The document summarizes feedback from an audience questionnaire about a student-created music video and accompanying promotional materials for the electronic band Glitch Mob. The feedback was overall positive, though some felt the video could have a stronger narrative connection to the song or promotional materials. Students used various media technologies like Adobe After Effects and Photoshop in creating, researching, and evaluating their projects. They aimed to use conventions of real music videos and promotional designs while also developing new approaches suited to the band.

1. Dean Connor Leo A2 Media Evaluation

2. What have you learned from your audience feedback? From the questionnaire we have prepared we have gained an understanding of what a varied audience thinks of our music video and ancillary texts. This feedback can be used to reflect, evaluate and make any minor changes to the work we have done. First of all we asked our volunteers to state what their preferred genre of music was and if they had ever heard of the Glitch Mob/ edit before. This gave us a basic overview of what was the most popular genre within the group chosen was and how our video might change their opinion of the band's genre. Which leads up to the next question which was "from the name of the band what genre of music would you expect?" this was important in determining what the audiences first impressions where of the band without even seeing or hearing the band itself. The feedback from this question was fairly conclusive; most people knew that it was going to be with the "electronic" genre. To evaluate how well we constructed a video suiting the band, we showed the audience the video without the audio first. This allowed the audience to really concentration what aspects of the video they liked and more importantly what they didn't. Feedback showed that the audience liked the effects, such as the planets created using Photoshop. However they felt that there wasn't a definitive narrative to the video. This is intentional, we did not want to concentrate too heavily on a narrative for a song which has no lyrics. Although this may have left the audience confused in to what was happening in the video , some scenes may need to be altered to counteract this affect.

3. The majority of the audience did not feel that the music video made them want to buy the album, which was another question asked, they instead felt far more interested in the genre after seeing our video and maybe after listening to few more songs they may consider. We also dedicated part of the questionnaire to ancillary texts, which were a poster advertising the band's new album release and tour dates and the production of the artwork for the album itself. Again we asked questions on what they particularly liked and what they found to have grabbed their attention was. Their main reaction was that they interested in the concept and imagery of both texts, especially the door in the field that opened up to show a galaxy. Comments where overall positive, many people said that the print media and the video integrated well and complemented each other and gave an overall theme to the band. However some felt that this could be improved on, for example one individual said that there was not enough of a connection between the poster and the video. They found that the door in the field may have worked better if it had been placed in an urban location, much like the location of the video itself. We feel that this is a very legitimate point and one that we would work on if we had more time to work on it.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Media technologies were used throughout every step of the process in planning, research, construction and evaluating our music video and ancillary texts. For instance many of our ideas for the style and mise-en-scene of the music video were drawn from texts, images and video clips found from all areas of the internet for example "Youtube". Influences and ideas where especially drawn from the Glitch Mob's own website and from their MySpace page. It was very easy to find interesting information about the genre through the internet. It was very important that we referenced all the information we gathered through web site addresses and hyperlinks to show exactly where we got the inspiration for our ideas from. In construction, we used " Adobe after Effects" to edit and compile our video. It was used to create the interesting visual effects, such as light paths and slow motion. This program has really allowed us to be creative with the ideas and inspiration we gained through the planning stage. Although this program could be difficult to use at times and was very time consuming we felt that the overall construction of the video was a great success.

5. Another program used in the construction was "Adobe Photoshop". This was mainly used for creating the ancillary texts, however the planets that can be seen in the music video have all been made from scratch using Photoshop and tutorials found on the internet to give us guidance. We felt that the images created using Photoshop work really well to help create an overall image that connects all the texts together. Through the evaluation stage we have been able to showcase our music video and ancillary texts over social networking sites, such as ”Vimeo" to get a broad spectrum of opinions and criticisms. This has been relatively helpful in evaluating how successful we were at creating a music video that fits within the genre, however we understood that it was very important not to have a large proportion of feedback from people we knew to keep the results reliable. One aspect of our project that we feel we could have improved on if we had more time would have been the lighting in the DJ scene. The scene was too dark and the lights from the DJ equipment were not easily seen and therefore did not complement the camera angles. We would have reshot this scene using a more brightly lit location and maybe including more lights from the equipment to further enhance the techno / electronic vibe.

6. Audience Feedback

7. How effective is the combination of your main project and ancillary texts? Upon Evidence from audience feedback we feel that we have effectively linked our tour posters and DVD box design to the music video. We have made a connection between the main project and the ancillary texts in a number of ways. One way in which they have been connected is through the text design; we have used the same font in both the DVD and the poster. This links the two products in a subtle but effective way. We also used the same main image for the front of the DVD and the image for the poster (An open door looking out into a star field). This connects all of the products together very effectively and means that the audience relate each product to each other. For instance they might see the DVD in a shop and buy it they like the music and are interested in seeing the artist live. A poster with the same image as the DVD is instantly recognisable and eye catching. This idea of synergy within the products is very common in the music industry as advertising is very important. Especially as today most revenue for artists is through live performances. Another way we have connected the main product and the ancillary texts together is to create an original and unique them for all the products to revolve around. The theme of space can be easily implemented into all the products and is eye catching. Upon further reflection and audience feedback we have seen that improvements could further be made to link the products together. For example one individual suggested that we could incorporate the light beam that is followed throughout the music video into the poster or DVD cover.

8. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In our music video for “Ltlp” by the Glitch mob/ediT we mainly use conventions of real music videos. We researched into the genre of the band and other similar bands and found conventions that both use. For example it is quite common for music videos/posters from within this genre to use light effects, such as strobe lighting and neon light beams that can be synchronised with the music itself to help the audience visualise the energy and fluidity of the music. Many music videos from the ”techno/electronica” also use imagery of stars and galaxies which is an idea we mirrored in our music video. Music videos sometimes have a very strong narrative, linking the music or lyrics to images within the video. Others are very performance based showing the band playing their song and you are the audience. We felt that as our chosen song does not have any lyrics it would be best to not base the main idea of the video on a story for the images to follow, this will develop on the conventions of real world projects. Instead we used a balance of performance (an actor using samplers and DJ equipment) and strong imagery from conventions within the genre itself, i.e. Light effects, imagery of stars. The print media conforms more to conventions than our music video itself. However we felt that it would be a good idea to use these conventions for our own benefit. As the audience are familiar with the typical tour poster we used the usual design of a strong image to grab the audience’s attention with tour dates along the side. Using synergy to relate the DVD cover to the tour poster it allows the audience to instantly recognise the bands music and makes it a lot easier for them get access to more information about tour dates. The DVD design incorporates imagines from the video itself and the front cover is used for the design of the poster. This is a technique used widely in real media products.