Mest 2 evaluation
I have chosen to complete brief three, I worked individually
to create a low-budget marketing campaign for a small, upcoming band signed to
a small record label, I chose to create my work on the platforms, print and
broadcasting. I have created four A4 posters, two advertising the tour, one
advertising the album and a further one advertising the tour, album and the
band themselves. For my broadcast task I
have created a short video containing a sample of the bands music, footage of
them playing and an interview with the band, the video is intended to help an
audience get to know the band and it also informs people of tour and album
information as well as providing links to their social media.
My research into other print based media texts, created for
bands of similar genre and style to my chosen band revealed a multitude of
things and I built my posters around the conventions that I had observed. For
example my tour poster follows a very conventional layout, with the bands name
and the tour name at the top in large print, with a list of dates and venues
around the lower middle of the poster and then towards the bottom social media
information and ticket information. I noticed that most posters include the
bands name in the form of their logo, so, with that in mind I have done the
same, replacing the bands name with their text-based logo, so that it is still
legible but also showcases the bands style. I also noticed that a lot of
conventional posters include an image of the band, but I was unable to get a
high quality image of the band, so I improvised, creating a ‘mascot’ in
Photoshop, using an image of a baby crying and a male body builder as material.
I then used the photo of the ‘mascot’ as the main image of the poster. All of
my posters contain fairly simplistic backgrounds as I found that this was
conventional, and it made the poster more legible by not distracting the viewer
with un-important content. My posters also contain highly contrasting colours,
and a colour scheme comprising of mainly black, white and grey, as I found this
was conventional for posters of similar genre to my own chosen genre and it
also made the posters easy to read and striking.
My research into similar broadcast based media texts for
similar bands to mine helped show me which direction I should take my piece in
when I was filming and creating it, I found that, conventionally, band
biographical style videos contain footage of the band in a variety of
situations, including, performing, messing around backstage and in the studio.
I recognised that most of these videos also include ‘plugs’ for social media
outlets of the bands and that the bands also use the ‘interview’ sections of
these videos as ‘free airtime’ to promote themselves, often taking the chance
to talk about their tours and upcoming albums or singles. With this in mind I
created my broadcast piece to mimic the other videos I had watched. During
filming I let the band themselves take the lead, the only parts that I had
influenced, was I told the the name of the tour, and I told them the locations
which the band would be playing, the rest was unscripted and organic, which I
felt helped my video feel like one of the conventional videos from other bands.
The footage I ended up using for the video included footage of the band playing
and the unscripted interview with the band. I also included a large amount of
anchorage at the end of the video, heavily focused on social media and the
bands upcoming album, as I found was conventional. The entire video is set to one
of the bands musical pieces, which is lowered in volume during periods where
there is other things going on, such as during the interview, this eliminates
dead air and allows the audience to be exposed to some of the bands music, I
found this to also be conventional within the genre.
My finished pieces were really strong in some areas, for
example I believe that my posters are visually striking and that they are
effective in informing and generating interest in my target audience. My
posters are also iconic in styling and they are consistent in information and
styling across the board, my posters also share some stylistic qualities with
my broadcast piece, giving all of my work the same sort of feel and making it
feel more professional. My posters are all in high resolution and I have taken
care to ensure that they have as few rough edges as possible and that they are
as polished and professional as I can make them. My broadcast piece has a few
very strong points, including its licensed studio quality sound track and its
obvious and informative transitions. I believe the footage I recorded for the
video was of good quality and is thematically matching and is conventional in
its nature.
However, my finished pieces also have some flaws, I was
unable to get a high quality image of the band for one of my poster designs so
instead, I created a mascot from found images on the internet which I edited
into one image, whilst the mascot serves its purpose and is eye catching and
powerful, it doesn’t quite fit my original vision and doesn’t represent the
band members. My broadcast piece also has a few issues, it didn’t quite turn
out how I wanted, partly due to the organic nature of the interview, where I
allowed the band members to reply however they wanted and let them lead the way
during the interview, I believe that, while this created an authentic feeling
to the video, it could have been made more professional and still made to feel
authentic with a good script. Another issue with my broadcast is that my
backing video doesn’t quite match the soundtrack, but without complex
compression of time I couldn’t edit the video to make it fit perfectly. I would
have done this if I had had more time to edit the video, but my final version
of the video was edited under severe time constraints after an earlier cut of
the video failed to render properly and was un-usable.
I believe that, I focused too much on the construction of my
content from a stylistic point of view and I have failed to represent the band
and record well in some areas, I believe this could be rectified with more use
of the bands branding and the record labels branding and a heavier use of the
bands image, including actual photos of the band. I do however think I created
content that matched the theme and genre of the band and that lines up with the
conventions seen in other similar pieces for other similar bands of similar fan
base, genre and theme.
For my third platform, I would have created a three page
website for the band I am promoting, the website would have been integrated
with the social media of the band, with links to their facebook, and myspace
presence. The website would have a home page, with navigation links to the
other pages, links to their facebook and myspace, and a widget that contains
their latest facebook posts. The home page would also include a header
containing an image of the band members, their name/logo and a small ad for
their debut album the home page would also feature some general band related
news. The website would also contain a page focused on the tour, with
information on each venue and date and a link to purchase tickets, the tour
page would also include navigation links and the header from the home page. The
website would also contain a page dedicated to the album and its purchase, this
page would also contain the header and navigation links previously mentioned,
with links to all the different ways to purchase the album, including, iTunes
and the nutune records record store, which ships physical copies of records, in
vinyl and CD format.
