Focus Group

When a company want to test how their product will be received by the public, they often test it out on a small group of people in a controlled environment to see what the reaction is likely to be. Audience testing is important because:

• When you have worked on a product which you care about, it is easy to be biased yourself and a fresh perspective can often help to point out flaws which you didn't see yourself.

• You may be making a product designed for an audience which you do not belong to. This means that feedback from members of your target audience are more valuable as they understand the genre better.

I collected my focus group as young adults from my school to gather opinions, as they are my demographic for my production, in the ages 16-25, and HipHop RnB are popular types of music among my social groups.

My focus group consisted of:
Owen (age 17)
Melodie (aged 18)
Rob (aged 23)
Toby (aged 25)
Shonah (16)
Matt (19)
Mabel (18)
Henry (21)
Megan (19)
Lydia (16)
Anoushka (18)
Thabo (20)

Magazine Progress & Focus Group Feedback

I had 3 mock ups of my magazine advert for my album, and I asked my focus group which was their favorite.

I liked this one as it featured the album cover and the deep purple of the jellyfish is dark and moody, contrasting the light cover and smile on her face.

I used the reviews at the bottom as that is a common convention of album promotion.

For the next two, my main image was Imogen, and I used the same tagline 'brand new self titled album:'
I also liked the use of the release date being so bright and the symbols of apple music and spotify.

The focus group response came back with mixed responses. I asked some candidates the things they liked and disliked and I eventually came up with this design. 

I chose the same photo used for the digipak and enlarged it, keeping with the colour themes used on the other aspects of the brand. I also adapted the reviews and symbols of the music platforms, adding more of a range of listening platforms.




After showing this one to my focus group the feedback was very useful and precise:

• Make LUNA bigger
• Swap the 6th September and the 'worldwide hit'
• Put the platform symbols in a less evasive position. 
  I corrected this feedback and I think the response was very constructive for my magazine advert. I made LUNA much bigger, and to link the magazine advert to the digipak, I added jellyfish in her sunglasses, as seen on the cover. I also rearranged the reviews to make them more symmetrically positioned. I also emphasized the word ALBUM at the top of the page.
  
  
  
  
  

Digipak Production Progress : Back Cover

I made the set list based off the kind of song titles I think my artist would name them. I found it was conventional for digipaks to have a barcode and compact disc symbol on the back cover, as well as the copyright information and the record label.

However, after continuing some research of digipaks, I found that it isn't always conventional for the artist to be featured on the back cover, and often the track list will just be layerd over an animation, a setting or often just a solid cover. I wanted to keep with the theme of jellyfish though, so I layered jellyfish over each other and coloured it to match the deep purple/ blue theme. 

I also experimented with the positioning of trackless, barcode and copyright information on the cover. I asked my focus group what they preferred.

My focus group responded with the best back cover having the track list in the middle.

Digipak Production Progress : Cover

Below are my digipak cover ideas that I played around with first. I collected my focus group as young adults from my school to gather opinions, as they are my demographic for my production, in the ages 16-25, and HipHop RnB are popular types of music among my social groups.



I liked the use of the clouds, 
giving the album an airy ambience and feeling,and this font of LUNA I think works really well on all these covers. 
My focus group feedback gave the general consensus that having 'Luna' on the cover was more interesting to look at and would create more of an incentive to buy the album. 

Although they liked the font and theme of Jellyfish in cover 2, 
they preferred to see her face. 

Which made me create cover 3. I liked the use of jellyfish in the sunglasses, and my focus group said that they enjoyed the idea but they were a bit too bright and took the audience attention away form the model, the main focus of the cover.

Finally, with the feedback from my focus group, I merged the ideas together. I put the clouds behind the model, made her larger to bring focus to her and dimmed the jellyfish to not distract the attention from her. 

I contacted my focus group again and the new album design was the most popular.

Set Location

My first set that I am using is my bedroom. I want to shoot in the morning and evening for my "flashback" scenes. The bedroom scenes are going to have two contrasting atmospheres, one in the early scenes of the relationship, with the couple in love, and then during the collapse of their time together, with the coldness and loneliness.



My second set is the beach, where I am going to film the scenes for my artist walking away (being freed from what has hurt her in the past). The beach is a great setting for a video like this as it's natural and undomesticated environment, which I think is perfect for this part of the video as it replicates her facial expressions and how she feels being liberated.