Final Digipak!

This is our final digipak, and we are overly proud of ourselves for what we have achieved and produced! Beforehand, we hadn't added any text onto our digipak, therefore in order to make the digipak look as professional as possible, we added certain pieces of text to certain images to enhance the professional world of music.

Firstly, we added the title of our album, just underneath where it says 'Polar Collective'. This needed to be done, as we couldn't just call the album the name of the band. We chose the name 'Snakes & Ladders' because it created a random, yet quirky effect to the album, flourishing the randomness of the album itself. It is also originally the name of Polar Collective's album, therefore enhancing and publicising their music.

Secondly, on the top middle picture, we chose to write out the chorus to the song 'Weather girl'. We done this on several reasons, the main reason being that it is the song of our choice, and our target audience are more able to recognise the lyrics from our music video.

And thirdly, in the bottom middle picture, we chose to write out a caption from Polar Collective, in which it will inspire their fans and other people. The message is inspiring them to carry on the indie genre, so in ways it may be hinting for them to support indie genre more, or even to other people, it may inspire them to develop their own.

Evaluation Question Four; Prezi

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

Evaluation Question Three; Discussion

"What have you learnt from your audience feedback?"

This is our film discussion about our Final Cut Video, in which we talk about the audience feedback we received and how that effected our video. We discuss how we had taken into account the feedback we had received, and how we had changed a few certain things, which created a bigger impact on our Final Cut Video.

Evaluation Question Two; Extranormal

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

Evaluation Question Three
by: Beckiyoungs

Evaluation Question One; Commentary

"In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

The commentary added on top of our final cut video, implies our response to question one. With our commentary, we have mentioned the conventions in which we believe we have used effectively within, and our reasons for these decisions.

Not only have we mentioned what went well, and our strong points towards our final cut video, but we have also mentioned what went wrong, and how we could of improved. We have also discussed what we could of been done differently, which may of had a different impact on the final cut video. 

FINAL CUT VIDEO; POLAR COLLECTIVE - WEATHER GIRL

This is our final cut video for our chosen song 'Weather Girl' by Artist Polar Collective. We are very proud of our finished production, and believe we have worked well as a team to achieve the video we have created. It has taken a lot of time in general, to produce ideas, think of the mise-en-scene (props, lighting), create a narrative, film the footage, and most importantly edit it altogether to produce the final production. Overall, all of the time and effort we have put in together has been worth it!

Audience Feedback

In order to gain feedback from our fellow students amongst our class, I conducted a short questionnaire in which I handed out, for them to fill in whilst they watched our Music video. We wanted to receive as much feedback as possible, to make sure that if there were any small tweaks we could make to the video, in order for it to be overall better, we could apply them before submitting our final cut production.  Below is the feedback we got off our audience.

1. On a scale of 1-10, how effective is the lighting and why?
8- Each scene has a decent amount of lighting. In particular, the scene when Sam is playing the guitar comes across very effective as you are able to see a reflection of the guitar.

2. Do you think our music video targets our target audience appropriately and efficiently? and why?
Yes it does, as it portrays stereotypical aspects of the teenage audience through the use of mise en scene, and it also portrays certain images which would only communicate well to the teenage audience. Not only this, but the lifestyle of Sam portrayed within the video, may emphasise on the lifestyle of a typical teenager.

3. Does our music video match the indie genre? and why?
Yes it does. The use of clothing within the mise en scene has been used appropriately, as the clothes symbolise an aspect of the indie look.

4. On a scale of 1-10, how effective is the lip syncing?
The lip syncing is very good in some scenes, however in others, the lip syncing becomes shaky, which makes it unclear on what Sam is singing. This is something you should concentrate mostly on, as it is an important feature on flourishing the star image.

5. Is there anything that doesn't work well, and therefore needs to be changed?
No. However, it would be wise to include more snapshots of Barbie and Sam together, to create more of a narrative and 'love story' between them.

6. Do we meet any of Andrew Goodwin's theories? if so, why?
You have met the use of using both narrative and uses of performance to portray within your music video. With the use of Barbie, this has created a quirky narrative, whilst continuing to flourish the performance side of things, with Sam sat on his bed playing the guitar. This makes your video more interesting as it flickers between the both, therefore engaging the viewer all throughout.

With the feedback we received from our audience, we are going to apply the responses to our video, in which we will take into consideration any changes that were suggested by them, as a way of improving our video.

Poster/Advert

This is our finished poster/advert for Polar Collectives album "Snakes&Ladders". By studying many other posters/adverts, for example; Ellie Goulding and her 'Lights' advert, we took from them many different ideas, and collided them all into one. However, without noticing it on other posters/adverts, we thought of the idea of presenting the 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' logos on the poster, to increase the amount of advertisement flourished, and also to increase their fan base. The logo's are targeted specifically to their target audience, to enhance their followers, and to also cheekily use it as a way of publishing their market through peer-to-peer to engage more people into listening to their music and thereby purchasing their music.

We got the idea of the short quotes, by looking through music magazines, in which we thought as a group, it was effective, and gave the audience positive feedback, in which was more likely to push the audience to buy their music. We used the quote by Q 'the next indie sensation' on purpose, to reflect Polar Collectives genre, to give an insight of what their music was based around. We felt that this was very important, as it is able to engage all the indie lovers out there. Not only that, but we felt it was necessary, to make sure no one is mislead into thinking they're a different type of genre; therefore receiving negative feedback, which could lead to online peer-to-peer negative comments being caused, in which would put a negative stigma onto the band; losing its fan base. However, we have used the quote from NME in which it is has given the band 3 *** by saying Polar Collective are a "Raw.Unique.Talent". As their music has a slight twist of quirkiness to it, we felt it was right to say "Unique" as they're in several ways. We also felt it was right to say "Raw" as it isn't very often that you come across quirky bands like Polar Collective. If a member of the audience was to see this, and may not of been an indie fan, they may give the album a listen, just to see if they are what NME state as being a "Raw.Unique.Talent" in which could either turn out really well or really badly.

Just below the text saying 'Polar Collective' we have advertised that the band will be touring soon. We have done this as a teaser to their fan base, to keep them entertained and almost attached to them, to ensure that their fan's don't lose an interest in them. This also comes to an advantage with the 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' logos, as it means that their audience will keep a close eye on them, to see when they release their tour date.

Overall, I am very proud of my group for creating such an excellent poster/advert. All of our hard work of researching posters/adverts and searching through magazines has paid off. However, although our poster is looking very professional, there may be a few more things to add, such as an 'Itunes' logo, to ensure that our audience knows where they can purchase Polar collectives music from, and also a 'Youtube' logo, to enable people to be able to share their music, thereby increasing their fan base, and therefore increasing their marketing profit.

Digipak

This is our Digipak so far. By using photoshop in order to create and edit our Digipak, we finally got to terms with the programme, and completed our digipak successfully, ensuring all the images that we had chosen before hand, were edited into the finished production. As we weren't too confident with photoshop, it took us up to 5 hours to complete this, in which I'm glad we took so long, as it wasn't rushed, and it gave us time to rearrange pictures, giving ourselves time to think amongst eachother what worked well and what didn't. As we gave ourselves time to think, we also came up with more ideas, which in fact worked out better than our original ideas.

To begin with, we used the bottom middle photo as our front cover. It wasn't until we got feedback from other members in our class, that we actually realised that our chosen front cover picture stood out more, and met the conventions of music overall; the Star Image holding the light as a microphone, therefore linking the idea of music. Not only this, but it also enhanced the quirkiness of our band, along with the rest of our chosen photos, by using the rubber ducks and silly string, to create an unusual and random, yet funky look. We decided to go with the whole random idea, to reflect on our target audiences personalities and interests.

Overall, I believe our digipak looks awesome, however there is still work to be done to it. By researching other artists digipaks, we noted that the majority of them either have lyrics in them, or have some sort of description or information packed inside about the band. At the moment, we have decided to do both, however after doing both, we may change our minds depending on how the digipak looks, thereby resulting in either one or the other.

Audience Feedback from our Digipak: (15 people) (1-10)

1.How effective is our use of star image?
    -average score 9
2.How well does it use the conventions of the indie/pop genre?
    -average score 10
3.Does it show continuity between the digipak and our music video?
    -average score 8.5
4.How effective/engaging is our front cover?
    -average score 10
sophie: "the front cover is amazing, it really highlights sams face as well as being different but fun at the same time"
5.How professional does our digipak look?
     -average score 9
 A way to improve would be by putting the lyrics onto the digipak for an extra effect for our target audience.

Changes to Poster

By flicking through the images we had previously taken for our digipak, we came across this image, in which we thought was excellent. By getting some feedback back from the other members of our class, we settled on a decision of using this photo instead of the other one we had previously chosen. This was because, it produces an effective source of lighting, in which only lights up Sam's face by the source of a light bulb. As we are publishing Polar Collectives album, we only felt it was right to produce a poster, which reflected on the music industry, and linked well to music in general. Therefore by Sam using the lightbulb as a microphone, we felt this worked fantastically well with the type of idea that we wanted to create, advertising not only the band, but also flourishing to their target audience, Goodwins theory of the Star Image. As Sam is looking and smiling at the camera, this really engages the audience as it almost welcomes them. With the background also being similar to the background in their music video 'Weather Girl', people are more likely to be aware of the background, and therefore are more likely to recognise them as being the fun, random and quirky band that they are in the music video, which will draw people into liking them more, and thereby listening and purchasing their music.

Photoshop

To be able to create both our Digipak & our Advert/poster, we need to come to terms with how to use a certain programme, called Photoshop. Photoshop is a programme in which people are able to upload either pictures or videos to edit them to quite possibly the highest standards. 

To begin with, we started on our Digipak, in which we used the template placed above to help us with locating the chosen pictures into place. To begin with, we thought we had to drag each picture into the highlighted sections, however there was a certain technique which was taught to us by our teacher. Once we had edited two pictures into the template, we had got the hang of it, and thereby continued comfortably until the end. 

As the pictures we had taken with the camera before hand were of a smaller frame to the sizes of the frames in the digipak frame, we came across a tool called 'Clone Stamp Tool'. Basically this tool enabled us to copy a small snippet of the image, and paste it to the original image, to increase the size of it, instead of increasing the size manually which would make the picture blurred. 

This worked fantastically well, as it solved all our problems for the images being too small. It also became un-noticeable when looking at the image, therefore it isn't pointed out when looking at our Digipak. 

Poster/Advert/Inspiration

As we still need to create our poster/advert, we have finally chosen our photo in which we feel portrays the star image successfully. With the guitar being covered in silly string and grafitti, and a beer bottle being placed underneath it, we felt this linked to the quirkiness of our music video, and mostly targeted our chosen target audience to the best quality that it could.

By looking at other posters/adverts of other artists, we came across a poster/advert of Ellie Goulding advertising her album 'Lights'. We really liked the way in which her body faded into black at the bottom of the advertisement, which gave space for text to be added on. This gave an effective look, as the writing came across more bold against the dark background, therefore making it stand out more, which is how we would like ours to.

She also has quotes added onto her poster/advert which have been made by other people, to give a positive response to her album. This is something we are going to look into, by researching more about it through music magazines and other posters/adverts, to see whether it is popular amongst other artists, deciding on whether we should add it to ours or not.

To create our poster/advert, we will be using a programme called Photoshop, in which we will create a template for our advertisement.

Original Digipak idea

When looking through the clips that we hadn't used, I came across a certain piece of footage that I thought was very effective. I then paused the clip at a certain aspect, in which I screenshot' the image, which gave us the picture above. To begin with, I thought this was an excellent image that we could use for the front cover of our Digipak, however, when receiving feedback from our fellow classmates, we realised that the picture would be a lot better if the bottom of the rubber ducks weren't cut off. Our audience also asked what the purpose of the umbrella was, in which we didn't know ourselves. Therefore we felt that the best thing to do, was to take certain aspects of the picture, and capture another picture, noting the changes which needed to be made. 

Below is the photo for our digipak which we made changes to. As we were disappointed that the bottom of the ducks were cut out in the other picture, we made sure that we lowered the camera enough to fit each and every duck in. We also got rid of the umbrella, as we didn't see the purpose in having it, and instead focused Sam's focus on the rubber ducks, instead of focusing direct towards the camera. We also edited the colour, to make it have a more quirky and indie look towards it, therefore meeting the conventions of an indie genre. 

Overall, in my opinion, I am very proud for what my group has created. When getting audience feedback, the whole class, including the teacher said they preferred this idea, compared to our first idea. This is great news, as it proves that the little things we have changed, have made a huge impact on our audience.