Evaluation

A2 Evaluation
Occasions

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

I feel that my media products use the forms and conventions of real media products the most. When doing research I looked closely at the way different adverts are formed, and what the all contained. They all seemed to have a comedy or fun element, which has been brought through in our advert by the way the same box of chocolates is given out by two people for different occasions. We have also gone with the conventions of the timing of our adverts, with them being at around 51 and 35 seconds each.

Although I believe we have developed and challenged the forms and conventions of chocolate adverts because we have advertised a different type of chocolate to what you see most on the TV, which is a box of chocolates, rather then a bar of chocolate. There is a gap in the market for boxes of chocolates that are aimed at any occasion. We decided that it would be fun and innovative to challenge these existing conventions and create a box of chocolates.

Our TV Sponsorship uses the forms and conventions as it uses footage and ideas from the TV Adverts, which from research I have found most TV Sponsorships do, also it is around the same timing as a real media product. We have also decided it to sponsor Pineapple Dance Studios, which is a TV program which is likely to be sponsored by a chocolate. Also this works well because a lot of teenagers and young adults watch this programme, which means our target audience will see this.

Our radio advert also uses the forms and conventions of a real media product as it has a voice over, background music and lasts around 25 seconds, which from research is what a radio advert consists of. We feel that we have started to develop and challenge the forms and conventions thought because chocolate isn’t something that is usually advertised on the radio, especially a box of chocolates. We have also decided to add in occasions that you wouldn’t normally give chocolates for as a comedy element, and to show how versatile our product is.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts is really good. They all have clear links between them which is very important when marketing a product as you need to create maximum brand recognition for the product. Our two adverts both link together as they both share some of the footage from the birthday scene. They also both contain the same characters, which mean people will recognise them from each advert, providing continuity and familiarity for the audience.

We then also have our first ancillary product which is the TV Sponsorship; this again links with one of the TV adverts as it uses footage from the Valentines Day scene, these means people will be able to relate to the scene, characters and plot of them. There is also a jingle over this product, which is used at the end of the two adverts, this links them together as people will recognise the music.

The last part is the radio advert. This has the same idea to it as the adverts, with the chocolates been given for any occasion, and again it also contains the jingle in the background.

Overall I feel that all the products combine well together, and create good brand recognition for the product. They all have elements that intertwine with each other which means they can be clearly defined as a set of products, as opposed to 4 separate products. We have used different aspects to help with this, we have kept the same fonts and colours through all our products creating a brand style.

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

I used different media technologies within the course. To begin with I used the internet to access YouTube and other websites to do research on different adverts. I am familiar with the internet which means this was easy for me and I managed to get this done without a problem.

Another website I have used a lot during the coursework is Blogger. This is the first time I used the website, but I quickly got used to using it. Over the times I have being doing my coursework I have been updating it regularly. I found it easy to edit and add text. Then I came to adding my scans to my blog. I was not sure what would be the best way to do this at first. I though about adding them as PDF files, or adding them as photos. I decided to embed them as photos, and this worked really well as they look neat on the blog, and they also open up bigger when clicked on so you can read them more clearly. I also decided to add the videos I looked at for research in my blog. At first I just added the links, but then I decided I wanted to extend my knowledge of Blogger and found out how to embed them into my blog, to make it easier to use. I did some research and found out how to do this, and I think it’s made my blog look nicer. The last addition I made to my blog was to add a poll, I really liked the idea of this as it will make my blog more interactive and fun.

I have really liked doing the blogging and the way all work has to be kept electronically this year as it is something I have not done before, and it not made me realise how effective blogging can be, as with work on paper, it usually just says what needs to be said for the work, but with blogging it gives you a chance to reflect on your work more and write about everything that has been happening.

After creating our work on paper, we needed to scan it onto the computer to include it in our blogs; to begin with we had trouble with this as the scanner used a program that was not available on all computers. This meant once we had scanned it in, we couldn’t access it on any other computer other then that certain computer. We tried to convert the files to something easier to use, but found this hard as the programs were not easy to get hold of. After this I decided I would scan them in at home which was a lot easier and give them to Jasmine and Attiya on memory stick so they also had access to them.

After this process, I then started using Video Cameras to record the footage for 3 of my products. We had used these devices before so I found them easy to use and work with which was a big help in getting the coursework done.

The next step was to edit the adverts, to do this we used iMovie on the Macs. Again, I have used this program before, so I found this was simple and effective to use, although it had been a while so I had to refresh my mind on some of the ways to use it. One of the main problems we had with this was that the first time we filmed we didn’t leave enough time at the end and beginning of each clip to edit them together well. We learned from this and then filmed again and made sure we left a few seconds at the beginning and end of each clip. This made it a lot easier to edit the second time.

I feel over this piece of coursework I gained a better knowledge of all of these technologies that will help me in the future.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

We have asked our target market of our product to look at our set of products. We then asked them a series of different questions to see what they though about our products. Everyone recognised that the set of products are for a box of chocolates, and they all understood the message of one box of chocolates being given out for different occasions. Everyone said that our products look good, and work well as a set as they all link together in various ways.

With our radio advert we got creative criticism saying that it was a bit short compared to normal radio advert. We agreed with this and we decided to add in more “occasions” to make the advert longer, we also felt this would give it more impact as it shows the chocolates can be given for more than just the four occasions that are used on the other products. After this we got feedback on it again, and people said it was more like a proper radio advert.

From this we also noticed we have two different audiences. First of all there are the people who will watch and see our adverts, who will buy our product, but then there is also our secondary audience who will find out about the product through our main target audience. Also we have two different sets of viewers/ listeners for our products. As people who listen to the radio don’t always watch a lot of TV.

Also one person noticed the part where I am stood in the mirror. We were unsure about whether to add this part to our adverts or not, but we decided it was not too noticeable, and also it was only a short clip which we thought added well to the advert. Seeing as only one person noticed this we have decided to keep it. Although on reflection if we were to do it again we would make sure this wouldn’t happen by doing a test show first.

After all the products were finished, I decided to use the poll feature on blogger as a form of feedback. I think this is a really good way to get feedback as it is done privatly so it creates honset feedback. This has created really positive feedback.