Evaluation Question #2

 This is my answer to Evaluation Question #2. I decided to use Popplet in order to answer this question which was:

2). How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts 
(DVD digipak, Magazine advert)?

In case any of the content doesn't show up, here is a web address link to my answer:

http://popplet.com/app/#/2425041

Evaluation Question #1

This is my Prezi Presentation for Evaluation Question #1 which is:

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


In case any of the content doesn't work, here is the web address link to my answer:

https://prezi.com/q3eam6elk-sa/evaluation-question-1/

Audience Feedback

After finishing all of our production pieces (music video, digipak and magazine advert), we decided to show all 3 of our productions pieces to 3 of our other classmates in order to get some audience feedback. We wanted to find out what others liked about our productions pieces, and whether we was effective at producing our tasks.

The 7 questions that we asked were:

1. What did you like about our music video?
2. On a scale of 1-10, how effective is the pace of editing compared to the beat of the song?
3. How effective is our use of costumes in the music video?
4. How could we have improved our music video?
5. Who do you think the target audience is for our music video?
6. Do you think the combination of the music video, magazine advert and digipak presents our band with a unique image?
7. If you saw the magazine advert and digipak together, would you think that they are for the same album and artist?

This was the feedback that we received. 

Constructing The Digipak

Back Panel of Digipak

The first panel that we decided to work on when producing our digipak was the back panel. For this, we wanted the panel to contain 4 pictures of the back of all the group members heads. We decided on this because it would match the front of the digipak. Originally, we had the idea of having contrasting black and white colours. As you can see, Alanta in the top left corner has a white background, whereas Freddie in the top right corner has a black background. We originally thought this would be a good idea as it would show off our bands image.

After doing this, we decided to have a put a black border to put around the 4 pictures. We would do this so we would have space to put the QR Code and few other bits of information.

However, after reviewing this panel, we found that there was a few colour problems. For example, Alex in the bottom left corner, we felt that it didn't really look right, and it looked too superficial. Also, Freddie's hair was white which was totally false so we decided to alter the colours again. We found the contrast that we wanted as seen on the photo on the right.

We then applied this contrast effect to all 4 pictures on the panel so it kept a consistent feel to the digipak. We felt that this looks much better then the design idea that we had before. After this, we put the names of different songs on the back as this is a typical feature of digipaks. To finish, we wanted to make our back panel look more professional. To do this, we added a barcode of which would be scanned when customers buy the product. Customers could also use a QR Code Reader/Scanner which would take them to the bands website. We then decided to have a copyright logo with the name of a company. We ended the panel with the website of the copyright company.





Front of Digipak 

The next panel we decided to create was the front panel. As the back panel of our digipak contained the back of our heads, we decided that the front of our digipak should show our faces. As you can see from the album cover on the right, we was heavily inspired by the band "No Doubt" with their album "Push and Shove".










We adopted a similar kind of style for our digipak front panel. However, we slightly altered their idea of having a white and black background, and we stuck with having white backgrounds for all 4 pictures. This maintains consistency. We used similar toning settings as in the back panel, but we made the images sharper in order to make us stand out more at which I felt we was successful at.

After we was happy with the how the pictures looked, we then added the same black border around the images. This keeps a consistent feel to the digipak as we also used a black border for the back panel. We was able to use this black border in order to put the artists name at the top, and then put the album name at the bottom.










Inside Panels of Digipak 

After completing the front and back panels of the digipak, we then decided that we should work on the 3 inside panels. For this, we wanted to keep a consistent idea of where we could apply across all 3 panels, instead of having separate ideas on the 3 panels. For this, we decided to fill the whole 3 panels with shots of our band. We have shots of as a group and individual shots of all band members.

We decided to go with this idea as it fits in with the montage idea of which we used in our music video. We also decided to use black borders around each of the pictures as it keeps with our consistency of using black borders in the front and back panels. It also makes our pictures look presentable.

We then decided to edit the pictures so that they were a bit darker which would match the theme of front and back panels of the digipak. After that, we added a CD Impression. This would show where the CD would go. As you can see, we made it slightly transparent so you can still see the pictures behind the impression.


Last Digipak Panel 

The last panel that we had to produce was the panel which shows on the outside, and is between the front panel and the back panel. We noticed from researching other digipaks that this panel never usually had much on it, just because of its placement. As a result of this, we decided to use a very simple idea of having a group picture of the band. We used the same black and white settings that we had used in our back digipak panel. We, again used a black border around this panel in order to achieve consistency. For effect, we then decided to find fonts using www.dafont.com . We wanted to find fonts that looked like signatures so we could add them to this panel so that it had a good purpose. We feel that the fonts that we chose work well, and give the panel a professional signature look.

Finished Digipak (Individual Panels)

Digipak Decision - Black and White or Colour?

Colour 

Black and White

Constructing The Magazine Advert

Before we could create our magazine advert, we had to plan different things that we would use in the advert. The first element that we had to decide on would be the main picture that we would use for our advert. We wanted to create a mood that we are a serious band, but that we have elements of fun in us as well. Also, as we are an alternative rock band, a typical band picture would be the band against the wall, of which we used for our magazine advert. We narrowed our pictures down to 2 of which we liked, but ultimately, decided to use the second picture.







The second element that we decided to plan was the font that we was going to use for the advert. We felt that this would be very important because we have to make sure that we choose a font that is suitable for the style  

of music video that we have already created. We wanted to choose a font which dictates a level of seriousness, but fun at the same time. We used the website "www.dafont.com" in order to find the font that we feel would be most suitable for our video. Screenshots on the left show some of the different fonts that we considered as a group. We would look through many of the different fonts available, and then choose which one we thought was best. We typed in our band name "Remember December" in order to get a preview of what it would look like. After much debating within the group, we finally decided on the font "Bebas Neue" which is the top screenshot. We feel that this font was the most suitable font as it achieves the goals that we needed our font to be, which was to be serious but fun at the same time.

The third element that we had to decide would be what other pictures we could use for our magazine advert. This would show places of where our album would be available to buy and download so that people could actually listen to our album. By doing this, it would make people aware of where they could listen to our album, and it also made our magazine advert look much more professional. We decided to include well known names that people will of heard of before. In the end, we decided to use Spotify and iTunes on our actual advert.










Once we had considered all of the elements that we would need to know before starting the production of our magazine advert, we was then actually able to start creating it. We used Adobe Photoshop for the production of our advert.

 Our first magazine advert production session led to this screenshot on the left. As you can see, we had made a good start to the production of our magazine advert. We decided to use a black background for our advert because of us being an alternative rock band. We also imported our picture into the document and then edited the contrast and brightness of our picture in order to make us into black and white. We are doing this to keep a consistent style, as we are also doing a similar style in our digipak. We also downloaded and imported our font "Bebas Neue" into Photoshop and then used our band name "Remember December" at the top. We also used the album name "Friends With Benefits" with the album release date "19.06.15". We then decided to use a turquoise/green colour as we felt that it stands out against the black background. The final thing that we did was to add a 5 star rating to make our advert seem professional.

Our second magazine advert production session was when we thought about other different things that we could put in our magazine advert. In particular, we thought about different places that we would make our album available. We imported the Spotify logo and the iTunes logo (as seen on the left) and then we used the "Free Transform" option of where we would reduce the size of the logo without making the image contorted.
                                                                                   


This was what our magazine advert looked like after finishing our second production session. As you can see, we had added the logos of iTunes and Spotify into our advert, and we had also added another 5 star logo. We then had put in names of famous music critics who have rated our album 5 stars. We felt that this made our magazine advert look much more professional.

On our third magazine advert production session, we finally had finished the production of our magazine advert. As you can see, we had added a QR code, of where customers could scan the code using a QR code reader and then it would take them to the bands website "www.rememberdecember.co.uk". We then just added the website just below the QR code so that people could go to the website in order to find out more information about our band.