Evaluation (Four).

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

The main media technologies used throughout my coursework were Final Cut Pro, Garage Band, Blogger, YouTube and iTunes.

When researching my target audience I used iTunes to identify different artists of a similar genre, and discovered what consumers frequently bought. When I looked at Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, I found that people commonly bought music by other artists such as Gotye and Cage the Elephant, both artists who influenced me when creating the song an both artists that supported the genre.

The main media technology I used was Blogger. Blogger enabled me to record my ideas as they came to me, and to post important research as well as my print productions. Blogger is highly useful as everything is kept in one place, and is incredibly easy to access. You can also comment on your own posts and receive important feedback from other users, as well as label each post and file it to keep everything easy to follow.

I used Garage Band to create and record the song. Garage Band is incredibly easy to follow, and has a wide range of sound effects that can be easily applied to your song. The whole process of using Garage Band on the Macs allowed me to become familiar with the Apple Macs, and increased my confidence in using basic editing tools – I feel this prepared me for using Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Pro was used to create the final edit of my music video, and was straight forward in creating a basic video. The editing between cuts within my video are actually very basic, as I only had a few days to create the entire video. Final Cut allowed me to enhance the colour within the video; I used RGB balance to create more intense blues and greens in order to get a more ‘vintage film style’ image. I also used a tool to create a dark blur around the corners of the screen, once again to enhance the vintage style. Another key tool I used on Final Cut was the tool to both speed up and reverse clips, these were used on the ‘home movie style’ shot in which the sequence was fast paced and imperfect.  

Photoshop CS5 was used on my print productions. I’ve got Photoshop on my laptop at home so I was able to use it with ease, and without any complications. I used Photoshop to adjust levels of contrast and to also adjust colour. For my digipak I actually dulled the colours slightly in order to create a certain subtlety, as well as applying the text. On my magazine advertisement I adjusted the colour balance to give it a more tea stained hue and to make it look weathered, again I adjusted the contrast balance to highlight the darker tones and create more contrast within the print. I also used it to apply the text and ‘burned’ the edges to create more tonal variation.

Lastly YouTube was used to publish the finished video, and release it to the public audience. YouTube is a great way to record and analyse how many people are interested in your video, what they think of it and how frequently it’s being viewed on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Other users are able to comment on your videos and offer useful feedback, whether it’s praise or constructive criticism.

Over all a variety of technologies were used to plan, create and publish all three of my productions. Each offered a uniqueness that inspired my productions, and offered the appropriate tools to create variation and diversity. Technology enabled me to enhance some of my hand made products – especially the digipak and the magazine advertisement – without Photoshop I wouldn’t have been able to tweak colour and apply text creating a more professional outcome.    

Evaluation (Three).

What have you learned from your audience feedback?


While I understand the importance of gaining audience feedback, I unfortunately was unable to obtain any due to timing issues during the project change. While I lack actual feedback from a target audience, I was able to research what consumers purchased based on similar genres to my own via iTunes. This gave me a little more insight into what target audience I was promoting to and the themes that were prevalent in similar products. 

Evaluation (Two).

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

After completing my video I set about creating the advertisement and the digipak for the release of the EP. I felt that an important aspect of the marketing of an artist is the recognisability, and ease of identification among the audience. I therefore decided to create not only a visual link between my three productions, but maintain a theme with them.

As you will see there is a strong link between the EP cover and the magazine advertisement, as I’ve used the same image on both of them. The image is of a male figure, profiled from the shoulders up, looking down to the ground. This image was taken from my art sketchbook, one painted and one mono printed, and I applied it to both of the print productions. This recurring image will be memorised by the consumers, and therefore identified and associated with the artist; meaning this will become the artist’s sort of ‘logo’. The way in which the print productions are connected with the video itself, are a little more subtle. One connection is the use of a male figure in both advertisement and the video, as the song is about a male character named Justin; this links all three together regarding subject matter, and creates ‘a world’ that surrounds the release of the song. Another recurring theme within the three productions is the sheer sense of isolation, all three feature just one character and his withdrawal from the world; again making the release recognisable by its theme.

The three productions come together to create a kind of ‘movement’ as it were, a sort of campaign that highlights isolation and self destruction. However, this doesn’t represent the artist; it purely creates attention surrounding the song – almost how advertisement creates buzz around a film release and not the director. This creates a sense of mystery that obscures the artist, and will hopefully cause the audience to be primarily interested in the production, and then become highly intrigued by the artist – bringing about recognition in a slightly new way.

Another key aspect that linked the productions was the use of text. Using a consistent font across all productions creates familiarity among the audience, and connects the audience to any advertisement to the unsigned artist. Familiarity is key in creating a successful artist; if an unsigned artist continuously changed their style committed fans wouldn’t be able to keep up. Although it may seem basic and unimportant, text is one of the key visual formats that keeps things recognisable and easy to identify. I utilised this and maintained a constant font that spread across both of my print productions, this kept it not only simple and easy to follow, but easy to recognise and identify with the artist.

Overall, I feel I’ve been successful in creating a continuous theme throughout all three of my productions. Visually there is an evident connection, especially with my print productions, and I feel consumers will easily be able to identify and access the visual themes. However, the link between the print productions and the music video are not so obvious in a visual sense, but more in a theoretical sense. The audience needs to think about the actual message and theme within the song and the productions, in order to identify a recurring theme of isolation and self destruction. I felt this is actually a really positive aspect, as the information isn’t being fed directly into the audience’s mind, it needs to be reflected upon and thought about in more ways than one; everyone can find a personal connection to this production.