1. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Gathering audience feedback was an essential element as it informed my
successfully on what I was doing right and what I could improve on. It was
ensuring that I was creating a product which would appeal to my target
audience successfully, and be at a high professional quality.
My primary target audience for my products was females ages 13-30; however,
there is also the secondary audience of males ages 18-30. due to my chosen
artist ‘Passenger’ being at a similar age to target audience and having similar
life experiences as to my target audience, focusing on both genders for my
coursework was expected. This was presented in the way I created my
products in a quirky and old fashioned manner. Examples of this could be my
main image of my digipak, is the guitar which is constantly being represented
as symbolic for her love for music, or the narrative in my video which is
following the journey of both the female and the male through their
relationship – allowing audiences to personally identify with her.
I made sure to gather a lot of audience feedback for all of the products I was
making and throughout the process of making them. I generated the feedback
that I was given from peer class members, teachers and even on social
networking such as FaceBook. I asked for feedback on my music video and
any improvements they would recommend for me. I also created a
questionnaire which I got several other class members to fill out, who also fit
in to my segmentation of my target audience. I asked questions such as ‘on a
scale of one to ten, how successful would you rate each aspect of my music
video’ then providing a list with features such as mise en scene, locations,
editing etc. this guaranteed that I was going to create my music video which
was going to suit their interest which was important to me as they are the
desired audience for my video. I organised a focus group of which I got
feedback straight away which allowed me to get direct feedback and for me to
make notes on improvements and strengths.
I did find that some feedback was more effective than others, for example
asking for feedback directly during focus groups was a lot more effective as I
got more out of them, and was able to get a better understanding of what they
meant by responding myself. It was a better form of research in comparison to
using FaceBook as some people were quite brief when commenting, and
therefore I didn’t get all the information I needed to be able to include the
feedback and edit parts of my video the way they would have preferred it to be.
Using focus groups allowed me to write down what people were saying and
posted it on my blog, therefore allowing me to always refer back to the
feedback, and also showing how I have used the feedback to adapt my video to
the target audience’s needs. However, having said that, the questionnaires
allowed me to compare people’s answers and see how different people felt
about different aspects/features in my video, helping me to come up with the
best solution on what will be best for my video. For example, my narrative
concept of the relationship breaking up and how it is reflective of the song and
genre was captured and noticed throughout the research, which was soon
recognisable as I was voted highly on a clear narrative. This therefore proves
that research is essential to get your video to the best quality.
2. Once I had done my drafts for my music video, digipak and magazine advert, I
asked people on FaceBook to message me their views and opinions on each
one of them. This is where I gathered most information about my house style
and some images in particular. Some of the feedback I received was to ensure
that I matched the text on my digipak with the genre, as it didn’t exactly match
or look like it was for a folk rock genre. This was important to me as then I
could focus on looking for a better font which meets the interests of my target
audience, and also the conventions of my genre. I mainly looked at fonts for
the main image of my digipak, and found a great one to use on an online
website called www.dafont.co.uk. It definitely met the codes and conventions
of which I was trying to grasp, which makes my work effective as it gives it the
quirky look I was aiming for.
I wanted to gain as much feedback as possible, whether that would be negative
or positive, I wanted to be able to apply all of new found knowledge to my
work. Therefore I posted several times on FaceBook and to new people, asking
for as much feedback as possible. I am definitely determined to be able to
make my video as successful as possible. I found that most of the positive
feedback I got was around my narrative and the images which I used in my
digipak and magazine advert for example, and some negatives were that I
could of used faster shots and shots of my actress singing as she is actually
singing the song instead of a original track.
