Ancillary Product Feedback

-Very nice use of colour - the colour pop in the title was effective against the black and white background
-Really effective use of layering within the magpie, looks really professional however, it's not clear that it's Leeds, even to someone local. We are still happy with the product though, deciding to leave the Leeds imagery subtle so as not to be too over-facing
-The font had a really good reception, stating that it fit with the urban feel of the rest of the digipak
-100% of our audience identified the digipak and advert as being within the indie-rock genre

Overall this s really positive feedback and we are very happy with our final product.

Evaluation Question 4 Podcast

Before we had our online discussion I created a list on which we could base our conversation, making sure we didn't miss anything and ensuring it followed a coherent structure. We all had access to this during our conversation, allowing it to direct the topics covered. Therefore it can be see below as a rough structure of our discussion surrounding question 4: 

Evaluation Question 2 Poster

Using Pages, we created a poster to answer this question, arranging text alongside images that help the reader visualise clearly what is being referred to in the evaluation response.

Digipak Back and Inlet

For the back cover, we came up with the idea to invert the colours of the front concrete effect, therefore creating a cohesive package through the tone and style of the covers, whilst also creating a defining factor for each and fulfilling the genre convention of a dark colour scheme. We also created continuity by using the same font as the front cover, but this time in white to stand out against the black background. We finished by putting a barcode and record label on the bottom and creating our logo on Adobe Photoshop, using a magpie to continue the theme of the covers and link to the name of our record label - Magpie Media. 

For our inlet, we decided we wanted to continue the theme of Leeds imagery and the pops of colour used in the front cover. Therefore, to create continuity, we used the same image of Leeds as in the magpie on the front cover as the main basis of the inlet and layered this over strobe lighting effects to create colour. Furthermore, we wanted to continue through the 'grungy' tone established in the front and back covers, so we also layered in the same concrete background effect that is used in both of these templates. This creates cohesion between all 3 aspects of the digipak, making it one united product to effectively fit in with the genre conventions as well as the needs of the band and imagery in the song.

 

Final Magazine Ad Design

This is our final magazine ad design as part of our ancillary product line up. The image and background is the same as the digipak and we did this to provide a link between the two products. The colours and image link to the video as well because the colours are sombre similarly to the mood of the majority of our video. The quotes we have added to the ad are real quotes that we found in a  review of the gig we went to see back in February. The rest of the magazine follows conventions as we added social media links, release date and the website link.

Our finished magazine advert takes inspiration from examples from our research in that it is almost identical to the digipak cover, tying the two very clearly together. We retained the same background image and magpie artwork, changed the dimensions from a square to A4 and added some more subtle features appropriate for the magazine advert format. These include:

• Increasing the size of the font "TRANQUA LITE" and "TEMPERED TIDES" in order to stand out more as an advertisement and clearly display the band name and album title amongst the other information.
• The same magpie emblem from the digipak cover, slightly increased in size to grab attention from potential audiences.
• Text reading "THE DEBUT ALBUM" to ensure people know what is being advertised. We kept this text in the same font as the title and reflected the colour scheme of the text at the top of the image with the text at the bottom.
• The release date in a large, bold font.
• Actual reviews of the song we encountered online by local Leeds music blogs, helping both clarify the type of music being marketed and generate interest. We kept this in  muted, narrow, sans-serif font to not clutter the image and keep the magpie as the focal point of the centre of the image however it's still easy for audiences to read.
• A website link.
• Social media icons encouraging people to follow the band and album on Twitter and Instagram, the latter of which has a Magpie Media account.
• The record label logo.
• Small icons detailing formats the song is available from: Spotify and Apple Music.

Evaluation Question 2 Transcript

Our music video and supporting ancillary products (a magazine advert and digipak) were targeted towards fans of the indie rock genre of music as our band, Tranqua Lite, and their song, 'Tempered Tides', belonged under this genre. As a result we conducted research using YouGov into the types of people interested in indie rock. Our results showed there was relatively equal interest between male and female audiences and that there were spikes of interest in people aged between 15-25 and 35-45, due to the genre's prominence in the 90's and in recent years. As a result our media products we tried to make with a somewhat broad appeal in terms of not being tailored to a specific gender or generation of audience, but also something that would specifically capture the attention of fans of this genre of music.

In discussions with the band, we discovered that Tranqua Lite were keen to be marketed in a similar way to their influences, which included British indie rock bands Elbow, Kasabian, Foals and Biffy Clyro. Looking at the music videos and album artwork for these bands we searched for recurring stylistic elements, trends and techniques. There was commonly a down-to-earth and humble quality to the presentation of the band members in music videos and they were very frequently depicted playing their respective instruments in time with the song, imitating a live performance. The aesthetics of these videos tended to veer towards grungy and low-budget styles and used minimalism. Similarly, the accompanying artwork was usually deliberately amateur-looking or simplistic, often featuring provocative artwork or a graphic on a plain background. Consequently we discussed giving our video and poster/digipak art a unified look that followed this style.

Once we established that the band wanted the video to function as a tribute Leeds, the city centre became an essential location we used to shoot many sections of the video in. To emphasise the grungy feeling we wanted, we chose particularly weary-looking locations and places that evoked a bleak urban landscape. These included the bridge at Shipley station with big white walls either side that are scuffed and scratched with big black marks as well as the area around Leeds First Direct Arena which has a lot of dull coloured grey/brown buildings and concrete. As we completed the ancillary texts afterwards and wanted the two to be a coherent pairing, we therefore looked for ways to add this urban aesthetic to the cover art.

We came up with the idea of taking inspiration from indie rock albums by creating a simple graphic emblem on a plain background and combined a magpie (which is mentioned commonly in the song's lyrics) with images of Leeds so that the image looks like a magpie from a distance but upon closer inspection reveals the grungy urban landscape that our music video is set in. After developing this image, we still felt however that the two were somewhat detached and that the digipak cover wasn't truly representative of the video we had created. Eventually, after discussions within our group, we realised it was the plain white background that was causing the image to look mismatched. We discovered a white concrete texture background online and tested this as a replacement background and the difference was extremely noticeable. It not only looked less artificial and overly photoshopped and also tied it extremely more strongly to the visual style of the music video.

In fact, the background image was strikingly similar to the aforementioned bridge at Shipley, deepening the connection between the two. Our satisfaction with this result encouraged us to follow this aesthetic style further, adding an eroded, scratchy sans-serif font that looked decidedly grungy. Finally, whilst we initially envisioned a black and white digipak cover to fit in with the examples we had researched which included the album covers 'AM' by Arctic Monkeys and 'The Ride' by Catfish and the Bottlemen but upon consideration of how to establish a visual connection to the video we decided it would be more apt to include a hint of colour to reference the colour shift that is a significant feature of our music video. Therefore, we made the images of the magpie and Leeds full colour and shifted them slightly orange to compliment the colours, then included this colour in the text. The end result was a music video and ancillary texts that were distinctly unified and coherent in tone, aesthetic and style.

One of the main objectives our group aimed towards when creating the media products for Tempered Tides was fulfilling the band's brief of creating something that would raise awareness for homelessness in the local area. After the media products were complete, we sent out an audience survey that we created on SurveyMonkey in order to see how successful we were in achieving both this aim and the aim of creating an enjoyable indie rock music video, magazine advertisement and digipak. Fantastically, when given a list of 6 possible interpretations of the video, 5 of which were red herrings, 87.5% of respondents said they thought "the video's message was to raise awareness for homelessness". In addition to this, many positive comments were made about the video's use of colour shift from black and white as well as the colours and theming of our digipak and magazine advert. Also very gratifying to see was the seemingly equal interest in the products from both 16-25 year olds who responded as well as our secondary target audience, people aged 35-45, meaning our media texts were successful in appealing to both demographics equally.

On the other hand, there was lesser success with one of our secondary intentions: the idea of showcasing Leeds as a location significant to both Tranqua Lite and the issue of homelessness being portrayed in the music video. According to survey participants, the ancillary texts weren't clearly related to the city of Leeds and the iconography of Leeds Town Hall within the magpie's head was both difficult to see and not clearly recognizable as from Leeds, even from people who knew the city very well. Similarly, there were few people who picked up upon the significance of representing Leeds in the video, with lots of blatant establishing shots and uses of key iconic locations, when discussing the video with people in our target audience who had watched the video. On the other hand, we believe this may be down to the fact that as media students based near Leeds, our use of the location wasn't seen as a creative decision and rather as a practicality. To emphasize this more, we could have added some more obvious Leeds signifiers to the magazine advert and digipak, such as including a sign of Leeds in the magpie emblem however we think this may have looked too overbearing and crowded the image so the final products we are still extremely happy with. Also, whilst not being recognized as Leeds in particular, the city imagery in our ancillary products did leave an impact upon many other people who evaluated them in a survey, and the theme of urban settings in a more general sense was identified by a vast majority. In this way, our media texts were somewhat successful in one of our intentions for the video, in that it successfully represented homelessness in cities, but wasn't always clearly a tribute to the city of Leeds in particular.

The digipak and magazine advert were complimented by people aged between 16-25, our key target audiences, and [insert statistic] said they would be interested in listening to the song based on the artwork. Aspects that were listed by our audience in surveys as appealing included the urban aesthetic of the background layer and font, meaning our group's use of this particular styling was successful at connecting to the young adult audience demographic as we intended. What was also quoted as appealing included the "striking" emblem of the magpie and the coloring with the hints of burnt orange in a black and white scheme. This particular piece of information was also satisfying to hear seeing as lots of attention had gone into the use of colour within the digipak/magazine advert and the music video, including the colour shift and the contrast between shots in greyscale and in full colour. When questioned about the colour shift in the video, a large degree of respondents said it added to the uplifting feeling of optimism and a positive change of fortune for the character within the story. As both the main and ancillary media texts we had created were credited for their use of colour respectively, the combination can be seen to be very effective at satisfying the expectations of our target audience.

In conclusion, the combination of our media product and ancillary texts was extremely successful in achieving our aim of fulfilling the expectations of an established audience of indie rock fans in both 16-25 and 35-45 age demographics, appealing to these age groups in specific details such as the unified urban aesthetic and uses of colour, and we were also successful in promoting Tranqua Lite's identity as a new emerging band and the video's message about tackling issues of homelessness.

Video for Question 1

In preparation for this evaluation question we had a group discussion and went back over all our research on blogger in order to establish where we had met, developed or challenged our genre conventions. We then wrote a transcript, outlining our answer and used this as a script which Ed read over a video in which we included clips of the different influences within the video. 

For the voiceover, Ed used MusicMemos, an Apple application for smartphones and tablets. We then used the app Garageband to eliminate background noise from the recording and cut out pauses or mistakes that Ed had made. After this, using iMovie we pieced together the voiceover with relevant footage from both our music video as well as clips from the music videos we used as research in the pre-production process:

• Elbow - Grounds For Divorce
• Maroon 5 - Harder to Breathe
• Ed Sheeran - The A Team
• Biffy Clyro - Biblical
• Dan Croll - Bad Boy
• Kasabian - Ill Ray (King for a Day)
• Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
• Green Day - American Idiot
• Alt-J - In Cold Blood
• Django Django - Default
• Foals - Mountain At My Gates
• The Rolling Stones - Ride 'Em On Down
• Pulp - Mis-Shapes
• Catfish and the Bottlemen - Twice