3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

At the very start of the projet we identified our target, secondary and tertiary audience so we knew exactly who we were appealing to. 

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
We heavily referenced Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications Theory when making our video as I've mentioned briefly above.
Particularly with the narrative section we thought it would be good for "Personal identity" as people would be able to see their past relationships and even friendships in the narrative. They might even be envious of the relationship between the two actors. Electronic fans will definitely  identify with the desire to dress unique and act cool and so admire or aspire to be like NTLS.

Cute relationship

Alternative look

Another point we worked around was "Diversion." We purposely made the narrative very captivating and unique, particularly appealing to ages 16-24, so they could get lost in the story.

Stuart Halls theory of encoding and decoding reminds us that nothing has meaning when it is produced, it only has meaning when received by the consumer. This is why we ensured that at each stage of the project we gathered audience feedback to ensure we were creating products which would really come to life when finished due to their strong connection and specific appeal to our target audience.

RESEARCH AND PLANNING
DIGIPAK

We also introduced them to the possible idea of having a panoramic album cover and showed them the picture below as an example, then asked for some feedback

Mock-Up of panoramic album cover idea

Feedback from a member of our primary audience:
When informally asking various members of our secondary audience about the panorama idea, they thought the same thing as the member of our target audience in the recording, who thought we needed to show the artists faces clearly on the front panel. So, we then made some mock-ups of the front panel with a centrepiece graphic and showed them to members of our target audience in a focus group to see if they liked the idea 

We received nothing but positive feedback and they also decided they preferred the circular design to the squares.

WEBSITE
After researching some Electronic/Alternative websites, we realised a lot of them based the website around the album cover. So, we drew up a page and developed it onWix to send to our target audience in a Facebook group to receive quick feedback

They were really pleased that we were in-keeping with the idea of having an album cover similar to the website and so we thought we would definitely maintain and work around this idea in construction.

MUSIC VIDEO
To showcase the performance and narrative ideas we had began to think of, and to give an idea of how the video will look visually, we made an Animatic and Steal-O-Matic. We knew this would be helpful to us when it came to making the music video, but we also realised we could gather feedback on our ideas for the visuals and the structure of the entire video.

We set up mini-screenings of both to gather feedback from our target audience. They loved the Steal-O-Matic and thought the idea for VHS and HD would be a great unique selling point. This feedback really relieved us as we were worried the contrast was too confusing. The first thing a lot of people said was they wanted to see examples of what the archived footage would look like, as opposed to the black screen because it interrupts their suspension of disbelief, so we revised the animatic

Our target audience thought the overall structure was good but we should play with cuts and the music more to avoid it becoming "samey." This was useful advice which we would go on to remember in editing.

CONSTRUCTION
MUSIC VIDEO

Whilst we were making the video, we gathered feedback along the way to ensure we were producing something our target audience would like.
Here is some feedback we gathered on our first cut from our target audience who initially watched the animatic:

From the two screenings above and notes we took down as they were reacting to the video, we gathered the following information:

1. The VHS and HD footage really compliment each other and give the video a stylistic and edgy feel
2. The editing in the studio (with the snappy blinks and the flashes) looks great and futuristic, definitely connotes the genre. We should be mindful of the VHS footage as the cuts don't go with the music and its too noticeable and so creates a disjuncture between the track and the narrative when the narrative is meant to depict the song
3. The amount of VHS is too much. During "Sometimes I still need you" and the final section of the song, we should add more of the artists because primarily, thats who the audience are watching the video to see.

We were critiqued quite frequently on the narrative progression surrounding the couples relationship, saying that it was quite weak and didn't have a clear ending. To change this, we rearranged some VHS sequences to create a clear beginning middle and end. We also filmed an extra scene to conclude the video

The final films that we shot after audience feedback

This feedback was really useful, we took it on board and re-edited. Then showed this to other members of our target audience
(Please press play, after the blank the audience reactions resume at 00:41)

Getting this feedback on the performance and narrative was really great. It informed us that the audience were able to suspend their disbelief when watching the narrative and build up emotional connections with the characters in the story. They also liked the intensity and style of the performance and the unique editing.


DIGIPAK

Before Feedback

After feedback

Initially, the internal DigiPak cover was what appears on the left. We informally showed this to members of our target audience and some avid CD collectors and they all pointed out that having LuLu on her own on the right hand side suggested she was more important and it would strengthen the brand image if we perhaps had the logo or maybe a picture of both of them on the right hand side. So, we made this change.

We were also advised by an avid CD collector, that it is typical of Digipaks to contain a QR code which when scanned will take you to the website. We thought this was a great idea and added it in as it also created even greater synergy between the platforms.

Before

After

WEBSITE
We emailed the link to members of our target audience to flick through our first draft of the website and they returned with mostly positive feedback, just making two points on the tour page and contact page.

A lot of people thought the tour page was quite empty whilst also saying they would like a way to feel connected with the artist and know a little more about that they are doing. So we added a twitter feed and an advert for their BBC Radio 1 performance, which showed symbiosis with companies that our target audience could identify with.

EVALUATION
MUSIC VIDEO

A post Josh made which we shared onto our social media pages

To gather feedback on the final product we used SurveyMonkey to gather some qualitative and quantitative audience feedback, posting it on our social media pages to prompt people to watch the video and respond - this was a great way of gathering feedback because it was anonymous so people were brutally honest.

The majority of the people we asked thought the video was clear and engaging

It was extremely reassuring to see that 100% of those asked felt it fell under the alternative, electronic or the indie genre. Thisgave us confidence that we producing a video that truly reflected our genre

We thought it would also be useful to gather feedback which wasn't just multiple choice in order to have some information wholly based off their opinion. For these questions the person would write in a text box and submit their answer and we had a very large range of replies.

From responses like "relationships can break down because people change as inidivudals..." and "the fragility of teenage relationships" we were able to conclude that the audience understood the narrative and the overarching theme of a declining relationship. 

The answers for whether the video and presentation was professional/believable and if there was anything we would change ranged in length and we also received some really constructive criticism as shown above.

PERFORMANCE
In all circumstances the artists ad their image was believeable, however one respondent made a good point of if the artists looked older, it could have worked better. This was definitely something I agreed with when working to the strengths of the group for the efficiency of the project, it wasn't something we were able to do so I still feel we made the best of the situation.
NARRATIVE
The narrative got some great feedback. Respondents loved the contrast between HD and VHS and really built up an attachment with the couple. However some thought the VHS was too static and disliked the lack of quality. Although, when I looked at the answers of the respondent who didn't like the VHS, it seems they aren't a fan of the Electronic/Alternative genre which explains why less conventional filming and editing styles aren't as welcomed by them.

Respondent who commented on video quality

On a whole, I feel the music video gratified the audience. I feel as though they were able to identify with aspects of the relationship and hence why there were quite a lot of passionate responses to "what is the message behind the video." From the feedback it seems they loved the duo and thought they were really cool. From a stylistic perspective, using the actual VHS camera was a great choice but there is a lot of quality lost in certain shots which could have been avoided by just using a HD camera and editing carefully in post-production.

DIGIPAK
We held a mixed focus group with members of our primary, secondary and tertiary audience to gather some feedback on the Digipak. We had an overwhelmingly good response, below is an individual response from a member of each audience group:


We gathered from these interviews and the focus group overall that we had created a strong digipak which was synergistic with the other two texts. If we were to make any improvements and alterations, we could perhaps consider placing some lyrics from songs onto the cover.

WEBSITE
After we showed the focus group our album cover, we showed them  the website. here are some individual responses from different members of each audience group:

Overall, the feedback was really good. It seems having the "About" page was great  as it brought the artist down to a relateable level which allowed the audience members to connect with them. They loved the style of the site and it's synergy with the other texts, The interactivity was also a plus as it meant the site was engaging. If any improvements were to be made, we could think into some more merchandise such as the merged face graphic on a bag or a t-shirt.

From gathering feedback throughout the project, I've really learnt the importance of it. Without referring back to the needs of the audience we would have made what we "thought" they were going to like as oppose to what they actually wanted to see. I think because of our constant feedback, we made three great texts which were spot on for our target audience and were also able to really appeal to members outside our target audience.

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

RESEARCH AND PLANNING
For this stage of the project we used various social media and web tools to communicate with each other and to communicate our ideas.
Facebook


Since we all have smartphones and Facebook profiles, we thought the easiest method of communicating as a group where we would all be notified was on a Facebook group chat and a private Facebook group. Facebook features like the "Seen" tool allowed us to know when different members of the group had received a message or seen a post so that if it came up that someone hadn't seen it we could personally notify them.
We were also able to comment on the posts we put up which was useful if we were unable to give feedback in class times/meetings. It also allowed us to use our time more efficiently so we didn't have to discuss our opinions of things in real life, we could just comment










Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts

We also downloaded an app called "Hangouts" which allowed us to have video conferences outside school time. We developed a lot of different ideas for the project through this, as influences and ideas we would find when we were at home could instantly be discussed in a Hangouts session. The most useful feature of Hangouts is since it is a part of Google and not separate video software, apps like YouTube are embedded into the program and so showing each other different videos during the session was easy.

Youtube

YouTube playlist of influences

Clips from YouTube videos we made into our Steal-O-Matic

YouTube was incredibly useful for finding and sharing influences. Instead of sharing a list of links on an external platform, we were able to make a playlist where we added videos that any of us could access easily. This also meant all the influences for the Steal-O-Matic were in one place so we could all easily access them when editing it.

Pintrest

Pinterest was also really helpful in sharing makeup, costume, style and location influences. It was a really clear visual log of our ideas.

Our mobiles phones made all of this a lot easier. Luckily, we all have smartphones so we were constantly able to access the apps we were using like Pinterest, Youtube, Hangouts and Facebook. Also using basic mobile functions like texting and calling we were able to constantly be in contact with each other and I personally used my phone to set reminders on my phone as to when my meetings were to keep me organised.

PRODUCTION

CANON 5D Mini

The Canon 5D Mini was the camera we used to record the studio footage as it produced high quality, professional looking footage; recording in 1920 x 1080 with a 16:9 aspect ration and so producing very HD footage. This was useful as it eliminated any worries about the actual footage looking amateur. On this camera we could manually change settings like the ISO and exposure. This was a massive help to us as it made it easier to create the infinity white background that we needed. We linked the camera output to a TV Screen which was really useful because it allowed us to all watch playback instead of crowding around the camera and allowed us to spot things in the shot which we weren't happy with that may have been too small to see on the camera screen.

HONESTECH RECORDING SOFTWARE

LEAPFROG LIGHTING DESK

Leapfrog Lighting Desk

Me operating the lighting desk

We were taught to use the Leapfrog Lighting Desk in the studio because it created a professional look. The desk controlled all of the 1000K studio lights which we could change depending on the look we were trying to achieve. Our lighting sets were easy to create and save and only needed to be tweaked slightly during the individual shots to what compliment Josh and I's skin tones best. Our main problem with the lighting was having to reposition the rigs before each shoot so the light was falling on the right places. This did take up a lot of our time but was just something we had to do.

MOBILE PHONES

Having technologically converged smart phones was really helpful in capturing evidence as we could take videos and pictures at any time and then send them to each other over text or using a social media app. We even used our phones to access shoot boards VIA email and schedules which meant less to carry on external shoots.

POST-PRODUCTION

ADOBE PREMIER PRO

When we were editing our final footage we used the Adobe Premiere Pro software. This came with a lot of benefits

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS

Initially we had no plans to use After Effects but after being able to grade some of the footage we had no choice but to. This was because some shots were too over exposed and so when we would alter one aspect it would completely distort another aspect.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

Most of our album cover was designed on Adobe Photoshop as there was a vast amount of editing and layering that was involved in putting all the components together. Our main graphic was very difficult to make, as multiple photographs needed to be used and a clipping mask needed to be created in order to use various sections of each photo.

Photoshop was very useful for editing all the promo shots that we took. The lighting in the studio overall didn't change much but due to aspects like re-positioning lights and making slight alterations each shoot day, things like contrast, saturation and brightness had to constantly be tweaked which was time consuming but easy to do on Photoshop. A lot of the studio photos had a line across the back of the photos which showed where the curtains hit the floor so in a lot of them we had to spend time editing this out to maintain the infinity effect. Also, Photoshop made it very easy to add the NTLS logo onto the images of the merchandise that we put on the store.

The black jumper we used from H&M

The Photoshopped Logo

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR

The NTLS logo was hand drawn and so we needed to transfer it to a digital format that could be replicated on all our products. So, we scanned the image and opened it on illustrator. Here, we used a tool which digitised the image by tracing around it, this allowed us to edit it further. We then neated the edges and made the lines more straight.

How we used illustrator

WIX

The Wix website making tool was extremely helpful in creating the mock website. It was ideal of us to use as it didn't require HTML which would have been difficult to learn to the standard we needed to, in such a short period of time. The only issue with WIX is that since we had to use the sites preset widgets and apps, opportunities to maximize our creativity were limited. However, it made adding widgets like the instagram and twitter feeds very simple as on another software we would have had to learn the coding for how to do so.

EVALUATION

Mobile Phones and Webtools

Camstudio:

GifYoutube:

Examtime

Examtime is an online tool which allows you to build mind maps, flash cards, quizzes and notes for free namely to be used for revision. However, I found the mindmap option very useful when presenting pictures and text in my evaluation which all linked together. It was my alternative to using something like Paint which allows text and images but doesn't support the GIF format like Examtime does.

Blogger

The final and most crucial new media technology I have used to aid me throughout his entire project was Blogger. Using Blogger as a hub I could live-post in a diary-style way with the opportunity to embed lots of external web-tools to present findings in a number of ways. Blogger is also available as an app on my smartphone which made documenting minutes from group meetings even easier. The only pitfall was without internet access it is impossible to access Blogger. This was never directly a problem however sometimes my own internet connection at home would cut out before I had the opportunity to post something and I would lose work. Luckily, this only happened on a couple occasions. 

Album Cover: Final

For the final album cover, everything pretty much remained the same. We only made small tweaks like increasing the contrast so the facial graphic to make it stand out more from the background,
On the inside cover however (top picture) we changed the image to one we felt represented the artists better,

Album Cover: Development

Finally, we had put together everything we had for the album cover and made a front cover graphic which we liked and which we felt created a very strong band image.

The only thing that needed changing was me on my own on the inside cover as it emphasised me more than Josh. Our teacher also suggested adding features to the back which increased opportunities of audience interactivity, however apart from that, we were done.

Website: Final Development 3

As we had completed our On Location Promo shoot, we were able to replace the stock background image on the website with one we had taken and edited on Photoshop.

Background shot from Promo Shoot

After we placed this image, we realised the logo we created was no longer visible. To combat this, we white airbrushed the top left hand corner of the image before we layered the logo to ensure it stood out whilst staying in a fixed position if someone was scrolling.

Next, we used the completed merged face graphic and added that to the homepage, adding a click-able link which would take the viewer to the album cover and so making the page overall more attractive.

Homepage with Graphic

We thought it was important to offer the audience all the information about the artist on the website without having to Google Search or look on Twitter, so we added a tour dates page. This showed a list of date, venues when and where they were playing - with an interactive link to Ticketmaster, to make purchasing the ticket easier. To liven up the page we added a picture of the artist, with a link to their live twitter feed to strengthen the link between audience and artist. 

Tour dates page

For the final part of our website, we wanted to ensure that there was always a means of staying connected with the artist- so we added the Contact page for any enquires or just personal messages. We thought this would be the ideal page to add some information about Red Pigeon Records, to show where to find them and just to give them some credit in general.

Contact us page

This is a final walkthrough of the completed site:

Album Cover: Further Developments

Initially, the dotted graphic wasn't working so we just placed the NTLS logo on the front cover and started to make the rest of the album.

We didn't ever have time to take the lightscribing picture, so we had to edit some of the promo shots we took and use them instead.

The only issue with using the promo shots on the inside was that we did had intended to have a black on white and white on black image of the artists, except couldn't find a good enough image with both of the artists on the white background, so instead went for on of Vivian on her own. The issue with this was that it was confusing for people to see the female artist on her own, due to how the image had been created for all other aspects of the project.

Album Cover: Developments

We had various components for the album cover which we decided would best be made individually

The image on the left is the main graphic and was easiest to make on PhotoShop because it was made of quite a few layers.
Getting the ratio of face was crucial so it didn't make one artist look more important than the other.

We all decided on the idea of NTLS written within a leaf and so Josh drew it up. The image on the left was produced after a drawing was scanned in and edited on Adobe Illustrator. The black areas of the image were isolated and the edges of the original drawing were neated using a pen tool to thicken certain lines





With these components completed it was a lot easier to proceed into making the rest of the album.