My product challenges the forms and conventions of real media products,
I wanted to show the lighter side of hip-hop music and show that all hip-hop artists aren't crime and gang orientated and that it isn't all dark and devious, so I didn't make the digipack or advert with dark colours I used a colour scheme consisting of sky blue background colour and black text, because it stood out on the background.
I feel that this made an effective digipack and advert because all the text stood out as well as being readable, it also was bright and eye catching, I did this so if someone saw the album cover in a store they would be attracted to it and go see what it is or who its buy.
I also challenged the forms and conventions in my advert, because I made an advert that is not an extension of the album cover it is a separate picture with a small picture of the album at the bottom of the ad, I took inspiration from Adele's album advert for '21'.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of my Main products and ancillary products is very effective because the music video fits in with the album digipack I made and the advert fits in with the digipack.
The music video is for a song called touch the sky so naturally I called the album touch the sky, in the music video I used quite a few skyline shots so I put this to use in the making of the digipack, I took pictures of the skyline and some clouds and used them in the creation of my digipack, I used a picture of a cloud for my front cover because it blended with the Album name 'touch the sky', I then used the album cover to set my theme and colour scheme, blue backgrounds and black text in the font of Batangche. I followed this theme throughout my digipack and my advert.
My advert was different to the norm, instead of making an ad out of my album cover I made an album cover using a picture of the artist and added some black text to the blue background and cut out a section at the bottom of the ad and inserted the album cover with a release date, I added Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Spotify logos to the advert so people know where the artists music and pages are available and comments from magazines and newspapers, this was shown by the example of the Adele '21' advert, which was my inspiration for the idea, I put on the blog post with my finished advert. I also added a QR code that, if scanned, takes the scanner to the music video on youtube.
I feel like I followed a constant theme through out my products, it is shown more in some rather than others, and that was the use of the sky, the colour blue and black text.
I tried to show the different side of hip-hop music and show that it all isn't about gangs, drugs and crime. I wanted to show that hip-hop music has a lighter side and feel like I showed this effectively with my products.
Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
I conducted a survey using a website called surveymonkey and it gives feedback in easy to understand tables and from my feedback I have learnt that:
People would take an interest and look at the digipack if they bought the album, this shows that I used photos and editors effectively to meet my goal of a good digipack.
Over 60% of people would buy the album based on the front and back covers, I should have asked a following question her to find out why the other 30+% would not.
From the question I asked below that the digipack is bright, colourful and attracts the eye, one person also commented on the use of my blue and black colour scheme, this shows that i made a good digipack that would attract people to it if they saw it in store.
Everyone would buy my album after reading the reviews given, this shows that adding reviews to my advert makes a difference to how people see it and would consider buying it.
Out of the choices show below most people said my advert was effective but the rest said that they had neutral feelings about it, I should have asked a follow up question to find out why they had their feelings about it.
I also found out that my advert was effective but lacks something and that the reviews I used swayed some people towards the argument but the use of Nuts magazine put someone off because in their words it is a 'sexual orientated' magazine.
I showed people my music video and asked for comments on it and most were positive, for example a few people said that it was well performed by the actors and that they couldn't spot any faults with it, one person congratulated my group on the editing techniques used and the use of shots that connect to the lyrics.
Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Construction:
I used new media technologies in the construction part of all 3 of my products.
For example I used iMovie in the production of my music video I had a better understanding on how to use iMovie because this is the A2 course so I knew how most of the tools worked and had a better understanding of software, this assisted me in the construction of my music video.
This year I used some tools that I didn't use last year such as the ken burns tool at the end of my music video to slowly zoom into the sun, I wouldn't have been able to do that without the use of iMovie.
I used Adobe Photoshop and Pixlr editor, a online photo editor, to make my digipack and advert, these 2 photo editors had tools specific to them so I used both editors on each photo I edited to make the pictures more dynamic and make the pictures unique and interesting.
Research and Planning:
During the research stage of my music video I used Slideshare to show my audience profile and research about Kanye West, these helped me with the planning stage of my products.
I used YouTube to make the animatic for my music video and of course I used blogger all the way throughout the course for my blog.
I used blogger to script the evaluation of my years coursework.
All the new media technologies I used assisted me to making an effective advert, digipack and music video.
