A2 Media - Emily Swager

At the beginning of this year we were asked to make a pop promo and also to make a digipack and magazine advert of our chosen song and artist. My group and I choose the Noah and the Whale - 5 years time.

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

I think that my media product uses a lot of other pop promos, because our synopsis is very much a romantic genre which most pop promos of an indie music genre tend to use for example, earlier this year I analysed the pop promo Katy Perry – Hot “n” Cold, this is similar to ours as our storyline is of a couple that have broken up according to the audience, which is the same as Katy Perry’s pop promo. Also, another way that we tried to do the same as other pop promos is that we tried to make the visual go in time with the music, for instance, in our pop promo goes in time with the music when the girl runs down through the trees. I think that our group also has challenged pop promos in some ways because our main idea for the synopsis is that the girl is dead, and that it is different because normally in other indie genre normally it is a simple storyline of a girl and a boy break up nothing more. All together I think that our pop promo is the same as other pop promo’s we tried to do this because we wanted to make audiences recognise the narrative of the our pop promo.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The song we choose is a sad song if you listening to the lyrics but without them the tune of the song sounds like

a happy song, therefore our whole package of our pop promo is supposed to be happy colours. So that is the reason why we came up with bright still images as an example the picture of the tennis courts. For our font we only choose red because it stands out from the still images, and I wanted to use yellow but because you could not see what words where on the digipack, also, we thought that red is a darker colour so the digipack is a sombre tone same as the pop promo. I think that our promotional package goes well because we were aiming for the pop promo to have sombre but happy moments and we tried to show this in the digipack as the still images slowly get darker showing that the couple’s relationship gets worse. As art director, I choose certain places, for example, the local park, because I thought this is typical places in which a couple would be so this is the reason why I choose these places. I wanted to have different colour clothes for the actors to show that it is being different seasons but in the end we decided not to do that because we thought that it did not matter what type of weather it was, but the couple are getting angry at each other. We were trying to show the same as the lyrics that not everything lasts forever so that is why in our pop promo the couple break up the same as the lyrics.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We were trying to market our pop promo at teenagers (ages 15 to 20) because of the type of indie music, it could also be aimed at adults for instance 25 + but I do not think that not every adult would prefer this music. As we showed in the questionnaire that I did with my class earlier this year, they prefer to listen to this genre of music. The narrative of the pop promo is something that teenagers can relate to because of the break up adolescents know what it is like to be in a relationship and then break up, while adults are in marriages and they will not break up so they have not experienced this in a long time, but I don’t think our original idea that the girl is dead can be related to teenagers because not many have experienced the death of someone, this way in some way it can relate to adults because they have and they know that not everything lasts forever. We tried to attract audiences by making the audiences wonder during the pop promo why have these two people have broken up, so that at the end people are still confused because they are not sure what happened. We used M-E-S to try and attract teenagers because what the actors are wearing is very teenager clothing and also the places for example, the park, is a place where younger people can relate to. The audience related to the pop promo with contempt, because it is a simple story and they said that they understand it, apart

from the end because they were not sure that the girl is dead because they just thought that they broken up, and the glow when the girl is going backwards they thought it was just a representation that she was out of his life forever. Audiences thought that our digipack and print advert were ok, but again with the digipack they did not get the message that the pictures get darker because the couple’s relationship gets worse, they thought that it was just different colours to show different aspects of nature. With our print advert they thought that it was simple but got straight to the point, for instance, when it came out they said that it was not anything different than anything else they have seen before, they said that it did not attract their eye at all and that it just looked like a photograph nothing more. I think that our pop promo did attract our typical audience because of the pictures we used in the digipack and magazine advert it shows teenagers which will attract teenagers. But, the digipack the front package did attract our intended audience but the middle and back did not because they are not interested in nature. All of our audience feedback said the same thing that they were did not understand the end they just thought that she was out of his life and not dead, this was not our original message but if the audience understand and they were not confused it is fine.

4. How did you use media technologies in the research and planning, construction, and evaluation stages? (Significance of using these technologies)

During the researching and planning, I used the internet a lot for instance, YouTube and Google images. As our song is from a band who have promoted themselves we where able to find other albums and pop promos which they have made which really helped us because it gave us the intention of their pop promos narratives and style for instance, most of them our old fashioned and it shows a narrative, not just random places

like some pop promos, for instance, The prodigy – omen is just random flashing light nothing more. Trying to make the digipack and the magazine advert we used the application on our apple Macs which is called Photoshop that really helped us because we were able to use still images onto our digipack template. Also another thing that helped us was final cut pro because it managed to get still images from our pop promo and make them as a still image, this software also helped us add special effects to our pop promo, for instance, when Chris is walking along the bridge and he goes from one place to another in a blink of an eye.

All together I think that we did well in our pop promo video, because we tried to be the same as other pop promos for instance, the narrative but there were some faults, for instance how the audience did not recognise that the girl is dead at the end. But with our digipack and magazine advert I think that our group could have done better, because some of the still images were quite plain and simple and does not attract audience’s eyes. I think that if we had done a cartoon one like the original Noah and the whale had done it would have worked, but we did not choose this because we were not sure what to use as the middle image of the digipack. I think in the end that I have learnt more from last year when we did our film noir’s but I still think I have a lot to improve on.