What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

 

In order for us to establish our target audience, as a group we conducted some audience research to identify what our target audience liked and would expect to see from an indie-pop genre music video. We handed out thirteen different questionnaires and the interviewee's then answered them in order for us to analyse the results. The majority of the interviewee's were female and this was purposeful due to our main target audience being young females, however we thought we should also ask some males because they do also listen to the indie pop genre. All of the questions we asked were qualative because we intended for the respondents to give their own personal opinions to the questions being asked, instead of the options being closed. Their answers enlightened us to a range of different indie-pop genre artists they already listen to and this allowed us to focus our research on them and identify what makes them so effective and appealing to the audience, in an attempt for us to also make an eye catching music video for the indie-pop genre. The response on what type of music video the audience preffered was quite ambiguous because all three of the different types were popular. This was quite helpful to us because there was an equal set of responses, which made us feel comfortable with choosing any of the three because all of them were popular. At this point, we were contemplating using narrative and performance based elements but decided to break away from the stereotype of cliché break ups including both females and males. We therefore decided to go with concept and performance, which allowed us to put an original twist on the break up theme and have the whole music video based around the females and the concept element meant that we could use conceptual ideas to represent her emotions and feelings instead of just having a depressing narrative. Therefore our audience research supported our decision on the style of music video to create. Additionally, by asking the audience what they'd expect to see, we were able to gather ideas about different props, settings, themes and costumes to include in our music video to ensure that it appealed to our target audience. We therefore decided to include a variety of different elements including heartbreak themes, landscape variations and lighting to portray emotion. These were useful themes and effects to use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After establishing our target audience we decided to do two focus groups to show them the song we planned on doing the music video for and gather their thoughts and opinions on it. We established that females preferred our song compared to males and this allowed us to target our production and remaining research around appealing our production to females. They said the song was quite relaxing  however the male respondents didn't feel this and thought it was quite boring. They just thought the female was over dramatic. Shelby also suggested using black and white filters in our music video and this was an idea that we had already considered and therefore through the use of audience research, we were able to support our ideas with the knowledge that our target audience would like it. Additionally, the audience also said that they'd prefer a story (narrative) and we did consider this but decided we wanted to challenge the stereotype instead of supporting it and so we had to make a superior decision and ignore the audience feedback. We did this to prevent the music video looking clichè and unprofessional. Shelby's also final comment was to show a relationship and we took notice of this feedback but put a slight twist on it by only showing the females point of view of a relationship after a break up and so we again slightly challenged the stereotype. Overall, from completing our audience research we were able to establish what we needed to include in our music video and what would appeal to attract our target audience. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another instance where we needed to recieve audience feedback was when we created our digipak and magazine advert. Katie and I first decided to do some quick drafts to put our ideas on to paper and we thought that if we could show an idea to our target audience we could go from there. Everybody liked our digipak sketch and 93% agreed that the digipak suited the indie-pop genre, which was really positive feedback for us as a group because it indicated that we were working along the right lines. Because we didn't use any colour we thought it would be a good oppurtunity for us to ask our target audienceabout the ideas they'd best like, to ensure that we were appealing to them. Black text was the most popular response for our digipak, but grey, white and pink/nude were also other possibilities because they'd still been chosen. Therefore, when we were creating our digipak we were able to use all of the different coloured texts to see which looked the best. This gave us reassurance that our target audience would still like the coloured text because members of the target audience chose it. Additionally, overall from our digipak audience feedback we discovered that 93% of our respondents thought the digipak was eye catching and this was overall positive because it gave us a good direction to persue and meant we didn't need to make drastic changes to our draft. We completed the same sort of audience feedback for our magazine advert and 14 people said they liked the magazine advert we had created and 13 thought it suited the indie pop genre and similarly, this suggested that we should pursue the same direction because the our audience liked it and therefore no drastic changes were reequired. In addition this, the majority of respondents thought that the close up was appropriate and the text was in a suitable font style and size and positioned in the correct place. From this audience feedback, we were able to continue creating our magazine advert and if we hadn't of completed our audience research, we wouldn't have been as certain with the choices we were making and this could've resulted in incorrect choices being made. Second to this process, we made a digital version of the digipak and completed more audience feedback to ensure that our target audience still liked the design once it had been done digitally and looked more professional compared to the pencil sketch. For the magazine advert we handed out eleven questionnaires and the majority of feedback we gathered was positive, apart from the feedback about the font of the typography. We thought it may be a weak point because we really struggled with finding a suitbale sans serif font because a lot of the time they look really thick and bold, which put the target audience off. As a result of this feedback we decided to conduct a focus group to get an idea of what fonts our audience would like. Again, we asked three females and two males because we didn't want to completely eliminate males from our target audience because they may still listen the music and watch the video, even if they aren't the immediate target audience. As a group, we collated 6 different styles and also asked what colour the typography should be, whether it should have an outline, whether it should have any outline effects, and any improvements they felt we could make overall to the text. From the audience feedback we collated, we decided to use font style 4 because it is sans serif but thinner than the rest making it more suitbale for the indie-pop genre and also more feminine because they are the main target audience. Font style 6 was the most popular but we made an executive decision to still use font style 4 and it was popular because one of the respondants still liked it. We were also able to narrow down the text colour to white because it was between black and white and white was the most popular colour. Everyone also said it should have a faded outline and we took this advice on board and used a black, faded outline, which we feel looks really professional and without the feedback we wouldn't have been able to make the decision or even consider the design. In addition to this, our digipak feedback was just as positive with the target audience really liking it and the audience had the same issue as with the magazine advert, that they didn't like the text and so we used the feedback from the magazine advert and used the same text and this allowed the two different ancillary tasks to be synergised. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final piece of audiece feedback we conducted was concerning our rough cut for our final production and we got seven females to do 3 seperate focus groups and answer our questions about our music video. Overall, their responses were really positive but didn't give us too many things to improve on, which wasn't helpful because we wanted improvements to make it even better. However they did say what they really liked and understood what we were trying to portray throughout the production. All of them liked it and thought the contrast between black and white and coloured shots were effective, especially with the red lipstick and clear transitions. They all thought the dialogue at the beginning of the music video was effective,alongside the transitions and so we felt really confident with this feedback. Without this audience feedback we wouldn't of been aware of what was effective and whether it appealed to our audience, which is the most important part of creating the production. However, Megan said she didn't quite understand the end shot where the character tilts her head down and up and reveals her good make up. We therefore shortened the shot and it made it clearer and due to us adding extra conceptual shots towards the beginning of the music video, it made all the timings fine. Once we made these changes, we did one more interview and asked the respondent to just say their honest opinions about what they liked and disliked, instead of creating firect questions tailored to what we wanted because we'd previously done this and just wanted an honest opinion this time. The strengths included good lip synching skills, good use of shots including close ups and variation of shots and pace, very emotive direct address, conceptual make up that added to the emotion and distress of the music video as well as a wide range of settings, effective constrast in colour with black and white and colour and professional movement and panning. This was all really positive and made us feel confident that our target audience would enjoy our music video and assured us that we had used as many stereotypical conventions of an indie-pop genre music video because otherwise they'd of had many more improvements than they did. The only improvements we had were to change the long shot, which was used 0.15 seconds into the music video because it didn't suit the genre because the music video is based around the female, whereas this shot focuses on the setting, which doesn't have a direct link to the female, even though the setting is stereotypical for the genre. To change this, we extended the previous shots and due to the added shots we included after the first set of audience feedback, the extension of one shot didn't look out of place and added to the emotive direct address. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, I learnt a lot about my audience from my audience feedback because I feel that as a group we were able to effectively target our audience without too much difficulty and I feel this was quite a big achievement. I've also learnt that eventhough we may really like a certain aspect of editing or camera angles, our audience may not like it and at the end of the day they are the most important part to do with the production process because if they don't like it, then it would be classed as a failure. The final thing that I learnt was that we need to take typography into consideration much more than we do because we relied on our audience quite heavily and in order to be as professional as possible, we need to look through a much wider range of typographies because otherwise we run the risk of rushing it and losing the quality of the production.