Digipak

Poster

Music Video

Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used media technologies quite well in the research and planning stage. I was able to use presentations methods such as making graphs on excel and taking screenshots of the videos that I was studying. I also created my own style by using a particular font and a black and white theme on my blog. I also chose an iconic rap group – N.W.A for the background – rap came of age with them and they were very controversial. I also chose to use a prezi layout for my next steps analysis to use other media technologies. 

Production: 
During production we used industry standard equipment, including lighting, a professional camera and a tripod. We had to book the equipment, charge it and learn to put it up correctly including with the plates for the tripod. We were able to use the settings and the focus more effectively this year to achieve a high quality picture and also to create the faded parts of the video so it mimics the idea of the main star’s life going out of focus and creates the ideology that drinking is not a coping mechanism. 

This was really effective as we also created lots of point of view shots to show things from his perspective and also of him to show the effects of drinking to excess. We also had to control the movements of the camera, which was fine when we were doing the drunken shots because the hand held shaky camera worked really well for this. When we used the tripod it was ok to create a professional still shot, but it was more challenging to do the smooth movements without a dolly to run the camera along. We had to improvise with office chairs and skateboards, and it meant we didn’t achieve very many good tracking shots. We noticed that we needed to secure the camera very well to avoid having any sudden movements to make it have a professional feel. 

 






Post-production: 
In the construction stage I used a lot more technology to present the work, including imovie and photoshop. These were the best possible methods to present the work professionally. Most of the edits we used were straight cuts because these were conventional. We also used colour filter tools to make the video in black and white and give it an urban feel. We also use the crop tool to cut out any scenery was not useful or appropriate. We also used slow motion when the main star jumps off the wall to show he is intoxicated. We also used speeding up when the jolty handheld camera movements were used to show a feeling of chaos and drunkenness in a way that was not glamourised.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our audience is an important part of planning and making our product. From early on we realized that it was important to know what the audience wanted by methods that were deeper than just simple demographics. It was easier for us because we already knew that the C2DE audience demographic would enjoy our product more, because it is a really established genre with an audience following in this demographic. We used the life matrix segments to look at psychographics for our audience. We decided it was better to pick two particular segments who would be more likely to enjoy our product and target our audience questionnaires towards the ‘funatic’ and ‘tribe-wired’. 

 To research our audience I next did a questionnaire with the group to find out what the audience wanted. We discovered that our audience was male and female but mainly in the age of 17-20. They said they mainly listened to mainstream traditional rap and so we decided to stick to this part of the genre. The audience told us they wanted a story narrative shown, so we made sure we had a story develop in the video. We also asked them which layouts and fonts they would prefer throughout the research and planning stage, which helped us to decide on the look of the texts. For example they chose the ‘Railway to Hells’ font.

Along the way I also researched the following things with my audience:

• -       Initial questionnaire
• -       Prelim video
• -       Fonts
• -       Layout mockups of digipak and music magazine poster

The feedback they gave me was vital because they told me which layouts, fonts, image of the star and narrative style to use. The product would be totally different without their ideas, because they chose a storytelling narrative, a deep message rather than a shallow image of the star (star theory, Richard Dyer) and a storytelling layout for the ancillary texts. They also chose the fonts, colours and layouts of each texts.

When we had made the products, we exhibited all three in a big assembly to 50 students to get feedback from them. This is where we would make final changes before selling them to the public if this was a professional product. I have analysed the results below.

Q2. Rate your ability to use technology.

This result proves that the audience is tribe-wired which shows we picked the right audience on the whole for the one that our product was targeted at.

Q4. Do you feel we have a professional finish to our music video?

This shows it is a fun-atic person on the most part that answered this questionnaire because they are more energetic, outgoing and loud.

Q5. What genre do you think this music video is in?

This graph shows that most people thought our video was a rap music video. This shows that we have been mostly effective from our use of genre. We might have been able to improve this more if we had got them to write their reasons for thinking this.

Q6. Do you think the locations within our music video fit in with the song effectively?

This shows that the locations worked mostly well for the product. However, quite a few people selected no, which was worrying. We think it might because the locations could have been even better in our music video, especially the ones shot inside the college which looked more like a college than a more appropriate public or private setting.

This result was pretty good because we wanted people to see our ideology that it is ok to have a party lifestyle and to be young but it is not ok to turn to drink and drugs as a vice and to let it ruin your relationships.

Q10. Does our digipak look professional?

Q7. What do you believe our moral message about drinking is in our music video?

This is also a really good result, because we wanted the digipak to look like a professional text. If we were making it for real we would get the reasons why it didn’t look professional from the small amount of people who said no (4) and the reasons why some people didn’t select an answer either so we could make final tweaks to it before publishing it professionally.

Q.17. Which is your favourite text out of the three?

This result shows us that the audience were mixed on which text they liked best. They mainly liked the digipak which we were pleased with. Although I would have preferred for them to have liked the music video the best, because that is the main product ad the other two are just the advertising. Advertising is very important and also the main thing is that the products all link together with a strong brand identity.

Overall our audience showed us that our main messages, ideologies and genre came through quite well.