Evaluation Questions 3

Feedback on my Magazine Poster Advert:

I decided to gather feedback on all three of my products so that I could get honest opinion on my work. Because I have worked hard and looked at my products a lot it means that I can't give a true representation of my product as I have different opinions and have a different perspective as I have worked on my products and developed them as to how I think looks right. When producing my drafts for my magazine advertisement poster, I decided to ask my teacher Tim Anderson for some advice on the technical aspects of my product and also just to have some general feedback on the design of my product. This proved very useful as he told me that I needed to include information as to where my product would be available. Before if I would've left it at that, consumers of the advert wouldn't know where to purchase the album from and whether or not it would be available for streaming ect. He also helped me choose which layout design he liked best. He suggested having all the information centralised as the reader would then only have to look down the page rather than across the page to find all the information. We agreed together that conventionally the poster advert would look better with layout number 3. From this feedback, I learnt that it is good to have somebody else's opinion as it can often influence your own whether you agree or disagree with what that person has to say.

Another way of gathering feedback which I decided to do was to send a survey to everyone in my college, which I was able to do by sending to my teacher and then she could send it to all the pupils at my college. This would give me a wide variety of peoples opinions as not everyone listens and consumes music in the same way and the same genre. I used Twitter to publish my survey so that more people would answer the survey and would give a wider audience results.

Please could you complete this survey for my A2 Media coursework! https://t.co/7HC2MMNgT1

— Mollie Allison (@MollieMay04) April 12, 2015

Looking at the responses to the first question on my survey, 4 out of the 13 people that took my survey said that they liked the colour I used for my magazine. I am happy those results as I was unsure on what colour to use in the first place. I then did additional research into what colours I could sue and came to the conclusion of using white and gold. I chose these colours because when constructing my product, these colours worked well together with the background and I thought the gold made my product look grand. 4/13 of those who took the survey must of agreed with the colour choices I had gone with, Out of those who took the survey, 9/13 said that they liked the main image. This backs up that the main image itself can draw the audiences attention in. In pop genre this is very important as most pop artists use their image to make people want to buy their products. Many people said that the image made the product look professional, this is good because I wanted my product to resemble one of a pop genre. Most pop genre artists are framed as a medium close up or a close up of their face. Therefore I decided to frame my artist in the same way as I wanted my product to have conventions of pop genre. Another thing that the people who took my survey said, 6/13 liked the font that I used. I was glad that so many people said they liked it because at first I thought having 4 different fonts would be conflicting and hard to read. However I know that in the next question this was pointed out. Overall this question helps me to understand what people thought was effective about my product.

One of my questions that I decided to include in my survey was what people disliked about my product. By asking this question it picks out faults with my product of which I maybe wouldn't of seen without it being pointed out to me. In total there was 4 different things that people picked out. In total I think that isn't too bad considering the things pointed out isn't too severe. Like said above, 4 people mentioned that the fonts I used where slightly conflicting. With that in mind I could maybe remove one of the fonts so that only 3 is used. This might make my product easier to read and not get confused by what the name of the album is called ect. As this was one of the points made. Another thing people picked out was the lack of colour used. I have done this on purpose as most modern poster advertisements uses only a few colour combinations. Therefore me only using white and gold. I did try however to add more colour by including the rainbow effect on the box around my featured section so that it would draw the audience to the important information. I didn't want to use too many colours on my product as this would make it had to look at and conflict my music video as the performance section has the same amount of colour as my other products. The rest of the comments was about the information on my product. By using audience feedback, someone pointed out that I had wrote the release date twice and where both different. Therefore I will have to change that so that it is more clear. I could also change the font for the magazine name for the star rating and add the user name to direct the audience to the social networking sites so they know where to find my artist.

The results for these three questions helped me to know that I have achieved what I set out to do and that was to make a product that resembles one of a pop genre culture. I have learnt from my audience feedback that my product could use a few alterations to the information that is on my product. Other than that my product is fairly successful as it appealed to the majority of the people who took my online survey. Some of which who didn't like pop genre said they would consider listening to my album just by looking at my magazine advertisement poster product. From my results I can conclude that my product conforms to the conventions of a pop genre magazine advertisement poster and that if this product was to be altered by the appropriate comments suggested it would sell to the general public well. This would be considered very important as in pop genre, popularity is the main key for becoming successful as the product would need to be successful on streaming sites for it to reach the charts.

Here is my product if I was to take the advise from the people who took my survey:

To make the appropriate changes to my magazine advertisement poster, I have learnt from my audience survey what I needed to change to make my product look successful. The changes I made was to add the username for my pop artist so that it made it clear as to where my audience could find her on social networking sites. To do this I went back onto dafont.com and picked out the same text font as the website page so that it would match side by side. I then moved the website address more to the left to make room for the username to be placed in. 

Another thing that I decided to change was the name of the star rating so that it was bolder and people would see it more. Again this is what I learnt from my audience feedback as one of the users who took the survey pointed it out. I had to agree with this because I rushed putting the text on and didn't really think about the font. Therefore I decided to Google the names of the magazines and added them to more magazine. By having the same font that the magazine uses, it makes the star rating more believable and authentic. I also decided to move the date so that it is more central. Due to my models pose, it looks as though it isn't but technically it is aligned in the middle.

After that I decided to make the name of my artist smaller so that this then made my title bigger and thus stand out more. I then shuffled the name of the artist and album name to make the album name stand out more and make the artist name more distant. A few of the people who took my survey said that they didn't know if 'Know Something' was the name of the album or not. By learning what the audience expect from a product, it allows me to make adjustments to my product so that they're happy with the product. At the end of the day it is them that are going to be buying my product so therefore I need to make sure my product will sell to them. Another thing I decided to change was the release date, one person noticed that I had wrote two different release dates. This could make it very confusing for my consumers. So to resolve this, I changed the date so that they both matched to avoid any further confusion. I have learnt from my audience feedback, to check my product information to make sure that I have wrote the write things and not made obvious mistakes.

Lastly I decided to make my model bigger so that her face would take up more of the poster. I did this before because someone in the survey said that conventionally pop genre artists frame there faces more closely rather than a medium close up. Because I wanted to make her arms still in the frame, I made bigger slightly so that she would fill more of the poster as I thought there was a lot of unused space round the ages of the poster. It has also made her look more dominating as she takes up more space that in previous poster designs. Due to the help of my audience feedback, I have made my product more conventional of a pop genre magazine poster advertisement. The main image of my magazine poster is the same as the front cover of my digipak to show continuity through my products.

Through my audience feedback I have learnt that it is very important to get feedback of my product before publishing the final product because otherwise if it does not meet the requirements of the target audience, the product won't sell as well as it could. I have also learnt that by getting other peoples eyes to look at your product, they might see faults or have other suggestions of layout and information of which you maybe wont have seen. It is also helpful to see how well your advertised product would go, shown to a small number of people. You can then estimate how it would respond to a wider target audience.

Feedback on my Music Video:

While producing my music video I decided to show my 4th draft to my teachers to see what they thought of my product before I had the final draft. Even though there not whom I've aimed my product at, I knew they would give me good criticism on what I could do to make my product resemble one of a real pop genre music video. They would also give me good technical feedback on timing, editing, framing ect.

Above is the feedback I received from my media teacher Becky Ives. She told me that it would be a good idea to add effects to my music video so that it would look more professional and not look like an amateur video. With this advice I then went and explored how to add effects to my clips. Without this guidance I probably wouldn't of had a go at changing the colour of my clips. It was there that I discovered how to make the clips black and white and how to empathise the colour in the clips where she was experiencing the happy moments in the music video. Becky also suggested that I go through my clips and cut out sections that where not necessarily needed. I felt like I had to show every step of what activities they went on through my music video, but she explained to me that I could just have short sections from each activity and not have every step they take. By doing this I could then reshuffle some of my clips to make some clips longer as I thought that my video appeared have to many jump cuts for the slow song I had chosen. From this feedback I learnt to take risks and not be afraid to try something different, especially if I haven't used it before.

As well as asking my teacher during me editing my product, I asked some friends for feedback on my final product once completed. I asked them their opinion and if I they where to improve my product what would they do. For this I asked Ben Withers, Erin Miller and Jack Cracknell who gave me valuable feedback.

Ben Wither said that overall my product was good due to the structure of my music video. When I originally came up with my storyboard I was unsure at how the final video would come together. I knew that when it came to editing I would have issues with timing mainly due to the amount of things I wanted my main lead actors to do in a short time frame. Im glad that the my final video has worked well and that the balance between performance shots and narrative is right and the narrative is clear to understand on what is going on. Due to the structure of my music video, the narrative takes place during the day and the next morning. Therefore when it came to filming I made sure that my lead characters wore the same clothes on the different days of filming. Otherwise my narrative wouldn't make sense, On the next morning section, I made sure that the male lead had different clothing so that it showed that time had passed. I'm glad this was noticed otherwise people could have been confused by the narrative structure and timing. Ben also mentioned that the editing of my music video has worked well as the locational shots and costumes help make it seem as though I have filmed on the same day. I wanted to make sure this was the case as I wanted the narrative to flow effectively as possible.

Erin Miller said that she liked the effects used on my music video. Thanks to Becky advice I wouldn't of explored that as an option. Im glad that I haven't over used the effects because I was worried that I may have gone overboard with the effects. She said that she especially liked the lighting effect used on the performance section because it was conventional of a pop genre music video and she thought it made those sections interesting to watch as it added more movement to the clip. She also liked the black and white effect on the areas where she was getting beat up and the colour sections where she was happy with her friend. What i've learnt from what they have said is that by experimenting and re looking over my music video with a different outlook, can often make me things better. This is why I had so many drafts for my final video because I kept looking at my video over time and having different ideas of how I should edit different sections.

Above is Jack Cracknell's feedback on what I could do to improve my music video. The main thing he addressed was refilming certain areas of my music video. This is because in the performance section the lip sync is slightly out, and is due to the speed of my song and that when I did film these parts, the person I originally had to do it dropped out so I asked Lucy to do it for me and she didn't have long to learn it. I know that the framing for some of the performance sections isn't as good as would of liked it and if I had time I would of re shot this section. Another filming error was that in the park scenes, Nick's camera which I have used for filming, had been reformatted therefore I couldn't manually change the settings. I had to point the camera down for it to change the settings itself. Again if I had time I would re shoot this section too. What I have learnt from my feedback is to not rush when filming and make sure that I check the shots are framed accurately and leave time for re shooting.


Feedback on my Digipak:

https://cloud.gonitro.com/p/YHdLK-I-oxNg6JTPmbH3bd

What I have learnt from these two survey results is to maybe try different layouts and designs of my digipak before choosing a final design. With my digipak, I had a solid idea on what I wanted to create and maybe ignored possible ideas I could of experimented with. As I did a lot of research for my digipak, I found that I wanted to create something similar to the Emeli Sande and Sam Smiths latest albums are they where quite similar and I thought very affective, In these survey responses the response on the left agreed that this design looked professional. When I first came up with my digipak design I wanted it to look as though the black and white panels where being opened up to see the colourful panels of my artist inside. I did this because I wanted it to reflect on my music video as she breaks away from an abusive relationship to open up into a colourful new way of life. However I could of looked at other possible concepts of my digipak and include shots from my music video onto the panels rather than have the artist on the inside panels instead. 

Looking at my feedback from these two responses is that not everybody likes the pop genre of music, therefore I have learnt that you can't please everybody with your product. As long as the product appeals to the genre I have chosen and doesn't offend anyone, then my product will be successful in my opinion. The person on the right said that my product doesn't include bright colours, which he expected was conventional of pop genre. Even though this is the case, my product is more contempory using black and white to demonstrate emotion of my artist to show that my album is more soulful and meaningful than what you expect to listen to in a music video. Most popular pop genre music videos display the artist in a provocative and controversial way to draw the attention in for example artists like Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus and sometimes Rihanna. However my artist would be in the pop genre charts because of her music and personality for example like artists Taylor Swift, Emeli Sande, Demi Lovato. So even though you would expect bright colours, my artist and the artists listed would use the natural colours of black and white. The person on the right has said that my digipak includes conventions of the product and conventions of what she would expect a pop genre CD pack to look like. Therefore, I have also learnt that by researching existing products and conventions, helps to create a successful product which tells the audience what they need to know. For conventions of a pop genre, pop genre fans would conform to this product as my feedback has taught me so.

By using audience feedback I was able to make changes and develop my ideas of my products. For example I started with a basic sketch of what I wanted to include on my magazine poster advertisement and then from there, I looked at more products and asked for opinions on layouts from my target audience to come up with a more developed professional product. I then used Microsoft Word to produce a more structural design and look at different layout options. It wasn't until I took photographs of my artist which I could then use to feature on my magazine poster advertisement. By using photoshop I could then begin to construct a more detailed product. I used audience feedback to gather appropriate information about text fonts, an artist name and colour combinations. I also used my research to help with the decision making. I used websites such as Adobe Colour wheel and researched professional products of my genre to see what colour, font combinations they used. Photoshop allowed me to look into detail about what features I would include and I could explore the options of what I could take when producing my work.

http://molliemaymediaa2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/1st-mock-up-of-postermagazine.html
http://molliemaymediaa2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/2nd-draft-of-postermagazine-advertisment.html
http://molliemaymediaa2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/changes-made-to-magadvert-3rd-drafts.html
http://molliemaymediaa2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/final-magazineposter-advertisment.html
http://molliemaymediaa2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/final-advertisment.html
http://molliemaymediaa2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/my-final-productspromotional-products.html

As you can see from the links above, I made multiple drafts just to get to the final product. This was because I was constantly asking for my ideal target audience for information on what I might need to include and what they thought could look better if I had to change it. I also found that from my first draft to my final, I missed a lot of vital information which wasn't included in the original design. I found that I made more drafts for my magazine advertisement than my digipak because I used the image of my magazine poster advertisement as a base for how I wanted my products to cross-form synergy. As you can see from my other product I have used the same colour, font and main image for the front of my digipak and magazine advertisement.