Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Transcript:

Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Gathering audience feedback was a prime element of the production process of my music video, as it informed me on what sort of thing I need to improve on in order for me to reach the best grade possible. It also showed me the generally favoured elements about my music video, which highlighted to me what conventions my target audience appreciated as a whole. It also ensured that I was creating products that would appeal to my target audience successfully and be of a high professional quality.

The primary target audience I have chosen for my music video is mainly teenage and adult females between the ages of 14 and 30, as they will most likely have experienced or witnessed what my music video focuses on at least once in their life: heartbreak/relationships. Furthermore, due to Ellie Goulding being quite a young, angelic & popular artist that younger female audiences will most likely be aware of, a female target audience seemed appropriate. This is adding onto the fact that the Pop genre is more well-known within the younger generation. I represented all of these elements in my products by making them feminine and pretty/naturistic. Examples of this are the light star/twinkle effect I applied to a photo on my front cover digipak, or the narrative in my music video following a female on her journey – allowing audiences to personally identify with the character. The secondary audience of my music video would be males between the ages of 17 and 25. This is because I’d assume that less males would be interested in my music video because the concept is quite feminine.

I made sure to gather all the audience feedback I could, all the way through the production process of all my products. Before beginning the whole process of production, I created and handed out a questionnaire to my Media class mates which asked questions like “would you prefer a music video with narrative and performance? Or just performance?” This allowed me to collect both qualitative and quantitative data, which was really useful. As well as this,
for the draft of my music video and drafts of my other products I simply asked my peers to give me feedback and videoed them or took a screen shot of their response text. So this was for example after the second draft of my music video I would video Rag'e and Janani, and just ask them a few questions. This allowed them to provide me with qualitative data which was rich, and there were able to elaborate on it which I found really useful because I could actually listen to them and understand them, without them just rating my music video on a number scale and things like this. And I just recently did this again today; I video'd Siobhan and just asked her a few questions about my music video, and she was able to give me good feedback in which I could improve on my music video based on, as my final deadline was coming up. So this feedback was really useful for me. I also organised a focus group between my Media peers too. However, for the second draft of my music video I created a survey through a website called Survey Monkey. It included questions such as: “what do you feel I could improve on?”, “how professional would you rate my music video from 1-10?” and again this allowed the audience to give both qualitative and quantitative data. I received survey responses through many methods in order to ensure that I collect it from a good variation of audiences, as I wanted thorough feedback from all angles. I did this through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as the younger generation are the most likely to check into these sort of sites and therefore see my status’ about filling out my survey. Therefore, I would be getting feedback from my actual target audience, which would be really effective because if I was to receive it from an older audience, this would be helpful because it's from the outside looking in, but it is really good getting it from my target audience as I can actually generalise this information easily if I get it from a large amount of people. I can actually take this advice from the people, because it's who I'm actually directing my products at. As well as this, I texted/told my friends and family about the survey and asked them to fill it out. Even though some of my family are older, I figured it would be good to get feedback from an older generation too, so that there is a variation. Lastly, in class we had peer group meeting where we all watched eachother’s music videos and had to ask the class questions and receive feedback from our peers. This was near the end of the whole process; we were near the end of producing our videos and really needed advice to actually finalise them and perfect them. Also, our peers had to complete a question sheet asking them to rate each aspect of our music videos level-wise.

I found that some feedback was more helpful than others for my survey. For example, questions like “what would you rate my music video in terms of how professional it is between a scale of 1-10?” were very vague, and whatever the answers may be, I found I couldn’t do much to change how professional my music video was unless I re-shot the all of the footage, which would be extremely time-consuming, and I didn't have enough time for this as it was near my deadline, or I could adjust the settings of some of the footage, but yet again that would not really change a lot about its professionalness. So it's results like this that are quite vague. However, questions where the audience members could indulge in great depth of conversation about their views were really effective because it allowed me to actually note their responses and make improvements based on them, such as: “what do you dislike about my video? State any potential improvements.” Of course, this is quite an open question and I knew that I could receive a lot of negative feedback and criticism, but this is what I wanted in order to really improve on my music video, and know that this is people being honest. Also, it was helpful to know that these people were submitting their responses anonymously, which means that they were going to be more honest as they were anonymous. I always wrote down people’s responses and referred to them when continuing to work on my products. This meant that I could go back and remind myself of what to include and what to remove. I found the survey and questionnaires particularly helpful as I was able to collect both qualitative and quantitative data, and could compare particular answers and use these statistics to come up with the best decision to help me. For example, I discovered that when asked what was disliked about my video, more people said they didn’t understand the short, slow motion shots of Jess doing her gymnast, than people who said I should add more of it. Therefore since gathering these responses I have considered perhaps removing the gymnastic shots to suit my target audience. However, in the end I actually did not do this because I felt that I wanted added emotional meaning to my music video and I wanted my music video to have emotional depth and I wanted the audience to be able to relate to it on an emotional level. However I wanted this to be on a subconscious level too, in a way that it would not jump out to the audience straight away which may be why they dislike the shots or are confused by them; they'd have to really concentrate on it to understand on it. If you were to look at the gymnastic shots more I've put them in smart moments, for instance when Georgina's about to go on a date with Matt, I have carefully placed a shot of Jessica leaping into the air slow-motion, which represents Georgina jumping into her freedom and adventure. So I decided that I did want to keep these gymnastic shots because I felt that it added meaning to my music video. This was a decision I made on ignoring this particular feedback for these reasons. An extremely useful part of audience feedback in my process was the questionnaire I gave out at the start, and one particular question I asked was “what locations do you think should be used in a music video for the song ‘Guns and Horses’ by Ellie Goulding?” The most voted-for answer was the woods, so this is how I determined the natural wood setting for my music video with Georgina’s journey. So this is just a prime example of how crucial audience feedback is.

From the results I generated from the questionnaire I created before I made my music video, I was able to make my actual decisions quite easily. For example, the majority of people who took it said they would prefer a narrative and performance-based music video rather than just a narrative or just a performance-based music video. Initially I liked the idea of using performance and narrative shots, however this result encouraged my decision even more so as I knew it was what my target audience wanted from a pop music video. Furthermore, I asked the question “what settings do you think I should use in my music video for ‘Guns and Horses’ by Ellie Goulding?” and they had the choice out of “woods”, “house”, “club”, “London/shopping mall”. The majority chose the woods and a house which further-developed my idea to make Georgina take a journey through the woods, relating to flashbacks at a house etc.. Therefore you can really see how these results influenced the development of my music video. I think that my target audience chose the woods and house as the setting for my video because they felt they could relate to these settings more, because they are such 'normal' settings. I think these sort of settings are easier for people to identify and relate with, which I think is a crucial aspect for my video, and this is a real reason why I chose to go along with their responses. Furthermore, from the survey I created after finishing the second draft of my music video, I received many different pieces of feedback from different target groups, both positive and negative. I found that the most professional, precise feedback came from my Media peers who I had given the survey to through Facebook. It included responses such as “I really liked the concept of your music video, the story was clear and something teenagers would be able to relate to. But I think you should colour correct some shots”, or “some shots were blurry, maybe add a sharpness effect to rid of this”. These responses were helpful because they were able to give me an actual solution to my problem and they could spot the minor negatives in my music video where perhaps non-Media students couldn’t. These Media students were able to identify tiny problems, such as colour correction and features like this, whereas people who do not study Media may not identify these. This is why I found these people a lot more helpful.So, onwards from this feedback I added an adjustment layer to all of my footage which increased the sharpness, almost fixing the blur problem. I found after this it just looked so much more sharper and professional. I also colour corrected a lot of the shots by adding filters to some poignant parts, such as when Georgina is crying at the end, I added a red filter which tinted it a slightly warmer colour to represent the passion and love she feels for Matt. Furthermore, for others I literally just added an adjustment layer which just auto-corrected my shots in terms of colour, and I did find that they made them brighter and overall 'better'. So after this I could definitely see what people meant when they told me to colour-correct my footage. Adding these sort of filters made me realise how raw my footage previously was and how important filters and colour correction are/is, and again it added emotional depth to my music video that not everyone may realise. I also received the response that I “needed more shots of Jessica performing her gymnastics as there aren’t enough of these, therefore this may become confusing for the audience”. So, I worked on adding more gymnastic shots and spacing several of them out more in the music video to make it more consistent and less ‘random’ as said in some of my feedback. Some negative feedback I received was that the male actor in my music video (Matt) could have been less wooden, but in my eyes he tried his hardest and he is not the main protagonist in my music video anyway. In comparison to Georgina, she received a lot of positive feedback with people saying that she made the music video believable and good at miming and was an overall great actress, so I was pleased with this. Since receiving survey feedback, I also realised that I wasn’t too keen on the black and white shots so I added a light pink filter to them to make them more subtle. Furthermore, when we had the peer group discussion and had to show our music videos to the class, I was told again that some shots were blurry and needed to be colour corrected but overall it was positive. Again, this just reinforced my decision to colour-correct these shots etc.. However my teacher said that the last shot of Georgina smiling as she sung the lyric was confusing and did not match the rest of the music video as she was previously upset about her break up, therefore I should remove it. I took this advice on board and removed this particular shot, replacing it with a nostalgic shot of the camera following the ashes scattered on the floor from her burned letter. I then looked through my footage and found a shot that was really random and wasn't planned. While I was filming Jessica performing Gymnastics, I panned along and captured Georgina and Matt cuddling in the field, as they are actually a couple outside of the music video, and this was not acted out or planned, but I felt that it was a really natural shot so I chose to use it. I then placed it over the last new shot of Georgina looking downwards sadly, and I faded into the shot, so that you can actually see the couple cuddling through Georgina's face. I felt that this was a really good, nostalgic shot. It has a nice tone to it as Georgina is reminscing, therefore summarising the whole music video and making it have a better ending overall. Therefore I definitely took the advice on board. Lastly, through Survey Monkey I analysed the data of the survey I created and found some interesting results. For example, out of the 25 overall responses, 20% (the majority) rated my music video a 10 on a scale of 1-10 in how professional it was, which I was pleased with. Furthermore, 40% said that my music video was “pretty good” in terms of fluidity, suggesting that I have room for improvement on the fluentness of my shots. After this, I cut the shots a lot more and marked the beat on the timeline for the shots to match the exact rhythm of the song. Beforehand, the shots only really matched on climax which now looking back, I realise is quite consistent. But now, the shots match with every flick of the beat of the song and it runs a lot fluently. Also, 80% said that the mise-en-scene complimented the genre of my music video.

I found a lot of my results effective, especially the questionnaire I created before the production of my music video, because it helped in initiating the actual decisions I needed to make in order for it to attract my target audience. I think that the survey I handed out after producing my music video was secondly most important, because it governed precisely how I would improve on it according to my target audience, in order to receive the best grade possible. The survey was effective because it asked to be filled out through many different social networking sites and methods, meaning a wider population would fill it out. Plus, surveys are on anonymous so people will write freely what they want without being in fear of coming across as rude. It is also a more quick and easy method. In terms of the peer group, this was helpful too but it was important to note that it had low population validity; I couldn’t generalise my findings to everyone because it was only based on 17-18 year olds. Also, the peers had to write their answers which means they may not have bothered to add as much detail due to the effort to write, so my feedback may not have been very detailed. As well as that, when asking questions in front of class, students may have hesitated to answer in fear of being judged by others, or scared of speaking in front of others etc so I may not have got all the answers I could have received. Also students may have been ‘nicer’ than they could have been because it is not anonymous and they perhaps didn’t want to come across as ‘mean’. But saying this, when speaking up in class this probably gave students more of a chance to elaborate on their opinions and explain them. I think that sometimes recieving too much criticism, whether it be through Surveys, focus groups or audience feedback from friends, can go the opposite way and make you think negatively about your music video and just de-motivate you, because you may just think there's too much wrong with your video and it's almost hard to improve on your video, because there's so much wrong with it. But for me, there was not too much criticism; I felt that there was enough to improve on and I felt that audience feedback was definitely a really large help in the whole process of all of my products.