Ella Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is on the whole very effective, because artist identity is established and there is strong synergy running throughout. We have a fully integrated cross-platform campaign, which is incredibly important for artists today. As well as this, all of these platforms work together to construct the brand consistently and synergetically. The main artist images we wanted to get across throughout the whole of our marketing campaign are the band as a new indie break through artist, and the lead singer as over-the-top and uncontrollable; overshadowing the rest of the band completely.  However, I believe that there is definite room for improvement within all three products. 

We took influence from bands such as Blondie, Florence and the Machine, and Ian Dury and The Blockheads, who all have a very strong lead. 

From left to right: Ian Dury performing, a Florence and the Machine
 Promoshot, and a crop from a Blondie album cover

It was very difficult to find girl bands similar to ours, as it is unconventional for all instrument playing band members to be women. For this reason, I researched Beyonce's marketing campaign, as she is also a strong female artist. 

Beyonce's Marketing Campaign

A selection of stills from 4 of her
new music videos

Beyonce recently released a fifth, self-entitled album: Beyonce. This album was secretly produced in order for a surprise release, and by not being at all leaked, massive buzz was suddenly generated and the entire campaign went viral. 

The album has been referred to as her visual album, as there are 17 videos for just 14 songs. The medium of music videos has been used to promote the album, which give considerable insight into the messages intended behind the music and the lyrics of this secret album. Furthermore, Beyonce has used this shock and buzz generated to help to enforce her new branding as a "modern day feminist" and subsequently the album as a feminist album. 

The campaign effectively plays on the audience's needs and wants; 30 second teasers are available for every video, but the whole song must be purchase from iTunes, the links of which are on the website. The record company have made sure that there are very few leaks or illegal downloads available, and the songs are not even available on Spotify. This maximises buzz as well as profits. In this way, the website becomes the hub of the campaign, and generates much more traffic that it may otherwise do. By drawing audiences to the website, they can then attract them with other social media links, content and teasers. 

Influences that we have taken from Beyonce's campaign:

• Establishing artist identity must be constant and evolving and most importantly clear to audiences throughout any marketing campaign
• Teasers work effectively for identifying which audiences your artist appeals to. Our website now automatically plays a 30 second sound clip of the single we created the music video to, encouraging audiences to pre-order to album. 
• Music videos can generate buzz, if they present questions to audiences and make them want to continue either listening to the song or album, or interacting with the campaign. We have tried to do this with our video; it is a concept video and we have purposely left many questions unanswered and many different interpretations possible, in the hope that this encourages audiences to go further than just watch the video, but to buy the single, and buy the album. 
• The website must be very strongly linked to the campaign, and whilst the music videos have less of a link, all three must work in synergy to create and reinforce artist image.

Our Marketing Campaign (in chronological order)

Logo

This was the first stage of creating our artist image, and something that we knew would be used throughout our marketing campaign, and so we took great care in creating our band logo. We wanted to stray away from girly pop connotations to really emphasize the indie nature of or band, and so decided to go for and urban and edgy logo. Our initial idea was simply "warped grafitti".  However, this looked dull and so we decided to shape it into a circle, as this would fit in our bass drum anyway. To give the logo more depth, we used a dinosaur clipping mask on the text to add depth to the image, in a subtle way. We finally added a circle around the logo and erased some of the text to make the it more cool and edgy. 

This is the final logo.

Facebook Page

After this we created a Facebook page, so that the small audience who had heard of the band by word of mouth could be kept interested and engaged. We posted teasers on our page along with updates as to what the audience could look forward to in the future and when, along with what stages of production we were at. 

See the full page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Chaos-Killed-the-Dinosaurs/412357298891700?fref=ts

Facebook was very important for our demographic of 15-45 year olds (combined primary and secondary target audiences).  48% of 18-24 year olds check Facebook as soon as they wake up. This age group are the most prolific users of the social networking site and a key segment of of target audience. Furthermore, the 35 years + audience is rapidly expanding and now makes up 30% of the entire database. This means that Facebook was a very effective tool for reaching our audience. 

This is our "official" band Facebook page. (click to enlarge)

Our facebook page also had links to twitter and instagram and the website. 

Twitter Page

Twitter again was a very important platform for us as the most rapidly growing social network. We used our twitter page for similar reasons to Facebook. Our twitter account was not our artists tweeting, but rather as the record label tweeting on behalf of the band. We did this to try and maintain the anonymous and enigmatic nature of the unnamed lead singer. Again, we had links to Instagram, Facebook and the website from here. 

See the full page at: https://twitter.com/CKDofficial

We then went on to make our website, album cover and music video. Below I have discussed how well these work individually and synergistically as part of our marketing campaign. 

Website

Album Cover

Music Video Screening

In order to get feedback and to finally showcase our music videos, we organised a screening for them. To raise awareness of this I made a Facebook event. 

After this we released this the teaser trailer that I and two others made to the event and on YouTube, as well as on my own social media pages. This raised some buzz about the event and encouraged people to come. 

We then made the following teaser posters, and put these up around school. 

Synergy (& release dates)

One of the main reasons for why I think that the establishing of our artist identity was successful is due to the synergy across the different products and platforms. For instance, the logo, which connotes us as and urban and edgy, indie band, is synergetically featured across most media.

Synergy and Links Between Social Media 

This video shows all of the social media used for our marketing campaign, and how they cross -link together. 



Combination of Products

Whilst our music video strongly relays the images associated with artist identity, it is a stand alone product from the website and album cover who link together closely - this is very conventional because websites are often based on the album cover. An example of a campaign that has done this is Lady Gaga's. 

There are still links through all of our products though. For example, the band colours of black and red run throughout all texts, but the website and album cover focus more on a white and red/purple theme, due to the design and styling of the album. The diagram below shows the synergy between the album and the website. 

With all of our products, we have marketed Arianna more than the rest of the band. Furthermore, she does everything slightly different to them, such as wearing a red dress when they are in black, or having sequins on her face as well as glitter. Her overshadowing and dominance is also clear from the music video, the majority of shots feature the whole band or just her, with the occasional single shot of the musicians included for the fans that want to get a better knowledge of each members individual personality. Whilst I think that this message is clear, I think we could have gone further with this in all aspects, such as changing her hair styles to something more bold, or making her gestures wilder and crazier. I think that if we had done this it would have made our campaign more effective on the whole. 

Ella Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has been very useful throughout our project, and we have used it at many key stages to see what we can change and what is successful with our target audiences. Our target audiences are as follows:

Primary audience: UK 15 - 45 year old females
Secondary audience: UK 15 - 45 year old males
Tertiary audience: Foreign, non English language speaking *

*We initially planned to reach this audience, as we were aware that the pop-genre and its spin offs are very popular especially in Europe. However, as our project developed, we came to realise that this was unrealistic, Revolutionary Records are a small, independent record label, and would not finance the marketing of the band overseas. The record company would focus on getting mainstream UK audience appeal before investing in expanding overseas. Also, I think it would be more worthwhile trying to break into the American market if the band were successful in the UK; from there the European market would follow.

Feedback

We got feedback throughout all stages of the project, in the following ways:

• Questionnaires handed out at a screening
• Focus groups and Interviews
• Teacher and peer feedback
• Online responses to a survey shared via social media
• Informal conversations with friends and family

While we were still in production of the music video, it was very important for us to get feedback in particular from our target to see how we could make changes that would increase audience appeal. The following video shows the difference between our initial edit and the feedback we received on it, and the changes we then made. 

Feedback on Band Name

Brainstorming our band name was something that took a lot of time, as we were aware that it is the first thing that most audiences will hear in reference to the band, and so we had to think carefully about our connotations. We wanted to connote the lead singer as very over the top, much more dominant than the rest of the group and so came up with the name "B*tch and the Band". Through this name we would connote the lead's overdramatic nature, and "___ and the ____" is often the band name format used when there is one strong lead in the group. Furthermore, we wanted to take back the word b*tch and associate it with the connotations that we had chosen, rather than the insulting implications it usually carries. Lily Allen has done this with her recent video - Hard Out Here (below).

However, after receiving feedback, we decided that there was too much of a risk that we would cause offense and potentially alienate some of our target audience: "crikey, that's a bit much!". Also, unlike in Lily Allen's video, we are not directly satirizing the way in which it came to receive its connotations, and so the chance of audiences taking offence is even more likely. In Lily Allen's video there is very little offence likely to be taken due to the context given by the satirical feminist nature of song. 

Screening

To get some feedback and to have an opportunity to show our friends the music videos our year group had made, we organised a screening of the music videos. Myself and two others made a trailer for the event in order to generate some excitement around the event and to encourage people to come.The screening was a very successful way of getting qualitative feedback. We handed out questionnaires to a random selection of people. Here is a sample of what they thought of the finished music video. 

What did you enjoy most about this music video?

• Unusual storyline
• The running shots at the end
• The crazy mental institution bit
• The asylum bit. She went crazy when the music picked up 

This feedback correlates to the feedback we had on survey monkey: the hospital scenes seemed to appeal to the audience the most. 

When asked about the relevance of the dancer, and what happened in the video, these were the responses:

• The dancer symbolised her freedom and lost hope
• It was about the girl breaking free from the asylum/conformity
• He was a love interest
• It was about her pyschological problems/mental state deteriorating
• The dancer was an ex-patient at the hospital
• She imagined/had a dream that she met the dancer
• He was a hallucination
• He is an angel

I think that this varied feedback shows that the concept nature of the video was successful, people made different interpretations due to the way in which they viewed our representations within the video: this is polysemics. However, some people responded with "I don't understand the storyline" or "The dancer appeared randomly". This is something I would improve on if remaking the video: the dancer should be introduced more gradually and the concept nature made clearer. 

We also got some general feedback that was less positive:

• The steps to the story didn't follow well
• The band didn't feel connected as members
• Chaos did not kill the dinosaurs, it was an asteroid. 

This feedback has been very useful. I think that whilst we were unified in costume and make-up, we could have definitely improved our unity as a band in shots by having more interactions together. I also think that our band name may have too niche an appeal to be good. "Chaos killed the dinosaurs" is a quote from the 80s film "Heather's", and whilst this may strongly appeal to those who recognised the quote, seemed "random" to audience members who did not understand. I think that we should have chosen a band name appeal to a younger demographic; half of our target audience were not alive when the film was made. 

Online Survey

Using survey monkey, an online web tool, we were able to get people to feedback on our video. We shared the link through social media, via both the band page and our own pages. 

(click to enlarge)

This was probably the most effective way for us to get qualitative data; participants were anonymous and therefore more likely to be honest, and we got over 50 responses, making our results more reliable. 

Average Rating: 8.7
I was very happy with this feedback! To me this means that we have generally met the needs of our audience. 

This again was feedback that I was pleased with. As a band member I do feel that I tried my hardest, although if I were to do this project again I would try to be more relaxed and confident. In our last survery question, What could be improved? "Band performance" came up a few times. Also, many respondents stated that they would have liked to have seen more of the band "so we get a sense of their individual personalities". Although we wanted to focus on the lead singer, and connote the band as her support, I think that we should have included more band shots to gratify the needs of the more musical fans. However I do not think that the lead singer's performance could have been improved and the audience generally agreed, with comments such as "[the lead singer's] acting was incredible". 

Interview with Secondary Audience

Interviewee Profile:

• Male
• 30s
• Guitar and Piano Teacher

This feedback is feel is very positive; we successfully communicated the concept of the video to audience in just one viewing: "the girl is crazy or people think she is". However, I think that it may not be very clear that the video is concept, and that we have intended for people to take different interpretations, as when speaking to the target audience, some seem unsure as to if what they are saying "is right".

I think this demonstrates that we have successfully appealed to the target audience; on a technical as well as creative level. Something I would take into account though, is the pace of the editing. Whilst it is a convention to have quick cuts, and non linear editing, much of the feedback from the older age group in our target audience has been that the video is too quick, or hard to keep track of. I think that due to the complex nature of the concept of our video, we should have slowed down the pace in the beginning to establish the concept further, and allowed the length of the hospital shots and dancer shots to go on slightly longer.  

Focus group of Primary and Secondary Audience

•  From this interview I have learnt that audiences like something unique in music videos, and some members also like concentrating and making interpretations.
• They also fed back that they did not pick up on the films being projected in one of the performance set-ups. This lead to an interesting debate on how much each person read into the music video. It was said by one interviewee that he believed men did not look for meaning or unanswered questions, rather viewed the interview as a whole. Conversely, a female interviewee stated that she enjoyed looking for the deeper meaning. This lead me to think about the different uses and gratifications audiences may have when watching a music video. In this instance, whilst males are looking for simple entertainment, female viewers may deeper look into the music video in order to identify with characters, or for escapism of daily life. 

Feedback On Our Album Cover

We got feedback on this throughout the duration of the production. Firstly, we planned to use rope and chains as a motif throughout the video and album cover. Feedback from our peers and teachers suggested that this was a good idea, because it the album cover would very strongly connote what we wanted it to with regards to artist image, and Arianna being the lead. However, we changed this after doing further research when we decided we wanted to conventionally separate our album and music video. Here is our final Album Cover, and feedback from someone from both our primary and secondary audiences

Primary Audience



Secondary Audience

When asked what made him think of the suicide connotations, this was his response:

What I have learned:

• There is a strong need to be careful with subjects such as suicide, and we did not think of these possible connotations. This, linked linked to the hospital scenes could alienate members of the audience who find it offensive. 
• The album reinforces the genre of our band, the alternative, indie side to it. In this was I think that we have been successful. 

Feedback on Website

I asked a sample from our primary target audience what they thought of the website:

• Navigation is very straightforward
• The visuals are showcased very well but I don't like the dotted lines on the homepage
• It is very interactive, I particularly like the twitter feed on the side of the homepage
• I would like to know more about the band - how did they come to form?
• I like the opening pop-up page, it links well to the album and general theme

When asked about the album name, respondents correctly identified the album name as "I". 

I think that this is very representative feedback. I am very happy that our usability and interactivity are good as these were main focuses for our group. I also think that we have successfully raised awareness of the album with the website. I would agree though that at some parts the aesthetics of the website can be improved. Also, through audience feedback in general, I have learnt that the audience are very keen to learn more about the band; they like to go beyond just watching the video once, and like to get "insider knowledge". This is the main thing that I would bare in mind if I remade the website or music video.  

Ella Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used new media technologies and web 2.0. considerably throughout all stages of this project. Whilst some were new to me and some I had used many times before, I felt that all were very useful and were something that, in general, our marketing campaign depended upon.  

Research and Planning

We made a facebook messaging group so that we could all stay in contact on the same thread. This proved very useful when planning shoots or discussing any issues or problems that arose. 

At the beginning of the project, we presented our basic ideas with regards to artist identity, music video and album art to our class, in order to gain feedback to get feedback on whether or not these proposals would be successful. In order to do this we used online website "Prezi", to make a presentation that was more interactive that the software we already had i.e. powerpoint. The prezi is linked below, and we accompanied it with this handout.



Following this, we gave a technical presentation, to explain how we planned to film and light etc. This presentation was made on powerpoint, and we presented this to the class and uploaded it to the blog via Slide Share. Here is our technical presentation. It further explains the technology we planned on using.

Technical presentation from aliced1996

GoPro
In the technical presentation, we mention the use of the GoPro camera. We planned to use this over the bridge of the song, to make the dancer seem more surreal after she has just been injected. The GoPro would have been good for this because it can shoot in higher numbers of FPS which meant that we would be able to slow the scenes. Furthermore, it is very durable and can be attached to pretty much anything. We shot some footage in which we attached the GoPro to the dancer's chest. For this, we downloaded the GoPro app for iPhone and Android onto our mobile phones. This meant that when we shot these scenes, we could watch what the camera was recording on our phones as it was being transmitted by wifi. 

Although we did not end up using this footage, because it looked very different to what we shot on the Sony HVR V1E, I found this a great experience of using new media technologies through both the hardware of the innovative camera itself, and the software of the app on a smart phone. 

Construction

QR Code

Whilst researching album art conventions, I realised that next to the bar code was often a QR code. These codes can be read by smart phone cameras and then provide a link, most often to a website. I used the website qrstuff.com to create our QR code, which I made link to our website, as this is the hub of our campaign. However, it is useful to know that if we ran something like a facebook competition, I could now make a QR code link to the facebook page, or an iTunes page. 

Our QR code (you can scan it it works!)

Wix

To create our website, we used Wix, a free Java based site for creating your own website. This had the great advantage of meaning that my group and I did not have to learn how to code HTML. Furthermore, Wix often had pre-designed features that we wanted to use, such as colour changes when the mouse scrolls over text, something that again would have taken us a long time to have learnt to code using HTML. A disadvantage of Wix, however, is that it only has a certain number of options and features, and so our creativity was limited to a certain extent. For some features, such as the social media feeds, we had to download widgets which were HTML coded as Wix did not provide these as an option. Overall, Wix was a very good web technology for our project and served our needs well. However, in the future I would be interested in learning more about HTML, due to the freedom and possibilities that this provides. 

Hardware used 

To shoot the majority of our shots, we used a Sony HVR-V1E. This is because the camera is very versatile, and has a wide range of settings for aperture, shutter speed, ISO etc. The main reason for us using this camera, was because it could pick up the projection well, unlike the 5D. The adjustable shutter speed in particularly was another advantage of selecting this camera, as we knew that we would want to slow many of the shots, particularly for the dancer, and so we would need to shoot these in 50 FPS or higher. Another benefit of using this camera was that it enabled us to do smooth focus pulls very easily.

However, for the opening shot, we needed the F-stop to be very small so that we could do a focus pull from the singers hands to her face. The V1 was not as good for this as we would have hoped as the focus pull was not noticeable enough; too much was in focus. For this reason, the opening two shots were shot on a Canon 5D mark II, on which we achieved this focus pull with very shallow focus.


We shot three of the set-ups (hospital, projection and performance) in the school studio. We used the studio lights for each of these set-ups, in all three of which we faced a different challenge. In the projection set-up we had to light the band without making the colours in the projection fade away. For the grunge set-up we had to light not only the band but a large set in different coloured light. In the hospital set-up we had to create infinite white lighting. We did this by lighting the cyclorama in the studio with as many lights as we had available, and turning them all up to create full intensity. We then put sheets of paper over the metal arch between the cyclorama and the white flooring to eliminate shadows and create infinite white! Finally, we lit the bed and the lead singer. 

The unlit cyclorama!

Website and Social Media

Beyonce's recent campaign not only influenced our decisions with regards to marketing, but it had an influence on how we have used certain new media technologies. 

• Confirmed website as "hub" of campaign
• We put a 30 second teaser sound clip that automatically plays as you open the webpage
• Changed our banner bar from buttons to plain text as hers does
• Also had album teaser pop up before getting to main home page

New Media in Our Website Homepage from latymermedia

This video below also shows all of the social media links that we used. 



We also took influence from Lorde's website. On her homepage there was bold text that had images of herself from various shoots coming through where the text appeared. We created a similar effect with our teaser image, the first pop up on the website. This image was made using the album cover image attached with a clipping mask to the I symbol. 

The teaser page itself was made by creating a new web page, as it was not possible to create pop-ups on Wix. This was one its limitations, but it was something that we managed to work our way around it. The teaser web page, once clicked, links to the main homepage, and so in this way the initial web page acts just like a pop up. 


Adobe Photoshop

Whilst most of what we did on photoshop I had seen before, some was new to me. The main new tool that I used was the "Skin Smoothing Action". This was a tool enabled that blurred and perfected skin on photos. We used this most for the dry shots in the inside cover, in which the band are meant to appear stripped down but also made up, and perfected. 

Adobe Premiere Pro

This was not software that was new to me, however we used the software differently in this project. First of all, when editing, we lay down a performance bed, from which we cut in between so that we only had to lipsync each shot once. Our grading was also very different to that of film openings or TV trailers: it was much more dramatic. See the video below for the changes in grade from the original shot to the final grade of it. 





 More interesting though, is how we edited the dancer scenes. Towards the end, we had to make the dancer disappear gradually, both through running and increasing the pace of editing, but also by fading him in and out. In this final shot, the camera was static and we filmed the empty street first. We then filmed the dancer running, and intercut between the two to make him flash in and out. Finally, we added a zoom onto both of these shots. See the shot below. 

We also time warped shots by cutting them up and changing the speeds. This was particularly noticeable in the shot from which this still has been taken, which made it one of the most memorable shots of the video. The echo effect is also visible on this still, again creating emphasis in addition to that provided by the slow motion.

 Adobe After Effects

Another shot in which we used techniques that I had not seen before was the shot below. We needed to introduce the idea of the dancer disappearing earlier on, and he does so in this shot. Again in this, the camera was static, and we filmed two separate shots of the actors running. We then cut out the lead singer frame by frame, and placed this shot above the shot of the dancer. To make the dancer fade at the end, we cross dissolved the two shots. 

Evaluation

Throughout the evaluation I have explored new media technologies in order to present my answer. Some of my favourites are Camtasia (a screen recording tool), surveymonkey, imgflip (a gif generator) and slide share. I hope that they have made my evaluation enjoyable!

Alice Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies were used extensively across all stages of our project; research and planning, construction and the evaluation. 

Research and planning 
During this stage we ensured that our group were kept in the loop, with regular meetings at school, decided in advance, and created a group on facebook to enable us to speak to each other through social media; making it easy to share ideas, or flag up issues.

The very first step to research and planning; deciding the song, was done through the use of playlists on spotify, looking through songs on youtube and posting them to each other on our facebook group, as well as listening to our own music on our iTunes. 

Once the song had been decided we had to brainstorm ideas for the branding of our band, so we looked on fashion blogs and searched videos of other female bands on youtube to inspire us. Using the internet in our initial research tasks was crucial. During the pre-production stage it was also vital because we used websites such as eBay and Amazon to buy props (straitjacket, needles and doctor costume) along with another site called Freecycle that we looked at for free old beds for our hospital scene.
 

This is an image of a moodboard created to identity the style and identity of the band. This was an initial mindmap made.

 
Construction

Music Video
The construction of the video was the most time consuming and the one that strayed from our original idea the most. We had to play around using new media technologies to get the end result with our desired effect. We used professional software and media equipment to aim for a professional looking music video.



The slideshow above talks about which camera we used to shoot out music video. We used the HVR-V1E for the majority of shots, however also ended up using the Canon 5D for our opening focus pull shot of Arianna, because our technician advised us it would be the best camera for a focus pull. For shots that we were not all in, we were able to take turns filming eachother, however for group shots we instructed our camera operator on our desired effect. 

We began post-production by capturing the footage into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Adobe Premiere Pro gave us a wide range of editing possibilities, including our shots where we made Kai disappear and making the video look very dreamlike. We were also able to draw on skills we had learnt in the past, to make simple cuts, and transitions.

This gif shows our shot at the end of Kai disappearing, which we did through Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. During the shoot we took a still shot of Kai running, and a still shot of the road empty. On adobe we then cut in between each shots to make it look like Kai was disppearing and using Abobe After Effects added a zoom to both shots. 





Website

The website was crucial as part of our marketing campaign, as it is the 'hub' of the campaign. We took inspiration from Lady Gaga's website. Her use of a washed out image of her in the background was something we liked as a group, so I set the background to our website as our album cover 
image, washed out, however this

looked bland on every page so we later change this to an image of our album cover inside our album cover name, which made the website look more alive and more eye-catching.
The introductory page from our website, which links to the home page, uses an idea we took from Lorde's website. On Lorde's previous website design she used images within the text and our group really liked this style, so we used it on our introductory page, with an image of the album cover appearing through our album name 'I'. This image was made using the album cover image attached with a clipping mask to the I symbol.



Wix: Our website was created on Wix which is a flash based website, rather than an HTML based website. This makes it much easier to use and navigate to create our website, as well as enabling us to create an interactive, visual website. However HTML does also limit the possibilities, as you are not able to code your website and are limited to adding to your website only what Wix offers.

Here is a Prezi of how we used Wix:


We wanted to harness the use of social media as much as possible, so we also created a twitter, facebook and instagram page for our band, in order to promote the band and attract our target audience as much as possible and using modern technologies to target them. These new media technologies are integral to marketing campaigns and all artists use new media technology to promote their band establish their artist image. 

Here is a youtube video of a screencapture I did showing how the links of our website flow easily, and how the website is made interactive through the use of links to other pages to keep the audience interested. I have also showed in the screencapture the use of social media on our website.

Album Cover

For the album cover we used Photoshop and although we were all already quite advanced with the use of Photoshop, from GCSE and AS level projects our skills were developed even further and we had to learn how to remove shadows from a persons face, and ensure our pictures all fit within the digipack template.

Our promotional and inside album photographs were shot in the Seward studio, each photo taken by another band member, as we were never all in one shot. We used the seward studio to enable us to adjust the lighting easily and give us enough space to splash some water around.

One effect we used designing our album cover, was the 'skin smoother effect' on Adobe Photoshop. This was done by applying the effect to each person individually, and the programme automatically smooths their skin and makes it look softer. We wanted this effect to make every band member stand out, but at the same time looking neutral. 






Evaluation
All our group members used Web 2.0, have facebook accounts and are able to access twitter and instagram. This was useful in the evaluation stages of the product as we were all able to promote our video across different social media sites. 

We wanted to get feedback from our target audience, as well as our secondary audience (males, aged 15-45). This was done through using surveymonkey, a survey site on the web that you can share on social media sites and email to friends and family. Surveymonkey also enabled us to turn our feedback in visual answers, such as pie charts and bar charts. 

A trailer was made by other members in my group to promote the screening in the media studio, to encourage people to come to the Seward Studio and watch our videos, enabling us to gather audience feedback in the process. On top of this, posters were also put up around school that had been made on Adobe Photoshop, to promote the screening. 

The poster made by members of my group to
promote the screening.

A facebook event was also created by our whole media year, on which we then invited other members of our school to promote the screening further and increase the number of people attending. Our group all posted the video on Facebook and twitter to use a multiplatform marketing strategy.