Encoding/Decoding Model

Stuart Hall (above) is the man behind the idea of encoding and decoding within media texts.
He believes there are three types of decoding, after the producer of the text has imposed their encoded meaning:
Intended Reading:
The meaning which the audience has interpreted is the one which the producer intended.
Negotiated Reading:
A meaning which is similar to the intended meaning, is understandable and the reason behind the audience reading it in that way is negotiable, but is not the exact meaning which the encoder intended.
Oppositional Reading:
A reading of the video with opposes the one which was intended by the encoder.

EVALUATION TASK 3: Part 2

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

EVALUATION TASK 3: Part 1

Focus Group Material

Full Digipak

YouTube Demographics

FONT

This is the website I got the font from and the font, BEBAS NEUE is the one I chose.
As you can see from my previous blog on typography ( http://lydiah72.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/typography.html ) I spent a fair amount of time researching the font as I feel it's very important to the marketing of the band because the font acts as the logo and the main part of the branding.

Audience Feedback

We're going to collect audience feedback in a number of ways.
Firstly, we've made a questionnaire on SurveyMonkey which asks questions about all three of our products. We've included yes/no questions, questions which ask the respondent to rank on a scale of 1-10 and open questions which require the respondent to write their answer in a descriptive text box. To collect all the answers we need we decided it was important to ask a variation of open and closed questions to collect both quantitative and qualitative data.
When sending this survey out to people, by email, we're going to use a quota sample in order to get feedback from our target audience, secondary audience and third audience.

As well as this, we're going to hold a focus group in which the participants will belong to all our target audiences; adolescent boys, adolescent girls and middle aged men. We will film various sections of the session, such as when we show the participants the CD digipak, let them use the website and show them the pop promo. A plus of using a focus group is that we can ask follow up questions and collect much more quantitative data which we couldn't collect from the survey.

What is a focus group?

Designing the Digipak

 

This is the cover of our Digipak which I put together. Firstly, we all discussed what style of cover we would like and I then went away and created it.

I drew the doodle design using a black fine liner pen and tried to incorporate ideas which were random as we decided we wanted our cover to be focused on hallucinations. This is why there are irrelevant drawings included in the design such as the mushroom holding the flag, the bird smoking and the cracked eyeball in the centre. As our band are an indie-rock group we thought that this style would suit the style of the band. The alternative style of the artwork clearly connotes the alternative style of the music but the bold use of colour also connotes that the music is upbeat and interesting to listen to. The hand-made aspect of the design reiterates the fact that the band are focused on their music and not the fame. I chose to add the image of the Earth to the design because I think it suited the style of the band. The contrast between the light sphere and the dark sky are more serious looking which was useful because the doodle design could look childish and girly which is not what we were going for.

 

For the back, I chose to put the doodle design but edited it so that the lines are thinner and blue. This makes it look more professional and less cartoon and childish. I kept the idea of the galaxies which I thought was useful when marketing the idea of 'wonderland' - the name of the band. I changed the saturation of the colours to make it more blue and green in order to ensure that the cover is boyish and suits the star image of the band.

Making the Digipak

To make the Digipak, I used Photoshop and a website which allows you download fonts- http://www.dafont.com/
This meant that the Digipak had a more professional look and didn't use the conventional fonts that are found on Word or Photoshop's default settings. Using the categories on the site, I could find the exact type of font I wanted so that it was specific and accurate to styling and design.

Evaluation Task 2

Star image from LydiaHansenLH

CD Digipak

 

Conventions on Our Website

EVALUATION TASK 1
On our website, we have both adhered to and subverted the common conventions of a band's website.
We stuck to the conventions which we thought were vital such as the home page, contact page and "gigs" page but chose the other pages ourselves.

With regard to the conventions of the home page itself, we adhered to most, including a large feature photo of the band, their name in large bold font, a promotional sticker of their work and clear links down the side to other pages of the site.

A feature which we chose to add was the music tab at the top right. We chose to do this to reinforce the style of the band- they're all about their music and so it made sense for the audience to hear their music as soon as they enter the site.

A convention we subverted was having the link to purchasing the music and merchandise on the home page. The reason behind this was because we felt that this may go against the ethos of the band; they claim it's all about the music and not the money so by putting a link urging the audience to buy their merchandise on the home page, we thought this might deter the audience and taint the success of the band.

Website

Wonderland

Conventions in Our Music Video

When making our media products, we explored the effects of subverting and adhering to the conventions within the form.
Conventions which we would expect to see in the music video are things such as; a performance element, including close ups of the main singer and the band playing instruments; a narrative, either using the performer or actor(s) as the characters; shots of the singer lip-syncing; length of the video, three minutes in length and consistent styling of the band in both performance and narrative.

When making our video, we adhered to some of these conventions such as, firstly, the length of the pop promo.

As you can see, from this screenshot of the video on YouTube, our video uses the whole song and is 3 minutes long. We chose to adhere to this convention as we think it is a convention for a reason; songs that are much longer than this cause the audience to lose interest, this is especially relevant for us as our target audience are teenagers who generally have shorter attention spans than adults. On the other hand, if the video were too short there would not be enough substance and the audience may not feel satisfied with bot the song and the video.

Another convention we adhered to was the choice of shots we used. We focused more on the main singer than the band and did so by using many close ups of his face whilst lip-syncing: another convention which we adhered to. Our reason for adhering to this convention was that it reinforces the star image of the singer which is, fundamentally, what determines the success or failure of an artist or band. We still focused on the band playing their instruments however; to show that the band is important as a whole and to show that all the sounds heard in the song are organic and made by the band themselves. This will appeal to our target audience and hopefully ensure success for the band.

Including a narrative in the video is another convention which we used. We did this to reinforce the idea that the band’s music has a meaning behind it and so they make music because they have something to say, not for material gain.

The styling of the band in the narrative was the convention which we chose to subvert. We did this because we thought it would highlight the narrative over the band performance and therefore highlight the meaning of the song. The band, being indie-rock, focus on what their music means and how it sounds rather than their style or fame and so by highlighting the narrative by juxtaposing it with the style of the performance, we hoped to draw the audience’s attention to the meaning of the song.