Research

How we used the internet:

• To research the record label which Natalie Imbruglia (who sings “Torn”) was signed to – Island Records.

This version of the record label’s logo was used for our digipak and advert as our group preferred the black background, with it suiting the black pallet used for both these products. Also, the colour yellow in this image compliments the yellow stars on the poster (ratings) which would make them stand out and catch the attention of a potential buyer of the digipak as a result.

We used the popular information site “Wikipedia” which gave us information on the history of the record label and which artists are signed to them – therefore giving us a possible indication on who our target market might be.

How we used the internet:• We also visited the record label – Island’s – website to get further information on

which artists/bands they supported. This would inform us on whether or not the other artists who were signed to this record label produced similar music.

“Island” in fact releases the music of various types of musicians/singers of many genres.For example:Mika, Robbie Williams, and Robyn sing pop music, whereas Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails perform heavy rock music, Queen played glam rock music, Owl City record techno pop and Mumford and Sons play contemporary folk music.

This suggests that the record label does not cater for a specific target audience which could mean that we allowed ourselves to be more creative when planning our music video and print products as our group we aware that we were not targeting a specific audience.

What we have considered though is that our potential target market could be women (due to the emotional nature of the song). Therefore we have tried to design our print products to be more feminine (with the font), yet not excluding a male audience (by using the gender-neutral colour black). We also aimed for our target audience to relate to the subject of the song we are promoting through our music video, which includes various members of the public and a narrative of an ordinary break-up which may apply to some of our audience members.

How we used the internet:

• The website A-Z lyrics was also used when designing our booklet for the digipak as we were able to find the lyrics of other popular songs to feature in the booklet and then copy and paste them which saved time.

• From this step when then edited the size of the lyrics and the font they appeared in.

• When researching the elements of music videos our group also used the video site “YouTube” to research music videos of various genres and then analyse their use of performance and narrative elements. We also applied the videos we found to Andrew Goodwin’s features in order to assess to what extent these generalisations where used in videos of a certain genre.

How we presented our research:

• To present this research on music videos and music genres, we constructed PowerPoint’s and Prezi’s which involved text, images and videos from YouTube in order to engage our audience more through the organisation and layout of our findings.

• Although a Prezi is more visually interesting than a PowerPoint, these took longer to make which made the construction of them more time consuming which was a compromise for us.

• In order to upload a PowerPoint, slideshare had to be used, to enable us to post our presentations onto our blog. This method has always been reliable and relatively quick.

• In contrast, the process where videos are uploaded from iMovie and onto YouTube to post onto the blog, was difficult due to the fact that often this method did not work resulting from failed internet connections which must have been difficult to correct. Therefore, this delayed our group quite a lot as we often wasted time trying to upload videos onto YouTube and consequently then had to do so from home which was incontinent as we then had to save the movie files onto our USB’s which meant deleting other work (as movie files are very large).

How we presented our research:

• Our group regularly posted our research onto our blog, and later the process of how we produced our final cut for the music video and the print products.

• An advantage of using the site “eblogger” is that it provides a basic medium from which your audience can read your work and are able to comment on single posts and give feedback – although this function did not come into much use for us. The blog gives both you group and your followers instant access as it is set out in an uncomplicated way so therefore you are not put off by the thought of using it.

• Our group often posted our research “straight” onto our blog and chose not to use a video format to present out findings in as this made our blog more visually appealing (especially if diagrams or images were involved) and made looking at it more convenient for our audience.

• For example, when creating the graphs on excel, which showed the findings of our audience from the questionnaire that we had made, our group saved these as images and posted them directly onto the blog.

• Using excel was partly a challenge as one of our first questions related to age and if you type in for example “18-25” into the spread sheet, it converts this into day and month which can become irritating and we had to resort to the less formal presentation of “18 to 25”.

How we presented our research:

• Whilst filming audience feedback for our music video, which we used as research to determine whether or not more improvements were needed, our group filmed our audience using PhotoBooth on the iMac.

• We did this as, although the quality was not as professional compared to the image obtained from a camera, this method was basic and relatively quick as we did not need to upload any film from a camera. We simple imported the file into iMovie and then edited our footage by including text (to indicate what questions our audience were being asked) and either some stills from the video itself or a extract using picture-in-picture to remind the audience of our feedback videos, which sections in the video our audience were referring to.

How we presented our research:

• To research magazine adverts of digipaks, our group used real magazines (most of them specifically for music articles), and combined different new technologies by using a scanner to transfer the images on the magazines onto the computer, and then presenting our analysis of these images on PowerPoint.

• The scanner was incredibly useful as we found that transferring images onto a computer through photographing them with a digital camera often produced flashes on the paper, making the image difficult to read . Yet using the scanner meant that the image saved to the computer was just as clear as the original.

• The only issue with the scanner was that it was kept in a separate room than our classroom and we had to transport the images using a USB, which not everyone remembered to bring, giving us an insight into our organisation skills (by the end of the project, all the members in our group used a USB).

• We also attempted to use social networking sites as part of our research to indicated whether or not the construction of our poster was complete, however we decided that the comments received from twitter not too helpful as feedback for our work as they were very superficial and not exactly constructive criticism. This may be partly due to the nature of the website, which is to communicate in short sentences.