Magazine Advert - Audience Feedback

Create your own user feedback survey

As my results show, 100% of people felt that the magazine advert was effective in drawing their attention; this proves that the advert is effective at being eye-catching. 

I spoke to the 2 people who answered "I'm not sure" and their reasoning was that they chose that answer because they were unfamiliar with the genre. It's also important to note that they are both outside of my primary and secondary audience. 

The reason for this result is the same as the above result.

Based on the audience feedback I have received, I can conclude that my magazine advert is successful in advertising Bishop Briggs' album to my target audiences. 

My Music Video - Version 1 Audience Feedback

I asked for audience feedback on this first finalised version of my music video by sending it to my friends via WhatsApp, posting it on Facebook, and by enabling the comments section on Youtube.
I chose to seek audience feedback from my peers as they are representative of the audience demographic that I was targeting with my music video.

Above are the replies from three 18 year
old females. Two are Caucasian and
one is Afro-Caribbean; all three are
long-residents of the Cayman
Islands.

Sam Hadfield, 18 year old Caucasian British male. He went on to raise an interesting point regarding the ordering of some of the shots, which I am now going to review in light of his comments.

A YouTube comment that my video received. The channel appears to be a promoter of copy-right free music (but the compliment is still very much appreciated.)

Maya Ambekar, 17 year old Indian-Caucasian British Female.

With this feedback I am able to happily confirm that my video has successfully appealed to the demographic I was targeting. I also plan to address any questions the audience have, and will consider the suggestions made.

I posted a link to the video and a request for feedback to my personal Facebook page, in the hopes of gaining feedback from my peers. 

Charlotte Upham is a 17 year old A2 media student who recently moved to the UK from Dubai. I have made a careful note of her point about the transition from England to Cayman (something raised by Sam Hadfield as well), and will be revising the video, seeing if I can make the transition clearer in any way. 

My Music Video - Rough Cut 2 Audience Feedback

While my video isn't fully completed as yet, I did take the opportunity to begin getting some initial audience feedback.
I asked my friend if she wouldn't mind watching the video (as it currently is) and having her response recorded. She was more than happy to oblige, and after the watching the video I was able to have a brief discussion with her to gain her thoughts and feedback.


Overall, she was very enthusiastic and supportive of the video, but she was also honest, and I'm going to take into account some of the points raised during our discussion.

DigiPak - An Introduction

As part of the A2 media course, I am required to produce an ancillary product in the form of a Digipak.

What are they?
A Digipak is a type of packaging for CD's or DVD's, and is typically made from cardboard with an internal plastic holder for one or more discs. Typically, they tend to come as 4 panel gatefold (book-style) packs, or 6 panel packs, (although there are other options).
The front of the Digipak will feature iconography or imagery of the artist and will be in style with the predominant genre. As a whole, the Digipak will follow a theme - always relating to the music, music videos, and the artist in some way - as the use of theme helps with the branding and recognisability of the artist.
Digipak's are essentially a form of promotion, as they help to bring in awareness of the artist and as they encourage people to buy and listen to music.

Codes and Conventions of a Digipak

Front

• Main band/artist image
• Name of band/artist
• Title of album
• Logo

Back

• Track list
• Special features
• Another image (usually placed under the text)

Spine

• Name of artist
• Title of album
• Record label
• Reference number

Inserts/Inner sleeves

• Institutional information
• Song lyrics
• Photographs of artist
• Thank you's
• Post cards
• Promotional/merchandise information
• Website information

Additional Institutional Information

• Price
• Barcode
• Record label
• Year of publishing
• Copyright
• Composers/Producers, credit, etc. ... 

(This information is usually located in small print on the back cover, or else as part of the inner sleeves or inserts)

Digipak Analysis

1.) Lana Del Rey - Born To Die

Del Rey's 2012 Album "Born To Die" is one of which I am a personal fan. 

As an Alternative genre singer, Del Rey's style is typically quite cinematic, dealing in themes of tragic romance and melancholia, and more often than not it gives nods to 1950's and 1960's Americana pop culture; and "Born To Die" is no exception to this.

According to this source, the cover image was shot by Nicole Nodland, while Del Rey and David Bowden were in charge of the overall appearance of this Digipak. It features the typeface Steelfish, which Del Rey has since gone on to use on her more recent albums. She certainly follows a theme throughout all her Digipak's, with her name frequently placed in large across the top of the cover, a medium closeup shot of her (connecting with the audience by staring into the camera), the album title in a smaller print across the bottom, and a vintage styled colour scheme/photo's relating to a differing theme on each album (the theme being linked to the songs).

The album cover seen above is from the Deluxe edition (the standard edition is practically identical, save for the title being printed in a pale sky blue.) The typography - all in the Steelfish font - features a soft peachy colour for the title, which matches the colour of the track listings panel (the tracks are listed in white, except for the bonus tracks which are in black). 

In terms of the design elements, Del Rey sticks to her vintage/cinematic theme by covering the album in vintage style photographs and forgoing the use of graphics, (although there is the use of a blood splatter graphic effect on the lyric booklet insert - this links to the albums themes of pain, love and lust/passion, and links to the brooding lyrics of her songs, while the red colour matches the roses printed on the CD.)
The cover photograph is simplistic, following a bright blue/white toned colour scheme (with hints of red that bring to mind the American flag and create a sense of patriotism), while the careful positioning of Del Rey ensures that our attention is drawn to her. She's photographed outside in an unusual environment (a common feature seen in indie videos and artist branding), and is seen with vintage style hair, makeup, and clothing.
Overall the style is suggestive of the indie genre, but it definitely has its own distinctive vintage twist.

In conclusion, Del Rey brands herself with a simplistic, yet clear and distinctive style that holds nods to the mix of genres that influence her. This Digipak contains most of the common features of a Digipak, and successfully markets this artist.

2.) Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love

(These pictures are of my own copy of Sleater-Kinney's "No Cities To Love" - above is pictured the front (the dried flowers) and back covers, and the inside fold.)
The image of the female holding the paper displays the typed words of the first and second verses of the album's title song, "No Cities To Love".

(This is the inside spread of the Digipak - it's features the three band members, obscured in shadow to create enigma, and sets a serious tone for the album. Black and white photography of the band is a common feature in the punk rock genre.)

Sleater-Kinney returned in 2015 after a decade of silence with the an iconic collection of feminist punk rock in "No Cities To Love". 

Mike Mills was in charge of art direction, and worked with Thea Lorentzen on design. The front cover photograph was produced by Mills and Lorentzen, and the back cover photograph is a photograph called "Colour-Composite of the Sky Field with Several High-Redshift Galaxies" by Eso and has been edited to black and white (to match with the black and white photos of the band on the inside of this Digipak.) 

(Above: the unedited version of the image on the back cover)

While the choice to have the imagery of stars seems a little incongruous with the dried and faded arrangement of flowers on the album's cover, it does work, as the outer space themed cover art has been used by other rock bands, such as Pink Floyd and Def Leppard among others. The choice to make this image black and white also feels like a nod to the style of the 90's (which is when Sleater-Kinney started out). The space imagery also links to the modern/futuristic themes raised in this album's songs (such as the idea of the 'atomic tourist', in "No Cities To Love").

The flowers on the front cover give the album a more feminine touch, which is appropriate as this is after all a feminist, all-female band; the fact that the flowers are shrivelled does link to themes of death, dead romance, and the passage of time, and can in this way be linked to the punk/rock genre (although this cover does feel rather more indie.) 

The three inner panels of this digipak feature the three band members, obscured largely by shadow. While for newer and unestablished bands this may be done to create intrigue, Sleater-Kinney are a well established and prominent American rock band, and therefore don't need to create intrigue to gain popularity or build a fan base. Therefore the choice to do this is likely to be a way to ensure that their fans focus on the messages of their music, and not them. 

The font is in a simple and small sans-serif style - a fairly unusual choice for a rock band, as most tend to go for larger, grunge or graffiti style fonts - and is either black or white (as appropriate to being able to see it against the background.) 

Again, the simplicity of the overall packaging choices seems to be urging the audience to focus on the message of the music by eliminating all unnecessary distractions. 

In conclusion, while "No Cities To Love" contains all the necessary codes and conventions of a Digipak, the overall theme feels rather more indie than punk rock - but as an established band this is okay, especially as the theme's femininity relates to their feminism and girl power.

3.) Arctic Monkeys - AM

In 2013 the indie-rock band Arctic Monkeys released their AM album (the title 'AM' being inspired by the Velvet Underground's 1985 compilation album 'VU') - while neither the name of the band nor the album title appears on the front of the Digipak, appropriately, the album cover artwork is a graphic of an amplitude modulated (AM) signal. The simplicity of the design, and the bold choice of black and white make it eye catching and memorable to the audience, and create intrigue for those who are unfamiliar with the band. 

The inside cover follows features a shot black and white shot of the band looking serious and moody, (again, a common feature of the rock genre.) 

This Digipak is even more simplistic than most, with the only writing being the bare essentials (band name, track listings, legal jargon, barcode, and record label logo) on the back cover.

The band name (which doubles as their logo) appears in a large font above the track listings, which are indented from the left. The font for the bands name is distinctive - its part of their branding - and is likely based off of the font Futura ExtraBlack. The track listings seem to also be a variation of the futura font. While a sans-serif font such as this is generally uncommon of the genre, the Arctic Monkey's are unique in that they have made it part of their branding, so it's recognisable as being part of their style. 

Conclusions

In the digipak's I have analysed I can safely conclude that the codes and conventions I listed at the top of this post are accurate - all the Digipak's I looked at analysed included them, and all followed a theme relating to their artist/songs/genre. 

While every Digipak is unique to its artist, their is a general conformity to what's expected of its genre as this helps with branding. Of course, as with everything, there are always exceptions. 

My Music Video - Artist Research

Bishop Briggs

Sara McLaughlin (known by her stage name Bishop Briggs, (a name inspired by her parents home town of Bishopbriggs, Scotland)) was born in London on the 18th of July, 1992.

While British, she's now a musician in Los Angeles, California, and best known for her debut single, the hit song "River", which was released in January 2016.

Although relatively new within the industry, Briggs' is already signed to Island Records, and her song "River" was a significant success.
"The song quickly made it to number 1 on 'Hype Machine's' Popular Charts, and reached number 2 on Spotify's Global Viral 50. It also received an Honorable Mention on Shazam's predicted 'Songs of the Summer 2016', which was featured in Billboard. As of May 2016, "River" was steadily climbing the Shazam 'Future Hits' charts. "River" has so far climbed into the top 10 on the Billboard Hot Rock, Rock Airplay and the Alternative Songs charts." (Source: Wikipedia)

On iTunes, Briggs' biography reads as follows:

In my personal opinion, Briggs is a fresh new artist - of whom I've become a fan - with great promise for producing more distinctive music.

Bishop Briggs website is http://www.bishopbriggs.com/ and on it you can find her shop (selling her merchandise), and a link to tour dates and tickets.

She can also be found on the following social medias:
SoundCloud
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube

Her music can be found on the following websites:

In the space of just a year, Briggs' has released 6 songs and 4 music videos, all of which are available on iTunes. 

All the music videos released are appropriate to the genre, and feature Briggs within the video.

In terms of Briggs' audience, I have researched them as extensively as possible (given the scarcity of information due to the infancy of her career), and have detailed my findings here.

***********************************
As the course requires me to create a brand for the artist, and as I don't know Bishop Briggs personally, I'm going to be using the subject of the video to promote the brand (with the mask she wears becoming the key iconography with metaphorical meaning for promotional purposes.)

My Music Video - Genre

In the endeavour to gain a better understanding of this genre of music - so as to be able to create a more informed, professional standard music video - I watched various music videos from within this genre, helping familiarise myself with some of the most common conventions.

Example Music Videos of the Genre

The music video for the song "Backslider" by Wild Belle features the band's vocalist standing/singing/dancing in front of a screen which has various artistic images projected onto it. As I mention in my previous post, this is a similar concept to what I have decided on for my own music video.
The 'old film' style is one that seems to crop up fairly regularly within the alternative genre - specifically with female singers - for example, it's also used frequently by Lana Del Rey, in videos for songs such as 'National Anthem', 'Young and Beautiful', and *'Summertime Sadness'.

*(This particular video is very similar to my proposed concept, with Del Rey exploring a love through point of view footage and implied memories. The use of projections and 'old camera' footage is a very stylised effect, and is almost exactly the type of effect that I have in mind for my own video.)

Certainly from videos such as these I can predict that my concept will work, as it fits very well with these pre-existing media products.

The music video for the song "Kamikaze" by MØ  (which is technically not indie, but pop - however, the relevance of this is that MØ is a female singer with fans similar to Briggs, and therefore what appeals to audiences in her videos is likely the same as what will appeal to fans of Briggs,) is typical of videos produced by artists in the pop genre.
It features a semi-apocalyptic, rundown mise-en-scene, lots of young adults wearing grungey urban clothing, and purposefully shaken hi-def quality shots.

MØ also receives star treatment, performs in the video, and utilises looking to 'connect' with her audience.

Codes & Conventions

While certain elements of this genre - such as looking, star treatment, performance (both artists sing) - are common features of all music videos, regardless of genre, I have noted that there are certain themes and ideas that seem to be more prominent within the broad confines of the 'alternative' genre. 

The themes of such videos often deal with 'young adult' issues, exploring things like being 'different' or rebelling against societal expectations. 

While in some ways videos within this genre are artistic expressions designed to explore the 'realness' of being human, they're also very much just a way of crafting a new identity of sorts for the millennial generation. 

Certain common features of videos in this genre:

• Abandoned places, devoid of other people - empty buildings, forests, deserts
• Unfocused style of filming
• A mix of performance and 'story acting'
• Manipulation of light
• Colour themes - e.g. red to connote love, blood, pain etc.
• Unusual clothing, make-up - makes a statement
• Symbolic object - again, designed to make a statement 
• Story lines involving love, fights, rebellion, 'contemplative' scenes, death, surreal scenes

My Music Video - Audience Research Questionnaire Results

And the results are in!

Overview
I obtained 23 questionnaire responses (9 online and 14 hard copy). Of these responders 12 were female, 9 were male, and 2 individuals who preferred not to specify their gender. It was also the case that all of save 2 of the responders were between the ages of 17 years - 19 years, meaning that their answers are relevant to my particular video as they're the age of my target audience.

For the responders aged 17 years - 19 years the typical job was either a shop assistant or a worker in the food service industry, and all (except 1) within this age range in current study of A-levels. 

The music

The first thing I learnt from my results is that I'm bad at designing surveys.

I'd foolishly chosen to let people use comment boxes, so that they could write in their answers without being affected by predetermined choice lists. However, this meant that I got an enormous range of answers (for example, a collective 24 different styles of music as answers to "What music genres do you like/listen to?" as people tended to list multiple genres, some of which I'd barely heard of!) The issue became how to consolidate these to be useful to me, and my solution was a crude tally sheet (that took ages). The results of this tally sheet (which was a combination of the online and hard copy responses) showed the following: 

While it all boiled down to being a lot more fiddly and number-y than I'd planned, the important thing about these results is that they show me the top three most liked genres: Pop, Rock, and Alternative, while Indie came in at a close 4th (tied with Hip Hop). 

These results are encouraging to me, as the song these are the genres that my song/music video are closest to. 

The other significant music information that is required is the disliked genres. I analysed the information I received in the same why I did with the liked genres, and here's what I found:

The Heavy Metal genre was the clear winner for 'most disliked music genre', particularly within my female responders, while Rock took second place (curiously enough, as that means it's the 2nd most liked and disliked genre according to my results), followed by Rap and Classical (you couldn't find two more different genres) tying for third. 

While my questionnaires also probed for other information (such as favourite/least favourite movies/tv shows/genres, and hobbies) the results are too varied to include in a concise format. 

I'm not going to ignore the information though,  as I've read through all the answers and am paying attention to them so as to give me the possibility to include certain 'easter eggs' within my music video. For example, one responder stated their hobby is "playing on my roller skates"; so I'm now going to try and include GoPro footage of rollerskating in my music video.

My Music Video - Locations

Due to the subject of my music video being an abstract exploration of memories, its needless to say that the range of locations is going to be vast.

Already, I have filmed the scenes needed for the concert, which of course was done at the location of the actual concert, the O2 Academy in Leeds.

Another location that will be featured heavily within the music video is Ilkley river. I very much planned the opening and closing sections with the river in mind, although I did have to spend an hour or so walking up and down to find an appropriate spot of the river at which to film.

The left image was a point I had considered filming from, but when it came down to practicality I found it would not have been possible to obtain the shots that I required. The above image is at a point slightly further down the river, and on the opposite bank; this part of the river (at low tide) proved far more appropriate for filming.

For the scenes in which the subject gets ready for the concert, I chose to film in my own bedroom, as the mise-en-scene was already conveniently set up to connote a teenaged/young adult female's living space.

While the majority of my room was left alone, I did rearrange the set up of this corner (which usually has a bean bag chair in it) so as to be able to display the record player and the collage of personal affects on the wall.

To film the projections I intend to use one of the school photography rooms, as it has blackout blinds and a white background onto which I want to project the 'memories'.

In regards to the memories footage itself, it's going to have to be acquired throughout a range of locations within the Ilkley/Addingham area and from places in Grand Cayman (I've made the decision to include footage from Cayman so as to give the video a unique twist, in the way of mixing two significantly different landscapes). I have a few ideas on where/what I will shoot, such as in my own back garden, but I'm planning that the majority of the footage will end up being spontaneous. 

My back garden in Grand Cayman (home). 

My Music Video - Audience Research Questionnaires

To better understand the viewing habits and interests of my audience I designed two questionnaires (a hard copy and an online version) to gather primary information.
I asked for information about their viewing habits in other medias and their interests so as to ascertain information that I could use to possibly include intertextuality, giving me the potential to make my product more relevant to my audiences interests.

Audience Research Questionnaire from ngalvin99

Link to Survey P.1
Link to Survey P.2

I'll add another post later with a consolidation of my results, (once i've received them). I'm using social media and my classmates to answer my questionnaires as they're my target audience, but I've also sought answers from other, older people I know. 

My Music Video - Research & Audiences

As I intend to use an original song I do not have the option to conduct audience research into the artist; however, this does mean that I can have more freedom in the ways I choose to present my artist and what I create with my music video.

Of course as is the case with any business, a brand new product is very risky to invest in, so there needs to be evidence of success in other similar products if the decision to risk the new one is to be taken.
The song I intend to use is most similar to the work of indie-pop group Wild Belle, a brother-and-sister duo who formed in 2011 and mix the genres of folk, dance, reggae, and psychedelic into their music.

The sound of the song for this video is most similar to the original I intend to use; the concept for this video is curious, but relates in no way to the plan I have for my music video. 

The music video for Wild Belle's "Backslider" is however very similar to my proposed concept, in as much as the video features Natalie Bergman (vocalist) standing/singing/dancing in front of screen onto which various images are projected. I intend to use the same concept in my own video (although the projections will be of film, and related to a story.) 

 

I had actually come up with the concept for my music video before I began looking into similar artists and their music videos, so it was comforting to find this music video as it confirmed that my ideas where appropriate to the genre.

Audience
Based off of my intended song/music video style/artist's similarity to Wild Belle, I chose to conduct my audience information research using the information I could turn up about their audiences. I attempted to use YouGov but was met with unsatisfactory results as they had nothing registered under Wild Belle. I then tried to look into the group's wikipedia page and at their website for more information, but it was to no avail - the band are simply too unknown to provide substantial information into audience trends.

However, as a teenaged female, I have spoken with others in my demographic and I know that this style of music is relatively popular within my age group and gender, and this is why I have chosen females aged 14-28 to be my primary audience, whereas my secondary audience will be males within the same age range. The reggae genre mix of my intended song opens my audience up to potentially link with those living in the Caribbean, although as a genre indie-pop generally encourages a large enough fan base of all ethnicities and nationalities.