Evaluation Question 1

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

We used and developed many conventions and theories as well as challenge others to ensure our band was modern and original as well as familiar enough to appeal to our different audiences. Some real media products I used include Tonight Alive, Paramore and Imagine Dragons as well as many others.

We researched female fronted bands as well as rock/electro bands in general to create the We Fall Apart brand.

The female lead singers tended to either be extremely sexualised (Amy Lee from Evanescence) or slightly more reserved (Hayley Williams from Paramore). Also, female fronted bands would have all male instrumentalists, and that's something we wanted to challenge by having a female drummer. We also noticed that the lead singers were white, and that's something we also wanted to explore and challenge by having an Indian lead singer.

From our research into narrative, we wanted to convey a narrative that was structured around cultural studies on star phenomena, global icons and popularity as well as what those effects are on society and in our audience.

The popstar is generalized to comply with many pop genre conventions from pop music videos to their lifestyles. These are presented in the gif underneath.

The narrative is packed with information about the pop star, the many scenes all add to the overall atmosphere so audiences would want to make sure they saw everything which would result in watching more than once.

This is a Prezi of how we used Goodwin's Theory in our music video:

     

In addition to Goodwin's Theory, this is a video on how we implemented Vernallis’ Theory:

Sven E. Carlsson stated that often in performance movies the performer becomes absorbed in the performance, losing their identity. He said 'he or she is a materialization of the commercial exhibitionist. He or she is a monger of their own body image, selling everything to be in the spotlight - selling voice, face, lifestyle, records, and so on'.

We explore this theory as We Fall Apart's lead singer dramatizes it through the pop star in the narrative. We contrast the life of the pop star with the rock star.


   Website

We looked at websites of female fronted bands and electro bands such as Evanescence, Imagine Dragons, Paramore, Enter Shikari and Tonight Alive for conventions that we should include. This mind map summarizes some of the most common features and how we implemented them in our website.

To go more in depth, as the website acts as a hub serving the entire campaign, we followed conventions by:

• promoting the record label

Our website

Evanescence

• Symbiosis with other brands. 

Symbiosis between We Fall Apart and Alternative Press - exposure
for us, magazine space filled for them

Symbiosis between Paramore and Hot Topic by having
'exclusive' merchendise.

       

      Digipak

We researched female fronted rock bands and their debut albums as well as electro rock bands so that we could see what conventions we could use and develop when it came to album covers.

   
   

As a debut band, we wanted to comply with the convention of a female fronted rock band of portraying the lead singer in the front cover, but from an electro band perspective, it was common to use abstract imagery to connote a brand.

As we were trying to appeal to both audiences, we applied conventions we saw in both. For example, we kept the lead singer as the image in our front cover, but created a sense of anonymity and strong imagery with the purple paint and the top half of the face being cut.

There were  conventions visible throughout all the albums though, that we complied with  to ensure we created an album that would comply with record label needs. This is a table portraying those conventions.

Conventions we researched and included

Band name      Album title      Artist/Band photo      Key iconography/ visual motif      Typeface      Record logo      Barcode      Website      QR Code      Tracklist      Product code      Place of manufacture      Copyrights      Release date

       

 

Evaluation Question 2

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

I believe the combination of our ancillary and main texts are particularly effective when it comes to a synergistic 360 degree campaign. Nowadays, it is crucial to promote an artist or band through an integrated, cross-platform campaign and also to ensure that the brand message is constant on each platform. We challenged some conventions commonly used by other bands, however, which I will reflect on.

While planning, we wanted to make sure our brand was very clear through aspects like iconography and colour scheme throughout all of our texts. Synergy was very important to keep in mind as these are texts of a debut band, so a clear identity was fundamental.

The website is the central hub of all aspects of the campaign. Here fans can find out news, access social networks and see photos and videos. This means it's important for the website to look similar to other ancillary texts and the music video to familiarize audiences with our brand image. 

The purple was a significant aspect of our campaign as it was central to our synergistic plan for all of the texts. For example the logo is seen throughout the texts.  

We also included reoccurring triangles throughout the website and the album cover to add to our iconography and to have more modern imagery to appeal to younger audiences.

We created character identities for each band member so that we could each have individual personalities that would keep the audience interested and it was important to keep that constant throughout.

For example, these are the short biographical sections about each band member in the website.

Something we didn't see in our research, but thought was a good addition to our brand message, is that each band member has hobbies that reflect their personalities. To appeal to fans, we decided to manifest these qualities in the music video by having the band members have cameos in the narrative. For example Alec is known for taking selfies, so in the music video he's a superfan of Dani California taking a selfie with her in the fan signing scene. Luke is more serious so he takes on the authoritative rule of the director in the music video scene and Chloe is very interested in fashion, so she is Dani California's make up artist in the photoshoot scene. Dani from We Fall Apart, as she is the lead singer, plays Dani California.

Alec's cameo

Chloe's Cameo

Luke's Cameo

This Prezi references real combinations of main and ancillary texts for similar bands to ours and compares them to us.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our focus groups and web-based online surveys, that we conducted after we finished all the texts, with multiple audiences that ranged from primary to secondary and more, we expected to have understood and satisfied the uses and gratifications of our targeted demographics. We realized though, that some audiences seeked different things to what we had originally regarded.

We initially created audience profiles to help us during research and planning.

We had many ways available for audiences to send us their feedback. This includes feedback sessions where we recorded them talking about the music video, questionnaires on the music video and on the website and album cover.

The feedback session allowed us to gain qualitative feedback from primary and secondary audiences and discuss different aspects of the music video with the audience directly. We asked a range of questions ranging from talking about general likes and dislikes of the video, to questions about whether the music video inspired them to visit the website or generally learn more about the band which would help us understand whether we had a successful campaign or not.                                                                                        
We realised that our purple iconography was successful and the people we asked pointed it out as something they saw and remembered. 

The main criticism we received was that we hadn't differentiated the narrative from the performance enough. This meant that it was harder for the audience to understand what was going on at times, which in turn, meant that they could not suspend their disbelief fully in the diegesis.

Primary Audience Comments

This is a summary of all the comments our targeted primary audience offered us after the screening.

From these comments, I realized that:

• They all wanted to watch the music video again
• Most of them liked and understood the narrative
• They paid attention and enjoyed the costumes/props and settings. 
• Although they many not have entered the diegesis immediately, they understood the pop star and her story.

We also held a large screening and created a survey online to gain quantitative feedback. 

From these results we can see that:

• The narrative was followed well enough by all of the audience.
• Band identity was prominent, noticed by mostly all.
• They all liked the video in general.
• Most said they would at least consider buying the song after watching the music video.
• Most would watch the video again.

From this feedback, I can see that there is room for improvement in the music video when considering the narrative especially. Although the general audience thought the narrative could be followed, I feel like we could have introduced it better and it seems the introduction we included to achieve this was not good enough. I would re-evaluate this if I remade the music video.

WEBSITE

When it came to our website, the survey I conducted gave very clear answers to a few important questions.

Everyone that answered appeared happy with the navigational abilities of the website.

It seems that although we spent a lot of time creating an impacful brand with our colour scheme and imagery, we should have spent more time creating a more visually appealing website. We could have included a larger variety of shades of purple and reduced the clutter of the home page.

Most people thought the website had everything someone would expect from such a site.

Finally, I asked if they liked the website over all, and they all seemed happy to say yes.

ALBUM ART

Throughout the focus groups and surveys we conducted in real life, we also showed the audience the four panels of our album to see what they thought.

Here are some examples:

Do you think this represents an electro/rock album well?
Most people said they definitely saw the electro aspect, but they didn't get the rock side. They lent more towards pop but some said that considering this is a mixture of both genres, the album cover does justify the concept.

Do you notice similarities between the album and the music video/website?
All the people asked noticed the purple and the triangles meaning that our branding was successful in a sense as they remembered the purple from all texts and also the triangle shapes in our website.

Would the album stand out in a shop?
Most people said yes, the conceptual aspect of the anonymous face and paint is something that appeals to them and they would find interesting. They also liked the triangles in the foreground of our inside left panel. This represents the needs of a contemporary audience that we didn't know we had portrayed, although we aspired to a similar goal. 

Can you rate the album out of 10?
Out of all the scores, we got an average of 8, with some people commenting that the imagery inside, although fun and visually striking, did not represent the genre well enough. This is interesting as we wanted to portray each band member as an individual, but it seems we could improve on that aspect.


Conclusion

As most people wanted to look up the band online, and also enjoyed the websites and album art, the aim of persuading audiences to spend their money or at least lead them towards that path was successful.  as each of our products in turns promoted each other though a synergistic campaign.

From the feedback we gathered, I can see that we targeted the correct audience demographic and understood the needs of a contemporary audience. Although, as our narrative was the bases for pleasing such contemporary audiences, showing them the music video more than once and asking what they noticed each time would have helped us understand what our target audiences picked out each time so we could see what we could have changed to intentionally present to them what we wanted them to see first.

Evaluation Question 4

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

This table summarizes how we used new media technologies throughout the project:

Stage	What new media we used and how we used it.
Research + Planning	·         Web 2.0 – Research bands, videos ·         Youtube/Last.fm – find music videos ·         Wikipedia/websites – Learn about theories and conventions. ·         Facebook/Twitter – Research  social media integration
Construction	·         Sony HVR V1E – film our music video ·         Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr – create our social media accounts for our band ·         Canon 5D Mark II – Take pictures for our merchandise/gallery and used in the photoshoot scene. ·         Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 – Create merchandise/ Logo/ album cover. ·         Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 – Edit our music video ·         Blue Yeti mic. – Record introduction to music video.
Evaluation	·         Blue Yeti mic. – Used to record voice-over for videos ·         Prezi – Used to present information visually and more interactively ·         Vine – Used to portray information fast ·         Youtube – Used to portray a mixture of voice and visual elements ·         Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 – Used to create videos and gifs ·         Blogger – Portray Evaluation ·         Padlet/ SurveyMonkey – Visually portray audience feedback.

During planning, as well as having group meetings in real life, to communicate online we used programs such as skype and facebook.














Once we had an idea of genre and style, we wanted to find a song that we could implement our ideas to. We used web 2.0 with sites such as last.fm to find less mainstream songs that wouldn't already have a music video.

Once we found the song we wanted to use, we used Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 to create a visual breakdown of our music video.




This allowed us to present our idea to actors that would then understand what we are aiming for stylistically as well as the general chronology of the video.

We then began testing out lighting for the performance.

We used the Sony HVR V1E camera for the lighting test as we planned to use that for the real music video.

 We decided to use the ARRI Redhead 300k floor lights so that we could create lens flares that added atmosphere and made the video more interesting and more high concept.

The roof lights we used were ARRI Redhead 1000k and to have an idea of how we wanted to light our performance as well as narrative scenes further, we created bird-eye-view maps of the lighting setup on Photoshop CS5.5.



After shooting our music video, we used premiere pro to grade and edit our music video.

This video shows how we used high speed cross cutting to comply with conventions of editing to the music.



Here we explain how we stuttered certain shots in the narrative so that the editing would be different than in the performance.



With grading, as we had used the same camera, our variation in grading different shots was only based on the lighting (whether it was high or low key lighting).

Website:

Interactivity was important when creating the website, so used new media technologies such as QR codes that increased the platforms people could view the website from. This includes technologies with a camera that would be able to scan a QR code such as smartphones and tablets.















For Web 2.0, we also integrated social networks into our website to allow for easy access to multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Digipak:

We used photoshop initially to create mock ups of our front and back cover. This allows us to get images from Google and other websites for a more realistic plan of what we wanted.
















In the final version we included interactive web 2.0 features like a QR Code. With this, we developed the convention of having the website included in the back cover, as instead people can just scan the QR Code and get taken straight to the website as technological convergence allows systems like smartphones to be able to scan the QR code.