Using Pages, we created a poster to answer this question, arranging text alongside images that help the reader visualise clearly what is being referred to in the evaluation response.
Transcript
Our music video and supporting ancillary products (a magazine advert and digipak) were targeted towards fans of the indie rock genre of music as our band, Tranqua Lite, and their song, 'Tempered Tides', belonged under this genre. As a result we conducted research using YouGov into the types of people interested in indie rock. Our results showed there was relatively equal interest between male and female audiences and that there were spikes of interest in people aged between 15-25 and 35-45, due to the genre's prominence in the 90's and in recent years. As a result our media products we tried to make with a somewhat broad appeal in terms of not being tailored to a specific gender or generation of audience, but also something that would specifically capture the attention of fans of this genre of music.
In discussions with the band, we discovered that Tranqua Lite were keen to be marketed in a similar way to their influences, which included British indie rock bands Elbow, Kasabian, Foals and Biffy Clyro. Looking at the music videos and album artwork for these bands we searched for recurring stylistic elements, trends and techniques. There was commonly a down-to-earth and humble quality to the presentation of the band members in music videos and they were very frequently depicted playing their respective instruments in time with the song, imitating a live performance. The aesthetics of these videos tended to veer towards grungy and low-budget styles and used minimalism. Similarly, the accompanying artwork was usually deliberately amateur-looking or simplistic, often featuring provocative artwork or a graphic on a plain background. Consequently we discussed giving our video and poster/digipak art a unified look that followed this style.
Once we established that the band wanted the video to function as a tribute Leeds, the city centre became an essential location we used to shoot many sections of the video in. To emphasise the grungy feeling we wanted, we chose particularly weary-looking locations and places that evoked a bleak urban landscape. These included the bridge at Shipley station with big white walls either side that are scuffed and scratched with big black marks as well as the area around Leeds First Direct Arena which has a lot of dull coloured grey/brown buildings and concrete. As we completed the ancillary texts afterwards and wanted the two to be a coherent pairing, we therefore looked for ways to add this urban aesthetic to the cover art.
We came up with the idea of taking inspiration from indie rock albums by creating a simple graphic emblem on a plain background and combined a magpie (which is mentioned commonly in the song's lyrics) with images of Leeds so that the image looks like a magpie from a distance but upon closer inspection reveals the grungy urban landscape that our music video is set in. After developing this image, we still felt however that the two were somewhat detached and that the digipak cover wasn't truly representative of the video we had created. Eventually, after discussions within our group, we realised it was the plain white background that was causing the image to look mismatched. We discovered a white concrete texture background online and tested this as a replacement background and the difference was extremely noticeable. It not only looked less artificial and overly photoshopped and also tied it extremely more strongly to the visual style of the music video.
In fact, the background image was strikingly similar to the aforementioned bridge at Shipley, deepening the connection between the two. Our satisfaction with this result encouraged us to follow this aesthetic style further, adding an eroded, scratchy sans-serif font that looked decidedly grungy. Finally, whilst we initially envisioned a black and white digipak cover to fit in with the examples we had researched which included the album covers 'AM' by Arctic Monkeys and 'The Ride' by Catfish and the Bottlemen but upon consideration of how to establish a visual connection to the video we decided it would be more apt to include a hint of colour to reference the colour shift that is a significant feature of our music video. Therefore, we made the images of the magpie and Leeds full colour and shifted them slightly orange to compliment the colours, then included this colour in the text. The end result was a music video and ancillary texts that were distinctly unified and coherent in tone, aesthetic and style.
One of the main objectives our group aimed towards when creating the media products for Tempered Tides was fulfilling the band's brief of creating something that would raise awareness for homelessness in the local area. After the media products were complete, we sent out an audience survey that we created on SurveyMonkey in order to see how successful we were in achieving both this aim and the aim of creating an enjoyable indie rock music video, magazine advertisement and digipak. Fantastically, when given a list of 6 possible interpretations of the video, 5 of which were red herrings, 87.5% of respondents said they thought "the video's message was to raise awareness for homelessness". In addition to this, many positive comments were made about the video's use of colour shift from black and white as well as the colours and theming of our digipak and magazine advert. Also very gratifying to see was the seemingly equal interest in the products from both 16-25 year olds who responded as well as our secondary target audience, people aged 35-45, meaning our media texts were successful in appealing to both demographics equally.
On the other hand, there was lesser success with one of our secondary intentions: the idea of showcasing Leeds as a location significant to both Tranqua Lite and the issue of homelessness being portrayed in the music video. According to survey participants, the ancillary texts weren't clearly related to the city of Leeds and the iconography of Leeds Town Hall within the magpie's head was both difficult to see and not clearly recognizable as from Leeds, even from people who knew the city very well. Similarly, there were few people who picked up upon the significance of representing Leeds in the video, with lots of blatant establishing shots and uses of key iconic locations, when discussing the video with people in our target audience who had watched the video. On the other hand, we believe this may be down to the fact that as media students based near Leeds, our use of the location wasn't seen as a creative decision and rather as a practicality. To emphasize this more, we could have added some more obvious Leeds signifiers to the magazine advert and digipak, such as including a sign of Leeds in the magpie emblem however we think this may have looked too overbearing and crowded the image so the final products we are still extremely happy with. Also, whilst not being recognized as Leeds in particular, the city imagery in our ancillary products did leave an impact upon many other people who evaluated them in a survey, and the theme of urban settings in a more general sense was identified by a vast majority. In this way, our media texts were somewhat successful in one of our intentions for the video, in that it successfully represented homelessness in cities, but wasn't always clearly a tribute to the city of Leeds in particular.
The digipak and magazine advert were complimented by people aged between 16-25, our key target audiences, and [insert statistic] said they would be interested in listening to the song based on the artwork. Aspects that were listed by our audience in surveys as appealing included the urban aesthetic of the background layer and font, meaning our group's use of this particular styling was successful at connecting to the young adult audience demographic as we intended. What was also quoted as appealing included the "striking" emblem of the magpie and the coloring with the hints of burnt orange in a black and white scheme. This particular piece of information was also satisfying to hear seeing as lots of attention had gone into the use of colour within the digipak/magazine advert and the music video, including the colour shift and the contrast between shots in greyscale and in full colour. When questioned about the colour shift in the video, a large degree of respondents said it added to the uplifting feeling of optimism and a positive change of fortune for the character within the story. As both the main and ancillary media texts we had created were credited for their use of colour respectively, the combination can be seen to be very effective at satisfying the expectations of our target audience.
In conclusion, the combination of our media product and ancillary texts was extremely successful in achieving our aim of fulfilling the expectations of an established audience of indie rock fans in both 16-25 and 35-45 age demographics, appealing to these age groups in specific details such as the unified urban aesthetic and uses of colour, and we were also successful in promoting Tranqua Lite's identity as a new emerging band and the video's message about tackling issues of homelessness.
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