A2 Media Studies Evaluation

Music promotional packageRuth Heffernan

Part 2

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

Our PosterCD digipak

As part of our advanced portfolio coursework, we were asked to produce a music video, digipak and poster, which helped to promote our video. We did a lot of research into comparable products so we get a good idea of all the generic conventions for each product within the indie genre. We also created a questionnaire, to give us a good idea of what our target audience wanted to see. This worked to be very effective in helping us to make our decisions, as we knew what our target audience wanted to see (late teens and young adults).

Our results told us that our audience would expect to see the band/artist in the music video and the majority of them said that the like the lyrics to be linked with the visuals. They also said that they would like to see close ups of the band/artist. Taking this into account we decided to conform to these ideas, and made sure that we incorporated them into our video.

From our results, our audience said that they would typically like to see 4 members in the band, however this was hard for us to do, as people weren’t as co operate as we would have liked so we used 3 members, which got the second highest vote. However this worked out well, as it meant that there was a gap in the market, that we could cater for.

We asked our audience if they would prefer to see the video in black and white or colour. The majority of our audience said that they would prefer colour and a few said black and white. However, we still chose to do it black and white, as from our research into comparable products this followed the codes and conventions, for not only the video but for the digipak and poster. So this was something we decided to conform to.

We asked our audience about what type of font they would like see on the digipak and poster and the two most common was, big and bold and the other simple. We decided to conform to both of these, by using simple typography on both our digipak and poster, which was big bold and simple. We did the same on both the digipak and poster as they are promoting the same thing, so the audience need to be able to make the link between the three. By using the same typography our audience will be able to make the link.

We asked our audience What is most likely to persuade you to buy an album? Why? There was various answers for this question which include; album reviews, the front cover, the quality of the songs, seeing the videos, likeable artist/band, the price, track listing on the back to see if there are any noticeable songs and originality. As our audience commented on album reviews, we decided to put reviews at the bottom of our poster about album, which helped persuade our audience to buy the album. We also asked them why do you watch music videos? This was a very important question to us as it helped us to realise that for our target audience to stay interested, our video needed to be interesting and different. I think that we have portrayed our band as fun and youthful very well throughout our video, meeting the audiences needs.

We also asked our audience what sort of clothes would they expect an indie band to be wearing and they replied with dark colours, skinny jeans, checkered shirts. We decided to go with all these ideas when choosing costumes for our characters. Throughout our video, our characters wore very similar clothes to these and they did so on the digipak and poster too. We also decided to use the image that was on the front cover of digipak on our poster too, because we found from our research that this was generic to the indie genre, and it allowed our audience to easily make the link between the digipak and poster and therefore the video. We decided to use a lot of things that our audience said, because we thought that it was important to have theme that was easily linkable between the video, digipak and poster. Although we didn’t ask our audience whether they would like to see star ratings and reviews on our poster we put them on anyway because not only were they generic to the indie genre but we thought that it would encourage our audience to buy the album as the reviews are from trusted music magazines.

However, taking all of our target audiences opinions into mind, I think that we are successfully met the demands of our audience and have produced a promotional package that represents youth in a happy light, that is easily linkable together.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For our audience feedback, we used facebook to send out a message to our friends, asking them to tell us what they like, what they didn’t and what they thought needed to be improved on. Overall the feedback that we received was very positive for all aspects of our promotional package.

The feedback for our music video was very pleasing. Every person we asked commented on the colour scheme that we decided to use, as the black and white colour scheme was generic to the indie rock genre. 

Most of them commented saying that the colour scheme was very good in keeping with the conventions of the genre, and it fitted the song quite well. The tempo of the edits works very well with the tempo of the song, which made it easier to watch. They said that the shots of the band singing and playing allowed them to relate to the band members better, which again helps to immerse them in the song and the video.  They also noticed the one long shot, which was in coloured to help highlight the mood change.

Our audience also said that the framing and camera movement was good and that the subjects are central and are dominant of the frame. They said that the pan movements used were smooth and professional, which helped to keep their focus.  A comment was made saying that technical effects used were good and that the use of speeding up the motion of the clip where the cars were sped up and the split screen helped to add another dynamic to the video, which made it more interesting.  Pretty much all the people we talked about our video commented on the costumes and they thought that the conventions of the indie genre are adhered to for e.g.: skinny jeans are a typical trait of an indie band and therefore helps the audience to identify the genre easily.

 

From our feedback on our music video, we now know if we were ever to make anything like this in the future then we need to make sure we use appropriate lighting as I think that the lighting was the main criticism.

As we can see from the image, his facial features are very dark due to bad lighting, which makes him look a bit scary, which wasn’t the image we wanted to portray.

The feedback for our digipak was also positive. People said that they liked the way there was an image of each  member of the band and then a picture of all the band inside laughing together.  They said that it gave a positive feel to the album.  They also said due to the high definition of the camera and the simplicity of the colours and typography our digipak had professional appearance, which made the album look appealing.  They also said that they really liked the originality of the back cover.

However, they said that it looked a bit too serious, compared to the quirkiness of the video.  They also said due to the age of the band members, that we should have used a more immature image that suited their appearance. 

We took our audiences views into account, but decided to stick with our images and we felt that it put them across as a strong collective and went with the codes and conventions of the indie genre.

Again, very positive feedback for our poster was received.  They said that they really like the five star rating, as it gave the band a professional appearance and encouraged them to want to buy the album due to the positive reviews, which were written. However, they said that they would have liked to have seen a different image than the one they already saw on the digipak. 

After taking the feedback that we received into account, we decided to stick with our original image, as we wanted our poster to be easily relatable to the digipak, and also from our research using the same image followed the codes and conventions.

Overall, Our band have been portrayed in the way that we wanted, which was fun and youthful, which also went perfectly with the song that we chose. I think that we used a well matched colour scheme that followed the generic codes and conventions of the indie genre and have shown a theme throughout our promotional package, by using similar if not the same images on both the digipak and poster and having them be in black and white just like the video, so our audience could easily make a link between the three.