Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 In order to record audience feedback I conducted a series of interviews with my mum, my dad and my brother. I also created a questionnaire on Google forums and sent the link to my friends and extended family.

The family interviews proved to be very useful in determining the successes and the downfalls of our music video. It is interesting on reflection however that half of my results highlighted that the end of our video has received mixed reception. From the answers given to the question "Did you understand the music video generally?" half answered no and queried the male lead dying at the end, why it happened and what happened. This was also true of my video interviews with my family as the confusion surrounding the death of George as to whether he actually did die, the ring on the grave possibly left this a difficult concept to grasp. After our peer feedback however, we did attempt to rectify this problem by using a shot where in which George places the ring in Connie's hand. The successes of the music video however are evident through the 100% yes answer to the question "Did you enjoy the music video?". This highlights that we achieved what we hoped we would, a video that our audience would mostly understand get something out of watching it. The shots that were picked up on were the focus pull, the close ups of Connie lip syncing, the sunsets and the jump cuts as the beat progressed within the song. This shows the strength in our product as those shots and editing techniques took time to execute and had a clear encoding within them, it was clear to the audience the message we put across. This is also highlighted within the answers to the question "Are the characters clearly represented within the music video?" with all positive results our message is easily gathered and understood by our audience.

Another question that I thought particularly helped with the reception of my music video was the final two questions "Do you listen to indie/electro pop often? (Artists such as Halsey, London Grammar, Jack Garrett, Troye Sivan etc.)" and "Do you think our music video conforms to or challenges the conventions of an electro-pop band music video? Why?". These questions really helped me to gather what it meant to have a music video belonging to this genre of music and how popular our music video would be (if it were officially released). It also helped me to reflect on which element to our music video conformed/ challenged the conventions of the genre which is a good piece of research to apply to my evaluations.

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final Website

Here is a hyperlink to my final website for our band Oh Wonder within a screenshot of the home page.

Digipak Final Draft

Vlog 6

Final Music Video

Digipak First Draft

Peer Feedback- First Draft of Music Video

The Making Of Drive

Digipak Research

Vlog 5

Artist Websites

It is clear that an artists website is crucial to their representation and image, it has become increasingly important over the last decade to present yourself through the web and an artists website is their place to showcase their work. Therefore it is important that it portrays who they are as an artist.

Jack Garratt

Jack Garrett is the perfect example of what I would like my band website to look like, the dark colours create a very slick appearance with the artists brand image of the different blues breaks up this dark and portrays a very cool element to the artist. I particularly like the very different lay out of the website with the titles either side, I am considering using this technique within my own website so that I can break up the conventions of this genre.

Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber is also an artist that I would consider using ideas from his website for my own. His basic black and white presentation conforms to his pop genre yet adds a very smooth appearance to the brand. His shop tab I found particularly interesting and I hope to introduce a store/ shop page within my own website. His news tab I also think is a very important element to the website as it allows fans to be even closer to the artist and feel like they are more involved. I would hope to explore the news page on my own website as well.

London Grammar

Finally, London Grammar is possibly the most influential artist that will effect how I design my website, I  think the use of photos and colour on their website is particularly effective in portraying again this indie/ pop band genre. The black background is reflective of the bands music and I hope to instil this quality to my own work as I feel it makes it seems more genuine. The live tab with tour dates is one component to my website that I feel is crucial at the forefront of this genres website due to their often intimate concerts. The band photos I also feel is important as it helps to bring fans closer. 

Cast Meeting Vlog

Oh Wonder Case Study

Oh Wonder

Oh Wonder is a london based duo made up of Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West, they have released one album very recently and are a new group, increasingly gaining a larger following as time goes on and their outreach gets wider. They released their first self titled album 'Oh Wonder' on September 4th 2015 to Soundcloud.

Website and Social Media

They have a very individual modern image that successfully embodies their sound and the genre of music that they belong to. The band uses black, yellow, blue and pink on their website http://ohwondermusic.com to portray this individuality very successfully, it gives them a very slick music artist portrayal. This theme is continued throughout the bands music videos and cd cover to enforce this image.

The band's has numerous social media accounts, including: Soundcloud, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. These accounts have a combined following of over 305k showing their extremely quickly increasing popularity as their music and band gets bigger and bigger.

As shown above their themes are shown throughout all of their promotional tools and social media forms. Their only album recently released has the colours mentioned previously in a very random yet organised almost camo pattern, reflecting the possibly camouflaged meaning of their songs seeing as they are all quite soft and have emotional love connotations.

The typography on the album cover also adds to this with a sleek capital finish. It is very bold and stripped back, again relating to the music, the letters on a white background highlight this whilst also having again the same camouflage effect.

Reviews and Awards

The band being a very recent to the music scene have had various reviews on their album with mixed reception particularly shown in the guardians review below. The guardian writes "Oh Wonder’s breathy synthpop starts to collapse into mind-numbing, mid-tempo fluff about halfway through. Gucht and West make little use of their voices, choosing to harmonise in octaves that add to the album’s monotony"

Virgin media music however on the other hands gives the album a slightly better three stars, commenting on the fact that "Despite the band having never played a gig, each track has reached number one on the Hype Machine chart, and they claim to have notched up 35 million streams on Spotify and Soundcloud." 

The bands awards are as follows but again due to their increase of popularity through online social media music streaming they haven't been present within the music industry for long enough to obtain numerous awards.

Music Videos

It is evident throughout the couples music videos that the same soft RnB vibe runs through, within the colours and settings used Oh Wonder's image is clearly portrayed. On their OhWonderMusicVEVO YouTube channel they have three music videos for their songs; Livewire, Without You and Drive- our chosen music video song. The image of the band is clearly shown in all three videos. 

 Without You

 Drive

 Livewire

Oh Wonder's image is clearly shown within these screen shots of their videos, as seen above the band regularly use soft sunset settings and have similar effects added to their shots during the editing process. Everything in the videos highlights the different sides to love with the couple acting in Drive and Without You. The suburban New York setting of Without you fits with the western desert setting of Drive giving off the appearance that the couple are the 'American Dream'. Their music videos are also in most cases, either shot in extreme close up or extreme long shots. Being edited to have a slow effect makes the videos mirror the music well particularly when the artists sing it gives a floaty moody effect. Having the couple act in their music videos has also helped to strengthen their image as artists because their audience get a stronger view of them seeing them act to a storyline of their own songs.

Influences 

On the website clashmusic.com Oh Wonder gave many answers as to their influences and their reasons. Below I have screen shotted some of these responses. They go through each song and why it has inspired and influenced them to make the songs they produce and be the band they are today.