Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our assignment was to create a music promo package for an unsigned artist, included in the package is a music video, a digipack and a magazine advert. This led to us having to do much research and planning in order for us to do this task, we had to analyse current music promo's, digipacks, and magazine adverts in order to learn the conventions of these and in turn make our own adhering or cohering to these conventions.

The purpose of making a promo package is to make sure you can get a maximum number of people that can recognize you for what you have done, for instance a song that you have written. The promo package will enable you to gain an audience through places on the internet such as YouTube and Twitter, magazines such as Kerrang, and even on TV.

An example of an existing magazine advert is below:

This is a magazine advert by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in 2006 for their new album ‘Stadium Arcadium’. I believe that this is an effective magazine advert because it is attractive to the eye and also the main text which is the name of the new album is bold and large which could make people want to find out what it is. At the top of the poster it clearly has the name of the band ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ so that people that haven’t seen this new album know who it is by.

The magazine advert also includes information on when the album is released which is very important, as it says the album comes out on the 8^th May 2006, this gives people the opportunity to go to a store on this day knowing it will have been released if they want to buy it.

Other information on the magazine advert includes a small piece of text below the release date of the album saying that it includes their hit single ‘Dani California’, this gives them a chance to increase their sales of their album as if people that do not know much of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers but they know of this hit song as they’ve heard it and really like it, then they may buy the album to see if they like their other songs in the album, giving them a better promotion of themselves and better marketing.

As well as all of that information the magazine advert also includes some advertising for the company O2 as at the bottom right corner their is their logo and on the left of it in the middle is some text that says 'Text CHILLIS to 2020 for exclusive downloads, ringtones and competitions on O2'. This could give the Red Hot Chilli Peppers a wider range of target audience in the people who are with O2 as it gives them access to these extras meaning that more people may want the album or other Red Hot Chilli Peppers merchandise.

Costumes

Overview of costumes warn:
The idea was that there will be 2 different costumes being used, that of a smart/scruffy kind of look which will be suit and ties but wearing them as if you have just come back from a late night out partying. The reason for this is because it will suit our genre and also it will suit the music video that we are doing as we are trying to make a video that revolves around a ironic British holiday however we don’t want it all to be jokes as our audience will not appreciate it as it won’t be a good representation of the genre but we do want it to be entertaining.

Outfit 1
The main costume was sort of holiday/swimwear clothes such as shorts or a vest and sandals etc. This was worn in the main narrative part when filming in the beach location. 



Outfit 2
The second costume that was used was a smart but scruffy attire which was mainly in the performance parts of the music video so that we stay true to our genre and so that the audience take our music video seriously. 

Question 2 - how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our music video:

Our magazine advert:



























Our digipack:




when all the three of the above were completed they finished off the promotional package for Will and the People. they have synergistic links from one another through the typography images and as well as that the band member photos.

first of all we made sure to use the same typography throughout our digipack and our magazine advert, this was so that the audience would know that when they see both of these that they come as a part of a package and are linked to one another. hopefully this would result in the audience researching the band to try and find out more about them in turn making them more recognized.

the same typography was used in both the magazine advert and digipack however it was not included in out music promo as our promo contained no written text in it, but we could have overcome this by including some at the beginning as an intro or an the end of the music promo as an outro.

we made sure that we used the same images of all of our band members in both the magazine advert and the digipack so that the people that would be seeing these ancillaries would know that they are linked together as they can see the same people on both of the ancillaries. this also links to the promo as all of the band members in the photos on the ancillaries are in the music promo, meaning that they would be more recognizable if the audience had seen the ancillaries, which links them all together as one package.

the music promo will be showed on both the TV and the internet. on the TV it will be shown on the music channels such as MTV and UK top 40. this will be good for promoting Will and the People as they are two of the most popular music channels, and as well as that they majority of the viewers of these channels are of an indie rock audience meaning that they may also like the song and want to research more into Will and the People. on the internet the music promo will be shown on sites such as YouTube, this will be good for promoting the band as YouTube is one of the worlds most visited websites meaning that it could be seen by anyone around the world. other sites on the internet that the music promo could be viewed are social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as there is a wide range of people that can view the videos as as well as that they can share it with one another and to there friends which will get people talking about it and make it more well known.

This would show the band as being more professional as they are offering more places for thei audience to watch their music video and as well as that they are giving themselves the chance to get more widely known and potentially grow into a bigger name in the future.

the digipack will be shown and sold in two different places, in store and digitally. in store the digipack will be shown in places such as HMV as this means that those that prefer to buy CD's over digital songs can do so giving the band also more potential sales of their digipack and offering the audience more ways to buy it. the digital way in which you would be able to buy or see the digipack would be on Itunes as when you search a song on Itunes you can see the digipack cover, or alterenatively if you buy the song you then get to see the digipack, and for those that prefer buying the digipack digitally it widens their ability to do so and buy the song digitally.

the magazine advert will be shown in music magazines such as Kerrang. this popular music magazine would be a perfect place to get the band well known as it is bought and viewed by many meaning that more people will be able to see and recognise will and the people. it is also suitable as readers of this magazine are also traditionally indie rock fans meaning that it could make sales also rise as more people may be interested in buying a single or the album after seeing the magazine advert.

our magazine advert follows conventions of a magazine advert as we have included pictures of the band members so that they become more recognised, and as well as that have made sure to include the band logo for Will and the People in the top centre of the magazine advert so that it is seen easily and recognised also across the anicillaries.

Question 3 - what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Example of vox pop:







Example of focus group:







Below is a video of us presenting our idea to a group of students and receiving feedback:

Question 4 - how did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

There were also other pieces of technology that I used that helped us to manage our research and planning, one of these technologies was blogger. Blogger is a website that allows users to set up a page about any subject, in this case A2 media studies, and publish different posts about anything that you wanted to. This was useful for me as it allowed me to post all of my work out on to this page and organise it easily.

Another technology i used was Google. This allowed me to search for anything that i needed information on or for any images. 

I also used YouTube which is a website allowing people to post videos of anything. This was useful to me because I used it to research existing music videos, tutorials and techniques I could use throughout the production. I found that this was my most used website out of all of them.

Digipak

Magazine Advert

The Music Video