Throughout this project I have collected audience feedback at different stages of each of my products. The feedback has been extensive and useful and has definitely had a huge impact on my project’s path right from the very start with the treatment. But I have got feedback from a wide populous from different ages and overall different backgrounds, so before I took my feedback directly and immediately started changing things or not I had to decide which part of the feedback was more important to me. Of course though audience feedback from loads of different people was still a very good thing, but more specifically it was more beneficial to find out the feedback gained from my target audience.
Firstly I had to work out who was my target audience - I knew it was going to be people who liked the genre indie. I firstly had an idea that my audience would be both males and females aged between 16-24 year olds but what I wanted to know more was what kind of people in that group liked and disliked things etc. For this I used the theory from Michel Maffesoli of Urban Tribes to find out which tribe my target audience was in. There are many tribes in the UK and many different aspects to each of those tribes (which makes them very specific) but I managed to narrow down the tribes to one main one. My main tribe I was focusing on was the Leading Edge whereby people within this group would listen to band such as Bombay Bicycle Club and the Drums and lifestyle would consist of going on Soundcloud and watching videos on Vice. So I took this information and collaborated it with other information I already knew about my target audience and created aspects in which to appeal my products to and advertise them also; and here’s that list:
- 16-24 year olds
- Male and Female
- Enjoy bands such as Bombay Bicycle Club, Radiohead, The Drums and Arctic Monkeys
- Consume internet heavily on sites such as Soundcloud, Facebook, YouTube etc.
- Are into independent style media where mainstream media created by giant media companies isn’t normally that appealing.
So in order to see how much I achieved reaching out to my target audience throughout this project I created some interviews. Two interview consisted of people within my target audience and one who wasn’t. The reason for this was so that I could get a wide perspective on my video to understand if it appealed as much outside of my targeted audience.
An interview with Ellie Kousoumis a 17 year old Art student.
An interview with James Dyer an 18 year old Music Student.
An interview with 45 year old Anne Donald.
I gained a lot of information from these interviews as I was successfully able to see how my video worked in the eyes of others and if they liked it or not and for what aspects. Collectively, the feedback I got from the interviews was all positive but the different people had different perceptions on which aspects they liked the most. Ellie Kousoumis enjoyed the artistic side to the music video thoroughly and said that it was "visually simulating". When I researched into indie music videos I knew that the artistic side was a vital part of any music video and this was representative in videos such as Little Black Submarines by The Black Keys. Therefore this perspective was very satisfying for me as it proved that my work with the music video had accentuated the indie artistic side perfectly. James Dyer, the second interviewee, felt that the personal feel to the band and the way they worked with each other in performance worked really well towards the music video, and this also was one more aspect that was pleasing to hear. This of course was pleasing because another important aspect of indie music videos is that the bands are very personal with each other and there are only a few of them playing like the band The Front Bottoms. So therefore I feel that from this audience feedback I could clearly see my successful progress in incorporating the indie style to my music video and subsequently making it appeal to my target audience. However the last interviewee, Anne Donald, wasn't part of my target audience and therefore the feedback from her was a lot different - but I was still able to learn a lot from her. She said that although she doesn't watch many music videos at all, and therefore hardily any indie music videos, the music video I created still enticed her as the audience and the cartoon world kind of reminded her of the 'Beatles'. This shows me that my video does appeal outside of my target audience, and this was exactly what I wanted. It was clear that it still encompassed aspects of an indie music video with the first two interviewees' comments, but then it was able to appeal to people that I wouldn't have thought it would have appealed to.
After gathering all of this information from these three interviewees I looked at theorist Stuart Hall to take the information even further and to learn more about my video and the audience. Stuart Hall talks a great deal about encoding and decoding within media and how media collects different perspectives in three different categories. Mainly then, the perspectives focus on the narrative of a music video and their meanings/messages and at the start of the project I knew that the kind of perspective I wanted to gain for my music video was one that Stuart Hall calls 'The Negotiated Reading'. The Negotiated Reading is a concept whereby the audience partly believes/understands a text but then uses their own experiences to reflect upon the rest of it and understand it fully that way. All of my interviewees said that they understood the story and followed the character on the journey throughout. However they said that they understood the themes mainly, such as optimism, and that the abstract themes were the most prominent rather than the story being told explicitly. This was exactly what I wanted, and although it could be argued that the reading of my music video is therefore a dominant/preferred reading whereby the audience fully accepts what the author intends, I still feel my music video is a negotiated reading piece as I incorporated polysemic meaning for the audience to understand in their own ways.
Although I learnt a lot from the feedback at the end result of my project, I also learnt vital information from my feedback throughout the project at different stages. Gaining feedback wasn't difficult and I use the typical way of directly asking people and used the internet to ask for people's feedback also.
These two images on the left and right are scanned images of feedback we gathered in class. This feedback was very extensive and we gathered it for our two rough cuts throughout the projects. Written feedback was very useful for us because the directness of the way we did it made people put down their honest opinions and a lot of opinions also. This meant that we could both gather positive feedback and constructive criticism which helped us greatly when going back to our rough cuts and changing them to better them. When we asked for feedback over our treatments, rough cuts etc. we were quite open with our questions as it allowed the audience to give a wide, expansive answer to the question. This worked well with the style of questioning and then after the open question we asked for a number between 1-5 at where our treatment or rough cut etc. was at in accordance to different factors. This was just extra information for our own benefit to see where we were with a proper statistic. This method overall was one of the most beneficial for our feedback as it had many advantages and little disadvantages to it. It helped us mostly in gaining the most information we possibly could to better our music video. We learnt also that sometimes understanding the video and the aspects of it was difficult for audiences, and this was mainly because we were so involved with the production and creation of the video that we may have overlooked some aspects and how easy they were to be perceived correctly. This meant that overall the audience feedback gained through this approach kept us on the right path to creating a good music video. We kept on pushing for feedback at different stages so we stayed on that path and I believe that was the perfect thing to do as the video wouldn't be the same without it.
The next approach I took to gaining feedback was using the social networking site Facebook to reach to an audience that wasn't doing a similar project as me (compared to the people in my class) and therefore had no knowledge of the products and their creation. I knew though that when asking questions on Facebook I had to make them closed questions, multiple choice, so that more people would feel obliged to participate. When asking my class the probability of answers from everyone was pretty much 100% whereas on the internet it is a lot lower, and that's why I asked a question such as the one above for my magazine advert so that it didn't take much time to participate.
I then took the answers and created the pie chart on the left. Clearly there was an overwhelming decision of what should be used for my magazine advert but I didn't take that aspect and go completely with it. In this instance I knew that 'No.3' didn't have a strong relationship with my other products, but 'No.2' did. Therefore I took what I learnt from this feedback and how many people liked the look of the 'No.3' and collaborated my own ideas and mixed 2 & 3. This shows that although I appreciated the feedback greatly and it was a huge help, I still needed to take into account what I knew about my products in order to create the best possible magazine advert for my project.
I also used Facebook's sharing option and got a few people to share my video on their own profiles as shown in the pictures surrounding. This was able to get feedback even from people I didn't know and this meant there was no bias factor involved and therefore their opinions held more credibility to the overall feedback.
This graph on the left is for my feedback gained from my digipak ideas. I asked people in my class for this and the percentages represent each person's individual likeness for each idea. Similarly to my magazine advert I also used this graph to see that two ideas were favoured and therefore combined the best bits of those ideas in my own way to create my digipak.
The whole project has been very extensive for me in creating each product and the amount of research and time I have put into the project has been immense. So gaining feedback from different areas in different stages has been a vital aspect of this project's development and outcome. I learnt a lot from feedback and it has changed my magazine advert and digipak's outcome and mine and my partner's video greatly. I took the feedback and used it to help utilise my own potential in creating something that appealed exactly to my target audience which perfectly shows the significance of audience feedback on a piece of work in making it the best it can be.
Although I learnt a lot from the feedback at the end result of my project, I also learnt vital information from my feedback throughout the project at different stages. Gaining feedback wasn't difficult and I use the typical way of directly asking people and used the internet to ask for people's feedback also.
These two images on the left and right are scanned images of feedback we gathered in class. This feedback was very extensive and we gathered it for our two rough cuts throughout the projects. Written feedback was very useful for us because the directness of the way we did it made people put down their honest opinions and a lot of opinions also. This meant that we could both gather positive feedback and constructive criticism which helped us greatly when going back to our rough cuts and changing them to better them. When we asked for feedback over our treatments, rough cuts etc. we were quite open with our questions as it allowed the audience to give a wide, expansive answer to the question. This worked well with the style of questioning and then after the open question we asked for a number between 1-5 at where our treatment or rough cut etc. was at in accordance to different factors. This was just extra information for our own benefit to see where we were with a proper statistic. This method overall was one of the most beneficial for our feedback as it had many advantages and little disadvantages to it. It helped us mostly in gaining the most information we possibly could to better our music video. We learnt also that sometimes understanding the video and the aspects of it was difficult for audiences, and this was mainly because we were so involved with the production and creation of the video that we may have overlooked some aspects and how easy they were to be perceived correctly. This meant that overall the audience feedback gained through this approach kept us on the right path to creating a good music video. We kept on pushing for feedback at different stages so we stayed on that path and I believe that was the perfect thing to do as the video wouldn't be the same without it.The next approach I took to gaining feedback was using the social networking site Facebook to reach to an audience that wasn't doing a similar project as me (compared to the people in my class) and therefore had no knowledge of the products and their creation. I knew though that when asking questions on Facebook I had to make them closed questions, multiple choice, so that more people would feel obliged to participate. When asking my class the probability of answers from everyone was pretty much 100% whereas on the internet it is a lot lower, and that's why I asked a question such as the one above for my magazine advert so that it didn't take much time to participate.
I then took the answers and created the pie chart on the left. Clearly there was an overwhelming decision of what should be used for my magazine advert but I didn't take that aspect and go completely with it. In this instance I knew that 'No.3' didn't have a strong relationship with my other products, but 'No.2' did. Therefore I took what I learnt from this feedback and how many people liked the look of the 'No.3' and collaborated my own ideas and mixed 2 & 3. This shows that although I appreciated the feedback greatly and it was a huge help, I still needed to take into account what I knew about my products in order to create the best possible magazine advert for my project.
I also used Facebook's sharing option and got a few people to share my video on their own profiles as shown in the pictures surrounding. This was able to get feedback even from people I didn't know and this meant there was no bias factor involved and therefore their opinions held more credibility to the overall feedback.This graph on the left is for my feedback gained from my digipak ideas. I asked people in my class for this and the percentages represent each person's individual likeness for each idea. Similarly to my magazine advert I also used this graph to see that two ideas were favoured and therefore combined the best bits of those ideas in my own way to create my digipak.
The whole project has been very extensive for me in creating each product and the amount of research and time I have put into the project has been immense. So gaining feedback from different areas in different stages has been a vital aspect of this project's development and outcome. I learnt a lot from feedback and it has changed my magazine advert and digipak's outcome and mine and my partner's video greatly. I took the feedback and used it to help utilise my own potential in creating something that appealed exactly to my target audience which perfectly shows the significance of audience feedback on a piece of work in making it the best it can be.
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