Final Evaluation

The Client And The Project

The Bath Chronicle first started it's publication in 1760 as a printed newspaper but has now made it's way online as a website as well as accounts on social media. Although the Bath Chronicle are now targeting an online audience, they're younger demographic audience is still yet to be directly targeted. 

My task was to create a product for Bath News&Media that will encourage people between the ages of 14-25 to have more interest and engagement with the Bath Chronicle in whatever way I felt that it would work best. 

After researching the target demographic, I decided to focus on a more condensed demographic between the ages 14-18 as I can relate well to this age range therefore meaning my product would be as accurate as it can possibly be, making news become more appealing to a younger audience.

I decided to take the route of social media, developing the Chronicle's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as well as setting up an Instagram account that would encourage a whole new community of young photographers.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths 

• The simple, minimalistic Instagram competition poster with a basic colour scheme and neat layout looks professional and expensive.
• Social media is free to access meaning young teenagers with no money don't have to payout any unnecessary outgoing costs.
• Teenagers already access social media heavily so they won't have to start learning or downloading new software that they aren't sure they will enjoy or not.
• Short, basic and relevant content on the YouTube channel is engaging and means that teenagers don't have to think in an in depth way about it or spend a lot of their time consuming the information.

Weaknesses

• Someone, or more than one person may have to be assigned the job or running all of the Bath Chronicle's social media accounts which may not be affordable for Bath News and Media.
• All of the social media accounts will have to be clearly branded as part of the Bath Chronicle, if the content is mainly aimed at the interested of teenagers then the social media platforms may start to veer away from a way of presenting news.
• If the online content isn't consistent then teenagers won't stay engaged or have reason to keep coming back, this links back to having someone that can focus all of their time on keeping the Bath Chronicle's social media up to date and whether this would be financially possible.
• As well as posts being consistent, the content ideas will also have to be consistent, the social media accounts, especially YouTube could potentially start off strong whilst ideas are fresh but then become boring when all of the best content ideas are used.

Theme And Influences

I wanted the theme for of my product to be arty and attractive- to show that the target demographic had really been researched rather than just leaving the task up to someone who isn't well informed about what the demographic really want or need as that way the style and content wouldn't have the right visual or contextual appeal.

My mood board is a collection of images from brands that successfully promote themselves on Instagram for example Starbucks, Oreo and Nike. As well as images I found out how they manage to succeed on Instagram, this is where I found the idea for my Instagram competition as I was influenced by Starbucks White Cup competition.

I took inspiration for the Bath Chronicle's YouTube content from YouTubers who're currently very popular with teenagers like Zoella, Alfie Deyes and Makeup by Mandy. All of their content is specifically directed at people between the ages of 14-18 although they also have a wider audience who show interest in their videos.

I thought that by making the Bath Chronicle's YouTube content similar to that of popular YouTuber then they have a good chance of gaining the interest of the younger demographic as well as maintaining the attention of their current audience.

Experimentation

I experimented with every part of my product. The poster was developed over a series of hours where I looked for style ideas I liked from posters that already exist and then altering my own poster design by created thumbnail layouts and adjusting colours and images until I developed a poster that my peers and I were happy with.

My 'What are students wearing this week?' video was inspired by Outfit of the Week videos on YouTube that gain millions of hits. I collected a good amount of footage to work with, all shot in different styles and angles so that when it came to editing I could see what I liked the best.

Firstly I edited the video so that each shot was detailed and the whole product wasn't extremely fast pace and I collected some feedback. It was suggested from that feedback that I could reedit the video and make it more fast pace with jump cuts so that the video would be even shorter and possibly even more engaging for teenagers to view. After creating my two final edits I did some more peer reviewing for comparison.

Comparison 

Above is the poster I took design inspiration from and below that is my final poster design. One of the main aspects I really liked about the poster was the geometric border which helps the poster to remain minimalistic but shows that you have thought about the design and spent time on the design rather than the blank spaces appearing unthought about.

The idea of having my text centralised on the poster also came from the poster above as when I looked at the poster my eye was automatically drawn to the centre of the page, most people are this way inclined and are unlikely to firstly focus anywhere else first. 

My font is far more simple than the inspiration poster as I have included more text. If I was to write a fairly large chunk of text in a serif, arty font, the poster would look very noisy and unprofessional. That however doesn't mean that the serif font doesn't work for the other poster, it works for that poster because the text is very minimal. 

I wanted to keep the text on the poster as minimal as possible but still including all of the necessary information, the other poster uses circles that follow it's colour scheme to include any extra information but I didn't want to do this on poster as I planned to include images. To much art dotted around would add to the noise on the poster that I didn't want to create. 

Development

• Reflecting on my development so that if I alter any ideas and could look back upon how I reached those decisions.
• Having an insight into other people's ideas and thoughts helped me to develop my ideas further as their ideas helped to provoke thoughts that I hadn't previously considered. 
• Feedback about the writing on my Instagram ad helped me to experiment with different colours to make the product more legible, resulting in a more effective product.
• Being set the task by Steve (teacher) to step away from the computer and use the physical tools that are all around us.
• Experimenting with the jump cut editing technique after feed back, that I hadn't previously considered using.
• Having the freedom to present my research in the way I prefer the most rather than following a strict brief, it made my work more expressive and creative.
• The initial pitch presentation to tutors was key for my development for creating a better pitch for the Chronicle.

Reviewing Proposal

In my proposal I kept my idea open as I knew that if I stuck to one fixed idea for one big product then I will struggle to make it exactly how I invisioned. Deciding to improve the Bath Chronicle's social media in general, focusing on Instagram and YouTube in particular, meant that I could decide exactly what I was going to create after plenty of research. 

In my pitch proposal, I said that I was simply just going to develop an Instagram account for the Chronicle, but after feedback on this idea it was suggested that I make some sort of advertisement for the account whether it be online, print or video form. I expanded the idea by designing an Instagram competition for which I made a poster for, I then adapted this adverisement poster to fit the rest of the Chronicle's social media sites.

I am happy with the progress I made with developing the YouTube channel, by creating two edited versions of a 'What are students wearing this week?' video. As well as the video I have made blog posts discussing what my aim for the YouTube channel is and how it could work, so there is an action plan.

I am happy that I have completed everything that I set out to do as well as more.

Adaptation

If I was to adapt anything about my product I would have another go at shooting my fashion YouTube video. I would spend more time on the camera settings to make sure the lighting and exposure look much better quality. Also I would spend more time on each shot, making sure it's set up exactly how I invision it and take more shots so that I have more to work with.

After reshooting the video I would spend longer editing and putting it together, whilst trying to specifically following my storyboard. I created a storyboard for my first video although I didn't actually follow it as I prefer to improvise. 

Have I answered the brief?

'Your job as a Tempa Media Producer is to devise contextual research, propose, plan, produce and pitch a media product to attract young people to the paper and BNM’s other interests around the city.'

I feel that my work is appropriate for the client and I have met the brief. I did indepth research and recorded everything I found out meaning that I had a very good insight into what the client and the target demographic would be interesting.

Using the pathway of social media was a good choice for me as I can garuantee that the target demographic use it heavily and there would be no problem in engaging them to use it more and expand their use of it.

With a garuantee of engaging the younger demographic, this means that the brief for the client will also be met as their audience will expand and their interest around the city will increase.

Pitch Reflection

Before the pitch I felt nervous, I produced some flash cards rather than a long intense script as I felt it would work best for me to improvise from my main points rather than stressing about following a script word for word. I was worried that I would struggle to improvise and would do a lot of 'ummming'. 

Thankfully, the pitch went better than I expected! I didn't even have to rely on my promo cards, I briefly glanced at them a couple of times which I was really proud about. I was confident and didn't get stuck for words. My improvisation worked and I even managed to talk about things I didn't initially plan to go into detail about.

The feedback from the client was very helpful. They didn't have anything to criticise about my idea which was a shock for me, a pleasant shock though. Lynne, from the Chronicle, told me that she had been working on some sort of picture competition for people around Bath to enter and Instagram seems like the best way to do it, as it's simple and cost effective. 

Ed, my tutor, suggested that my competition could go even further and people could enter 15 seconds videos using the feature on Instagram as well as just pictures. Then potentially at the end of the competition the short videos could be made into a longer 15 minute documentary with the title 'Bath in 15' or something similar.

Overall I am very pleased with how my pitch went and the outcome of it. The only thing I would work on is condensing it so that I could manage to finish the whole presentation. I didn't manage to discuss my plans for the YouTube Channel which was a shame however I feel the that Instagram account idea was strong enough. Time keeping whilst presenting is going to be my target for the future.