Evaluation Task 1 - Part 5: In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something.  Conventions can be used, supported, reiterated.  They can be challenged to deliberately broke to subvert conventions.  In evaluation of the question set I feel that I have drawn on the conventions of media products in my own campaign.  The use of these conventions is evident in the construction of my own products, for example the use of a lip sync and performance element in my music video as well as the psychological thriller style narrative that was used in my thriller opening sequence , this is supported by my own research into the forms and conventions  of music videos and opening sequences for thrillers.  

At the same time I have sought to develop and been able to challenge conventions, for example, I have decided to not use an imagery of the band on my CD Digipak and I have decided to place the track list on the inside of the CD Digipak rather than the back cover.  The reason why I decided to do these things was to differentiate my product in a competitive music industry market and I have attempted to challenge audience expectations in order to bring something new to the media forms.  

Media Conventions are ultimately relied upon for communicating the right message to the intended audience, but they can also deviate from these expectations in order to aid the sale of the star image that I wanted to promote.

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 4: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 3: In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 2: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms ad conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION

I am going to be looking at how my music video, website and CD Digipak have used, developed and challenged conventions that have been used in real media products. I will essentially be looking at how my music publicity campaign is similar to other media products as well as how it differs from other media products.

Before I started to evaluate my own product, I first looked up what conventions are and what some typical conventions of music videos, websites and CD Digipaks are. This helped me to understand in what ways my music publicity campaign was conventional and in what ways it was unconventional. 

In terms of music videos, the conventions you are likely to see can be separated into technical and symbolic conventions. Technical conventions relate to the styles of camera, editing, lighting and sound whereas symbolic conventions relate to mise-en-scene, costumes, props, location/setting colours, makeup and arrangement of band members. For websites, some of the conventions include having a homepage, biography, music video and album links as well as photos of the band members and information about upcoming tours. CD Digipak conventions include having the band name in a larger font than the album name, having a track list on the back as well as having the band name and album name on the spine.

From my research I gained a deeper understanding about how utilising conventions makes it easy for an audience to understand what type of text they are consuming and enable them to situate a song and artist within a musical genre. By following established conventions, I was able to, as a producer, increase the chances that our music publicity campaign would convey our intended message to the target audience.

Negus argues that music videos are essentially the explicit and unashamed promotion of the artists's 'image' as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption, therefore, comparing them to a promotional tool.

CONVENTIONAL - Typical/ Expected/ The 'norm'

UNCONVENTIONAL - Atypical/Unexpected/Not the 'norm' 

Coming up with a band name

We have been trying to come up with a band name for quite a long time now but nothing seemed to be working and we didn't like any of the ideas that we had come up with enough to put the on the products. 

We wanted to come up with a band name that tied in well with the star image that we have created for them as well as work harmoniously with their USP and their organic style. I had also suggested that we come up with something that reflects a theme or idea that we have referenced or used within the 3 products of the campaign as I thought that this would give us a good starting point. From that point we started to brainstorm ideas. 

One day, whilst Chris and I were working on the website, Chris had the idea of B-side label. We liked this idea as it was ambiguous and it would get the audience intrigued as to what it meant, however we weren't sure whether it was appropriate for the genre of music that the and create and we also thought that it was too long. We then realised that we liked this name because it was ambiguous abut we wanted something shorter. 

I had the idea that we could use a fancy word for time travelling or something to do with the movement of time or the concept of time due to the fact that this was reflected in our music video when the time period jumped from the 1929's to the future. I thought that we could use the word for the fear of time travelling or eve the fear of time. However, upon our research we realised that there were no specific words that were short and ambiguous that related to this theme and so we abandoned this idea. 

Evelyn then had the idea of coming up with something that related to the scientific element that we explored in the music video. She suggested that we look at the names of the elements in the periodic table as these are occasionally short and ambiguous words. 

She found 'aether' and instantly we knew it was going to work. It was scientific, ambiguous and a short and snappy word that was easy for audiences to remember. It then felt even more appropriate as a band name when Evelyn started telling us about the history of this scientific element as it was very popular around the 1920's which not only ties in well with the 1920's element of our music video but it also reflects the genre of music very well. 

We then decided to go with aether as our band name as it just felt right and all the members of our production group liked it. 

This is what the element aether looks like

Generating song names for the website

We have been trying to come up with some song names to go on the website and the album. We had to think about what kind of feel we want audiences to get from our album and we also had to consider names that would tie in with the genre of music and also with the name of the track used for our music video. 

I was responsible for coming up with some options for the band name whilst Chris and Evelyn worked on the album and the website. I came up with some of the song names purely from my imagination and creativity but for some of them I used the website song name which helps you to generate song names.

Song Name Generator

Here were my first options for song names:

After sending this email I got some feedback from the other members of my group on the suggestions that I provided them. They said that they liked the suggestions but that they were quite long and so I then decided to come up with some more suggestions that were shorter.

My other, shorter suggestions

They said that they liked these ones but they were quite short. So I then suggested that we should take a selection of the ones that they liked from both lists and use of combination as then we would get the best of both worlds. 

We then proceeded to choose a section from both lists that I had generated in order to get a combination of long and short song names. Chris then had the task of translating these into Thai as this was a convention that we wanted to not only use for the album name but also for the list of songs. 

Here is the finalised list of songs that we produced and they are also translated in to Thai. I think that the song names look very good and carry on the theme that we created in the album name as well as tying in well with the genre of music that the band create and their star image. 

Website Version 1

After taking on board the feedback that we received from our peers, Chris and I have taken on board the role of completing a Version 1 of the website. I took on the role of doing the copy for the website and making sure that the written information was good and clear to the audience whilst Chris took on the creative role of creating the website and designing it according to the feedback. We decided to change the colour scheme of the website so that it ties in nicely with the colour scheme used on the album. 

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE VERSION 1 OF THE WEBSITE

I really like how the website has turned out and I think that we have taken on board all of the comments that our peers provided us with apart from the tickets/venues section which still needs some adaptations however we need to look into how we can carry these out through WIX as we are unsure.

CD Digipak Version 1

Following the feedback that we received from our peers we have completed a version 1 of our CD Digipak. Due to the fact that Evelyn has the best Photoshop skills as she is a photography student she went ahead and made the adjustments to the previous version of the CD Digipak following me getting some feedback on this part of the campaign. 

I really like how it has turned out and I believe that it reflects the organic image of the band well as well as being conventional of the electro-swing genre of music and tying in well with the other parts of the music publicity campaign for the band. 

VERSION 1 OF OUR CD DIGIPAK 

Feedback on CD Digipak

Evelyn had been coming up with some initial ideas for the CD Digipak and come up with a funky metallic tubing effect for the digipak. She had created this design and then given us different options of the colours. We decided to show our peers her first designs and get some feedback on what they liked and what they thought could be improved/changed.

Here are her first designs and the different colour options that she came up with:

RED METALLIC VERSION

YELLOW METALLIC VERSION 

GOLD METALLIC VERSION

GOLD METALLIC VERSION WITH TEXT 

The feedback from our peers told us that we needed to make Aether larger than BOLT in Thai on the front cover of the album as this is a convention within CD Digipaks that the band name is always larger than the album name and so this was something that we needed to adjust. 

The feedback from our peers also informed us that the colour that they thought was the most effective was the gold metallic variation as this is the version that looks the best visually and well as tying in with the colour scheme of the music video well and reflecting the 1920's theme and the genre of music that the band create. 

Overall, our peers said that they really liked the album design and they thought that our initial idea would be perfect for our final product and so we have decided to go ahead and make the changes to the gold variation and then we will have our version 1 of the CD Digipak. 

Our peers also commented on the fact that they think that we have created a very good campaign for a neish market and so we are pleased with the success of our initial digipak design. 

Feedback on Website

We decided to show the class our first design of the website to get some feedback and to come up with an action plan so hat we know what we need to improve on and what we need to add, change or make adjustments to. 

Here is the link to the website design that we showed them: 

Click here to view website first design

Here is the feedback that we received: 

• font needs to be bigger on the homepage 
• homepage and biography look like links not tabs 
• band name needs to be bigger
• change band name to Aether
• need to do a photo shoot with the band members
• photo on biography page needs to be bigger
• effects on photos on homepage are effective 
• more text/copy needed 
• like the simplistic style and layout
• album review and let the audience co-opt which allows them to make comments on the album
• titles need to be bigger
• 'check out our latest' single release
• look over the text again and make changes
• change locations of shows
• think about dates chosen for shows
• link to ticket master/buying tickets - mock ticket page - fake ticket generator
• what record company?
• photos at bottom need renaming 
• add feature about Mike T - guest jazz legend 

From this feedback it has helped us to establish the things that we need to make alterations to and the things that work effectively and that an audience would like. The action plan consists of making the appropriate changes and coming up with a first version of the website that we can then get further feedback on before creating the final version. 

Audience Feedback 2

We have already had some audience feedback on our music video from some of our peers at school. But we thought that it would be a good idea to get some feedback from people outside of school and people of different ages. Therefore we decided to send a link around to our friends and family to see what the general public's reaction was to our music video.

Fortunately, the overall feedback from our friends and family was very positive. The general opinion and comments about the music video were that it was impressive,  very good and enjoyable to watch, as well as the storyline being clear and very original and creative. Some of the audience members even mentioned the fact  that they had viewed the other music videos created by our peers and that ours was very different and stood out from the rest. They thought that the narrative was clear and that it made the video more engaging and kept them intrigued as to what was going to happen next rather than it simply being about someone singing into a microphone. 

One of the audience members that Evelyn contacted for feedback commented on the fact that it reminded them of Doctor Who  because of the jump in time which clearly demonstrated that the audience understood the transport to the future, which we were very pleased about due to the fact that many of our peers who we had interviewed previously were unclear about this aspect of the video. 

We were particularly surprised with the fact that the audience members loved the mad scientist and found him highly entertaining which is completely contrasting wit the feedback we got from our peers. We realised that this may be due to the fact that the actor playing the mad scientist is a teacher at our school and so there may have been some bias in this feedback as they know him and therefore were not so complimentary. However, our friends and family thought that he suited the role very. Some people even commented saying that they thought that he was a strong addition to the music video video as he helped to build a clear contrast between the unconventionality of the rest of the video and that his appearance was very fitting for the role. 

In addition, one of the other audience members said that they really liked the set design and they thought that it was very effective and impressive as it helped them to establish the time period and it also look very visually striking. One of the younger audience members said that he was particularly impressed with the mad scientist's lab as he thought that it matched the manic acting of the scientist and the use of colours were effective. We are really that the audience liked the set as this was very expensive and time consuming to create and we are pleased that they were impressed with the mise-en-scene was a very strong aspect of our music video meaning that we did a good job wit the art direction. 

Unfortunately, one of the audience members picked up on the camera work commenting that it was a little bit unstable and shaky at times. I think that this could have been improved in our video as at times there are parts where one of the performers head is out of the frame, however it is understandable as there was a lot of movement and choreography that was very difficult to frame. 

The thing that I am most pleased about is the fact that through showing the music video to our friends and family and asking them for feedback the video has reached around 3000 views! Which means that people are definitively intrigued by it and are enjoying it.