Evaluation Question 4

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

I chose to answer this evaluation question in the form of a Prezi, please click full screen.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I chose to answer this evaluation question in the form of a powerpoint presentation, please click full screen to view in a separate page.

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In this evaluation, Milly and I decided to answer it in the media form of a video.

We've included a transcript to make this evaluation more accessible, please click here to view it. 

Evaluation Question 1

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

When approaching the topic of our music video, we decided we would upload our final product on YouTube - a well known video sharing website that allows anybody to access it for free. Due to this, it means that anyone is able to view our music video, which will only further promote and help market our audience. Founded in 2005, YouTube has helped create many careers for once ordinary people. Musicians such as Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen and The Weeknd simply uploaded videos of themselves singing which allowed record scouts, managers and producers to be able to find and quickly sign them. We knew that by posting our music video on a website that generates billions of dollars annually, it's clear that it would be an effective platform to promote our artist.

We wanted to challenge common forms of real media products by advertising our artist in a newspaper advert. Recently, as it is the age of social media, most artists use sites such as Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram to promote their music. We wanted to go back to the oldest form of media and use newspaper adverts; as we felt this would reach our target audience more concisely. We wanted to target people who read newspapers often, usually those who live and work in the city and therefore live a busy life; we wanted to capture their attention with the variation of bright purple shades. We felt that these people who live hectic lives are more likely to enjoy calming music. Our target audience is referenced in the title of the digipak, 'The Kids Aren't Alright' as it alludes to the inner child in us all and how perhaps the stressed, or most determined people of us all, aren't alright, they might need uplifting, which is what our album intends to do.

We decided to both conform and challenge the conventions of our music genre: R&B, Soul and Trip Hop, which is seen in these blog posts: R&B, Neo Soul, Trip Hop. Conforming to the 'trip' element of the musical genre trip hop was important for Milly and I, as we knew this was something The Internet conformed to and based their music on. We felt if we stuck to this convention then overall our music video would work well with the song we had chosen and we'd be able to create synergy between the two. Wanting to create the reoccurring calming, relaxing feeling that is associated with trip hop we decided to create a conceptual music video, rather than a narrative or metaphorical one. We actively chose to challenge the stereotypical conventions of the R&B musical genre by straying away from what is usually seen such as minimal clothing and extensive jewellery because for us, our music video was based on displaying how much wealth our artist has, especially as a new and upcoming artist, they wouldn't have much. We wanted to focus on the feeling of the song and create a music video that matched.

Conforming to small elements of the R&B genre, we edited the beginning of our music in greyscale. We decided to do this after gaining inspiration from Anderson.Paak, an R&B musician, seen in this blog post. We felt that not only did this stand out from the rest of the music video in terms of colour, but the introduction would become an iconic part of our music video and remain memorable. This fits with part of the contemporary R&B conventions in terms of slow songs and how they're portrayed in music videos. The greyscale helped show the deep feelings of emotion that is referenced in the lyrics of Under Control and it also showcases various shots, include close ups and medium shots of our artist, which helps us establish them from the start. Something Andrew Goodwin states is crucial in his theory of music videos. The expressions of our artist show her in various emotions ranging from pensive to elation which conform to the genre of R&B. The setting we chose, such as a beach and a canal, conform to the dramatic settings that are displayed in contemporary R&B music videos as they act as a metaphor as to how the artist is feeling. The greyscale also conforms to the soul genre of music as music videos that fit in that category often feature monotone colours and schemes.

Wanting to include an intertexual reference, as it's often seen in the Neo Soul genre, when The Internet released their music video to Get Away, it felt right to me to include shots of the video almost as a tribute to the group that inspired so many of our ideas. Originally wanting to have the projection of the video cast on my face, we realised this had been done so many times before and wanting to consciously challenge the convention, Milly and I decided to film myself as the artist dancing in front of the video projection. Once we edited it on iMovie, this created a lovely silhouette with vivid colours that match the conceptual theme of our music video and ancillary texts.





We consciously decided to challenge the conventions of R&B in terms of how women are portrayed. Both male and female R&B artists utilise the well known phrase 'sex sells' and so they use extreme amounts of sexuality to sell their music. Whether that includes having scantily clad women seen in the background of music videos or female R&B artists wearing promiscuous clothing. Often this leads to the objectification of women in music videos, which was something we wanted to stray away from. We wanted to show a female R&B artist as an dominant ethnic representative without resorting to objectifying the artist and I think we did this well. We purposefully chose clothing that was both feminine, through the use of mini A line skirts and knee high socks, and masculine, through the use of heavy denim jackets and baseball caps.





When choosing a media platform to present our ancillary texts I would chose the platform of social media. It's a platform that has exploded in the past decade as many people predominantly in our target audience of teenagers and young audiences make up the main demographic of people using sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. With the pros being that anyone, everyone, anywhere all over the world can access these sites; news and information can spread incredibly quickly, which would help promote our artist incredibly well. It is also a place where celebrities can directly communicate with fans and therefore music labels can directly see what their consumers want and how best to cater to those needs.

I think overall our media product has proven to be successful in terms of the conventions that we have challenged, as because of this we've also shown that such a well known and iconic music genre such as R&B can be developed. Many female artists are similarly challenging these conventions as society realises that women don't have to be objectified to sell music.

When looking at the conventions of digipaks, its abundantly clear that there's a running theme throughout that ties the whole piece together. This convention was something we wanted to focus on, so that our target audience would recognise our artist based on the media products that they release; simply because they can see the relationship between the digipak and music video. One convention we consciously decided to challenge was the use of using the artist's face on the front cover. Although this does establish the artist, we decided to break away from this convention by placing our artist's face on the back cover, as we wanted to reflect the conceptual music video in our digipak. We wanted to show our artist's stylistic growth, which is why we took the outline of the picture and used it on the front cover, as this links to the lyrical content of the song Under Control - which was a Neo Soul convention. We wanted the artist to seem empty, hollow, as if they were missing something and as the consumer would read through the digipak, they would see all these elements coming back together to create the final, complete picture of the artist. If we were to make a music video for every song on the album, we would show this growth in detail as we felt when creating a concept, it was crucial, not only to the convention, but to our target audience as reflected in our feedback, that we continue the concept and reflect it back into both our music video and ancillary texts.

I think our ancillary texts were successful as they are distinguishable from most media products that fall into the same music genres we focused on. The eye catching colour scheme is consistent which links the digipak, poster and newspaper together, which means that our target audience can become familiar with our artist and has something to relate back to our artist - whenever they see those pink and purple colours they'll think of our artist, which is often how music labels create an artist that can be branded and therefore noticed.

Being a fan of Neo Soul music, I felt that we would able to create a successful media product if we chose a genre we were both familiar with as we would be familiar with the conventions and enter the research and planning with an idea of what we wanted to conform to and challenge. I was inspired by the sound of The Internet, their music being something that both Milly and I frequently listen to and when they released their newest album, Ego Death, we both felt inspired by the songs with Under Control standing out amongst them all. 

Target Audience Feedback

After releasing our music video, we wanted to gain audience feedback on our media product and ancillary texts and so we asked people who fit our audience demographic to give any feedback they had to offer. Being consciously aware of the large impact social media has in the 21st century, we decided to connect to our target audience via social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube; as both of them are in the top ten highest earning websites of 2015 and have a large following who use both websites daily which would therefore give our music video large exposure. 

This piece of feedback was beneficial for us as this person noted key features that they enjoyed such as the lighting which is something that we focused on and worked hard to create a variation. They also gave us constructive feedback on how we can adjust the colour of some of the shots we had taken. They also made reference to an exact moment in the music video (2:06-2:09) that seemed off, which meant that if we had time to go back make some subtle changes, we'd know exactly what to focus on.

This person complimented the lip syncing, which we're thankful for as it was something we focused on perfecting, especially as they're are some lyrics that are hard to decipher and lip sync accurately.

This person enjoyed the locations we had chosen for our ancillary texts and felt that it complimented the colour scheme, which made us very happy to hear that feedback. This was something we wanted to really focus on and make evident that this was the main concept.

This piece of feedback commented on the use of angles, which was an aspect of the music video we tried hard to add variety with as we felt it would add to the conceptual feel.

Possibly the most greatest piece of feedback we received was that if not stated our music video seemed realistic, something would be seen on TV for example. This shows that we paid attention to common music video conventions that fit our music genre and that we also referenced Andrew Goodwin's theory on music videos.

This person was very detailed in their feedback of our music video, which was incredibly beneficial as it highlighted that the little details that we focused on really resonated within our target audience and they were able to identify some cinematic elements we tried to incorporate. They noticed the way we used various shots such as wide shots and close ups to in order to establish our artist. They stated that overall the music video seemed very natural and flowed seamlessly which meant that we managed to portray the overall chilled and relax theme of the music video and the genre, Contemporary R&B, Neo Soul and Trip Hop.

This person kept their feedback concise but they noted the use of the  shots and editing style we used for our ancillary texts. I think the way we edited the shots added to the overall concept and created synergy.

This piece of feedback I feel was very important as it came from someone who hadn't heard of The Internet or their music. For them to enjoy the music video that we had created means that we were able to create a successful piece that not only attracts people from our target audience, but people from outside as well. They noted that our colour scheme varies a lot which for them took away from the camerawork, which I agree with; as at times the colour scheme can be very bold and bright but also very soft. I like these contrasting elements and I feel like it works well in our music video, but I understand that for others it might prove to be distracting.

These are a collection of feedback comments we received directly on YouTube, which compliment the artist and the camera shots we used. 

Audience Response

In order to help us with Evaluation Question 3,we had asked various people who met our target audience that fit various demographics such as gender, ethnicity and age to review our music video at different stages and explain what they thought of it thus far. We then took their criticism and edited our music video accordingly in order to gain a deeper understanding of what our target audience wanted from our media product.

Initial Audience Response: Caitlin Mettle

Adapted Audience Response: Joshua Inkpen

Final Adapted Audience Response: Bella Giorgini