What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I got a mixed response from audience feedback. We posted our finished video onto youtube, but got no response from anybody, Just posting the video onto youtube was not enough so we needed to get it out more for people to see it. We decided that putting a link to the video on The Killers fan page would be a good idea as we could get feedback from real fans who obviously like the killers enough to use a forum about them.

Sarah made an account on the website and then posted this on their wall

The post got over 92 reviews but however only 2 people gave feedback It was not very detailed feedback however it was promising and positive, one saying "'Wow great video! Really! Good job.. Thanks for the post sarahdixonmedia!'. doing this also gave out youtube link more hits.


We also made a survey on a website called "Survey Monkey", we were recommended to do this by our teacher as it gives the responses from everyone who answered it in a clear and way to read way and is free to use, unless you want it to be presented in tables and graphs,then you have to pay. Using the free version you can make a questionnaire with up to 10 questions. We hoped that this would give us more specific feedback by asking people what we actually wanted them to answer, instead of leaving it open and them saying what they want. It is also anonymous so you don't know who has given you feedback


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HNR3DC5  Here is the link to our survey


Sarah then posted the link to our video and our survey monkey questionnaire onto her facebook page and sent messages out to some people that she knew, we then got some really positive and constructive feedback and with the help of survey monkey it was specific as to what we needed to hear. 50% of people gave our video 8/10 and the other 50% gave it 9/10 and people answers were very positive for example "I very much enjoyed the video, very easy to follow, but at the same time intriguing and unpredictable. It kept me in there".People also mentioned how the advert, digipack and music video clearly went together in a "package" and how they would be easily able to identify that they were all connected Other people also mentioned how they liked the storyline that went through the whole music video, not one person said they were disappointed as there was no performance. The only downside to this was that we knew the people giving the feedback and they may have been generous as to what they said, however as I said before SurveyMonkey is an anonymous website so we would not know who commented, they could say what they like and we would not know who it was.


The link on Sarah's facebook page




All in all I have learnt that it can be very hard to get constructive audience feedback. You need to get your video up in lots of places so lots of people see it and hopefully give feedback. With the use of facebook, youtube and survey monkey it has however made getting feedback easier, as it was not hard getting any of our feedback it just took time. I can imagine big company's get feedback very easily from facebook and websites as more people will view them and they willa lready be well known. I feel our audience did like our music video as the positive feedback we did receive was very promising, I feel that our audience like having a storyline throughout the video that they can follow, this was the main feature to our music.

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

Digipack and Advert

• Our digipack and advert also use images related to the music video, this is too help make the digipack, advert and music video one package. The time code from the music video is also on the didpack linking it back to the music video
• Lots of post-production was used on our product, just like we saw in other indie bands such as Yeasayer and the CD Sawdust by The Killers.We had to overlay the blue texture on the advert and digipack to give it the dark effect,we also added shadow to The Killers logo and to the name of the CD to help give it a gloomy feeling. The digipack can reflect the band and CD heavily, hence different bands have different styles of digipacks reflecting their music. That is why we gave ours a dark feel to it reflecting what the songs are actually about

The Killers and Yeasayer Digipacks

• I wouldn't say our products challenge any conventions as in my opinion followed lots of them for our digipack and advert (as shown in top image). We linked all three of our products together to make them into a package so they stand out.

Music Video

• The Killers video always seem to have a storyline to them as shown in both The Killers videos we researched (http://tomsandersona2media.blogspot.com/2010/09/research-music-video-2.html http://sarahdixonmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/09/video-analysis-killers-smile-like-you.html) In the first link the band are all playing and in the second it has the lead singer miming through the video. We decided to do the miming as in our video we could not see a full performance with a band happening in an interrogation room? This actually made our video easier to do as we did not have to find actors to be in the band and it would have taken longer to set up and do more scenes.

These images show the main characters miming in my video and the video link above

• In this Killers video http://sarahdixonmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/09/video-analysis-killers-smile-like-you.html it shows The lead singer as a ghost looking back at the past. We kind of did this in our video as the main character is having flashbacks throughout the interrogation scene. Also the lead singer from The Killers is shown as a ghostly character through the video, we tryed to include something like this in ours so we had the ghost of Jenny come in our video.

These images show the ghostly image of the lead singer from The Killers and the ghost of Jenny from our video

• We found out in our research that Indie kids tend to where whatever clothes they want to, and found out that The Killers tend to where a suit. We decided that the main character in our video would where normal clothes, just to show him as a normal everyday person, the inspector wore a shirt and tie as we tried to incorporate a little bit of the suit look, we decided against him wearing a suit jacket and to roll up his shirt sleeves as the inspector is only shown in the investigation room and is trying to solve a murder, this could show him as a little stressed out and that he is trying to get comfortable, it also shows him to be more dominant than the main character. Jenny wore a dress to make her look feminine and vulnerable. You can see in the images above that the lead singer from The Killers wears a suit.

These images show Jenny's dress, The inspectors shirt and tie and the main characters casual t shirt

• We also tried to do a ghostly effect on Jenny, we filmed her laughing and then added effects on premier to make her mover around the screen, a similar effect was used in The Killers, Smile Like You Mean It music video as shown in the ghostly picture of the lead singer above.

• With reference to 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' by Andrew Goodwin,  a convention in some music videos is the reference to looking ( a screen within a screen). We did this in our music video by adding a time code in the bottom left hand corner, this was to make it feel like you are watching CCTV footage and to give it a dark and sinister feel to it like you are watching a murder that you cannot stop. It is also to make the main character more vulnerable as the whole murder is on CCTV footage and the actual interrogation is being filmed by CCTV. 

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

Here is a power point presentation showing all of the different technologies I have used throughout my project. These technologies have made it so much easier and even possible for me to do my project 


http://www.slideshare.net/secret/HV1cnvR9Qppxhh

Also another new technology that helped us lots was our mobile phones. These were very important as we used them to communicate with one another so that we could meet up to do our filming and editing, if we needed any help and just to see how everyone was doing with their projects. Without our mobile phones it would have been very difficult to meet up as we would have had to do it via land line or email , if anyone had a problem and was going to be late it could have messed up the whole filming.

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

Above is my Music video, digipack and advert package. I feel that if you look at them and watch the music video you can straight away tell that they are all connected.I feel that the work me and my group have done works very well and presents "the trilogy" in a great way. As they all seem to represent each other e.g the advert and digipack have the timecode from the music video on them, this will attract the audience to the CD.

• Throughout the digipack, advert and music video lots of dark colours are used. in digipack and advert the blue texture overlay was commonly used linking the two together. The dark colours have been used to represent the dark goings on in the song " Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine". We also tried to create a spotlight sort of effect on the inside cover over the text. This is supposed to link to the interrogation room from the video with the spotlight going over them.  

These image show the use of the spotlight in the music video and the effect that we did on the inside cover of our digipack

• The main image used on the digipack and advert show the main character crouched in the corner of a room, this is taken from the part of the music video towards then end where he is crouched on the floor because he has given up and the murder had unfolded, we also emphasised this by adding the time code onto the advert and digipack.

this image shows the main character crouched on the floor, similar to the advert and digipack.

• The fonts used on the advert and the digipack are the same. For "The Killers" font we just used thier band logo, as for "the trilogy" we downloaded a font from dafont.com called "Times New Yorker". we felt this font fitted in perfectly as it looked like it was from a typewriter, linking to the interogation but also the font looked like it had run down, linking to the dark events that happen throughout "the trilogy"

• I feel our products would attract both males and females. Our research showed us that Indie kids are both sexes but tend to be a little more male. We didn't want to attract just one sex so we tried to make the advert and digipack appeal to both using colours that would not be biased towards sexes, such as pink attracting females.
• The most important people we wanted to attract was fans of The Killers. When Sarah posted the video on their website we got a few positive responses from some of The Killers fans which was very promising, we tried to do as much as we could to follow the conventions of Indie music and of The Killers to make it attract this group of people, one example is having the digipack and the advert very similar, if not the same
• I think our products would attracts an age range of about 16-20, this is mainly to do with who acted in our music video. all the actors are 17/18 and I think that this would attract an audience of this age as they could relate to the people in the music video

Advert final

This is my groups final Advert design, based on the front cover of the digipack, as shown in my designs previosly.This was to follow conventions as The Killers do this with all of their digipacks and adverts. We did however choose a different image to make the advert with to make it look slightly different but you can still easily tell that they are linked. The Killers logo is on it aswell as the record label and when the album actually comes out, all common conventions. We used more layers in the top left hand corner to make it more dark giving a more sinister and dark feeling to the advert.

Digipack final

Front and back cover

This is my groups final digipack cover and it was made on Serif photo plus. Just like in the drafts of the front cover shown previously on my blog, we got the main character to sit in the corner of a room looking very weak and susceptible. This is helped by the high angle shot used when we took the picture stressing that he is a very weak and susceptible character. We tried to make it look like there was a light over him such as a spotlight and that he is being watched on CCTV (The little numbers in the left hand corner of the front cover). We used the Killers logo and there record labels, as well as a bar code on the digipack to follow conventions and like it is an actual killers digipack. The Killers logo looks almost 3D against the bluey background, we did this by lowering the opacity to make it more bright and stand out more and look ghostly, linking to the murder and Jenny. The font used for "the trilogy" has been done in a font called "Times New Yorker" and was downloaded from www.dafont.com. We chose this font as it looked like it was from a type writer, linking to the whole investigation scene.


For the inside pages we chose to put a brick wall there linking to the main character being trapped and there is no escape as to what he has actually done. on the right hand side we put a picture of the main character but also some very faint font that blends in with him. This is supposed to be like a flashback in his memory and the text is the report written up of how he murdered his girlfriend, like it is haunting him. On the left hand side we put the track names and a description of each song, we used the "Times New Yorker" font again and used the same effacts as we did on "The Killers" logo on the front cover.


Inside the cover






http://tomsandersona2media.blogspot.com/2010/10/digipack-and-advert-design.html link to the designs

Final Music Video