Note for moderator

Dear Sir/Madam,

As part of my A2 coursework I was asked to produce a promotional package which, included  a music video and two ancillary task (website and digipak). The music video was based on James Bay's "If you ever want to be in love". For the main construction of the music video I worked alongside Ella Croft, whilst the other two I did on my own.

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Many Thanks,

Canisha Chakadya                                                                           Student number:6230

Edgbarrow School                                                                           Centre Number: 5111

Final Website

Website link-- http://canishachakadya.wix.com/jamesbay

Landing Page 

Website top

Website Bottom 

Following feedback from  my teacher, I carried out some alterations to the landing page and homepage. These included regimenting the boxes so they looked neater and coordinated, adding more information like some news as seen on the website bottom image. I also added the album cover onto the page to link all the ancillary tasks together as well as show consistency with the choice of colour scheme of the album and the webpage which are grey, black or white. I have added our music video onto the page that is complete. 

Final Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxa58-JlcLI

Final digipak

Following my audience feedback, I carried out the necessary alterations to the CD and third image. I was recommend to remove the title James Bay as the colours that were used conflicted with the overall colour scheme and the sizing difference of the texts looked messy. Therefore, I have neatened the page by bringing the album title closer together and having a consistent size font throughout as well as moving the title further up the CD. 

Additionally, the size of the third image has been increased so that it takes up more space and stands out further. In the past there was a lot of white space that made the page look boring and standout from the other images, to overcome this I decided to insert the lyrics of all the album songs onto the background to fill the space and add a unique as well as personal touch to the digipak. It also gives the audience a glimpse into what the album is about and draw their attention to that page when they otherwise wouldn't.

On the back page, I added a copyright notice on the bottom of the back cover, which is a common feature on CD's that protect them from being copied or reproduced. 

I am happy with the final appearance of my digipak as I feel that my artists can be clearly seen in all the images and there is a sense of brand identity throughout the promotional package. 

Evaluation Question 4

During the process of creating a music video and the other promotional packaging that included a website and digipak, I used a variety of media technologies to achieve my final product and the diverse nature will hopefully show my progression from AS level work to A2. Each stage of research, planning, production and evaluation have all needed different media technologies that were specific and all featured their own difficulties. 

I will discuss this further below.

Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Audience Feedback

Evaluation question 2

This is a running commentary I created that examines how effective the combination of the main product and ancillary texts?

Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1

Audience Feedback for Digipak draft 4

Digipak Draft 4

For my most recent digipak draft I decided to collect some audience feedback to see what my target audience felt about the CD. I used social media application Facebook messenger to gather instant responses with four questions in mind: what do you like about this CD? Do you feel the brand identity of the artists is clearly shown? What do you feel could do with some improvements? and lastly, what do you not like about the CD? 

The feedback I received are as followed:

1.  Billy, aged 18 

2.Kate, aged 17

2. Milly, aged 17

3. Jackie, aged 19

4. Abby, aged 19

I am going to take on board all the comments I received and understand their recommendations in terms of font, image resizing and ensuring that a brand identity is fully incorporated throughout the digipak. I plan on making the necessary alterations to ensure I achieve the goals.

Progress Log 07/01/16

Today I focused on working with the feedback that I recieved from my teacher. This involved making some edits on the webpage and digipak.

I also completed a draft of my evaluation questions.

Digipak Draft 4

Evaluation Question 4 Draft

Question 4 

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

-For this part I plan on splitting the technologies into what was used for each part of research and planning, construction and evaluation process

-I will discuss what worked well when using each of the technologies and what I felt I could have used instead

-I will also discuss the benefits and difficulties of using the technologies as each had a different effect when using for the three stages 

Evaluation question 3 draft

Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

·         -Audience feedback has played a key role in the production of the music video and ancillary tasks as they have provided guidance on many ideas and help me sift through the most successful ideas and themes that would work.

·         -I will talk about some positive feedback that I received were that they liked the video 

·         -I will talk about the improvements that were suggested to me and how I implemented them into my work  

·         -Discuss whether I chose the appropriate group of people to interview and whether they met my target audience needs

·         -Talk about the negative comments that I received and how I felt and improved on the criticisms

·         -The comments made from the feedback will in the future make sure I get constant feedback from the audience to ensure that I don’t go off track in the production process. 

Evaluation Question 2 Draft

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

Brand identity

·         An important aspect to consider was the “brand identity”, which describes how the artist is presented to the audience and how they can be distinguished from other artists within the genre. The image that we as a group decided was for our artist to be: An everyday guy that the audience could imagine being friends with, takes care of his appearance from his clothing to his facial appearance and is not afraid to express himself in terms of feelings through his music.

·         To achieve this we used similar clothing in the music video, images on my webpage and also the digipak. This created consistency and allowed him to form his own style of clothing that was identifiable to the audience and had males wanting to dress like him.

House style

·         I wanted to go for a cold colour scheme that involved using darker tones and colouring from the clothing, to the colours and fonts used in the digipak and webpage. This meant using colours like blue, black and grey that I felt represented the lyrics of the song through synaesthesia.

·         I also ensured that the fonts that I used were either the same or similar for James Bay name from the music video opening/closing credits for the music video and ancillary texts. This ensured consistency across the board

·         The style that I aimed for was for a modern and clean look through clear text

Selling to an audience Album

·         I feel that the image selected for the front cover is simple yet alluring as the artist is shown in a vulnerable position that suggests to the audience that he is bearing his soul to listeners through his music.

·          

Selling to an audience Advert 

To complete the question I plan on using an application on web 2.0 as I can use images and links as well as make it interactive. 

Evaluation Question 1 Draft

Evaluation

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

Music videos are short films that combine and integrate imagery and recorded song to create visual effect for promotion and entertainment. The research and planning process played a crucial role in understanding our media product and examining pre-existing media products created by artists for their intended audience. Peter Fraser wrote  “a clip that responds to the pleasures of music, and in which that music is made visual, either in new ways or in ways that accentuate existing visual associations.” In his article aimed at A Level students  ‘Media Magazine’. 

In the process of carrying out my research and planning, I found re-occurring themes among existing music videos that formed the basis and patterns of what I believed and was already pre-conceived to being the conventions that I would later use to create my music video. There was a need to ensure the authenticity and realistic visual elements and appearance of my music video to appeal to the audience and go beyond a level of just giving content. Instead I wanted the video to consciously interact and stimulate our audience’s perception of our narrative to form a relationship with the artist and this audience. I discovered this aspect when looking at other narrative based music videos like Macklemore and Ryan Lewis “Same Love”, which tackled social perception of homosexual relationships and the importance of acceptance. This ability to interact with an audience contributed to the high volume of views on social media platforms like YouTube. Therefore, I wanted to ensure that our video used the realistic element and this intertwines with the repeatability factor of the video. This was also important get correct as it would ensure people would be interested to watch the video over and over again like with the popular video “Same Love” and how PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video attained more than 2 billion views.  Therefore in our music video we created a balance between having a narrative and the artist performing as that ensured it was not predictable as well as lose the attention of our audience.

Similarly we ensured there was a level of synaesthesia, often referred to as “thought beats” and this is where you picture certain sounds in your mind. Achieving this would mean that our audience was able to identify visuals that matched the sound of our music video and gain a level of understanding that goes beyond a catchy beat. To carry this out, my media partner and I dissected the lyrics of the song to identify how we could visually express them and translate the feelings of the artist singing the song to the audience listening to it.  

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I will then go onto discuss what i learnt about the conventions and whether they fell into the real music genre.
I will also talk about my digipak and website and whether they fell into the real music genre 
How i also appealed to my target audience with the three mediums 
To achieve this i am going to make a text post with screen grabs and images to support my points.