Evaluation: Audience Feedback

Question: What have you learnt from our audience Feedback?

In the music world, there is nothing more important in your career than your audience, your fans. Listening to what they have to say is critical to becoming the greatest artist you can be. After all our advertising, we believe our audience gave suitable feedback to know we are on the right track with our work, and that they enjoy it. We advertised our music video on facebook, youtube and twitter, and immediately allowed people to comment on our work and give us both positive and negative pointers on everything we do, from the music video, to our Digipak, to everything else we do with our band and company.

Our facebook page

Our comments and feedback have been guinely positive with our work. Alot of people believe our video was well made, and were shocked by how good it did look.

Youtube comments

After viewing these comments, I can tell that our video was praised by our audience, and we recieved generally positive feedback. Our fans also gave great ways on how to improve our work, as shown below

This helpes us to improve, and shows ways we worked well together and ways we didn't. Using this will help us improve our next piece of work.

Here is another example of praise.

Overall, our fans have been a great help in evaluating our musical performance. Thanks to them, we belive that we have created a really good musc video, with mistakes such as music syncing not being a problem at all, as well as really good camera shots. And the critism we recieved will help us when making future videos, which will hopefully attract more fans. And in this way, we can keep improving and keep tailouring to the guys that keep us going, and could prove to be a pinnacle part of our bands development

Evaluation: Conventions

Evaluation conventions

View more presentations from Arikarin.

Evaluation: Music Video and Ancillary tasks

How effective is the combination between our music video and ancillary tasks

Evaluation: Media Technology

The biggest media technology availible to use when starting our media project is the internet. The internet is a band's blank canvas for creativity, as they can advertise and express themselves in a variety of ways. We used the internet majorly throughout our project for a variety of reasons, including research, devlopment, planning, editing and broadcasting. 


We used the internet mainly for research. We observed how bands of a similar genre (including the artists of our songs) advertsie and interact with their fans, including the use of social networking sites and self webpages. We also researched music videos and artwork from bands, to establish the conventions of the genre in question and adapting it to our own work. We learnt from this that social networking sites are highly popular with bands and fans, as it is a quick and efficient way to communicate with each other, especially considering the amount of teenagers, the next generation of audience, are present on the sites. It is also a effective way to recieve feedback and to establish a general understanding of your fans. We also learnt the conventions shared between bands of a similar genres, and what ones are unique are altered by certain bands.


During our planning and development phases, we used the internet to reference other bands ideas, and see what works well and what would fit with our ideas. This is mostly used to check the song we were using, to see the bands original ideas and how we could twist them to provide a unique take on their work.

The internet was also used to broadcast our work to the world. We used sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud and youtube to show all sorts of people our work, in order to spread it around and gain feedback on our work. People could comment on Facebook and youtube about things they liked and things that needed improvement, and what we could do in the future. This is essential for small bands and companies such as our own, as no one will know of our existence, and we won't have the budget to advertise on media products such as billboards and television, whereas the internet is free as long as you can access it


We also used a variety of other media products during our production. One of these includes the editing software we used, Adobe Premier Pro. This program allowed us to upload the footage recorded with ease, and edit every detail of it until it was perfectly tailoured to our ideas. This made some of our ideas possible, as not only did the editing software made complex techniques possible, it also simplified them down to the point that new users could pick it up after a few hours practise. Using this software proved an essential aspect of our development, as it gave us the oppourtinity to test ideas to see if they worked or not, and allowed us to really finalise our work, rather than taking risks and not being able to see it first.

The camera was a digital camera, which allowed us to preview of cameras vision before recording, as well as watch the footage being recorded in action. It also allowed us to review footage after shooting it, to make sure we got the right footage, and that the footage we had was good enough. This helped the progress of our music video increase dramitcally, and proved a great help.


The final piece of software we used in our project was adobe Photoshop CS5. This software allowed us to edit the photos we took for our ancillary task. Using this, we turned our photos from colour to black and white, and made adjustments to the pictures, such as sharpening and blending, particularly around the hair and faces. We were also able to add text to our work, which was helpful for certain pictures of our digipak and our poster.

Without the internet, this blog and even this post would not have been availible. Blogger provided the tools needed to creat this blog, and other sites such as scribd and slideshare allowed us to put presentations on our work.  Without blogger, users would not be able to tracj iour development, and we wouldn't be able to pool our ideas together. Blogger creates a great template for feedback as well as development, seeing everything progress into a finished masterpiece. We created text posts, pictures, videos, presentations and much much more, all enhance and released to the world through blogger. It has been proven and invaluable tool, and our work would be of considerably worse quality without it.


We also used sites such as youtube to embed videos onto our work to show the viewers what music videos we're reseraching from.


Media technology played a huge role in our project, and it wouldn't be possible without them.

Evaluation overview

Now that we have finished creating our company, making our music video, and designing our poster and digipak designs, I can now evaluate this ears work to see what went well and what could have been improved on our product.  To do this, I will answer the following questions, relating them to my work where I can and noting both good and bad points.

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

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

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

Finished Poster

Finished DigiPak

DigiPak Planning-Photos

Not that we have a few shots, we have planned to make our DigiPak. We have decided to use the following photos

Digipak Comparisons

We have created out front cover of our digipak, shown below

To make sure this is sticking to our genre, we decided to check other bands pictures for referencing and clarification.

Below is our results

Blink 182 also used a black in white style with a plain background. They have also used a wall in a similar style to ours.



Although Panic! at the Disco have used a colour picture, they have used suits and ties as attire, similar to our own attire throughout the video and the DigiPak

Using Photoshop to edit our photos

When we tried to capture our main photos for our poster and digipak, we came across a few complications, including a conflict with brihgtness and sun exposure. To help conflict these problems, we decided to start using photoshop. I have had some experience with photoshop in the past, but nothing past creating simple images using basic tools. To improve our photos, we needed to remove shadow effects, as well as make the photo seem natural.

We first started by using the eyedropper tool to mimic the colour of the background, and try to blur the shadows into a similar colour to the background, however, the eyedropper tool was not advanced enough to mimic the texture of the wall, therefore only mimicking the colour slightly, and creating too much of a smudge effect, making it look like someone had drawn on it. This was undesirable, as the picture looked extrememly unprofessional.

We then decided to use the rectangular marquee tool to section a piece of the background off and try to fade it onto the shadow, making it look

Album Cover Photoshoot

Today we took a variety of  shots for our album cover, in uniform, to see how they looked. We were quie impressed with the results.

However, the sunlight was a big problem in the photos, as the shine distorted the colour, and made it look unprofessional. To combat this, we plan to change the pictures into black and white on photoshop.

Here are the pictures...

Ancillary poster designs- Test shots

After our research, we decided to take a few test shots, mimmicking the previous work of bands of our genre, in order to establish what worked for us and what didn't.

In this picture we are mimmicking one of Panic at the Disco!'s latest posters. We both decided that the picture was really effective, and worked really well combined with the background.

A close up of the picture

We also took some imitation photos, such as the one below, to establish if mimicking the band worked or not

Digipak StoryBoard

Now that we have finished our music video, we can start work on the ancillary tasks. We have jotted down some ideas for the digipak.

Finished Music video

Pilgrim Records Going Viral

Today, me and Niall created our facebook profile, in preparation for our music video release. As our only source of advertising and publishing is the internet, we believed that joining a social network would rapidly enhance our audience feedback, as our target audience are the people most likely to use facebook. From this page, fans can see our news, our music video and give us feedback about our work. This would be extremely beneficial for future work and direction, especially when including samples such as test shots, where fans would be able to judge for themselves whether they like the new work or not.

The facebook group was created to coincide with our music video launched. A screenshot is shown below

Ancillary Tasks - Reviewing previous work

For our Ancillary Tasks, we have to make a Digipak CD and Poster to advertise and promote the music video. The Digipak must include a CD, CD case and a leaflet contatining details such as song lyrics, or just pictures of the band.

Before we start creating our own versions of these reference materials, we decided to look at and review the bands versions of the digipak

 The Ballad of Mona Lisa Single DigiPak

Panic at the Disco! released The Ballad of Mona Lisa as a single, and as such, released a Digipak specifically for the song. The CD only had the one feature track present on it, which is unusal, as bands generally upload a few other, older tracks to the CD, or remixes of the single, in order to promote the single and allow fans to get more for their money.

The Cover art consists of simply the Bands Logo and the track name, on a navy blue background. The top right corner is ripped, and the logo and background give a Steampunky vibe, continuing the style of the badn and their latest album 'Vices and Virtues'

The official album with the track on was released later on, under the name 'Vices and Virtues'. It is the bands third studio album. The Album had 10 tracks present, with The Ballad of Mona Lisa being the first. The Artwork continues the Steampunk Theme, with Band member Brendon Urie and Spencer surrounded by strange equipment, as well as wierd actors. The bands logo is present in the top right of the album cover.

The posters released specifically for the album were few and far between, instead the band relying on third party posters and posters relating to the band in generally instead of its latest creation. The only poster directly reffering to the vices and virtues album consists of the CD artwork expanded to fit a bigger size format, and looks more like a movie advertising poster that one would find in a shop, than one for decorative purposes in someones house, though it could still be used for that purpose. Other posters include images of other albums, and pictures of the band together, such as below, though the example appears to have been released in a music magazine, possibly after abn inteview with said publishers.

There is also posters which involve only Brendon and Spencer, since the other members decided to resign from the band.

From the research provided, I believe the duo style poster would benefit our group fantastically, as there are only two of us in the group, as well as only one performer in the music video, meaning that there would be no need to have a whole band shot, since there is no band in our rendition.

For the digipak, we could provide either a similar style to the poster we make, or similar to the bands album cover.

Story Board and Ideas

Today we started putting our ideas onto paper and came up with a general overview of what we planned to do. This is to help form later ideas, and is influenced by our research.

The ideas for costume and style of performer.

The start of the shot storyboard

Adapting our ideas using Research

'Panic at the Disco! - The Ballad of Mona Lisa' Music Video Analysis

Changing our Song

After looking at our shots present, and discussing with our mentor about future plans, we decided that the footage we had already filmed was of unsatisfactory quality, and didn't adapt well to the editing program and the song track. This would cause us to have to re-shoot all of our work. It was then we decided to have a general look at our situation, and came to the conclusion that our ideas weren't strong enough to support the video and get a good grade, and the production of the video was not going as anticipated. This caused us to try and decide on a alternative, either replanning or starting again altogether.

We have decided it would be best to change our music video track. Although this would provide alot more work, including re planning, researching and the shooting of the music video, we believe this will strengthen our coursework, and as long as we put the work in, will be better off for it.
We have changed out song to 'The Ballad of Mona Lisa' By Panic at the Disco!

(Video)
For the rest of the day, we are going to plan out our music video, including a storyboard, to help progress as much as possible in what little time we had left. From then we will perform a little research, however, the bands are in simila genere's, if no only a slightly different, and the research we already performed would apply to the new track iswell. This mean't that the learning side of the research was pretty much already completed, only referecning and showing proof of development was needed.

The lesson after we will start filming...

Next Steps

Now that the examination revision has finished, we can focus solely on our coursework portfolio. Reviewing what we have done so far, we have decided that we need to make a few improvements to our variety of things.

 First of these things is our shot quality, as there are some shots that need to be improved to fit in naturally with the rest of the video, as well as sync up with the music track. There also needs to be more variety, which has been caused by both lack of shots planned and some shots going missing while uploading to the computer. To combat this, we plan to film a variety of new shots, including a close up of the bassist, to help provide a whole rotation of the band, as well as effective and high quality shots of all the band members close up with their instruments. We also plan to film a extreme close up of birth the Guitar and Bass guitar, to show the band playing them, mainly for the intro of the music video. This will help provide variety to the video, and is also a common convention in the punk rock genre, as the artists play their own instruments, allowing themselves to show off their playing to their fans.

We have also planned where and when to fit narrative shots into our music video, where the performance shots are weakest, but this may have to change when we acquire our new performance shots.

After this is done, we can progress forward to film and mould our narrative shots. Before we start this operation, we should research into similar music videos, to see the different ways we can tell the story, and how we can mix in it with our performance shots, using special effects. We will then have to storyboard our ideas out to provide an effective plan, to make sure the same mistake doesn't happen, and we get effective shots first time. The storyboard should include our ideas, what shot types we can use, and what locations we can film in. Providing a variety of opportunities to film will help us film faster and filming in more locations will help us provide the most effective shots.

While this is happening, during times when we are unable to film, we can focus on our Ancillary tasks. We have to create both a music CD and a poster promoting the single. This will be the way our track gets attention, and therefore will have to have a clear message about what genre and style it is, while attracting the target audience to our track. This again will require research into other bands methods, to see what ideas we can use and mix up. We can then perform several drafts and show it to people, and see if they can tell us what genre they think the track is, and how effective is the poster in attracting interest. We can then use this to improve and make a final draft. We can then do the same for the CD track.

In summary, over th next few months, we have to complete the following

1) Re-shoot some performance shots
2) Research into our narrative shots
3) Storyboard our Narrative ideas and filming locations
4) film the narrative shots
5) Research ideas for poster and music cd
6) plan ideas for poster and music cd
7) Make drafts and show them to fellow students for feedback
8) Re-draft and finish final poster.

Auidence Theorists

AUDIENCE THEORY

When you look at your target audience, you need to recognise and adapt to the way they think, the consumer theorem. A few examples include

"The entire world's a stage and the men and the women are merely players."-This states that the audience is heavily manipulated and brainwashed to buy certain products, join certain trends, and perform activities they wouldn’t normally do. This could be used in something as harmless as product advertising, but also something as dangerous as politician propaganda.

THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE “The media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who as a powerless mass, have little choice but to accept.” We get ideas about life from the things we watch, for example someone who watched something violent might go do something violent.

THE CULMINATION THEORY Watching one violent movie won’t affect or influence us, but years and years of watching violent material will make you less sensitive to violence, even to the point of embracing it.

TWO STEP FLOW Another argument suggests that the average human will experience a media product on their own, but will then join a mass group to discuss what they watched, and share opinions, which in turn can influence people in their own opinions about the piece.

USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY We make the choices about what we watch, we also have certain expectations, we expect to be gratified by what we have watched. The types are as followed... Information Entertainment Personal identity Social empathy/social personal interest Escapism This may be more relevant to a short film project, however in our music video there will still be a strong element of narrative and despite the fact we are using song, we have chosen a song which tells a very clear story from start to finish.