Final Review&Closing Off of The Blog

I have made a vlog of myself giving my final review and finishing off the blog! I can't believe this is the final post! Seems like just yesterday we started it! Goodbye Group 6. 

This is a selfie of me I took while completing my last blog. As you can see I am so upset :(

Evaluation Question 4

This a short film I have made of the audience feedback we got from our video. Most of the people we asked for feedback fit our target audience. By asking our target audience for feedback allows us to know whether or not we fufilled our aim of reaching a demographic of 16-24 year old's.

The initial reaction from the audience was great. Everyone was cheering and clapping, which was a nice and rewarding feeling. From the inital reaction from the audience I learnt that my video was not as bad as I thought. I did not have much self confidence in my work but from the way the audience reacted it was clear that we succeeded in our aim to appeal to the demographics in the audience of the cinema.

When we asked for feedback from individuals there are a few comments that stayed in my mind. Firstly it was the amount of people that commented on the performance of the artist. Of course an artist has to perform well and not stand static infront of the camera but I didn't realise how much of an impact it would make on the audience. Nearly everyone we asked for feedback from commented on this, which taught me how important it is for an artist to perform and work well with the camera.

Another positive comment that stuck out for me was when Rebecca (my teacher) said that initially she didn't like the shot with the shutters from our rough cut. She said that it distracted the audience from the artist and we did our best to improve on it. Due to a lack of base tracks we didn't have a shot that we could replace it with, so we used a filter to make me glow and stand out drawing in more attention. Rebecca noticed this and said that it looked much better. From this I learnt that through the use of technology, you can improve your work without having to re-film footage. Technology allows for you to rectify mistakes and mishaps you may make during production, which is something, considering our feedback, we succeeded in.

One member of the audience said that to improve on our video we could have included a wider range of locations. Although most members of the audience said that they liked the locations, this one particular member said that to make it better we could have used more locations and base tracks. During the editing process I had come to realise that we could have done with more base tracks so this feedback was confirmation of my realisation. From this experience and feedback I have learnt that you can NEVER have too much footage!.

 This a short video including some feedback I got from  my ancillary. Like the final music video I got a lot of positive feedback for this too.
One of the people I asked for feedback said that there was a clear visual link between the main product and the ancillary product. From this comment I learnt how important it is for an artist to make a clear link through their albums and promotional strategies, in order for their audience to notice it.
One negative comment I got was that although there was an urban theme linking the two products I produced, from a member of my target audience I learnt that the synergy could have been stronger. He suggested that I could have used some kind of grafiti which was a predominant feature of our mise en scene, in our video.

Overall our feedback was good and we got positive feedback from our target audience which leads me to the conclusion that our video is appealing to our target audience. SUCCESS :)

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

 This a vlog I uploaded to YouTube, answering Question 2 of the Evaluation

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1 (ancillary)

 This is my final advertisement. I used conventions that I found during my research of real music advertisements.
Due to the growing use of technology and social media, I included the fact that the album is available at online stores such as iTunes, Amazon and HMV. The majority of my target audience are more inclined to downloading or ordering their music online opposed to going to the a shop and buying it. In the past few years the use of social networking has grown tremendously and it is likely that my target audience of 16-24year olds all use social networking sites such as instagram, tiwtter and facebook. Social networking sites are a way that fans can engage with the artist they love and feel that they share a personal bond or for people that are interested in finding out about an artist. This is why I included her web, twitter, instagram and facebook page. Another common convention of music advertisements that I used was the leading singles on the album. People who are familiar with the single will be made aware that it is included in the album, enticing and intriguing them to buy the album, resulting in a greater album sale. For the same reasons i included ratings from magazines that share the same target audience as my artist. Jessie J's advertisement for her album 'Who You Are' particular gave me inspiration for the use of my album cover as the advertisement. I thought that it would be a way in which my target audience and other demographics would be able to find my album at stores without difficulty as they would have already become familiar with the image of the album, from the advertisement.

   

This part of my digipack follows many fundamental conventions of actual album digipacks.

I have included my name of course, in a larger font than the album cover and an image of myself. Emphasis on my image and name is important as new artist to create a brand for the artist. Rita Ora's first album includes uses the same technique, which I think was carried out well, as was mine.
On the back panel, I have included a track listing. This is so that listeners are able to listen preferred songs with just the click of a button and so that they are aware of the songs included on the album.
I have also included copy right acknowledgments and the logo of my record label which is a very important convention of a digipack, used in all real media products.



I included a sticker on the front of my digipack giving information on the single that is included on the album. This is not a convention that is used in all real media products however I thought it was a nice touch, that you do often see on real digipacks.

This is an image of Katy Perry's inside panel of her digipack. I thought that the use of just an image creates a statement, puts emphasis on the importance of the image of the artist. Which is why I decided to do something similar to Katy. It is common for artists to include ackowledgements however I thought that this convention worked well which is why I decided to do that same in this part of my digipack.

      

Ancillary Products - FINAL

BEFORE

AFTER

I got to this point of editing my advertisement. It was nearly done but there was on problem! My name was covering my head. After a second opinion and a third and a forth, I finally managed to structure it in a way where the font wasn't covering my head but was still relatively large.

Planning Ancillary - The Title of My A.lbum

I have chosen to call my album 'Vision'. As a female empowering artist and the status of her current career, I thought Vision was an appropriate title. This album is a 'Vision' of where she wants to go and how successful she wants to be in the industry. The title 'Vision' will stand out to her target audience as it may empower them to have a 'vision' and work for what they dream of. There was memorable moment at the beginning of the A2 year when I said to Rebecca 'I have a vision of my music video' and I that stayed in my mind, which is another reason as to why I wanted to call the album 'Vision

Production - Ancillary - HALF WAY THERE!

At this point it had begun to look more like a digipack. However I was nowhere near done. I had the most important parts done (the images, background) but I had still not fulfilled my 'vision' ;) haha. There was much more work to do until I am completely finished

Ancillary Research - Album TrackListing

While I was writing the track list on the back of my digipack the question 'How many songs should I include on the album?' Being a fan of music I knew that it was common for E.P's and Mixtapes to have only a few tracks. I also knew that albums from new artists don't tend to have more than about 15 tracks. So I decided to look up how many tracks were on debut albums from big pop artists. I found that they had about 11-13 so I put 12 on mine.

Katy B - Katy On a Mission 

12 Tracks

Rihanna - Music of the Sun

13 Tracks

Beyonce - Dangerously In Love

15 Tracks

Rita Ora - Ora

12 Tracks

Editing Ancillary - CD - Before&after

This is how the disk started out. I wanted to continue the white, black and purlple colour scheme throughout so I chose to use the purple colour for the actual disk.










This is my disk when I had first done it. I knew something wasn't quite right and asking for feedback from Rebecca, she suggested that I put the writing at the bottom of the disk.

Once I did, it felt a weight lifted off my shoulder as I had realised what was up. It looks much better with the writing at the bottom.

Screenshots - Editing Digipack

Here is the blank disk I had before I began photoshopping away and making it look like a real disk.

Photoshop SCreenshots - Choosing Fonts

These are screenshots of me experimenting with the fonts of the titles on my digipack. I didn't want to go over the top with the fonts because I didn't want my digipack to look like a teenager let loose on photoshop lol. I wanted a really simple font that was easy to read. I decided that the font highlighted was not the best font so I chose the font bellow. Its clear and simple.


I chose this mild purple colour because again I didn't want an over the top colour. It is a girly colour but is still quite urban and strong. I later changed my name to black. This is so it stands out against the light colours on the digipack. I am happy with the fonts I chose. I didn't want the fonts to be anything grafiti typed which some fellow students suggested due to our urban style video. This is because I believed it will look unprofessional and my aim was to make it look as professional as possible

Mock Up of Advertisment

This is the mock up of my advertisement. Although my attempt at drawing it is, is very poor lol, my vision for the final product looks much better. I wanted to make sure it looks like an advertisment for the music industry not the film, which I have noticed some previous student work does which is why i decided to include a picture of the front panel of my digipack.

Final Mock Up of Digipack

This is the front and back of my digipack. This is an improvement from the mock up I had last week. It is more detailed as well as annotated. After a chat with Rebecca I made a few changes. I scrapped the idea of the brick wall as carrying continuity with the brick wall throughout the digipack will be difficult and may not look as professional and realistic as I want it to. It may look weird if some parts of the digipack are infront of a brick wall and some are in a studio. I also scrapped the idea of having and image of me on the back of the digipack. THE WRITING ON THE BACK WILL NOT BE BLUE, I JUST COULDN'T FIND A BLACK OR WHITE FELT TIP LOL

This is the inside of my digipack. I wanted to keep it simple because if I start adding random bits and pieces such as acknowledgments, the digipack may begin to look amateur which is NOT what I want. This is also annotated.

All writing throughout the digipack will be white or black, depending on what looks better once I begin photoshopping and the fonts will be a block print.

Ancilary Planning - Pictures Shortlist

Here is a shortlist of pictures we took that I liked in particular. We took quite a few and now I have shorlisted a few that I could potentially use. Even though these are studio shots, they still have an urban essence about them through my body langauge and costume.

Ancilary Planning - Colour Schemes

I didn't want to go over the top with too many colours. I wanted to stick to 3 basic, plain colours throughout my ancillary work. I have an idea of the colours I would like to use however once I get on to photoshop my ideas my change as I will experiment with what colours look good.

I don't want to use any bright pinks or bright bold colours. My writing will be definitely be black as I think that black works well with any colours I may decide to use as it stands out well. Bright colours give connotations of love and happy music whereas I want to carry out my urban theme from my video, for synergy purposes.

I really like the background colour on this album cover. It is femanine and pretty yet still gives urban connotations and gives a sense of girl power along with the image of the girls. I'd like to use a similar background colour on my digipack once I get started.

     

Production - Ancillary

We used 3 different cameras to take shots for our ancillary products! First of all we used the still cameras the media department provide. The pictures came out okay but not great. So we got the idea to ask the photography department to borrow their studio and cameras during their workshop. They allowed us to borrow their Nikon and Cannon still cameras. 

At first Euginie and I were confused as to how they work but eventually we got the hang of it.

  I did my hair and make up similar to how it was during the video and we snapped away. We took over 200 pictures so I will have to make a short list.

First Draft of My Mock Up

This is my first attempt at the mock up of my digipack. Its not very detailed and is quite poor if I'm completely honest. However I will be working on this in the next few days in order to have more of an idea of what I want to create when I begin working on photoshop.