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

Evaluation question 1 from carliecokell

Final Product: Music Video

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction of Research, Planning and evaluation stages?

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

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

Target Audience:

Age: The age group of our target audience is 16-30. This is because there are older themes in the song that is inappropriate for the younger audience. The song portrays themes of love, sex, drugs, and money which are more suitable for the audiences over the age of 16 as these are adult themes.

Gender: The gender that we are targeting is mostly males as this gender listen to UK rap over females as they are more likely to relate to the themes. Also, as both artists are males, this may allow a higher chance for our audience to form a relationship between the artists.

Race: We are targeting the ethnic minorities such as Black Americans and Latinos. This is because UK Rap is usually listened to by these cultures and so we will follow this convention. Also, both our artists are Black British which means that they might then be able to form a bond between the public that are the same race.

Audience Category: Our audience category is C2-E which include skilled workers, trades persons (white collar), semi-skilled workers and unskilled manual workers (blue collar) and unemployed, students, pensioners and casual workers. We picked this target audience because they are most likely to be interested in the UK Rap genre, as anyone from the categories A-C1 will usually listen to more classical music or jazz due to their higher job status. Mainly students and young people aspire to a better life and sing about hardship, therefore I believe they will be more interested in our genre.

Questionnaire & Graphs:

During the initial planning stages I carried out a series of questionnaire to try and gain some resourceful feedback to assist with me and my groups planning for our music video. By doing this, I was able to identify my target audience as I asked questions specific to the genre of my music video, which was Rap/Grime. After gaining as much critical feedback as I could from my questionnaire, I then formed graphs that would correlate to each question in order to display a clear overall result of the 20 people that answered each question. This helped me decide what to include within my music video as I could identify the audiences expectations.

My Questionnaire:

Key Questions and How It Helped:

The audience showed that they would want the music video to be focused on the artist or in my case, our two artists. This suggests that we should make the majority of the music video artists orientated so the audience will feel a closer connection to our artists. Therefore, we would try to fulfil these audience's expectations through the the music video showing the artists being lingered by the camera.

This helped as that the audience prefer for the lyrics to match the visuals suggesting a narrative to take place. This implies that in a Hip-Hop music video there are usually narratives to be told as the lyrics match the visuals. Therefore, we were able to match the lyrics to visuals as our lyrics were story telling, which is why we included the narrative.

These results clearly showed that the audience would prefer a male and female relationship to be shown. This suggests that it is conventional to the  Hip-Hop genre which is why we included this. We did this by the artist reminiscing on his past relationship where he was heartbroken.

How did this help you decision?

Forming this questionnaire task and receiving feedback from 20 candidates helped me make key decisions in what to implement in my music video. This was beneficial because this was the only way to engage with the audience to find out their opinions on music videos specific to our Rap/Grime genre. This also helped me conclude some decisions with my partner when identifying the target audience of our genre. Otherwise it would be difficult when making the music video as well as trying to satisfy our audiences expectations. My results enabled me to make decisions purely on what the audience want and suggest which would make the planning stage easier for my group.

The importance of receiving critical feedback once the production has been made:

Once our final product had been filmed and edited to the best of our ability it was important that our target audience would sit and watch what my group and I have created (This included our ancillary products and music video) so we could receive as much feedback as possible, both positive and negative. This would ensure that we would know what the audience liked and didn't liked so we would know what we did good and what we could do to improve. This stage was the finalising of our project so when gaining feedback for the last time, we could the finalise on improvements before officially publishing our product online. We held a focus group and invited a mixture of students from AS/A2 Film and Media classes as well as people who interests the Rap/Grime Genre.

Focus Group Pictures:

Soundcloud Feedback:

1) Gizem

2) Kamal

3) Zahir




4) Berci

Link to Music Video and some of the comments left:

(LINK)

Some of the comments we received on YouTube included:

(IMAGE of youtube comments)

Why did you put your work on YouTube?

I uploaded my music video onto YouTube as I am aware of it being one of the biggest sites/applications in the world as well as being the top video based platform that is used on a global scale by mass audiences. Therefore, by uploading my groups work onto YouTube, it ensured that I would receive more views and comments from viewers all over the world, including my target audience who gave critical feedback, both positive and critical opinions they identified in our music video. This then allowed my group and I to identify what was successful and what we potentially improve or implement to make the overall product better. As a result, we were able to finalise our video, making it more audience satisfying and appealing to to the target audience.

Screenshot of video on Facebook and Instagram

........

Why did you put your work on Facebook and Instagram?

By putting my work on Facebook and Instagram enabled the music video to be promoted on on my personal profile, therefore I could receive supportive feedback from local people that I knew.. This means that my friends and family were able to view it and give more in depth feedback in comparison to online comments that re just simple and brief. These social media sites also advertise my product to a wider audience and gain even more potential feedback to determine whether our music video was successful.

What did you learn from this audience feedback in terms of whether you created a conventional and successful music video?

The audience feedback let me know that I did in fact create a conventional and successful music video which is evident in the unexpected mass amount of views and more positive than negative feedback our music video gained on YouTube. Although there were some negative comments, my group was still able to follow the conventions of the Rap/Grime genre in which it was clear that my music video fits in to this category. 

Overall, I learnt to use a variety of media platforms to promote my music video and campaign which ensured resourceful feedback from the audience. This enabled me to determine whether my product was conventional and successful or not. In success, I gained a lot of positive feedback on my music video however, few negative opinions showed that improvements can still be made. This helped me understand the audience's perspective in what they would rather prefer to see. Therefore, the feedback I received about my music video was a very crucial stage in accomplishing overall success of our product. If I could create this music video again, I would focus on the negative comments I received and plan more in more detail so that I could ensure that I would be creating a completely successful product.

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

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

Final Product: Final Advert

Final Product: Final Digipak

Research and Planning - Drafts of Advert

Drafts of Advertisement

Before creating our final product, Josh and I had to go through various drafting to ensure we were creating a conventional product. Each time we developed a new idea or made changes, we received feedback from our teacher and peers that we knew liked the UK rap genre, as their feedback was beneficial for us in order to make improvements. 

Draft 1:

Positives:

1) Clear consistent campaign relating to digipak.

2) Colour scheme compliments the eye.

3) Relevant/ key information on poster.

Improvements:

1) Cropping around artist 1 (SWEENEY) head to eliminate all green areas.

2) Looks like a movie poster, very similar.

3) Parental advisory symbol (Digipak only).

Draft 2:

Positives:

1) Photoshop is much better around the artists

2) Layout is complimentary to the theme of the advert

Improvements:

1) Try and crop even smoother around SWEENEY'S image

2) Where you write about where it is available to download from, change typography 

3) The symbols of availability should be the same size

Conclusion: 

This process has been crucial in order for us to ensure that we create a product that is complimentary to all our other products. Further, the feedback has been invaluable to allow us to make the appropriate changes needed to reflect our genre. As this is a product that will be on public display, we need to ensure it is eye catching and I believe that if we make the changes advised in our draft 2 'improvements', we can do this. 

Research and Planning - Drafts of Digipak

Drafts of Digipak

Our class were required to create a brief design/draft of what the album for our music artist would contain. In particular with my groups campaign we needed to create a digipak to would fit the conventional needs to our duo artist campaign. Creating drafts benefited us highly as our end result was to create a final digipak that would go along with our music video production which would help sell the artists.
Draft 1 image:

Feedback:

Positive

- Colour scheme very good

- Clear consistency and style

- Good images provided and used

-Typography is good and suits style

Negative

- DefJamRecordings logo goes on the back

- Production company details missing

- Inside panel is not white

- CD looks a bit boring

Draft 2 image:

Feedback

Positive

- Front and back compliment each other very well.

- Good artistic style and theme to the video.

Negative

- Inside image does need to be circular, distracts from the CD panel.

- Lyrics are blurred and looks odd

- Think about what else you could put in the inside panel.

Draft 3 image:

Feedback

Positive
- Really good consistency across all panels.
- Layout and artist image is conventional to the genre.

Negative
- Album name on front
- Some green noticeable on MD's face on the front. 
- Instead of ''Ying X Yang'' on the inside, can you think of any other words you could use?

Conclusion

Creating these drafts was really beneficial because it helped me and Amani to develop into creating a professional looking campaign for our artists and music video. Creating several different drafts allowed me to experiment with new ideas and even implement different designs, color schemes and theme ideas from existing products that me and Amani researched in to. As well as myself and my partner giving each other constructive criticism on our drafts for my digipak and his adverts, we also received feedback from students and peers who were interested in the Grime/Rap genre.