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

I've created a powerpoint presentation showing the different media technologies I've used:

Evaluation Question 4

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 Throughout the project, I've gained a deeper understanding of the importance of new media technology. Web 2.0 allows people to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community; it means that consumers are now becoming producers. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), blogs, wikis and video uploading sites (eg. Youtube). New media technologies such as Web 2.0 have allowed me to directly access my audience and connect with a much larger audience, getting instant feedback, which has made me appreciate why a growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development and promotion. Ultimately, Web 2.0 offers an opportunity to engage consumers.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the production of our video, we have continuously learnt from audience feedback, making improvements based on people’s thoughts and ideas. As the target audience for our product is 13-19 year old females, we were able to ask for many of our friends’ opinions which we found encouraging and useful. Once we’d established the genre of our video i.e. romance, we were able to research existing media texts, such as Taylor Swift's 'Mine' music video and Rihanna's 'We found love' music video, and explore what codes and conventions they’d used to appeal to their target audience. We created polls on our blog to find out our target audience's preferences of film and song in the romantic genre, which helped us decide which direction we should take with our video, in terms of song choice and style.

After creating a first draft of each of my ancillaries, I showed my peers the products and asked for their opinions as to which areas needed improving. From this, I found that the fonts needed to be bolder in order to stand out, but overall the feedback gave me confidence in my products.

Before

After

Peer assessment was also useful when it came to editing the final cut of our video - we showed them our first and second rough cut, making improvements each time based on their opinions. After some discussion, it was agreed by everyone that the ending needed to be more definite (we'd previously used a long zoom of the scrapbook, followed by a shot of the sea which faded to black), so we cut the ending earlier, blurring the scrapbook until it faded to black. This was a much more effective ending, as the closing of the book in itself brought the narrative to a definite end.

Before

After

Throughout the project, I have gained much understanding of the importance of audience; I've learnt that a text, in itself, has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience. Therefore, it was crucial to continuously ask for feedback from our target audience because their opinions and ideas were key to our video's success. It's also important to harness the power of the social network because it's becoming an extremely useful way of accessing target audience and creating a buzz online proves to be a successful way to market products. I've done this by posting my video on Facebook and Twitter (see below) to make my video accessible to more people and receive their feedback.

Facebook

Twitter

By doing this, I was able to directly access my target audience and get instant feedback. I found that my video appealed to both genders, which has made me re-consider my audience as being both male and female teenagers:

Rach is 17 years old and is a fan of indie music. She enjoys watching music videos and uses Web 2.0 to share and listen to new media. We were able to get instant feedback from her because she watched our video on facebook on her phone on and immediately commented on it with her response. Rach 'favourited' our video on Youtube and added it to her playlist, which proves that she enjoyed our video!

James is a prime example of a male who enjoyed our video. Although he is interested in a different style of music, he still found elements of our video appealing and found that he could relate to our quirky male protagonist very well. James liked the video on Facebook and gave us his feedback in person, saying that he loved the locations used and it had a great narrative.

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

When creating our ancillaries, we made choices about font, colour and layout based on what resonated well with our video. One font we've used in both our poster and album cover looks as though it's been handwritten, giving it a personal touch, fitting in with our video which also has a personal feel. Furthermore, our album cover ancillary is featured in the video as the front cover of the scrapbook, a key element of our video. I've uploaded both my ancillaries to Flikr and annotated them with notes about why our products link so well, which can be viewed below (click on photo and roll over image to see tags).

Video

Album Cover

(Click on photo to see tags)

Poster

(Click on photo to see tags)

Here's a short video of our target audience watching our video and their feedback on how the ancillaries link together. I asked a selection of people (mixture of ages and genders) what they liked about the video and what they thought worked well. 

As the video demonstrates, our audience were impressed by our products and picked up on key elements that we purposely used to create meaning, such as the blue tones and the scrapbook etc. Therefore, I feel as though we have succeeded in creating a successful video with ancillaries that link very well. Overall, I  believe our products are effective and engaging for the audience.

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

The powerpoint presentation below illustrates what I learnt from the initial research stages, such as the codes and conventions of the romance genre, and how I've applied that knowledge to my own work:

Evaluation Question 1

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Final Cut

Here is the final cut of our music video. We have made the necessary changes that we believe have enhanced our product enormously, based on the comments from our audience feedback. Overall we are very pleased, as we feel as though we have created a successful product!

Audience Feedback

Here's a short video of us asking a member of our target audience questions in relation to our second rough cut. This helped us understand what areas we can improve on to add more appeal for our target audience.

As well as filming Ellen, aged 19 above ^ we also asked a group of our peers what they liked/ disliked about the video. We got a good response from our target audience, with great feedback: 

- Claire, aged 15 said:

• " I like the opening sequence, it's fun and effective."
• "I empathise with the female character and can relate to her."
• "The close up of the book in the cafe is really clever as it foreshadows their relationship."
• "The ending is good because it's a realistic portrayal of young love. I expected that to happen because the mood of the video changed towards the end."

- Amelia, aged 17 said:

• "I really liked the blue tones towards the end of the video because it showed the deterioration of the relationship and reflected the mood of the video." 

- Cassie, aged 16 said:

• "The ending needs to be more definite, as it seems to trail off pointlessly. It would be a better ending if it faded out earlier on. Also, I don't understand the beach scene at the end!" 

- James, aged 18 said:

• "I actually really enjoyed that! I felt like I could relate to the male character because he was a bit geeky and quirky, instead of a typical good looking guy! 

Rough Cut 2

Here's our second rough cut which we have adapted by editing the footage to the beat of the song, so that the pace of the shots reflects the pace of the song. This is effective because towards the end of the song when it slows down, we were able to edit our 'break up' shots to be slow and nostalgic in contrast to the quick editing at the beginning when the song is upbeat and happy. This connotes that the love is slowing down and eventually coming to an end. We know that there are still a few tweaks to be made, so we will continue working on the editing of the video. But for now, we will show our audience to gain some more feedback.