Evaluation Question 3

1. Define your audience by their demographics:

This moodboard represents what our target audience is. I figured that due to the genre being indie/folk and not just one or the other it's containing a more specific type of people. I think that they are male and female of an older teenage age to mid-twenties, they enjoy the nature aspects of the world and like creating art either through drawing or taking pictures. They like spiritual meanings and enjoy quotations of guidance they like listening to music through vinyls and enjoy collecting their favourite music in this way. They love fashion shopping at Topshop/man, Urban Outfitters and unique labels of their own and enjoy blogging in their spare time along with writing their own music and playing acoustic guitar. Their dislikes could be considered being heavy metal rock music as it doesn't in their taste have a calm and gentle nature.

From doing research into subcultures I found this great mixtape on youtube that represents the different sounds of Indie/Folk music in which we were taking into account on our music video.


2. Discuss the importance of audience feedback and how it's used by industries.
The importance of audience feedback to an artist is very high as the artist needs to ensure that they're reaching out to their intended audience because if they aren't they may not make any sales. For example One Direction has created a slightly different image to how they started off, they've gone for the older approach and some fans are starting to dislike their new ways. However, if they're then attracting new fans more than what they had before then this means they aren't losing any profit. It's different for a band who make a totally new album like Arctic Monkeys 'AM' in which fans could then begin to dislike the band as a whole for a while until they get used to the band themselves. Therefore, using audience feedback helps to show the artist if they're making music or creating the identity they need to fulfill the needs of their audience or whether they're drifting away from the intended product and not attracting the number of fans needed. This is an example of customer reviews on what is consider a 'bad' album:

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3. Audience feedback collected in different stages of production

Evaluation Question 2

1. Outline what products you created and the general theme that you were aiming for.

The general theme for our products was indie/folk as we didn't want to be too specific in the field of folk or indie as we liked the idea of having a mixed genre for our band. A running theme throughout our products is the basic colour of the album and the website pages because we needed to be continuous in the field of the design. The fact that the band was called The Cassettes we emphasised this feature by adding the cassette icon to our website for the buttons and a cassette on the front cover of our album making sure that our audience can identify us clearly. As we didn't use much colour in our design of the abum cover or website we wanted to highlight different parts of them by focusing certain sections in colour. When doing our research we found that colours used within the products were only limited or used a very dull colour palette because of the genre it is.

2. Outline the marketing packages of bands/artists that you researched.

• Twin Atlantic (website)
• Royal Blood (website) 
• Jake Bugg (website)
• Of Monsters And Men (merch)
• Mumford and Sons (video)
• Lily Allen (video)
• Catfish and The Bottlemen (promo) 
• Lumineers (album cover)

We liked how the framing made the characters very central making sure they were focused upon in the video, there were different angles to how the characters were looked upon in the video in different cuts in which we tried to portray in our video aswell. We liked the fact that it was in a barn setting which represents the genre very well, the costume of being "farmer-like" we also wanted to incorporate for the male character we made sure that he had the same outfit as the people in this video. The whole costume was consistent within the whole package of the website and cd too so that he kept the folk costume continuosly. We found that in the Mumford and Sons video they make sure that they always use the same instruments per artist and that throughout each seciton of the marketing stragety eg. album they also have their instruments with them to portray the genre and represent it in a clear way. Mumford and Sons were our main basis for the male character because we felt that the girl character in our video would need a certain aspect of indie rather than folk because the folk image upon girls was too extreme for what we wanted to create. Across all three platforms e.g. the website, video and album the same font is used because they're going for the bold but western-country music type of look which is different from the genre but helps emphasise that they sometimes could be thought of in that sense due to their instruments. They like to keep a clear image and genre throughout all their products using the same font and colour because they want to make sure they're easily recognisbale.In relation to the female character construction the costume was based around London Grammar and Birdy because their indie genre and the way they dress suited the constume our male character had and we needed them to fit together. Another video we gained inspiration from for the music video was Lily Allen's Not Fair video. Within the website we used a variety of different marketing packages from different bands, they each have a different genre for example Twin Atlantic are an alternative rock band, Royal Blood are modern garage rock and blues rock, Jake Bugg is indie folk and so are Of Monsters and Men. As you can see from the video to the right I have used the layout of each of the four bands pages in the video to use as a template for my website however I've changed the font type to suit my genre. This is because for example, Royal Blood uses quite edgy writing throughout all of their products e.g on their album cover because they feel that is their identity so the band name font would never be changed for them it also represents their genre perfectly in that on their music videos distorted imagery to represent to contrasting worlds of the woman character as seen in the video below.

The colours were similar even though the genres were different because I felt that using a black background was better for the audience and emphasising different stories as any colour could stand out against it. From the video below you can see the inspiration I had from each artist within their marketing packages, of the websites, all of the artists you see used simple font so that their stories and other aspects of the website stand out clearly within each section. Using different colours to signify different titles and subheadings (Of Monsters and Men mainly) I wanted to use that feature so that my audience would be able to navigate around my website in a simple way.














Each package of what is shown in the image below uses the same font type throughout all of their products, even the merchandise they sell to fans. The website accommodates the newest album available for example the Kasabian website is now pink in colour because of their new 48:13 album they also have a new theme of having words written behind them on stage so therefore they have used this in their eez-eh music video and on merchandise. The arctic monkeys is an example of where the font is used throughout the products, they have now used the soundwaves for their new album and that is shown on the set of their tour and also on their first video released for this album.

The Cassettes have their own marketing campaign in that we tried to use the same features within all our products. For example, we had the props in the video which were then shown on the album because we needed to make sure the genre was simplified for the audience. The fact that we used a cassette on the album cover meant that the feature of our band name and the cassette buttons I made for the menu on my website follow a identity clearly. I created my own merchandise for the website because I found this is an important feature of promoting the band. Again, by using the cassette imagery I put it onto t-shirts and phone cases so that our audience would be able to buy the products and therefore could be seen by others promoting the band in a different way. We have added the record label to our album because we wanted to show where our band was signed too. Also, the fact that some colour is highlighted in our album shows that represented on the website too as the stories and menu buttons are emphasised through the use of the black background.

Why Do Artists Use Social Media

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our video was based on the conventions of Indie Folk because focusing upon just the folk genre wouldn't have been suitable for us as a group because it would have been too difficult to get the correct instruments solely for that genre type. We therefore analysed bands that are placed in this genre category and looked at some of their music videos, clothing and albums to grap some ideas from them.

Here is my prezi showing how we used the conventions of the genre and how we challenged them.  

This is a powerpoint showing the features of Andrew Godwin's theory and how we incorporated them into our video.
 

As you can see this gif shows that our music video atmosphere had a very happy tone, which was created by the upbeat dancing within the video and the smiling faces on the characters we used too. This is because within indie folk videos the music and atmosphere must be parallel in that happy songs have to be replicated in the video by the visuals. This is apparent in music videos like The Lumineers - Hey Ho as seen in the gif below. The lighting also has to replicate the tone as bright lighting emphasises the colour of the background and costumes more whereas darker lighting gives a grungy feel.

Within the video we focused on the costume similarities between Mumford and Sons for the male because we felt that they had the best style to straight away simplify what the genre is without any confusion. The use of props also with the tambourine and the guitar also highlighted the conventions of the genre and because the song had both these instruments in it was simple to show this.

The way in which we showed our characters in the video was that we used many medium close-up shows of the pair together in the barn whilst they were singing. We found this happens a lot in the genre to symbolise the tone of the song as the facial expressions help to create the tone itself and how the audience should be feeling. The movement of the camera to follow the people around when they're mixes up the style of the shots instead of just having still video shots in the video as this was also a feature of Mumford and Sons. We showed the different locations of the video within cutaways on the video, we tried to ensure the lighting was similar throughtout the whole of the video especially in the barn because this again helps to show the atmosphere of the video.

For the actual set design in the barn we used the main setting for Mumford and Sons - Hopeless Wanderer with the barn location and the hay scattered around and then also using the design of Lily Allen's Not Fair video as she doesn't usually have a folk type genre to her music so we wanted to see how she thought the representation of this genre in her video. We found that she used different costume to us but she also used hay bails in the background so therefore we had another cutaway where the two of our people dance in between hay bails.

Final website

http://amberhemming.wix.com/thecassettes

Final video

Final digipak

Photo page improvements

In feedback people said that I needed to change the images by rotating them to make sure they all followed the same pattern, I added new images from the video we created to have more images on the sites because at first there wasn't many and I needed to fill out the page.

Home page improvements

I decided to change the design of my website home page because I felt that their was too much empty spacethe first image is what the layout was orginially going to look like separated with white lines, and then later on the lower picture I decided that I would make the boxes smaller to reduce the space and also add the share buttons in for the news stories. On the right hand side I removed the images from the buy tickets. However, after recieving feedback I think that within my website it could be improved further. I have now decided to re-design the whole front page and whilst researching some websites I found Twin Atlantic's website to be laid out with different coloured boxes so that it differentiates between different stories meaning that the font would also stand out. The contrasting grey colour from the dark grey background means that everything looks clearer within the layout and also you can see the different sections of the website rather than all the information being on the page with no clear set layout. I wanted to add the twitter/facebook share buttons again because audience members will want to share to social media sites as they're used frequently and this will help our band promote the news without us having to do it it's as if the fans are helping us promote ourselves. I thought the idea of having a large image of the band at the top of the page would also symbolise who we are because people who visit our site for the first time will want to be able to recognise us straight away and also again highlighting our identity. I thought that adding the new album to the right hand side in the top corner would make the album memorable as it's on the home page which in theory would be the most visited page and therefore would stick within the audiences mind. This is now the new website layout and I think the imrovements I have made are good in that it fills the space, I changed the font type and size so that the news stories are more clear also.

Social Media sites

I have now created a twitter page so that our website becomes more interactive to the audience and the buttons work on the follow us section appearing more professional. I have also a created a twitter account because I felt like I needed some social media site feed within my home page to promote the band and "gain" more followers within that social network. Sometimes bands find it easier to communicate with their fans over social media because more people would be likely to see their news whilst scrolling down twitter than going on their website and looking through the news pages.

Welcome page

After gathering feedback one particular comment was that the button didn't stand out enough to realise straight away how to get into the site, so I decided that to add an effect of when the audience scroll over the button it would change colour in order to emphasis it more clearly to them.

Feedback from Pete

We decided to tweet the examiner asking for feedback on our video and how we could improve it, he said that we need to increase the editing pace which is in comparison to what our teachers have said is the main point in which we need to improve our video. Apart from that he liked our unique location and also that our performers looked good.

Results taken from our survey

Survey of other feedback on all our rough cuts

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.
We have designed a survey to give people of a similar target audience to our video for them to comment upon our video, website and digipak and for them to give us feedback in which we will use to improve our designs. 

Feedback from Jake

It compares to most the feedback we have got about splitting up the shots from the environment to the ones we have in the barn as we have a lot of focus upon the woods shots rather than them in another location. We haven't really used a lot of close-ups because we had problems with lip syncing within our video so therefore we needed to get more footage once we had handed in the first draft.

Teacher Feedback on my Rough Cuts

After looking at both of these feedback sheets I have gathered good areas in which I need to improve my wesbite, digipak and music video. Firstly; 

• For the website I have already made a twitter page for my website I just haven't added the link to my website yet so that is the first thing I need to do. Secondly, after we have created the music video I need to add that to my front page because at the minute I was using the original video for a template which obviously wouldn't look good on my final product as it would be promoting the wrong one. Finally, rotate the images on the photos page, adding captions to them so that the fans can understand what is going on and also add better pictures to some of the pages. 
• Secondly, the digipak needs significant improvement to it, we have thought of making the front cover background just a solid image so that the cassette on the front stands out. Make sure that the lighting on the images reflects the genre and lets the images stand out, considering a good location setting throughout the images. Make the track listing bigger so that people can read it and make sure that it contrasts from the background. 
• Finally, the music video we need to make sure that the pace fits the atmosphere of the song because at the minute our video's editing pace is too slow for the song. We need to make sure that our actors are animated because they don't seem to be enjoying the video and as it has a happy tone they don't replicate this. Maybe add a costume change into the video because we have the same costume within the outside location and the barn location. 

The adaptations to our rough cuts will begin this week and we will focus on other feedback from people such as our target audience making sure that we ask the correct amount of people to have a good evalutation on our results.

Feedback on my research and planning

From this blog feedback I have made sure that all the posts that were missing have been added with detail and I have also added Dom to our group post. Most of my blog posts were up to date but needed more detail added to them to achieve a better mark. I have made flatplans for the website on all of the pages and scanned them into my blog but to keep up on target with my A grade I am making the target to frequently do blog posts every lesson to show how i'm improving my work and also how i'm speding my time because at the moment i'm only posting things when I've done something significant whereas I should be showing the examiner each time I do something however small it is.

Rough Cut music video

Rough Cut Digipak

Rough Cut Website

http://amberhemming.wix.com/thecassettes

Props problem

Our initial idea was to use fairy lights to decorate the barn set, but because we didn't have access to electricity in the specific part of the barn we used this was a problem for us. We managed to get electricity but just for the main lighting and as the weather was very bad on the day of production we didn't have the facilities to get any other source of electricity to the set. We couldn't use hay bails within our set design because the person in which we were going to use them from had stacked them up in another barn therefore we had to improvise on the day with the resources we had. Overall, the set has changed since we designed it but I think it still followed the conventions well. Instead of using hay we set out a bench and decorated it with cushions and lights etc with wood blocks scattered around to still make it the woods type theme.

Home page

This is my home page of my website, I decided from looking at twin atlantic's website layout that I thought this was the most clear with the most relevant information on the front page focusing upon what is going on with their live dates down the side and their new album advertised as soon as you open the page. I didn't like the idea of having the video on the front page because I already had it on the welcome page and a music page in which it would also feature therefore I thought it would be too much if i put it everywhere else.

However, once I looked at my website I felt as though the news stories were too spread out and it looked as though there was no information to go with the story creating too much empty space. Therefore like Twin Atlantic's website I made the news stories closer together adding a facebook and twitter share button because that's a good idea for the fans to be able to share our stories to their friends creating a bigger fanbase for us if more people know about us. On the right hand side where the Tours were I made it look better by making that less spread out too, I didn't want to put the live dates down the side though because again I have a page solely for the tour dates so by just putting a button on instead I can link it to other pages. I still need to figure out what to put underneath my news stories because the bottom of my website it quite empty.

Welcome

This is my welcome page in which the fans will be directed to straight away when they click on our web page, I liked the Royal Blood design in which the black background contrasted well with the white writing and the video being centre of the page standing out to the audience. I liked how the writing stands out at the top of the page and I changed the enter site button so that it turned a different colour when it was clicked. I liked the idea of having all our social media sites on one bar so that the fans could click on whichever like they wanted and it didn't take up a lot of space. Once we have finished and exported our video I will add that video to our front page I just put that one there for alignments and to see what the layout looked like.

Music Page

I liked the idea of having a page solely for music therefore the fans can easily access our songs and play them whilst being on the website itself. The top left video is being left for our video so that it will attract the audience attention. As there's options to play the songs from soundcloud or from youtube it's using two different music pages broadening our audience as some people prefer to use one or the other to listen to songs. I have used the download on itunes button to make it easier for the fans to get our songs and it's also as though we're promoting the download of our songs not just them listening to it. In comparison to the Jake Bugg website below I have videos but he has all of his songs available to play whereas I only have three I might add more videos later to again fill it out and make more of our songs known. I don't particular like how Jake Bugg just has youtube videos on his page therefore I changed the design as it was easier to do on Wix and also I liked using two different music sites.

Blog on website

I decided to add a blog of what the "band" are getting up to in weekly posts sometimes featuring videos and photos or just text of what we're up to, this is so fans can keep up to date with everything we're doing and it makes more of a connection between the fans and the band to keep them interested in us.

Opening scenes and establishing shots

When we were on set in the woods we decided we would take still shots of the types of opening scenes or establishing shots we liked from our location, these could go in our video as transitions between sets and veruses etc. These scenes along with the sun look really nice and we therefore want to film when the sun is out rather than it being dull weather to emphasis our happy atmosphere.