CLOSING POST

Dear Examiner,
You will find all posts relating to my A level coursework under the label: 'A Level Research and Planning'. 
I hope you will enjoy reading through my work as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Thanks,
Derek Tsui

*THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED*

Post 10: Reflections on Finished Outcomes/ Target Audience Responses

Whilst editing the music video, I received feedback from the teachers to which I found helpful in making minor adjustments to improve the video. Below was a list of feedback from a viewing sessions done by teachers and members of the target audience.

Suggestions from the Media Teachers:

• They thought that the narrative of the music video wasn't specific enough, due to the lack of shots to do with the female. 
• The pace of the music video can be changed or have a surreal feel towards it, as the audience may need constant reminder that this is not reality. 
• Some of the grading looked a little under saturated.
• Some of the shots didn't fit in to the music video or some of the shot duration may have been a bit longer than necessary. 

After taking the suggestions into consideration, I decided that these were the things that I had to do, in order to improve my music video.

What I did in response to the suggestions: 

• I had a choice of choosing which part of the narrative to make more prominent to the music video, as one was to remove the female narrative as a whole or simply putting in a lot more of the shots including the female through the whole video. Due to the lack of shots obtained during the shoot, I had to remove most of the female scenes to make the otherside of the narrative more notable. 
• After looking at more existing music videos, I had decided to include some specific editing such as slo-mos and fast-mos in order to make the music video surreal whilst experimenting with the pace of the music video. For example, during the build up to the drop, I put in slo-mo shots due to the slow paced nature of the build up, however during and after the drop, the pace has sped up, which allowed me to return the shots to normal time or even a fast-mo version of it. 
• I adjusted the hue and saturation accordingly in order to make the shots more vibrant whilst keeping it consistent throughout the video. For example, during the scene where the roses are seen in the background, I had increased the saturation in order to bring out the colour of the roses, as well as making the artist look more "alive". 

• I looked over the shots and decided to keep some of the shots with longer duration whilst also removing a few. I had kept some of the ones with longer duration as I thought this allowed for the video as a whole to have a range of shot times. 

Feedback from the people within the target audience: 

• They liked the range of emotions conveyed within the music video.
• They thought that the transitions were appropriately place according to the music. 
• They enjoyed the dancing shots within the video, as it fit with the music and the video as a whole.
• They thought that the settings used were also appropriate and looked "professional"

During the making of my website's home page and second page, I had also received feedback that I thought was helpful in order to improve my websites. Below is a list of suggestions from what the media teachers thought, as well as what the members of the target audience found interesting. 

Suggestions from the Media Teachers: 

• They found that some of the social media links did not lead to the correct pages.
• They thought that I should make my call to action more prominent, so that the audience would be able to take part and purchase what is being promoted. 
• They thought that some of the buttons should link to the appropriate pages, for example the purchasing tickets button should lead to a ticket buying website. 

After taking the suggestions into consideration, I decided that these were the things that I had to do, in order to improve the website. 

What I did in response to the suggestions: 

• I had additionally created a twitter page, as I thought that this was also another social media that my target audience likes to use and decided to correctly link the rest of the social media links. 
• I had also created a singles cover and a button below which would lead the audience to hmv's homepage if clicked on. This would encourage them to buy a copy of the latest single, which would benefit the artist.  

• I also linked the tickets button to ticketmaster home page, so that the audience will know where to purchase the tickets, if clicked on. 

Feedback from the people within the target audience:  

• They thought that the social media was easy to access, due to also having the instagram feed featured at the bottom of the page. 
• They liked that there were blooper and behind the scenes videos on the home page. 

• They thought that there were nice details in the news articles and was able to find out more information when clicked on. 
• They thought that the pictures used on the websites were fitting to the message that was being conveyed. 

Final Product Review by TA:

When the final product was published, after making the appropriate adjustments from the reviews, I gathered a group of people from within the target audience, who reviewed the work. This was done through Skype, where I called them individually to ask them a set of questions regarding the music video. 

I gathered 6 people in total, 3 males and 3 females ranging from ages 16 to 22. The questions I asked them were: 

Some of the feedback that I had obtained were:

From these results, I can see that the music video created was able to relate to most of the target audience's needs and lifestyles, and that the type of music was not dissimilar to their current music taste. However, I can also see that the message wasn't made obvious enough to the audience, due to question 4 being low score amongst most of the answers. It was only after I gave them a hint to what the message conveyed was, that they understood it well, therefore I must make my message more explicit so that the target audience can understand the situation within the music video. 

 

Overall I thought that by having members of the target audience and the media teachers give feedback, it was very useful in order to make improvements to the websites, as it meant that there were other opinions, as opposed to my own, giving feedback to both the products. I therefore thought that this process was vital, in order to make the music video and website better.

Post 9: My Second Webpage

Inspiration for my news page

Initial sketch of news page

The general idea for my news pages was to inform the audience in the most straightforward manner. I therefore kept it simple with the layout of the news articles. From seeing other artists' new pages, I also noticed that it is common to maintain the same structure and colour scheme, in order to keep the website consistent.

Final Product (News Page)

The same layout can be seen with the menu bar, artist name and social media across the top of the page. Additionally a banner can be seen which matches the one from the home page when clicked on. The first 2 articles would feature on the homepage, as it would keep the audience up to date with any events.

The dance.co.uk feature seen on the news page is an example of involving another media platform, as the artist is promoted across an external radio channel. This is common amongst successful artists in order to reach the target audience.

Another common convention is the giveaways hosted by the artists themselves, often giving away signed t-shirts, posters or cd covers. In this case, I decided to go with a signed singles cover and have the event take place on twitter, a social media that is commonly used within my target audience.

Meet ups are also commonly done by artists in order to keep a consistent interaction with the fans to satisfy them. They are usually done in easy to access places so that a large number of fans are able to participate and also during times that are convenient to most people. I have decided to host my meet up at Westfield, Stratford on Saturday from 11am to 5pm, which encourages the fans to take part.

Although rare, cancellations occur during tours for whatever reason. In this case, despite not being announced, the reasons for the cancellation to concerts in Nottingham and Sheffield is due to the lack of funding provided, as Zephyr is still new to the scene therefore not being able to fund himself.