Critical Reflection Essay
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Final Draft of Social Media Page (Draft4)
Introduction
Making a social media page was a great experience for us. We got to use different ways of marketing and promoting to get our products to reach our target audience, and we got to show our work through the eyes of a star. I have learnt that to be successful you also need to be conventional. Our main aim for this social media page was to represent our audience, star and genre in these products we also needed to use AIDA (attract, interest, desire and action) to do this. Creating awareness and buzz around a product is also super important as this is what makes it popular with an audience.
Social Media Page screenshots
Social Media page walk through
Convention Checklist
Skills
The main skill I have used during this final draft of our social media page was The use of In design and Photoshop. These software’s have really impacted our page as it makes it look professional, flawless and neat. We used these software’s to make the tour poster. A skill i used on In Design was the text menu, this helped me layout the text on a diagonal. I also used different effects in photo shop to make the tour poster glisten
Reflection
Our social media page has included all of the conventions that a typical social media page has. Since draft 3 we have included 3 more posts, another highlight with many stories on and we have included all of the links we have used in our posts into our bio. the first new post we did was our tour poster. The graphics on the tour is VHS which is the same as our digipak, this keeps the consistent branding throughout our products. Our next post was an ‘ordinary’ (Dyer) post, showing our fans that Nevaeh can live a normal life and do normal things. This is also relatable content meaning the audience are able to connect with this. Our last post we did was our launch of our digipak. We posted this as a reel so it would be engaging for our audience. The Highlight we added is called ‘life’ this is just stories showing the audience that our star is doing normal things. Adding the links into our bio makes the audience more persuaded to click on them, it is also more convenient then looking though all of our posts to find them.
Focus Forward
This task has given me a great opportunity to step into the shoes of a star. It has been a good way to learn about marketing and promoting products, and also how to engage an audience online. If I was to do this task again I would definitely consider posting more reels and more posts of our star being ordinary. I have learnt and developed so many skills throughout the creation of this that i will definitely transfer to other projects I do.
Final Draft of Digipack (Draft 4)
Introduction
This is our final and complete digipak. This have been a difficult product to create, from getting the measurements right to actually knowing the conventions of our genre. We have worked well as a group, and listened to all the feedback to create the best version of our digipak. This final copy is conventional to our genre, and shows our star image well. We have noticed our audiences psychographics and applied them into our product.
Reflection
This tasks was very challenging for our group. Draft 1 was very different to our final product now, as we did research throughout to understand what our genre will look like. Our Mise-en-scene makes our star seem extraordinary(dyer) and we use symbolic codes (bathes) to show the 90s vintage style. We have also included our colour scheme more in this, as our other drafts didn’t show it clearly to the audience. As a group we realised we needed to make it for our target audience as we need to attract them. We also worked well as a group to realise any mistakes and we would talk up about anything we didn’t like.
Skills
For the final draft we used many different tools on Photoshop the main tools we used were the blending options tool and the tool to layer textures. The blending tool was really helpful as the opacity of the graphics were really bright. This was one of our targets in draft 3, so I knew that for this draft it had to be done. This made an impact to my work as the text on the digipak is now more clear for the audience to see.
Focus forward
Focusing forward this task has helped me learn and develop many skills. If I was to do it again I would make sure I do more genre research before hand so we didn’t have a mix up half way through. I would have also done more research on our audience demo and psycho-graphics, so we can make the most engaging digipak possible. Overall I really like the digipak we created as a group, as it is conventional, aesthetic and pleasing to the audience.
Social Media Page draft 3
Introduction
For draft 3 of our social media page, we looked at our targets from draft 2 and we worked as a group to get more posts and stories uploaded. We have now included 3 more posts, more stories including behind the scenes and Q&A’s. 2 of our posts are cross media convergence with our song being in a movie, we made the design and then equally split it in half to create a banner like design on our home page. Our next post was merchandise which we designed to look like our digipak.
screen shots of social media page
Social media page walk through
teacher feedback
Reflection
After listening to the feedback from our teacher our social media page is very good with the conventions we currently have. We still have the final things to post and we need to finalize the layout. the cross media convergence post we did is aesthetically pleasing from the front of our homepage, this is a good way to draw in our audience to see what it is about. When the audience see our song is in a movie this will immediately make them want to listen and engage with our song. The merchandise is a good way for our audience to connect with the star and our products and gives them a way to represent there personal identity. In the video you can also see our tour poster, which matches up with the design of our digipak and it represents our branding.
Skills
The skills I have developed in this draft was my use of In-Design and Photoshop. We used both of these software to create the 3 posts. We used them to create the tour poster by layering the different graphics on top of our star image and also to make the text and the different angles. We also used it to design the movie banner with our stars name on it.
Targets
- We need to include another highlight potentially linking to merchandise, tours or collaborations. this gives our audience a quick way of looking at the posts and following the links to buy our products.
- listening to the feedback from our teacher we also need to add the links of our websites into the bio of our social media page as this is more conventional. It also makes it more convenient for our audience to navigate where the links our.
- We need to include the launch of our full music video. This is a great way to promote our video, and after the sneak peek we posted the audience will be so intrigued to watch it.
- We need to post the launch of our digipak and inform the audience where they can purchase physical copies as this will make us profit and increase our sales.
Focus Forward
Focusing forward, I think me and my group have a strong, well branded social media page. For the next draft we need to focus on making it conventional, and make the layout like a real influencers. By working as a group on the targets our teacher has provided us with we can produce a social media page that is the best possible. I really like how we have kept the colours and our branding consistent throughout as it makes it more conventional and recognizable for the audience.
Social media page draft 2
Introduction
For this task we were adding more posts to our social media page. We were reminding ourselves of our convention checklist from draft 1 to make sure we included more of the conventions. We made sure to keep consistent with our branding and also upload many more interactive stories for our audience. We made sure to add a collaboration with revelation as that was a big element were were missing in draft 1. Another post we have included is a charity post, this kept the theme with our branding and also helped represent our star as an ordinary person.
Self assessment
Reflection
Doing this social media page is a great way to represent our brand and promote our products. This is a part of our promotional music package, meaning we need to attract our target audience and make it conventional for them. Social media is a good was for promoting products as a star’s fandoms are so powerful they can know about it within seconds, it can also be promoted by your fans with word or mouth. In this draft we released our collaboration photos and did many stories about it too, to create awareness. We did a charity post that was purple to represent our branding and to also show we are an ordinary person trying to help the world. Doing a vouge magazine posts shows to our audience how successful we are and we used it was an appreciation post for our fans. The use of covers on our highlights makes our page look neater and makes it clear to the audience what we are posting. The colours of the names also link with our colour scheme. Giving ourself feedback on this draft it helpful as we notice the little things that need correcting. It is a good way for us to be honest and share our ideas with our group. It also gave us a clear idea on what posts we need to upload and work on.
Skills
The skills we have used foe this draft was Photoshop and In Design to edit photos and to design the magazine. We also used Dafonts to download different fonts for the highlights. These skills had a massive impact on the quality of work we produced as it make them look really professional.
Convention Checklist
Targets
- We need to incorporate cross Media convergence into our social media page, as it will draw in our audience and help promote our star.
- I would also like a merchandise post so our audience can interact with our products. This can help create buzz and awareness about our products.
- I think we also need to represent our star as an ordinary person more. This can help our audience relate/ connect with our star better.
Focus forward
Focusing forward we still have a lot of work to do for our social media page to make sure it is more conventional. We need to include posts that will attract our fans and make them engage with our account. We can reflect and look back on this post to make sure we include a lot of the conventions we missed in this draft. The self feedback was helpful as it made me notice the little things about our social media page that we need to work on and include.
Buzz feedback
Introduction
Buzz is a group of creative experts from the company Specsavers. They came into our school and gave us all amazing feedback on our coursework. For my group buzz mainly gave us feedback on our draft one of our social media page and they gave us a small amount on Digipak draft 2. It was really helpful getting an experts opinion on our coursework as they have been in the creative industry for a long time and they know the conventions of a Digipak and Social media page to give us the best advice possible. They told us the pros and cons about our promotional music package and gave us improvements to make. We also took this opportunity to ask questions so we could make the best improvements possible
Summery of feedback
- Buzz suggested to me and my group that on our Digipak we should remove the textures of the paper rip, coffee stain and the black dots and replace it with the VHS. The buzz team really liked the VHS behind the CD and they mentioned it would look good if we incorporated that on all 4 panels.
- Buzz remind us that for our social media page not all of the posts need to be perfect. The main idea is to promote products and engage with an audience. This was really helpful to hear as me and my group would spend ages trying to represent our star as extraordinary, and forget that our fans need to be able to connect with the star.
- Another helpful thing that said was to represent the R&B genre more in all of our products. They suggested adding in the colour orange more frequently as this is a popular colour for the R&B genre.
Focus Forward
Focusing forward we will be using all of these feedback from the experts to make out next drafts and final products the best quality possible. It was an amazing opportunity to get a professionals point of view on our products and give us advise to succeed in the creation of them. As well as giving us useful feedback they also gave us many tips on how to use software’s and how to make our designs more conventional. They helped us used different filters on Photoshop to make our promotional music package look flawless.
Social Media Page draft 1
Introduction
For this task me and my group had to create a social media page on Instagram. This is another component to our promotional music package, and it gives us a great opportunity to represent our brand. We have to put our self in the shoes of a real social media star, by doing daily posts, stories and highlights. Being ordinary and extraordinary is key to create a balance in the content you post but most importantly we need to create awareness and buzz for our products. Social media is the best way to create a large fan base in a short amount of time. It is also a great way to connect with a star, just by liking, commenting and messaging them.
Convention checklist
Green- We have included it
Orange- It is included in small amounts
Red- We haven’t got there yet
Targets
- We need to include more interactive posts, so this can draw in and engage our audience. We have 2 marketing campaigns coming up with will relate to our audiences psycho-graphics.
- We need to add a post with either synergy or cross media convergence as this will attract a larger fan base to us.
- We also still need to do our merchandise release which will again attract our audience as they can can relate to us (Blumler and Katz) this will also create attention to our new album that is yet to be released.
- We need to include more ordinary photos, so the audience can relate to us and see what happens in our daily life. It is important to share that as well as being a star we are also still a person that does normal things. Ordinary posts mean the audience can connect with us on a deeper level.
Skills
One of the main skills I learnt during this draft in creating our social media page is when creating posts on canva. There is an option on canva to make the template/ design you made into the exact size of an Instagram post. Another skill I learnt is to colour grade an image on Photoshop this came in helpful as a lot of our Instagram posts are going to be purple. This was a great skill to learn as it is going to help all of use edit posts quicker and post them at a better quality too.
Reflection
Making a social media page as part of our promotional music package is a great way to experience the reality of a star. I think we have a strong start to our social media page as we have represented our branding well, with the retro aspect and the purple colour scheme. There are still many posts that need to be released like behind the scenes, merch and sneak peaks. Once we have created a collaboration post this will make the audience engage with our posts as they have the opportunity to purchase something we have creates. We need to create more awareness and buzz about our product too.
focus forward
For draft 2 of our social media page we need to prioritize getting a collaboration post as this will really increase our fan base. We need to make sure we have 6 more posts for draft 2, we need to keep the branding of the purple posts and the retro/ vintage feel. We need to release more teasers and behind the scenes of our other products as this will engage the audience and help them interact with the star.
Digipak draft 3
Introduction
This is draft three of our Digipak, and it has been changed a lot. We did lots of research on our genre to come up with a more eye catching and conventional design. Me and my group liked the idea of VHS effects as it really encodes the R&B genre. Using different editing skills we layered the effects on to out pictures to create a vintage, scratched design. We have also experimented with different colours and typefaces.
front cover
This is our digipak in the case
Reflection
The teacher feedback was very helpful it gave is a good indication that many components of our digipak needed to be changes and needs to be more representative of our genre. The research we did made us discover our genre is more R&B then pop. We all agreed we really like the vintage look for our digipak as it portrayed our genre better. From the peer feedback survey we received on this draft we noticed that the top genres they thought our digipak was were; EDM, Indie Rock and soul. This was really helpful for us as we now know that we need to show the R&B side of our genre better, but we have represented the soul very well. Getting our peers to gives us feedback was really good it gave is the opportunity to get advice from people doing the same work as us. When experimenting with the colours and the typefaces of this draft of our digipak we chose to add orange into our original colour scheme of blue pink and purple this represents more of the R&B genre.
Skills
The main skill I used during this task was layer styling and blending, this was to make sure the textures were layered together correctly. This was helpful to adjust the filters and make it look even on the pages. Photoshop has been really helpful to make our digipak look professional. I have learnt how to change the opaqueness of the filters too.
Targets
- I think on the front cover we need to be able to read the title better and see the stars face more clearly as it looks really blurry. we need to make the effect more transparent so we still have the effect but we can also see the star image.
- I also think that we need to make the VHS filter less prominent on the back page to our audience can see the track list better the are certain words you cant really see.
- I think all the typefaces need to be over the graphics even on the spines too this will make the audience more likely to read it.
Focus forward
Focusing forward, on the next draft we need to work as a group to come up with the best way on how to make the writing more visible over the graphics. I really like this draft of the digipak compared to our other drafts, it represents our genre of R&B/ soul as in the star image you can see the sadness with her facial expressions, and the VHS represents the r&B. The peer feedback we received did show that some people thought out genre EDM or indie rock, this means we may also need to change the graphics slightly so our audience can decode our genre.
Digipak draft 2
Introduction
For this task we took our feedback that we received in draft 1. We made many changes and edited it a lot to make it more conventional. We worked as a group to input our opinions about things we needed to change. We have developed our Digipak a lot since draft 1, but there is still think that we need to work on, as it still isn’t conventional to the R&B/ soul genre. We have received feedback from our teacher on this draft meaning we get another opinion on our layout and design.
This is draft 2 of mine and my groups Digipak
middle right cover
This is the feedback our teacher gave to us
What went well
- I really like the typeface we used as it matches the star image we are attempting to portray, transmits an elegant aura to the Digipak.
- I like the outdoor images with a leather jacket and a dress as it creates an edgy feel and relates to the soul side of our genre.
- I think the black dots look nice and it carries on with that edgy feel, it adds interest to the design with out over complicating it.
What can we improve
- Even though I like the naturalistic images I don’t thing it relates to our genre very much. Our colour scheme isn’t shown in it and I don’t think our audience could decode what genre it is.
- I think all of our elements are good but they don’t work together or with our genre.
- I think the design need to be tidied up as it looks a bit messy, there are lots of elements on the back cover that makes it difficult for the audience to focus on the star.
- I don’t think the tea stain works. It doesn’t relate to our genre and it doesn’t correlate to our audiences demographics.
Skills
The skills I have learnt in this draft of my digipak was to layer different graphics on to the digipak. We used a process of trial and error to figure out how to add the paper rip effect. My skills of photoshop have really improve during the making of the digipak. I also used Da Font to down load different fonts to trial out what would look best.
Reflection
The feedback me and my group received is really helpful. We have done more research on our genre and realized that our digipak doesn’t work with our genre. All of the elements that we have work but they don’t all work together. We used different editing tools and effects throughout the creation of this digipak. Getting feedback from our teacher gives us a new perspective on our work. A fresh set of eyes gave us new opinions on what we need to change or what works. We need to represent our star and our audience demographics better as this will draw there attention. I do like the use of the graphics on the back cover, but they don’t represent our band/ genre.
Focus Forward
For draft three I think me and my group need to all discuss different colours and themes for our genre that also match our brand. It needs to be more conventional and it needs to draw attention to our target audience. we need to study the demographics of our audience and make our digipak and graphics more relatable to them. My aim for draft 3 is to make the convention checklist all green so we can have a conventional digipak.
Final Music Video Draft 6
Introduction
This is the final complete draft of out music video. We have spent ages editing this, receiving feedback and thinking of new ideas. Me and my group have worked together to produce the best work possible. We used premier-pro to create this project, it was a new software to us so we have all learnt many new skills along the way. Before uploading our final draft we all re-watched the video to pick up any small detail we thought didn’t work or looked out of place. This includes clips like; if they were out of time, the colour grading looked off and to much fade to black on a clip. Looking in detail to our music video made sure we picked up everything so we can produce the best version.
Our final music video
Convention Checklist
What went well or things that worked
- I really like the end scene of her in a ‘White room’ or psychiatric hospital as it gives the effect she has woken up and she cant remember anything. This really worked with our narrative idea of making it all a dream, this scene just adds more excitement for the readers.
- I think the idea of her had swiping across the table to reveal the song title was a really cool idea, it took a lot of practice to perfect but I think it ended up okay. My only downside to this clip is that I wish we slowed it down.
- I think it was a good idea to add the blue and pink lip sync clips as they both stick to our colour scheme and work well together.
- I like how all the colour grading worked to make our video look more professional and better quality.
Reflection
This task is our final music video, we have been filming and editing this coursework for a while and it is good to finally see all our work come together. We had many hiccups along the way, for example our narrative didn’t work when we were half way through the music video. We had to work as a team and had to discuss different ideas. This did mean that 1 of our scenes we filmed didn’t get used as it didn’t work with our ideas and our brand. This project has helped me learn so many new skills on premier pro and has also given me more confidence on how to use a camera. Our final narrative is that a girl gets stalked by her ex boyfriend, she is anxious and scared. This then is a dream and she wakes up from a coma all confused. We have used a mixture of outdoor scenes ( Le Guet) and indoor (Church, bedroom, and a white room). We took on responsibilities and roles when it came to production and post production. taking turns to direct, film and edit.
Focus Forward
If I was to do this project again I would spend more time looking at our genre to make sure we definitely got it correct, this will help us create good branding and draw in our target audience. I would also make sure we have a conventional and understanding narrative plan before we started filming, that had a beginning, build up, problem, solution and an ending. This would have saved me and my group a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the narrative more conventional when we were already half way through our music video. This project has made me learn many new skills from how to film on a camera, how to edit and colour grade on new software’s, and also how to be able to direct a star.