in terms of advertising the Example advert is more effective as it more bold, colourful and eye catching, I also believe it reflects his style of music better than mine. The reason my design isn’t done like this is because I wanted an advert design that matched my digipak and covered the genre as a whole (including other artists) well. Also, with the Example cover, it would be extremely hard to create something like that in Photoshop and maintain a professional appearance to the advert. However both background do you splashes of colour, which seems to be a convention of this type of music and its adverts.

Another feature that appears in both adverts is the use of overlapping imagery and text. I think this must again be a convention of advertising eletropop and could represent the business/liveliness of the songs. By creating a layered effect you create a nice 3D effect which ultimately makes the advert jump out a bit more and grabs attention better. It makes the advert look as though everything on it is trying to get to the front and get your attention 1st, again with the idea of the liveliness of the songs within the genre.

When it comes to sub texts or cell lines, the 2 adverts differ quite substantially. With the Example advert there are a lot more cell lines and they are a lot clearer than the ones on my advert. I think that the Example advert is much more effect than mine as the cell lines are either in bold eye grabbing boxes or clearly highlighted in comparison to mine, which are just typed over the background and even with a drop shadow applied they don’t look as eye grabbing and clearly aren’t as effective. However, the style I went for matched my product well (as does the style used in the Example advert) so I didn’t want to loose the effect I had created on the advert for the sake of making a some of the sub text a little clearer.

Overall I think that my advert has several similarities and a few differences between an existing product. I can see how my piece could look more professional (e.g. Highlighting cell lines etc.) but in general I’m pretty pleased with what I have achieved with my advert and my digipak also. I think that I’ve learnt a lot about genre, codes, conventions as well as how to divulge and gain relevant information quickly and effectively.

How effective is your combination of your main product with your ancillary text?

I think it’s hard to say how effective the combination of the products actually was. I believe that our video tied in well with my digipak and advert designs well in some aspects and not so well in others. The main issue I believe is the fact that the music video is shot with one song in mind where as if you’re designing a product for an album, you have to take into account every song and all the aspects of that genre before you start designing. Fair enough if the digipak and advert had to be for the single release of the song, but they had to be for the whole album and every song on that album. Therefore the task doesn’t then become about linking the digipak specifically to the video, but to the genre in general. Taking that into account I believe that I combined things well to reflect the artist in general and overall I think that I gave a pretty accurate representation of the genre.

The thing that links the main product to the digipak and advert, as well as real media is the use of our actors, and their outfits. I believe that, like most things in the media, a key concept of electropop is the image. The image the artist creates, and the image the fans create for themselves. We tried to create a video that had fashion laced mildly through it. We tried to use outfits we could image Example wearing in the official video to this song. I think we achieved this relatively well (the checked shirts, goods, leather jacket, tight jeans look, like you may see on a topman mannequin) as you can see in the images to the left.I then tried to continue this theme of simple yet effective fashion through into my digipak and advert. We took photos in the photo studio to get a professional shot (pictures 1 & 6) As you can see we’ve got Tim wearing a leather jacket and a checked shirt. We also use this theme throughout our video, not only with Tim but other actors too (see picture 3).

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Digipak & AdvertI believe that my digipak and advert work well together and combine in the correct way. This is because I have used the same imagery and background, as well as fonts to create consistency and maintain a specific style throughout.

As you can see there is a clear theme running through the 2 products. I created an initial background on Photoshop. I found that the white background didn’t work as well compared to the background which had a more of a club feel to it which is a theme I wanted to tie into the advert as it suited the genre of the music well. I then saved the background as a JPEG image, and opened it onto an A4 blank Photoshop document, as well as the digipak template. I then adjusted the size using the transform tool and thus I had background that was appropriate for use with both the advert and digipak.

Background designs

After this it then became a case of making sure everything interlinked well. The reason I wanted to achieve this so badly was because whenever you look at professional products (as my initial research can vouch for) there is always a link/ theme that is evident between adverts and digipaks and so I wanted to create a theme too. I then went on to use the same font too as I believed it was quite a nice font, it is very effective and it suits the genre well.

The imagery was a constant theme that helped combine the whole coursework together. Not only did I use the same imagery but also Tim wore similar clothes and styled his hair in the same way for both the filming and the photo shoot. This really helped tie the video, digipak and advert together and create a strong bond and sense of unity/ harmony between them all. However to make the advert and digipak look fresh and different I edited the images differently using a variety of tools on Photoshop. This was also the case when it came to applying text to the ancillary texts. I think that there is a fine line between a theme and just copying another design so therefore by making small alterations I found that my digipak and advert both looked good together, yet when they were apart they had their own sense of individuality.

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

Throughout the whole process of creating my blog/ doing my coursework I have used a vast range of technology to assist me and help guide me along almost every stage. Technology has been a massive aid to me throughout this entire project and without it this course would of been a totally different course.This is a list of the different types of technology I have used throughout the course (I will then look at each topic in a bit more detail afterwards);

TumblrInternet Explorer

PhotobucketSurvey Monkey

FacebookHotmail

Digital cameraMobile phone

Digital video cameraPhotoshopPremiere

Microsoft office (word & PowerPoint)

At the very beginning of our project we had to create a blog. We had to select a website that we believed would be the most suited to our needs. We had to take into account usability (how easy the blog was to use, whether it was easy to upload images, videos and sound or just posts in general), accessibility (was the blog easy to use on the go and was it easy to access both for us as the blogger and for the tutor/audience). Likeability (if we actually enjoyed using the programme and found it easy to interact with and use).Tumblr;Taking all this into account I decided to use tumblr. The reason I selected tumblr was because I found it easy to use, likable and I found it was easy to access. I also selected tumblr because it is well known blogging site, I would consider it in the same league as facebook or twitter so it is easy to use along side other websites such as facebook or photobucket etc as applications are made compatible for it. I downloaded a tumblr application to my mobile phone using android. This is a prime example of cross media convergence and by using this app it allowed me to create quick posts and let people know how filming was going, or what we were doing at that specific time which was particularly handy if we had done a lot on a certain day as it allowed us to post something briefly to make sure we wouldn’t forget it, and then go back to it at a later date and edit it. Once we had set up a blog account, it was time to begin research. I used several different websites, and types of software when I began researching.Internet Explorer;I used internet explorer to access youtube and watch music videos that I would then analyse. I also used it to find album covers and adverts. Which I again analysed as part of my research. It also allowed me to find information out in later stages of research e.g. Record label details, information on the artist we’d chose to make a video for, email addresses of record labels regarding copyright issues. The use of tabs on the actual explorer software enabled me to look at something on one page, and blog about it on another. This was helpful throughout the entire process of planning, pre & post production and even evaluation. Also the internet was a fundamental instrument in creating our blogs and actually making the video. Without the internet none of our coursework would even be there in the form it is in now. The whole structure of subject would be completely different and it would effect us at every stage, research, planning, and feedback would all take a huge impact if the internet wasn’t there.

The next piece of technology that really helped me construct my blog was the use of websites like photobucket and survey monkey.Photobucket;Photobucket was a very helpful tool, across practically every area of the coursework. By cropping images down, and cropping print screens, as well as creating block out plans, or scanning in hand drawn images onto the computer by using photobucket I was then able to quickly take the URL for whichever image I chose to upload and paste it into one of my blog posts quickly and effectively. You can also us photobucket to uploads videos (however it is easier to use youtube for this) and voice recordings too which would of been helpful should we have done a recorded interview.Survey Monkey;Survey monkey was actually a very useful website. It helped an awful lot when it came to getting audience feedback, both for research and evaluation. The main advantage of survey monkey was the time it saved us when getting feedback. By creating an online survey it allowed us to integrate out questionnaire onto our social networking sites for people to do at their own leisure. It also allowed us to email the surveys we made to people who we believed fitted the music genre stereotype (aka, the target audience) so it gave us tighter and more accurate feedback. It also meant that we could get advice and feedback about our finished pieces later on in the process. Survey monkey also put the data we received into easy to read bar graphs that reflected we could then save as an image and upload onto photobucket before posting the data onto our blog. The time this actually saved us was overwhelming, to of even attempted this kind of in depth research into the target market, audience options and feedback using manual methods (printing out questionnaires) would of taken us double the amount of time, and effect as well as costing us money in print credit. Again showing how new media technology was fundamental across every aspect of this coursework. Facebook;Although facebook wasn’t a major factor in our coursework it was still a helpful website as it allowed us to contact other members of the group quickly and easily as well as allowing us to share data, whether the data was links to videos, blog posts or images. Facebook also allowed us to post images onto our account to receive feedback from our friends which helped us when it came to creating a finished piece. Due to the fact facebook is really easy to use it allowed us to remove comments that weren’t appropriate or irrelevant.

Hotmail;By using email we could send data to one and another within the group. Data included things like, images, feedback, and schedules (shooting schedules etc). It was also another means of communicating with each other and it meant we could contact our tutor as well too which was helpful. It also allowed us to email data records regarding the use of their song and copyright issues, sadly they never got back to us but at least it shows another way in which we could use hotmail to benefit us.Digital SLR Cameras;The use of digital cameras was obviously quite important when it came to creating our digipak and advert. By using an SLR camera it allowed us to take a selection of high quality images in a variety of different ways. The SLR gave us more scope to be creative with our photographs because contrast and light adjustments, as well as focus were all easy to change and play around with until we found a photo that we thought worked well. We could also hook the SLR up to a PC and take the images that we had taken from it and edit further using programmes such as Photoshop.Digital video Camera;The digital video camera was great to use. Because it was digital it meant we could shoot our storyboard in any order and then place together at a latter stage (almost like doing a digital jigsaw). This was helpful as it meant that if we had several shots in one location, we could film them together, and then move onto another scene instead of shooting one scene and then moving location to shoot the next scene to then move back again. So ultimately by using the digicam it was much less time consuming when shooting, which again was helpful as we had a schedule to work to and we had to of finished certain scenes by a certain time. The digicam also meant that if we missed any shots we could quickly go back and film the scenes we’d missed without having to film the whole thing again, which again meant we saved time and meant errors weren’t as costly. Mobile Phones;Mobiles were without a doubt one of the most helpful tools on the entire course. Due to their vast range of features they were helpful across the whole of our project and without them the coursework would of been a lot harder.Mobile phones allowed us to contact group members and tutors about a variety of issues (filming plans, research data etc). This was obviously very helpful as our whole blog is an electronic portfolio and we didn’t see one another every day of the week so mobile phones became a good source to stay in touch as communication became key when it came to making the video, digipak and advert.Mobiles also contain such a huge range of technology we didn’t just use them to communicate to one another we also used them to view images, and watch videos on which we could then write about. As I mentioned earlier due to android operating system I was able to download a tumbr application onto my tablet, this meant I could create and post on my blog anywhere which just made life a little easier. Mobile phones could also be used to access emails as well which was rather helpful. Although we didn’t use our mobile phones to, they could of been used to take pictures whilst filming, or film short clips behind the scenes to show how we went about making our video, just another function we could of made use of but didn’t actually need to.Premiere;Premiere was the software we used to turn our footage into our video. Premiere was the foundation of our video and we used it in various different ways . The software wasn’t always reliable though and did crash on numerous occasions after we’d edited large amounts of footage without saving. So the programme could be quite unreliable at times. It also wasn’t as strong as other editing software so it didn’t really allow us to create a video with a professional feel to it and it didn’t let us do too much at once, so in terms of the actual programme potentially it is a very good tool to have but in reality it isn’t that great due to all the flaws it has with it and the things we did using it could of been done using Microsoft movie maker. Maybe I wasn’t that impressed with this software as we didn’t use it to its full potential.

Microsoft Office;By Microsoft office what I mean is word processor and PowerPoint as I used both programmes throughout the project. When I was doing initial research I wrote a lot of my blogs on word 1st. This was because at the beginning of the project we had more time and word allowed you to post pictures onto it quickly. It also corrected any spellings and grammatical errors which became helpful when trying to get a blog posted quickly. Word also gives you a sense of size per post, to make sure you aren’t writing too much or too little, this isn’t the same when posting directly onto tumblr as on tumblr the amount of text can become distorted when images are added to the post and the fact that it is all in a scroll box doesn’t help this problem either.There isn’t an awful lot to say about PowerPoint as it is pretty much the same as word. I have used PowerPoint for the whole of my evaluation stage of the project as I think it is easy to use and does the job more effectively than posting lots of posts onto my blog.Photoshop;By far my favourite piece of software we used throughout the entire project. Photoshop became the tool that structured our creativity and allowed us to put our ideas from our minds onto our PC screens. It is such a powerful piece of software and could be used in vast variety of ways that it was just really enjoyable to use. Initially I used Photoshop to crop images and increase their brightness/quality (if they were lacking anything like that) and then saving as a JPEG before uploading onto photobucket and then onto my blog. But this was just the beginning for Photoshop in my coursework. The next time I used it after I has used it to crop images and upload them was in the initially design stages. I drafted out block plans for my digipak and advert using Photoshop and the shape and text tools, I create the shapes as layers and experimented with them by moving them around changing angles using the transform tool until I found a layout that I believed would work and something that I was happy with.Once I had done this I then saved it for a later date. The next time I used Photoshop was when we had taken our photos for the advert/digipak. I used the software to sharpen up the images a bit by adjusting the levels of colour and contrast of the images. Once I was happy with them I then opened my blocked out layouts and lowered the opacity of the layout so that it was practically see through. I had previously planned which font I was going to use and also created a background using the paintbrush tool. I pasted all them onto the blocked out plan and adjusted the sizes to make them fit their positions. I then cut out the image of Tim which I thought was most appropriate using the magnetic lasso tool before brushing up on a few minor details (blending options were added, such as outer glows etc). I think without Photoshop my advert and digipak would of been horrific, once you know how to use the software it is probably the most rewarding thing I took from the coursework and ultimately it gave me a finished piece that I was pleased with.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Well, its fair to say that audience feedback was a crucially important part of our project and without it our task would have been a lot harder. We began to get audience feedback as soon as we had done initial research into the genre we would be working within. Our audience research started by selecting peers from our friendship groups who we believed fitted the genre stereotypes the most. We gave them a questionnaire to fill in that we had created on Microsoft word. This wasn’t particularly effective as the questions weren’t that great (I think the first questionnaire lacked quality because we weren’t entirely sure what to ask as the genre was fairly new to us so we were still getting to grips with the codes and conventions). There was further problems by the fact that the answers we received weren’t that sensible and were quite inappropriate. So to conclude our initial questionnaire didn’t really help us much and the feedback definitely wasn’t helpful as the majority of people just didn’t take it seriously.This left us with a dilemma as our feedback was clearly inaccurate and fairly poor. To solve this issue I created an account on survey monkey and rephrased the questions after a deeper look into codes and conventions to help lure out information we would need. I then sent the survey to people I could trust and people who I believed would give relevant feedback to questions. I gave the login information to the other group members so we could monitor progress and check the feedback was appropriate.By using survey monkey it was a lot more helpful than using Microsoft word print outs as it meant we could distribute the questions to a wider audience. It also allowed us to flag and remove inappropriate feedback, as well as putting all the data we received into easy to read bar graphs.

The initial questionnaire

After we had given people a week to give their feedback I then closed the questionnaire and took in the answers as they were. This feedback was very helpful as it created a specification of the codes and conventions for us to work with and ultimately use to guide us through the design processes.Using this feedback I then drafted out initial designs and discussed them with my group for their opinions (I could of uploaded the images of the rough plans onto facebook but I didn’t want to annoy my research team [the people I selected to question about our work on a regular basis] by constantly bombarding them with questions. I felt feedback from my group would be sufficient as they were obviously covering the same genre as me so their knowledge would be helpful to make sure I was on the right lines.

Questioning the Audience

After receiving feedback from my group the next stage was to create an actual design for my digipak and advert. Using the knowledge I had gained from audience feedback I had a rough idea what to go for in terms of theme, style and design. Once I had designed my products I then uploaded them onto facebook for a critique and to se if there was anything that I could brush up on to increase the quality of my designs, similarly I asked my tutors for feedback on my design ideas to see what they thought of them and if there was anything they would change.As you can see, I received varied amount of

feedback. Some people went into great detail on what they liked and disliked about my designs, others simply ‘liked’ the design and didn’t leave a comment. I had a range of different opinions which was nice as it meant I had a range of feedback to show and look at.Whilst this was going on we uploaded our

storyboard to tumblr, these were basically our initial draft ideas for our music video. By changing the settings on our tumblr accounts we allowed people to comment on our storyboards to give us feedback on what they thought. Although we thought this was a good idea it didn’t actually work as nobody left feedback on it so it wasn’t really that helpful. Once we had finished filming our final piece we uploaded it onto youtube and created a final questionnaire on survey monkey. Although it was too late to go back and change anything I think that by doing this it helps us out greatly as it gave us a chance to hear and see if we had met peoples expectations, as well as finding out what they liked and disliked about our designs or finished video.

Overall, I have learned that audience feedback is hugely important when it comes to designing practically anything. It not only allows you to see things from other people’s perspectives but is also so helpful as it means you can create a specification for your designs to work to. It tightens the loose ends up from initial design and the more feedback you get, the stronger your designs and ideas become.I think we did well and achieved enough audience feedback to improve our final products substantially.

To conclude;I believe that I have gained so much from this course and I have enjoyed the coursework from start to finish, in my opinion it didn’t feel like coursework as it was enjoyable to do and was never a task. Although there was aspects I found challenging I think that individually and as a group we overcame them. The course gave us a chance to learn may skills from new media technologies, as well as older information such as use of genre, codes and conventions. I thoroughly enjoyed the coursework and feel like I have learned a lot from it.

Evaluation

Oli Cook