Evaluation Question 3 Draft - Michael

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout this project, audience feedback has played an important part in the creation and final product of both our music video and my personal ancillary products. By receiving and taking in feedback from a whole range of different audiences I was able to adapt my final piece to ensure it was as good a media product as it could be.

Pitch: I first received feedback when, as a group, we pitched our first ideas for our music video. We created a 25 word pitch to express our original ideas to our peers. By receiving feedback on this we were able to adapt our ideas to suit that of an age group in our target audience. Comments such as:

      
were able to help us build on our original ideas. We answered questions that we were asked via feedback, and used these questions to slightly altar our planning. During the early stages of our planning this feedback was welcomed and became very helpful, as it meant we were able to learn about our target audience (as our media products were aimed at students the similar age to ourselves). Comments on our pitch, such as Phoebe's, that asked questions, such as, where we would be filming, allowed us to ask ourselves these questions and think about these for the first time ourselves. This was extremely helpful and meant we were able to start planning locations and other queries much earlier in the project than we may have done otherwise.

Digipak: More personally, I started to receive comments on my ancillary texts, when I published my draft digipak on the group blogger. With this piece I was able to ask for feedback from my subject teacher, as well as peers and other media students. Although my media studies teacher would not fit into the same target audience as was desired for our music video and final media products, I respected and was grateful for their personal feedback. As this teacher had seen many examples of student work in the past, and as I knew they had an interest in the genre we were using, I was encouraged by their positive feedback and took in their advice to make changes to certain aspects of my draft digipak. 

I also showed this piece to my family and friends. I favored my friends opinions over that of my family. I chose and made the decision to not listen to feedback or advice from my parents and other family members, as I believed they had no previous interest in the genre and did not fit into the target audience we had aimed to hit. If I were to listen to feedback from this group, my work may of ended up in a different style or may have been aimed at a different target audience. It was crucial I filtered the feedback I received and only listen to comments that came from members of my target audience, or someone with prior knowledge and understanding of the genre. This was why I valued the opinion of my friends and peers. After publishing my draft digipak, I asked peers and other members of my class to comment on this post so that I could receive as much suitable and relevant feedback as possible. 

I found the feedback I received from peers on this product just as helpful. The whole point of creating a draft was so that I could get feedback and improve on mistakes and see if anyone had any suggestions. Comments such as 'Charlotte's', which advised me to look at the individual panels and make them connect fluently had a great impact on my overall product. I listened to her feedback and completely changed one of the inside panels which hugely increased the professional appearance of my original draft. 

Advert: Similarly to my digipak I was able to get my magazine advert draft assessed by many different audiences. My family, my teachers and my peers all gave me feedback for this piece which massively aided me in my success of making this a successful and professional appearing  media product. In the same way that i did when publishing my draft digipak, I received feedback via comments from peers, from which I assessed my own work and made changes that were recommended to me by both my teacher and other media students. 

Video: The last part of my project that I was able to receive feedback on was the main media product, the video. Once we had taken all our shots and edited the video together we uploaded a draft version onto our blog. Similarly to my personal ancillary products, this post was commented on by our teacher. He advised us on certain aspects of our video and we learnt how to make it even better. this constructive criticism was helpful as it aided us in making the best music media video we possibly could. Although unfortunately we did not receive any feedback from peers or friends for this draft, we found the assessment from our tutor was sufficient and that because of this we were able to make a more professional and real life appearing media product. 

Overall I believe we greatly relied on the feedback we were given in order to reassess our work and make decisions to make changes to separate products which were greatly beneficial to us in the long run.  

  

Creative Journey // Sachin Mistry

Digipak inspiration // Sachin Mistry

For my digipak I took some inspiration from ‘Years and Years’, this is a band which I like to listen to but also their style of music videos and also photography in terms of photoshoots and interviews suits our band well. So for example the middle picture is of the band ‘Years and Years’, this is a picture of a photoshoot they did for ‘COUPdeMAIN’ is a New Zealand based music/lifestyle magazine, and they present the bands members/artists through a polaroid which I think look good and goes well with our theme. Also the bottom two images are of the ‘Ghajini’ Digipak which is a digipak of the songs from the Indian movie. It had a similar theme where on the left hand side it had a cut out of the border which is produced when you take pictures on an instant camera. I liked this effect an implemented it into my digipak design. I did this by creating an envelope which you can access on the left hand side of the digipak which just like the one in the ‘Ghajini’ digipak. But unlike the other digipak where it had a booklet I printed out individual photos of the band members doing different poses. This is just like ‘Years and Years’ photos for the magazine as they are also pulling random faces. I was going to writing on the bottom of the photos like the ‘Years and Years’ photos but then when I slotted then into the sleeve, the simplicity of then and the clean looks of the printed photos looked better in my opinion.

With the actual photos I wanted a similar theme which ‘Years and Years’ did, where they were against a neutral coloured background, and their expressions and body language would be emphasised by the flash when taking pictures. I achieved this look by setting the focus on my camera to automatic, this is because I switched the lights of in the room so it was completely dark. Then when the flash is triggered it would auto focus on the subject which are the band members pulling faces. Before I turned the light off I made sure that I had them in frame posing in the correct manner which I directing to do. Although we had professional lighting in the room, by switching the lights off and taking the picture I was able to create the shadow effect which is seen in the ‘Years and Years’ photos as this gave a simple yet effect look as the flash light would be solely on them and not bouncing off the walls. With the professional box lights the aim is to eliminate shadows and to ensure correcting for photoshoots, but I wanted to intentionally have shadows which kind of acts as its owns filter on the photos which I really liked the look of. 

6 Panel Digipak Decision - Michael

When planning for my digipak, I had to choose on the style and design of my media product, but as well as this I also needed to make a decision on the practical element of my digipak. I used the site 'DiscWizards' to research and locate different types of digipak and the wide variety of shapes and sizes that were available. This site would also give me a template as a basis for the creation of my digipak.  In the end I decided to make a 6 panel digipak, meaning there would be six panels all together in both the inside and outside of the album casing. I decided to pick six panels, as opposed to four, so that I could fully make sure I was able to both follow and defy conventions whilst maintaining the same theme throughout. I researched and looked at many albums to help me aid me in my decision.

Why I chose a 6 panel digipak layout // Sachin Mistry