A2 Media

Friday, 14 April 2017

Thursday, 6 April 2017

We chose to leave the 'Fix you' and 'Coldplay' plain what as it contrast the paint all around it, because in our music video only the people with depression can see the paint where as others just see the world as normal e.g. the public see Charlie and Annabel in a plain white tshirt whereas they see themselves with paint on. I decided to add a release date on Photoshop as it follows the normal conventions of a music video, I chose a plain black don't see that it doesn't draw the attention away from the paint and main title. I also include a hashtag in the corner, that is because our target audience is teens and young adults so social media is something commonly used, if our music video was to actually be for real a hashtag would get the public advertising your video for free on sites such as Twitter. In the bottom hand corner there are two icons, YouTube and Apple iTunes, I decided to include these because from our audience research video they said these are the most common ways in which they consume music videos, therefore if we were to release our music video on there we are likely to get more interested.

Digi Pack:

The idea for our digipak is to have it mainly plain white with nothing but the a few paint splatters and the album title and the song names on the back. The idea of having it white is so the person who has purchased the album can colour the album in themselves however their heart desires. We thought this was a cool idea as art such as colouring is often used as a form of therapy for mental health issues such as depression. We choose the colour black for the fold especially on the inside of the Digipak, on the left hand side the pink paint splatter represents Charlie and the yellow represents Annabel, the two colours are so close yet separated from the black line, this gives out the idea that many people have depression all around us but we don't break down the barrier to find out and help those. We chose to keep the the song title names in black rather than a bright colour to show the seriousness of the issue.

Overall, I think out Poster includes many conventions you expect to see in an album poster such as a release date, the album title and artist in big letters, and a hashtag and icons such as a YouTube logo of where you an expect to find the music video. However, most album covers have a gripping interesting images that draws you into looking at the poster, this is something our poster challenges as we don't have one of them. Our Digipack conforms with certain conventions such as the album title and artist in big letters, the layout and folders of the poster, and the song titles on the back. However, our idea is very unique and I haven't came across a single Digipak with the idea of colouring in and creating the Digipak your own so here we challenge the conventions of your everyday Digipak's.

Thursday, 30 March 2017

Evaluation question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and media products?

Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Evaluation question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

It is very important that the main product and the ancillary tasks have similar themes running through them as this is what makes them distinctive as a brand and this brand will then become recognisable to the target audience and other members of the public. Ancillary tasks should reflect what the main media product is about as they are promoting this main media product (in this case; a music video). They are a key way of advertising the music video as ancillary tasks are often things like CD covers, posters or magazine advert and this means that they are tangible products that can be found in shops or on advertisement boards and this will widen the audience to people who may not have access to the internet and therefore wouldn't have seen the hype or any online advertisement for this music video. Another way of increasing the effectiveness of the link between your main product and ancillary tasks is by using a form of synergy between all three products to promote the music video and therefore increase the videos views and sales, this is the overall aim of creating ancillary tasks.

In our music video we focus on the issue of a rise in mental health problems, especially with teenagers, and how people feel as though they can't share what they are going through with other people and the idea that they are all alone and the world is against them. When researching about mental health we came across a campaign advert that used a dog to represent the mental health problems, some days the dog was harder to walk because it was too big and other days the dog was smaller and therefore much easier to walk. We wanted to represent mental health in a similar light as this to get across to the public that mental health isn't the same for everyone and that it in fact differs in one persons case, in the way of being worse on one day but easier to cope with the next. As a group we decided to use paint to represent the mental health problems as we thought that this would be something that people would remember when watching a music video and therefore would increase the talk about the music video.

Due to using paint in our music video, it was incredibly important that we had the paint as the main concept running through all of the ancillary tasks as well. For our media product we had to make an album cover and a poster. For the poster we splattered the paint across a white background in order symbolise a very busy and chaotic case of mental health however we also wanted there to be a lot of paint on the poster to really enforce the idea into the publics minds and therefore make them remember it. For the album cover, we went for a much more simplistic approach. We very strongly focused around the colours of paint used in the music video. For example, on the front cover there is a completely white background with the words 'Fix You Coldplay' written in a black outline (the idea here is that the audience can colour this in as colouring is a theraputic thing, often recommended for people with mental health problems) and then two finger prints at the bottom where people would naturally hold a CD, one fingerprint is pink and one is yellow as these were the colours used in the music video. On the inside of the album cover, we had one side splatted lightly with oink paint and one with yellow, once again reinforcing the music video, creating an effective link for the audience. As for the back of the album cover we just listed the songs that could be found on the album with no paint at all. We felt that this was an effective way of linking the end of the music video to the end of the album cover as we tried to portray in the video that if people share their problems with others they would realise that they are not alone and that their problems would actually become easier to cope with if they had help and support from other people going through similar things and this is why there is no paint on the back cover.

Another thing that allowed for an effective combination between our main product and our ancillary tasks was that we always started with a white canvas. For example, in the music video, the characters are always seen wearing white t-shirts that have paint splattered over them and we wanted to take this idea into the creation of our ancillary tasks to allow the audience to see another link between all three products. On the poster we started with a white background, then splattered the paint but made sure that we kept the lettering of 'Fix you Coldplay' clear of paint so that the white stood out at the end and that the audience could see that underneath it all was a white background. Finally, for the album cover there is a lot of white background that can be seen with simply the colours of paint used in the video splattered across it. The white backgrounds in all three products are an effective way of showing that all three products represent the same issue in society and therefore are an effective way of advertising the main product to the public.