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

After creating my digipak for the band Dystopia I asked my class peers their opinion on the
digipak. I was quite specific when asking as I would aim to ask people who I know like the
rock genre, the reason I asked them for their opinion was because I know that they would
recognize the genre characteristics within my digipak I would hope that they would be able
to recognize these characteristics so that I knew I was meeting the needs of my target
audience. After asking my peers after my draft they said that the pixelated idea was a good
idea but it was just not working throughout my digipak and that it did not look professional.
I then asked them what they thought of my animated idea, a couple of my peers were
unsure of the idea but after explaining my ideas in more detail they agreed that if I did it
correctly that it could look good.
I also asked my teachers for feedback so that I could get further feedback from different
types of people as they are older and will have different music interests in comparison to my
peers and they also agreed that the pixelated idea was good but it didnt work. We then
discussed about my idea of my animated idea and they suggested some digipaks that are in
the real marketplace that I could use for inspiration. This helped me design my final product
as I also created my creative journey which gave me lots of ideas that I could use. They also
commented on how the digipak would have to meet the expectations of the exam board by
including key information on the digipak such as catalogue numbers. The exam boards
expectations did not affect my work too much as I felt as if I was making a digipak for the
rock genre and so it had to be relatable to the audience involved in this genre. This will
hopefully mean that the exam recognizes these connotations throughout and see that this
digipak meets the rock genres interests. After this feedback, I have learnt a lot from this
process specifically how to research into genres of music so that I can see what interests
and characteristics are used within these genres. I also felt that have learnt a lot about the
process of making digipaks and the attention of detail that should go into making a product
of this nature. I have also learnt how real life bands present their media products and why
they may use a specific theme in order to meet their audiences interests.
In creating my advert I once again asked my class peers for their opinions on whether they
felt I should use the front cover of my digipak which had a large influence on my decision in
what I was including on my poster. The majority of my peers said that they felt I should use
the digipak cover for my advert so that it is clear what band has produced the album. One of
my peers who has a high interest in the rock genre said that because I had used a black
smudge on my models face it shows how maybe darkness is spreading on her and suggested
that I could use a lighter scheme for my magazine advert which shows how she is not
completely dark and it would also show that she has got darker from the advert to the
digipak. I thought that this would create a small journey that I would hope that my audience
would recognize this journey through darkness. The exam did have a large influence in my
work for the advert as they expect consistency which will show professionalism through my
work so I decided to keep a similar theme for my advert.

Finally creating our music video as a group we had to do a lot of research into our genre to
see what was currently in our genre and how other professional bands represent dark
themes throughout their music videos. We saw that black and white themes were popular
but we felt it would be hard to present this theme in a performance based video. We spoke
to our teachers about how we could incorporate this within our video and they suggested
that when we get around to editing the piece of work that we could put a black and white
effect over our video which would portray the video as dark. We also had a play around with
some of the strobe lights from our drama department at our school which creating a dark
shadow over our artists. This helped create a further darker theme as it appeared as if there
was a dark shadow following us throughout our journey. I have learnt about how a basic
effect can have a large effect on a video or piece of work so that it matches the genres
characteristics. I have also learnt about how lighting can affect products and how
professional bands will use these to interact with the audience. The exam board had an
effect on this piece of work as we had to ensure that our music video met the needs of our
music genre, if we could do this we are likely to gain a better grade.
We then asked our classmates to comment on our video in which one of the comments
included I really like the convincing performance given by the lead singer as I think it
makes the video look believable. I also like the use of the black and white effect put on the
entire video as I think it makes it fit the rock genre. To make the video better, it would
have looked more realistic if the drummer was really playing the drums as it looks a bit
staged at times. This shows us that they felt as if the black and white effect was good and was
successful which as a group we were happy with. We were happy with the comments about our
lead artist as it shows how a lot of effort was put into the video. We agreed with the comments
about our drummer as our drummer had never drummed before and it was a bit of a last-minute
idea to use the actor for this role. If we were to do this again we would try to get someone with
drumming experience so that it appeared more convincing.
After our draft submission, we received a lot of constructive criticism from our teachers that
stated the changes that were required to make our video better. Our original video was to include
a female model who would perform My Immortal by Evanescence whilst also telling a story. Due
to this model being at school it was a struggle for us to film regularly. This amongst our
comments led us to start again but we carried the criticism over to our new video so that we
ensured that we did not make the same mistakes. This included how our framing of our shots
were not good and that our mise en scene was poor so for our new video we did further research
into rock music to ensure our mise en scene was better. We were also required to include more
shots of our artists which included more close up so we ensured that we did this for our final
product.