Evaluation question 3.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is a key element in the creation of any type of media. Audience gives people in the media industry a target during the production stage. Without audiences there would be no media. By not having a target audience many media industries would fail in the attraction and profit of their products as they would not be aimed at any particular type of consumers. The crucial part of having an audience is that they can provide the industry with constructive criticism as well as productive feedback that will enable that product to become more tailored to the needs of that collective group.

Student feedback.

The main thing we learnt from our audience feedback is that we needed to incorporate more establishing shots between scenes to enable our music video to flow between. We collected some quantitative research and found that 40% of people wanted more shots of the surroundings. We made these changes to the video and found that it did look much better and the storyline was a lot clearer. Another main point that we learnt from our audience feedback was that the relationship between me and Lauren had to be made clearer. 60% of people said that they could not tell whether our feelings were matched or not. We did not want to explicitly show that me and Lauren were a gay couple which is what may have caused confusion but this was purposefully done.
 

Music video analysis.

After watching a Paramore video which features two females 'having fun' with one another, we felt as if we wanted to create the same vibe. In the Paramore video the audience cannot tell whether the two girls are in a relationship or if they are just friends which is intriguing. It is important to create a sense of ambiguity within a music video as it will make the audience members want to watch it again. Due to the fact that music videos are only short bursts of a story that are often played on repeat in social areas, the storyline needs to fascinate the audience so that they will want to watch it multiple times in order to create a variety of conclusions/meanings from the narrative. Throughout the video the audience is left to work out what the relationship between the two characters is which is what we also wanted to create. After telling our audience this, they felt what we were trying to portray was clearer. However, even though 40% of our target audience took the preferred reading approach where they understood that me and Lauren were in a committed relationship, 60% had more of a negotiated reading approach. That 60% saw that me and Lauren must have had some kind of feelings for one another but felt that it was still not clear enough that we were in an actual relationship. This meant that they created a variety of meanings behind the narrative that consisted of themes such as friendship, loneliness and forced love.

Feedback from the band.

We also collected some qualitative research from the band which created the song 'Southern Comforting'. We did this via email, however, we did arrange a Skype call with the lead singer but unfortunately he was unavailable to do this at the time we arranged. We decided to show the finished product to Charlie Kerr who we have been in contact with throughout the whole process and he showed the rest of JPNS GRLS via YouTube. He told us that the idea of having a homosexual relationship was pleasing and he fully supported the message which we were trying to create. Charlie wrote to us saying " I am very excited that you are looking to show that love takes many forms and that you want to use our song as a vessel for that" and he liked that our video contained "Love and beautiful visuals". We were told from our audience feedback that the graffiti we used worked really well to distinguish between shots so it made the move less jumpy and more flowing and it also set the scene for the urban atmosphere (which consisted of a gritty landscape and a lot of street style scenes) and storyline. We chose to add in a few more graffiti shots after an audience member said they made the video "brighter which reflects the relationship that you both are sharing."

Teacher and target audience feedback.

Many of our audience feedback members said that the relationship between me and Lauren was very realistic and kept the audience engaged. We added in a few more shots of me and Lauren together to feed into the idea of us being a couple as that is what our audience members decided they liked. 50% of the audience members we asked said the pulled focus shots that we used throughout the video were really effective. We chose to include as many as possible because we all felt it added an eery aspect to our media video , especially the ones we took in the inner city. The audience really liked the circling shots which we used to show the passing of time. Our teacher said this was her favourite shot of the video so we made sure to include it again in the montage of shots near the end of our finished product in order to emphasise the fast pace of this movement and the desolate atmosphere that is brought in moments of isolation from the bustling city life.

The audience feedback that we collected helped us in many ways to change aspects of our music video and include more qualities that attracted specific collective groups. We were able to create an idea that intrigued and created emotion for our target audience because of the feelings that they portrayed to us whilst watching and contributing to the process of our music video product.