Evaluation Q1

At the start of my blog I looked at examples of existing products, such as digipaks, adverts and music videos. We looked at professionally made versions of them and analysed the various components that made them what they are. After looking at a range of media products, it was easy to see the different styles and themes they show, especially according to the genre of music that they are portraying. The differences were vast but each product we looked at had a strong professional look that could easily be identified with the band they were related to.

The subjects of entropy and redundancy arose from analysing the different products, entropy being if a media product was very different and in contrast from the typical product of a similar theme, redundancy being in keeping with the themes and style of products with the same or similar music genre. I looked at two examples of very different music videos with different genres of music. One was an example of a very entropic video and one was an example of a redundant video. By looking at these two examples, although they were very different it was clear to see that they had been tailored to suit the tastes of the target audience of the band. An example of this would be that fans of hip-hop music are traditionally used to seeing numerous women and shots of the star, which were seen in the video I looked at.

So by looking at these videos we identified that the genre of music helps to define the style of media product that will be created, but also that the audience of the music and band will be acknowledged in the form of what they would like to be seen from the bands products. We also established that the entropy and redundancy of media products is broad. Entropy will be recognised as standing out from the crowd and being different, but runs the risk of being too different and not accepted by the audience, but redundancy are generally well accepted by the audiences, but can be lost in the sea of many other similar products and seen as just being another boring product. So it is important to get the right balance.

These points will be important to consider when creating our own products, so that the target audience will be considered as well as standing out from the crowd and being different. I feel when it came to achieving these important features in our own products we took the right steps in making sure they were present.

When we had confirmation of our song choice it was important to establish our target audience. The song we were going to use was an alternative rock song, by a band in Australia called ‘The Novocaines’.  Now we had the song it was important for us to set up an audience profile, and establish who are target audience was. This would help us define a style for our products and work on how we were going to create that style and what the style entails.

We established our target audience as a younger adult but older teen generation of both genders. We feel they would like the bands: The Black Keys, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, and Them Crooked Vultures. Their income would be relatively low as they would probably be students, and enjoy artistic subjects to study.

Now we have a target audience we can establish what types of products we are going to create. I looked in detail at more examples of media products by similar bands so I can get an idea of what would be in keeping with the theme. The main thing that struck me was with this genre of music there was more entropic features and various features that you would not first expect from the genre of music. An example of this would be with the Foo Fighters. Many of their music videos are very entropic and nearly always a mixture of both narrative and performance based videos. This made us think that when creating the video we had a chance to create a really entropic video and still be keeping with the genre and what our target audience would expect.

The theorist Sir Ken Robinson stated that creativity grows from the fear of being wrong. I feel this was a strong feature with our group when thinking of a theme to make our music video with. We ended up deciding upon a very entropic idea of three men walking around town terrorising the town, but in fact only doing minor offences, yet them still thinking that they are cool. We thought this would be a good idea because it was different to many things seen before and it would be humorous, which would be a similar theme to videos by bands like the foo fighters, but after filming we decided it was too difficult to achieve and settled with a simple pure performance video. We did this because we felt at the late stage of filming it was a safe option that still gave us the chance to make a very professional looking video.

Our original narrative idea fitted with the theory or Tordorov. This was the face that there was an equilibrium, which was the group terrorising the town, there is disruption of the group, the disruption is overcome and then equilibrium is restored. This theory fits our original idea well, but we decided not to pressure the idea and went with the pure performance based video.

We tried to make the music video look as professional as we could and in keeping with the genre and of similar videos by other bands. We did this by using studio lighting, staging and various other props to give it a professional band look. Editing wise, we tried to make use conventions of a real media video, by using various camera shots and quick cuts to match the tempo of the music, as well as changing speeds and visual clips that would match the music and be in keeping with the theme.

In terms of my digipak I tired to use media conventions similar to the genre and in keeping with bands of a similar style by using things like specialist fonts, colour schemes and images. I had to use screen shots from the music video as we had no photographs to make the products with, but I was pleased with the ones I had chosen and they way they were laid out because I feel it looked very professional. On the final design I used a bar code, and various other features typically seen on a product of this type. I was impressed with the final product because I felt that it mirrored many features of professional pieces of a similar genre, such as: the colour scheme, arranging of the images, font, blurb, and bar code.

When creating the advert it was a very similar process to creating the digipak. I looked at various adverts of a similar genre to gather similar aspects from them I could use in my own work, as well as choosing the best advert size and shape that would be typical of the genre. I decided on a A5 landscape advert because it was the most typically seen in a music magazine that I had looked at. In terms of colours and fonts they are similar to the digipak, and keeps with the house style of the two. The same goes for the arranging of the images on the page. The conventions I used that were seen on similar adverts of the genre were the start reviews and the release date. I also used the Twitter and Facebook logo, as they can be seen on more and more adverts and albums as social networking grows and a marketing tool.

Overall I was pleased with all three of my media products and felt that they were good examples of the media products for the genre of music and the target audience. I feel they were not that entropic but redundant to the alternative rock theme, which is what I was trying to achieve from the start. There are no major features that strike me as different form the typical example, but as a redundant example for the genre I feel it is good. The colours and font are typical to what would be seen on professional media products similar to this and the layout reminds me of the grungy feel of some of the works by the white stripes and similar bands. I feel I have achieved products that would suit the target audience too, as it is not too entropic for the audience to reject it, but the cool and grungy look I feel would suit them well.