Evaluation Question 1

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

My partner and I worked on this question together and chose to present this in the form of a director's commentary. 

Evaluation Question 2

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


After completing my RMA research and seeing the codes and conventions that made each product typical to their genre, I found that it was necessary to have connections between all three products to make them recognisable as one. Whether that be colours, fonts, props, costume or locations my main and ancillary products needed to have common aspects that made it obvious they all advertised the same song.

Therefore, it became crucial that we conformed to this commonly found concept and have links to our own work. The main association that can be seen is the use of the same character across all three products, this created continuity and allowed the audience to have someone they could relate to. Also, it highlighted her importance to the storyline as she is the only person who appears in all three elements of the promotional package. Additionally, another feature that linked our products together was the use of a guitar to aid the narrative structure and conform to the typicality of the indie/alternative genre. The use of an instrument is often used by bands and singers in this genre which is clear in my own research, bands such as ‘Fall Out Boy’ and ‘The White Stripes’ made use of multiple instruments from drums, bass and guitars.

Furthermore, certain aspects of the scenery became an important way of linking all three elements of the promotional package. For instance, across both the digipak and magazine advertisement I used the same costume that our protagonist wore in the performance aspects of the music video. I used the same location to take the photos for our digipak and magazine advertisement but made changes with the lighting and camera angle to have some variety in the shots I was taking. I wanted to incorporate the colourful lights as they have positive connotations which tie in with the outcome of the narrative in the music promo. Despite having these bright colours, I wanted to contrast this with a dark black background which appears in all three aspects of our package, as although the song is upbeat the use of dark colours is something that appears frequently in the indie genre.

Finally, I believed it would be effective to not only focus on the big ideas that connected our products but the finer details such as colour and font that made these three products obvious to be part of a whole package. I used a cursive, bold, white font for the band name ‘Fickle Friends’ which appeared on the digipak and magazine advertisement, this stood out and created an impact which was something noted by my focus group. Another font we used was, also white in colour and it was used for the song name itself, tracklist on the digipak and briefly appeared in the music promo itself.

In conclusion, the combination of our main products and ancillary texts were effective as they conformed to our chosen genre, made our promotional package recognisable as one and appealed to our target audience. 

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I asked my audience these four questions regarding the music video:

• What audience and age range do you think the music video would target and why?

• Would there be anything you would improve regarding the music video and why?

• Is the narrative clear?

• Would you watch this music video again and why?

Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 2 - 1st Draft

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

Transcript:

For our A2 coursework we had to create a promotional package which consisted of a digipak, magazine advertisement and a promotional music video. For there to be connections between all 3 products we made us of synergy, so our product was recognisable as one and there were elements of each that connected them all together.

From researching into the indie/alternative genre and closely analysing all three elements of a promotional package I found that synergy played a massive role in everything I researched. For instance, in The White Stripe’s ‘Seven Nation Army’ the use of the duo and colours of red and black appeared in all three segments of their package. This was also similar in Fall Out Boy’s ‘Light ‘em up’, they had concept elements which including burning their old records which was present in the video and magazine advertisement.

We decided to conform to this convention by having a prop or object that would be seen throughout all three products. For us this was a guitar, we chose this as it was central to our narrative based video and something that would be identified with the protagonist. Like the White Stripes, we used the protagonist on both the magazine ad and digipak alongside the guitar, so her face was recognisable and linked in with the song. Also, one of the locations we used in our music video to film the performance segments was where we took the photos for the magazine advertisement and digipak.

However, the main connections are shown between the digipak and magazine advertisement as from our research we found they often share similar images, text styles and colours. We chose to use similar fonts to create synergy as well as using photos of the protagonist in the same location. This showed the connections between the two ancillary products and was effective as people would remember the artist.

Overall, the synergy between our main product and ancillary texts were successful and effective and created a well-rounded promotional package. 

Evaluation Question 3 - 1st Draft

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I asked my audience these four questions regarding the music video:

• What audience and age range do you think the music video would target and why?
• Would there be anything you would improve regarding the music video and why?
• Is the narrative clear?
• Would you watch this music video again and why?

Evaluation Question 4 - Draft 1

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