Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses and develops many conventions of the rock genre however, we also found ways to challenge some of these conventions using our narrative. To illustrate this I will use real examples such as Paramore, Flyleaf and We Are The In Crowd amongst others.


↳Genre

Our band is called "The Defiance" and their debut song/music video is "Unbreakable". Their genre is rock and they are specifically a female fronted rock band. These were the leading examples of female fronted rock bands that helped us form our idea:

Paramore

Flyleaf

We Are The In Crowd

↳Band Image/Identity

For our band's image/identity we mostly stuck to the conventions already formed in rock music. I have created a Prezi explaining how we do so.

↳Music Video

This storify document I have created explains how we gained some muse for the narrative of our music video.

Our music video uses Todorov's Narrative Theory throughout which is demonstrated by this flow chart:

Click to enlarge

Breaking Narrative Conventions:

In our research, we found that commonly in rock music videos if there is a narrative it is focal on the lead singer or there are other actors portraying the narrative. For example in Paramore's "Brick by Boring Brick" it is focused around the story of a little girl's tragic story:

The music video to "But It's Better If You Do" by Panic! At The Disco revolves around a character of the lead singer's life:

Performance Conventions:

Focusing on female fronted rock music videos, we used conventional movements/performance techniques and camera shots that were common in them.

Hair-flipping is a common movement used by the female lead if they have long hair to highlight the energy of their performance as shown in the first .gif by Brie Larson in her performance of Black Sheep. In the second gif you can see how our lead singer used a similar move.

Another convention is beauty/money shots of the lead singer that should be used frequently in the music video to attract the viewers. In first .gif of the two below, you can see a close up of Brie Larson singer. This also gives the viewers a close up of their emotions and they can connect the emotions to the meaning of the song. In the second .gif of the ones below, is one example of how we used beauty/money shots in our music video.

For the drummer when there is a speedy drumming beat we often saw this type of move performed:

So we replicated this in our music video:

Director's Commentary

Here we made a director's commentary of our music video explaining how we used conventions and how we broke some conventions.

↳Using Vernallis' Music Video Theory

• For the basis of our music video we looked at the three different types of music videos: Narrative, Performance and Conceptual music videos. After looking at many rock music videos, we observed that many were a mix of narrative and performance. Almost all rock music videos had performance as the instruments used are a key factor of the rock genre and audiences want to have the visuals of those. We decided to use this as the form of our music video.

Example: Misery Business by Paramore Contains both narrative and performance. Also the band members are characters in the narrative which is a convention we adopted in our video too.

• Our narrative is linear but a fragmented narrative as not all of it is shown in the music video but it is implied. For example, we do not see the characters travelling to the audition after seeing the posters but after seeing them all at the audition in the end you can assume that they are.

• Vernallis stated that the narrative may not always have a clear resolution at the end which applies to our video, although they all end up at the audition it is unclear as to what exactly will happen after that. It is left up to the audience to assume/imagine.

↳Using Goodwin's Music Video Theory

• We make direct links between the music and visuals and links between the lyrics and visuals. The video below demonstrates the examples of this in our music video

• Intertexual references

For the drummer's character's set up in the bedroom, we designed the set with many posters across the wall and magazines sprawled all over the room. The posters were of rock bands and movies which connotes boyhood and dedication to music. The magazines on the floor were music magazines (specialising in rock) and we thrown across the floor amongst clothes messily to add to the mise en scene.

↳Extras

• Our band is a three piece band and the band's friendship is one of the driving forces behind the band and one of the appeals of it to our target audience. Three is quite a symbolic number as in television, a close friendship of three people is very common. Especially of one female and two males.

Famous trios from Film/Television

Having a trio of band members is almost a pop cultural reference as audience can draw links between them and popular trios they have seen on television and film.

↳Website

For our website, we mostly stuck to the conventions of rock artists' websites we found in our research.

The video below explains how we drew inspiration from Flyleaf's website. When designing our website, we wanted to stick to the conventions. (The volume may need to be turned up quite loud to hear the audio)

Examples of how we stuck to conventions with our website:

Homepage:

The homepage also included a "News/Updates" events calender to keep the fans up to date. It also features a link to the "Tour Dates" section of the website.

Other pages:

We had a Gallery that had a collection of promotional photos and behind the scenes photos for fans.

↳Album Digipak

For the creation of our album digipak, we used and developed established conventions but we also tried to break some conventions to provide something fresh for the audience

I have created a Prezi explaining how real albums inspired our albums and how we adapted them to be unique to our band.

↳Conclusion

In conclusion, our media product mainly used and developed existing conventions and forms. We decided to do this as our audience will already be familiar to this and be more likely to want to invest themselves in this band if they easily know what they are getting. However, we did break some conventions as to not bore audiences and to provide some new ground for the music industry.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

The combination of our products is overall quite effective as we tried to create synergy across all three platforms so the website and the album cover is complementary to the music video. Nowadays it is extremely important for an artist to have an integrated, cross-platform marketing campaign so as to keep up a consistent branding that audiences can recognise. Their message must be repeated many times throughout their marketing for it to truly be delivered.  However, we believe there are steps we could have taken to make our product more synergetic.

As an example of a very synergetic rock music brand, we looked at the band Firelight.

What we picked up on:

• They had their band logo across all three platforms: in the top corner of their website banner, in the background of their album cover and it is shown in their "Stay Close" music video
• They generally stuck to a black and white colour scheme which is present in the website banner, the album cover and the narrative of their "Stay Close" music video. In their performance of the same music video the colours and very washed out, plain and almost sepia tone like and though it is not exactly black and white, it keeps close to the colour scheme
• The same image is used for the album cover and the website banner

Having seen that, we then looked into other bands and the similarity between their website banner and their album covers. Here are two examples:

 For example, the You Me At Six website banner and the Paramore website banner use the same font for their title as the album cover (as illustrated in the image above). The colour schemes for the albums and the website banners are also similar. You Me At Six stick to grey tones and Paramore have subdued grey tones with splashes of bright colours. 

So through researching bands' websites and album covers, I saw that it was conventional for their to be a similarity between the two products as it helps the audience familiarise themselves with the band.

In our initial planning stage we wanted to create something similar to the brands we researched but, when it came to production, we thought we ended up trying more variation. 

Unlike the previously mentioned websites, we did not keep the font of the band's name the same on the website banner and the album cover. Our intention was to create variation but, this may create disharmony between the two ancillary texts.

But, to keep to a similar theme, the band members are all stanced similarly- in a tight triangular formation and all of them purposefully looking in one direction. Furthermore, for the image of the band there are prominent colour hues. The website banner is notably pink/purple and the album cover is heavily blue toned.

We created a "Meet The Band" section on our website where there were links to each band member and a description about them. We realised that audiences may find a personal relationship with The Defiance's music which would invest them further into the band. To maintain such a personal relationship, we did our part to bring a bit of the band's personality to them. This way the audience can be assured that the money they are putting into the band by buying their music, merchandise, concert tickets etc. is with good reason. 

Shobnam's Profile (Lead Singer)

Aidan's Profile (Guitarist)

Daniel's Profile (Drummer)

Through each of their bios, we intended for the Album message of "not giving up" to come through.

Quotes from Shobnam's description: "... it started off with karaoke in my bedroom, until I found my true calling of Rock" & "To everyone who's made it possible for us t o be where we are today, thank you for listening and liking our music."

Quotes from Aidan's description: "...we all like rock music and have a passion for music." & "Playing the guitar is something I have been doing since a child..."

Quotes from Daniel's description: "I have always wanted to create the beat since I was young. I used to use cutlery, the table and pans as my drum kit." & "I couldn't afford lessons so I just had to teach myself. The first few years were the hardest as I annoyed everyone I played around." & "Don't let anyone stop your dreams!"

Below there is an analysis of the track list and how it corresponds to the details on the website and then it goes on further to analyse how we came to a decision on the inner panels:

Click to enlarge

The use of prominent use of one colour (the blue hue on the album cover and the purple/pink hue on the website banner) is also present in the music video as in the performance, each of the band members have a different coloured backlight:



Something that was common amongst all bands was to have the band logo on the drum kit in music videos as this enforces the band's identity and it is a practical place to put the logo.

Our band's drum kit.

Here are examples of other bands who have the band logo/name on their drum kit:

In conclusion, the combination between our main product and our ancillary texts are quite effective and we managed to maintain some syngergy throughout however, I feel there were steps we could have taken to make it all even more effective. We could have used the band logo on the album and not have used a different font. In addition, we could have stuck to one colour scheme in our website and album cover to have more of a lasting impact on the audience.

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our target audience was 15-22 years olds of both genders and our secondary audience were people above that audience. Our tertiary audience was dedicated fans of the rock genre.

Audience Feedback on Music Video

We realised that it was important to gather feedback from all stages of constructing our music video as we had focused audience groups, from our targeted audience, throughout the course of the construction of our music video. Especially at the rock genre generally has a fragmented and vast audience so we needed to do our utmost to meet their desires.

Pre-Production

Whilst in the pre-production stage, we gathered small audiences of around maximum 5 people to watch our music video in its progress and gained feedback.


Many of our audience members told us that the narrative for the busker was confusing which hindered them from fully understanding the message of the music video. This was our original narrative for the busker:

The scenario was that he was busking and a bystander was offering to buy his guitar but the busker kept saying no due to the love of his music. However, our audiences said that they would not have guessed that was what was happening unless they were told it. Some of our audience members told us that it was unrealistic.Taking all this into consideration, we altered the narrative.

Post-production

We held an audience screening for members of our school to come and watch all the music videos created for the A2 course. After that we sent out surveys to people who attended to fill out what they thought of the music video. We created surveys on Survey Monkey and sent them to people via the internet.

Here are the questions and responses to the survey about the music video:

Question 1: Rate the music video. 1 being poor to 10 being excellent. 

This was the response:





Our rating averaged at 8.29 which we considered to be generally positive.


Questions 2 and 3: What did you like about the music video? What did you dislike about the music video?

Click on the image to go to the page with these notes. Yellow notes were the POSITIVE feedback and the pink notes were the CRITICISMS.

POSITIVES:

From this I picked out that many of the audience members enjoyed the story line and our aim was to make the story line immersive and relatable to our target audience so, we were successful in this.

The style/editing/camera use in the music video was praised too which gives us confidence the way way we decided to film the music video. Our editing was very simple and conventional and this response shows that audiences like to keep to things that are familiar to them.

The 7th note contains a comment which says they liked how the plot was focused on the entire band which was something we wanted to heavily emphasise and we managed to achieve that. One of the core messages of the band is shown through their friendship: that they can do anything together and if the audience could understand that through out narrative then we had done our job correctly.

CRITICISMS:

A few of the comments mention that the quality of the shots were not up to standard. This tells me that we needed to improve on some of the technical aspects of our video in relation to the camera.

Another comment mentions how outfit changes were confusing when the shots cut right next to each other. This tells me that in our editing, may not have been clear to distinguish between the two performance set ups that had different costumes.

Our narrative was criticised for not giving all the guitarist's and drummer's characters enough screen time in comparison to the lead singer. Considering our aim was to show them all equally, this made us really think about what the audience wanted. We could have possibly added a more dramatic story for the busker and had more shots of the drummer included?

Question 4: Explain in your own words what you think the narrative of the music video was.

From looking at the answers received, almost everyone understood the narrative so I believe it was overall very successful in conveying the message. 

One answer however, said "It was just forming a band" which leads me to think that audience member did not understand the narrative. Another reason could be that that particular person did not feel a personal connection with the narrative and was not invested in it. This feedback has helped me to learn how audiences will interpret something completely opposite to how you intended it to be received.

Another comment says the narrative exactly how we intended it to be received but they have written "two people". Going on the assumption that it was not a typing error, this would mean that two of the band members got more screen time than the other which means we have not conveyed the message of unity properly in our music video.

Question 5: What kind of genre do you think this music video is?

100% of the audience guessed that the genre was rock which was correct. 28.57% also chose pop as the genre. We never aimed to have a sub genre of pop but, as the percentage was low we decided that overall we were successful in conveying our genre.

Question 6: Would you watch more music videos/listen to more songs from the band?

None of the respondents chose "No" as an option which shows that everyone who watched it had some sort of an interest in the band and as a record label in the music industry it is key to be able to get people interested enough to want more of the band to make more money.

Question 7: What do you think the message of this music video is?

Every response showed that the audience understood the message we were trying to show through our narrative (even the second slightly satirical comment).

Question 8: Who are some of your favourite artists/bands?

We asked this to see whether any of the audience's tastes were into bands similar to ours or not. Here is a collage the bands/artists that were mentioned:

The modal type were bands which is to be expected as most of them said they liked the music video so you would presume they liked bands too. It was interesting to see artists such as Marina & The Diamonds and Laura Marling mentioned as they are solo artists of a completely different genre but, the rest of the respondents answers were favourable towards our band. We did not limit ourselves to giving the survey to strictly fans of the rock genre as we wanted to see whether our band would have a wider appeal to fans of other genres too.

Audience Feedback on Album Cover

By creating a survey, I was able to gather some qualitative and quantitative data on how our group's album cover was received. I have created a Prezi explaining the results gathered from the survey.




Audience Feedback on Website:

The general response to the website was good, I decided the best way to gather people's opinions was through qualitative data as it would give me more detail to analyse. To do this I used Padlet which created a blank online wall and when I shared that wall with people they could post their opinions on this wall.

Created with Padlet

In Summary:

After showing a sample of our audience all three products, we asked them to guess overall what the genre they thought the band belonged to.

The top most guessed genres. | Infographics

Rock was the most guessed genre and it was comforting to see that even though the second most guessed genre was metal, there was a large gap between the amount of the two genres.

Overall, we have been lucky to receive great feedback from our audiences. From audience feedback I learnt that interpretations can vary according to person and that it is down to lifestyle factors such as childhood/friendships/family that may affect their viewing. I also learnt that the music industry cannot be assuming of its audience as they may not receive the product you are giving them in the way that you predicted. I personally learnt that the audience's view is very important as without them anything you work for in the music industry is rendered useless since everything is for the pleasure of the audience. I also learnt that we targeted the correct audience group of 15-22 year olds as they were the majority of our viewers (only one person who took the survey was below that age range). However, our secondary target audience were people older than 22 years old and I now realise that was a mistake as we did not get as many viewers of that age group.

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies helped us not only to film the music video but also helped us to formulate our idea of our band and to then follow that up with research. It also helped us create the album cover and website that is linked to our band and the technologies helped ensure that synergy was created across all three platforms.

In our early research and planning stages, one of our tasks was to create a technical presentation explaining how we wanted to approach our music video from a technical point of view. This was ours:




Cameras:

The Sony V1E:

Me using the Sony V1E.

Our music video was shot on this camera. It was easy to handle and had manageable settings that we could manipulate to achieve the look we wanted. For our performance we wanted the "infinite black" look and the quality of the camera helped us to gain that look.













The Canon 5D Mark II:

We used this camera to take the promotional photos of the band for the website and album cover. This was professional camera with different settings we could experiment with to get the right look.








Web 2.0:

In our research and planning stage, we explored YouTube in search for the song that we wanted to use for our music video. It was also used to eventually upload our finished music video.

A piece of qualitative data I found said that in 2012 64% of surveyed teenagers said they preferred to use YouTube to listen to music

To create the band's website, we used a flash based website called Wix. It was easy to use and navigate through and had all the basic components of a website given to us. A challenge we faced was wanting to incorporate more functions into the website but the site did not have them.

To do that we had to use HTML. For example, to put up the band's Twitter feed and to create a mailing list section. This helped us to think of creative solutions around a problem.


Programs:

We used Adobe Photoshop to create our album digipak. We also used it to create the band posters that are shown in the music video narrative.

Adobe Premiere was used to create our music video. The audio track was layed out on a timeline and once the things we filmed were exported, we could drag and drop them into the timeline and place them where we wanted. The program was simple to use and had opportunities to add effects to our clips however, we didn't. This is something I might have changed in hindsight.








Social Media:

In the Research & Planning stage:

In order to plan and research outside school hours but stay connected at the same time we used Facebook to message each other and contribute ideas. We created a group and its purpose was to discuss anything related to our project. As Facebook is easily accessible, we were able to communicate well through and used it as much as possible.

As part of creating the band's image:

On the website & album cover:

To keep our campaign fully integrated interactively, we made sure our website and album had features to emphasise social links. There are links throughout the website to social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. There is an opportunity for fans to sign up for the official mailing list for The Defiance which will keep them updated on tour dates, competitions, meet and greets, special offers etc. The album has a QR code for fans to explore even further into the band via it.

How new media technologies were used in the evaluation stages:

Our evaluation stage required feedback from audiences and to go about doing that we created surveys on Survey Monkey.

It was simple to design the survey, then a link was provided for us to be able to share the survey out and collect results and finally Survey Monkey provided charts and graphs of the data collected for us to analyse.

For the sharing stage of the surveys, I distributed the link via forms of social media I had in order to get as many respondents as we could.

I sent this message on Facebook to several people who had attended the screening of the music videos that we had had previously.

A post I made on Tumblr.

I also tweeted the link to my Twitter followers.

New media technologies has also helped me to present my evaluation in an interactive manner. 

Click to enlarge

Overall, I believe I exploited new media technologies to a great extent. In the production stage of our music video, I think we possibly could have made use of the technologies even more. For example, we could have added effects to our music video when editing on Adobe Premiere. In the evaluation stage, I used the new media technologies to help display my analysis and research in an interesting manner. Some that I had not even considered and I will definitely be making more us of in the future such as PadLet.