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

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

Evaluation 3 : What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I used survey monkey to gain audience feedback by creating questions and giving the survey to people as they view the video, this helped me to gather information and constructive feedback for our real media product as well as ancillary texts. I also asked a focus group some questions about our music video, website and digipak. 

Our music video was aimed at 16-22 year olds due to the use of explicit language in our chosen song. We decided that we would target the male audience before the female as typically the rap genre is enjoyed more by a larger male audience. 

I have created some profiles of our target audience which are mostly primary but also contain some secondary and tertiary audience that we aim to reach. 

Music Video First Draft Feedback: 

We showed our first draft music video to peers in order to receive a variety of feedback so that we were able to see whether the general concept and conventions of the video worked. We got a range of feedback from both male and female, predominantly in the age range of 16-18. Below is the most constructive feedback we received from our audience when we showed them the first draft of our music video. 

Digipak First Draft:

We also showed our first draft digipak to peers in order to gain some feedback as to how we could improve but also what aspects they liked. The marks out of 10 that we were given are below:

• level 3 - 8 marks
• level 3 - 8 marks 
• level 2 - 6 marks
• level 3 - 8 marks
• level 3- 7 marks 
• level 2 - 4 marks 
• level 2 - 5 marks 
• level 2 - 6 marks 

To act on the feedback that we received we decided to make some changes to our digipak to improve it. 

We added a lyric sheet but tried to make sure it wasn't too text heavy as this would be distracting and boring to look at. We added an image of iSO and blacked it out to match our galaxy theme. We also reduced the lyrics on the sheet so it wasn't overwhelming to read. This will replace one of the DNA strands.
 

We moved the special thanks up one square on the grid so it is on the back of the digipak as we felt this was an appropriate layout. 

Website First Draft:

We received some constructive feedback on our website as to what we can do to improve it and what people thought worked well with it. There was a mixed opinion as to the over outcome of what everyone thought of our website. Our scores were:

• 5
• 7
• 9
• 8
• 7

In order to improve our website we have taken these comments into consideration and have tried to improve the website in general but also in specific places that were mentioned as feedback. 

Firstly, we changed the store icon from red to white as it fits in a lot better with the black and white background, being a continuous theme throughout the digipak and website. This was only a small detail that our group didn't think about but was largely recognised by our peers. 

We then changed the layour of the about page completely and added a link to instagram, a description of iSO and the record label as people were confused as to iSO and the Real Proviso Records, which is iSO's record label. We added some other content to this page as people said it was too basic and short so they didn't have enough of an understanding as to who iSO was and his background. 











James added the link to iSO's twitter page and instagram page and put them in a visible place of each page on the website to maintain consistency. This also makes it easily accessible for anyone navigating around the website by being able to view his social media at any time. 

Online Survey: 

I created a survey online so that I could address a larger audience and gather wide range of opinions. 

These were the results we gathered from the online survey. We were able to see that we had a balance between male and female and our primary age group answering this survey was 17-21 year olds. 

Questionnaire for audience feedback on music video: 

Below is 4 male and female members that have watched my music video and then given me a response face to face. I asked a variety of questions as to what they liked and what they thought we could improve on. It gave us vital feedback as they gave honest answers which helped us to relate back to our target audience deciding if we targeted everything correctly. 

INSERT VIDEO

Survey for Digipak and Website: 

I created a short survey which enabled me to get some concise feedback as to what scores people thought our digipak and website would achieve. It enabled me to see what they thought about the layout, content, text, images and merchandise. 

ADD SURVEY

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

After completing our final music video we wanted to make sure that our digipak and website were completed to the same standard and to the best of our ability in order to achieve full marks. Our main product and ancillary texts were created to be as synergistic as possible in this cross-platform marketing campaign, attempting to create a strong brand identity. We aimed to create suitable advertisement for our artist to accompany our product and ancillary texts so that we could create and gain active social media presence and followers. In order to achieve this we recorded an interview with our up and coming artist, created a magazine article and used social media for general promotion. 

Throughout this process, we wanted to promote the uniqueness of our newest artist and share his new found talent amongst other who'll listen. I feel that this was displayed effectively through our digipak, website and music video using consistency as their is a continual theme and colour scheme throughout. We created the digipak and website with the music video in mind so that we could make them link and as a whole promote our new artist. This way, all our texts are linked effectively. Each product is also designed to promote the different products in the range whilst maintaining synergy. 

Within the music video, there are links between our general theme and concept that we tried to portray through the music video and ancillary texts. Our primary target audience is 15-22 year olds but more specifically, those who are interested in rap music. Our target audience is relative to our social media audience feedback found on our iSO page. 

At the beginning of the music video there are several shots of the sun moving across the sky as time lapses. This relates to the galaxy theme applied throughout our website and digipak.

The continual scheme of dark colours and darker backgrounds used for the digipak, website and album cover are contrasted as these brighter colours feature in the middle of the music video. However the colours also appear on the album cover and the digipak in the ora around iSO. 

There's a glow around some of the shots which makes it look like the glow of outer space also linking in with the galaxy theme. This is referenced to on the album cover too as it has an 'ora like' glow around the image of iSO. 

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

Before creating our music video we conducted research into rap artists and their brand identities. From this we then established a list of conventions of the Hip Hop genre that we could either develop or challenge. We found genre conventions from analysing products in our genre like Logic's Under Pressure and looking at how other white rappers like G-Eazy's image is presented. I think that we subverted many of the traditional Hip Hop genre characteristics but conformed to some of the lesser known genre characteristics. 

Style of our music video:
After hearing Buried Alive by Logic, our chosen song, it was obvious that we could use the title to base the music video on. As well as matching the title of the song, basing our music video on being buried alive fits in with the Hip-Hop genre as darkness and death are often themes in Hip Hop songs.

Our visual moodboard

As you can see from the visual mood board I made we drew inspiration from moguls of Hip Hop such as Eminem and Kendrick Lamar but also smaller artists like Logic.

Narrative of our music video: 
Typically Hip-Hop music videos do not contain a lot of narrative and are usually based on performance. However similar artists to ours like Logic and G-Eazy music videos both consist of performance and narrative hybrids. So we decided after research to make our music video a hybrid of performance and narrative.   

G-Eazy's music video for single 'I Mean It' sees him in the role of a news presenter, which forms the basis of the narrative. As he plays the news reader and himself, as the interview is ongoing he begins to rap parts of the song which form the performance side of the music video.

G-Eazy combing narrative and performance

Logic's music video for his latest single 'Young Jesus' is also a hybrid of performance and narrative. As he plays many different characters like a chef, shown below, and later on a police officer and news witness. But in between all of these roles he lip syncs parts of the song.

Example of Logic combining narrative and performance 

After doing research and seeing similar artists like Logic and G-Eazy music videos it became obvious that the vast majority of them were hybrids. So we decided to conform to current Hip Hop genre conventions and make our music video a hybrid of performance and narrative.

Balance between narrative and performance

Consumption Habits: 
One of the purposes of a music video is to be entertaining and be interesting enough to watch repetitively. As our music video is a hybrid of narrative and performance we couldn't keep our audience entertained with just narrative. So after doing our research on UK Hip Hop artists we identified that to make their music videos as interesting as possible they use a large variety of locations in comparison to other genres such as Pop and Rock. Below is an example of a UK Hip Hop artist, Nines, using lots of different locations to keep the viewers interest on a performance based music video.

The music video contains in total fifteen different locations. In comparison our music only has seven different locations but we used lots of cuts to keep the video interesting similar to Nines music video however the song is slower and therefore there are less cuts in Nines video than in ours.

Music video for Nines (UK Hip-Hop artist) 'Can't Blame Me' 

Album cover:
The main functions of an album cover are:

• Providing information about the music and the production of it
• Giving the audience a suggestion of what the music is like and what genre it is
• Acting as visual advertising, usually being the primary form of advertising aside form social media and tour dates poster
• Having sentimental value to fans and the auience

Above are some debut album covers from white UK and American Hip Hop artists. Although as you can see the album art varies from artist there some characteristics which are identical. For example the album name is always in bigger font than the artist name, in this respect we conformed to our genre as we have done the same with our album cover.

Our album cover

As you can see we took inspiration from our visual moodboard when creating our album cover. Below is an annotated version of our digipack cover. Which shows in what ways we conformed and challenged Hip Hop genres.

Website:
Our website in our marketing campaign for iSO plays a vital role, as it's purpose was not only to promote the artist but also the record label and the products. The presentation below explains in what ways our website conforms to and challenges the Hip Hop genre.

Genre Characteristics: 

iSO as an artist largely challenged genre characteristics, as a new artist it is important to challenge conventions especially as iSO is somewhat of a niche artist, A UK white rapper. 

iSO Interview

Filming Locations

Here are some of the pictures that we took when filming. We had several locations to film.