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

When research our product, we were influenced by existing media products such as the Arctic Monkeys videos, CD covers and advertisements. We used the Arctic Monkeys because we felt that they reflected the work of The 99s and used the same indie theme that we were going for. We thought the indie theme was interesting and there was room for creativity because they try and keep it simple without challenging the conventions and therefore losing the audiences interest.

This is the image used on the front of the Arctic Monkeys digipack - I feel it reflects my digipack well because of the use of the main singer on the front cover and the other band members on the other panels. Our audience research helped to define the strengths and weaknesses of our media products and shows us that we have followed the indie conventions well. For example, we asked the audience: "Does the Production work target the audience we wanted?" and a member of our target audience answered: "Yes, i feel the indie theme is portrayed well. and the black and white looks good. The costume and people used go with the target audience." We communicated with our audience mainly through Facebook because it is easy to come across the type of people we want. We set up a Facebook group and invited people who we thought would appreciate the music type we are using.

When comparing the digipack I created with digipack's that have been done professionally, it is interesting to compare the similarities and differences. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of the full indie CD cover for the Arctic Monkeys album other than the one above, but i feel you can see the similarities between the two front covers. However when further designing the digipack, I found it hard to achieve a professional standard due to lack of resources in college and little to no funds. The actors I used were very good at posing for the photos which made the process much simpler. I feel that the mood board I made, including photos of the type of clothing the actors would need to wear, reflects the type of things that are shown in the video and digipack. This works well with the audience and shows the research that was done into the target audience was fairly detailed and showed some good knowledge of the kind of people we wish to target.
The products that I have created follow redundant conventions from typical indie videos, advertisements and digpacks. The generic nature of the products works for this genre because the audience tend to 'know what they like and like what they know'. A member of our audience said this to us when we were doing initial research and we tried to stick to this rule. The black and white colour scheme of the advert and the digipack is something that the indie genre will recognise and immediately know what they are getting from the products. We tried to make it so they will automatically understand what they are getting from the songs they are going to listen to. We tried to make our actors typical 'indie' member of the audience, so we used clothes, shoes, hairstyles etc that would appeal to our audience. We are hoping that the audience will understand if they see familiarity and an Arctic Monkeys-type performance. However, there is the fear that the audience could easily forget about about the products, due to them being very redundant and the same as lots of other indie type products on the market. This was also mentioned in the audience feedback but we are unable to do much about this problem now that everything is finished. The practitioner Steve Neale said that the repetition of genre helps the audience recognise indie theme and shows understanding of audience needs. We thought about this when first looking into the indie genre and felt that we would want to reinforce this theory and satisfy our audiences needs.