Evaluation - Question 3

Question 3 on Prezi

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback proved itself to be vital in the process of creating my coursework products, much more so than I first anticipated. It is perfect for getting the opinions of my core and secondary target audiences and see how the product would actually appeal to them, and thus how effective and successful it is. I also found that getting feedback from a different perspective, particularly one from the outside of those who have worked on the music video to be important when my own thoughts were unsure, or they would reply with something I had not previously thought of.

Every decision I made, I had to ensure I kept my target audience in mind and focused on how they would react and be appealed to by these choices. My target audience consists of both genders, however with a slightly female skew as I feel the majority of indie music has a dominant male audience, thus there may be a gap in the current market. They would be teenagers and young adults, from around the ages of 15 to 25 who are fans of indie/rock music; this would make up my core target audience. My secondary audience would be people of both genders and all ages who are fans of indie/rock music. In terms of psychographics, my target audience is likely to be individualists, or mainstreamers believing themselves to be individualists as these are commonly fans of the indie rock genre.

One of my first forms of audience feedback was through polls that I posted on my blog, asking people to vote on the answer they felt most applied to them. These included:

What do you feel is the most important aspect of a successful music video?

     - Location

     - Actors/Performance

     - The concept behind the video

Do you feel it is important for the artist to be shown in a music video?

     - Yes

     - No

Do you feel it is important for the artist to be shown in a digipak and magazine advert?

     - Yes

     - No

Where do you usually watch music videos?

    - YouTube

    - Other websites online

    - Music channels on TV

I found that this was perhaps one of the most useful forms of audience feedback for me, as it was easy to spread to a variety of people unlike having to handout forms or film responses. It also resulted in me gaining quick clear, quantitative data that was very straightforward to interpret unlike other forms of feedback where respondents could be unclear in their answer.

One of the key things I learnt from my audience feedback was that I did not necessarily need to create an intro to the song, as my respondents from both my core target audience and my media studies class responded that they felt it was effective as it is, and that creating an intro may actually take away the fast snappy of the song which they felt was very effective. As I was previously set on creating an introduction to the song as I was concerned about the song length, this made a big impact on my music video, especially in that it gave me more time to work on the video itself and perfect the cuts and shots without having to worry about creating an introduction.

I gained feedback from my first drafts on the Facebook group I created, of which all those involved in my music video are members. As a result, I gained audience feedback from the actors, but people who also do media studies and members of my core target audience. I posted each product onto the page and asked them to comment their opinions on how effective it was and how to improve it. Much of my feedback was very positive, but a reoccurring point was that the magazine advert did not quite look professional enough, it spears to be lacking some detail. I took this into account, and decided that more text such as the producers company and institutional information would make it look more professional and overcome this problem. After completing these steps I reposted the magazine advert onto the group wall to receive comments on if it was now more suitable, which my respondents said it was. This feedback I received was very useful in that it identified a problem I had not previously thought of, despite knowing I could still improve my product. It was also very clear as to what the problem was, in addition to praising the aspects they thought were effective, thus as a result I would ensure not to change these aspects. Using Facebook as a way to get feedback was beneficial in that people who had been involved in the video could give feedback in addition to other members of the group, and it was fairly easy to collect together as I could access it from anywhere with the internet. Furthermore, I found that people tended to be more truthful in their responses when they were simply commenting on a product online, as opposed to me filming their response face to face where I found they sometimes felt more uncomfortable being critical of my work and only said what I had done well, and did not give me ways to improve.

I also received audience feedback in written form, by sending out an audience feedback form and asking people to fill it in. One of the key changes this kind of feedback resulted in is that I changed my video from being entirely shot on location to part green screen. Many people suggested I have struggle with having so many actors to organise in a busy location such as London, as it would be difficult to get them all there, be prepared for any problems or dangers and still be able to shoot effectively. Consequently I decided to only shoot the extreme close up shots of my main actress of location, and instead get my actors to perform in front of the green screen at school. This made it significantly easier as I was able to get actors to come in on different occasions and I was able to shoot after school, during breaks and free periods. Due to the organisation being easier and less stressful, I was left able to focus on the footage I was gaining. A further advantage of shooting in school was that I had my teachers nearby if I had any problems with the camera, or wanted initial feedback on the set up of my shoot.

The feedback on the third draft of my music video also had a significant impact on my final product, thus was extremely useful to me in improving my coursework. My respondents suggested that I included more effects in the video, such as arrows and text to fit with the fast pace of the song. This therefore led me to add a variety of add ons in Adobe After Effects, gradually building up from no effects to arrows to what is almost an explosion of text, lines and arrows towards the end of the song, which I felt made it substantially more effective.

I received video feedback praising my products, however I often found that respondents were more reluctant to be critical of my work as it was face to face, thus they tended to say the things they liked more than giving me points on which they thought I could improve. Therefore, although it was good to be able to record some visual feedback, I generally found this less helpful than the written, online feedback where the respondent felt more comfortable giving negative points.

Overall, I feel that the audience feedback I received was key in the process of creating my products, and without it I would have struggled to indentify things to improve and foresee potential problems. It was also very encouraging to me, as they did not only point out aspects I needed to include but also the parts they liked and thought were very effective.