What have you learned from your audience feedback?
For this evaluation task, we used two different sources in order to get some feedback from our audience and also to see how our idea was percieved by people who saw only the finished product, and none of the research or planning.
We asked a focus group, made up of males and females aged 16 - 18, if they could come and give some constructive criticism and feedback relating to our video and ancillary texts, in order to help us understand how our texts were perceived by people outside of the production process. Unfortunately we were not able to get an audience of a larger age range, given the fact that we are at school, but it still gave us feedback from that audience category. We used a focus group as opposed to another method, such as a questionnaire, or using Youtube comments alone, because when you are asking questions in person, people consider their questions more carefully, and are able to give more detail in their answers. It also allowed us to visually see how the audience reacted to our product.
We showed them the music video first, and then the digipak and poster.
After showing the video, we constructed a set of questions to ask them (it was important that the questions were open ended, in order to get as much relevant feedback possible).
One of the boys in our focus group, when asked what they liked and disliked about the video said - 'was it meant to be jumpy?' This worried us slightly because the whole point of the video was to make it look like a trippy wierd dream, however when we said yes, he replied that he 'thought it was quite cool', which was a positive response, as we wanted to create something which was relevant to a younger audience.
One of the females from our focus group also said she thought the casting was good, and understood the contrast between 'the girl with the black hair', and 'Abbi in the white dress', which is what we wanted to achieve - a clear contrast between the innocent and the seductive.
Some said that they found the lip-synching a bit out of time, and slightly off-putting, however, this issue seemed to be divided in the focus group, as two of the boys said that they hadn't noticed it. One girl said she found it off-putting as 'you were concentrating on that far more', but when we asked for a show of hands as to who found it distracting, half did and half didn't.
Almost everybody noticed that Holly (our lead singer) was meant to be a sex symbol, and understood how we had presented her in this way in the video:
we asked 'how did you think she was supposed to be a sex symbol', to which one girl replied 'the rope, her costume and the make-up...and also the way she was singing into the camera.' This was positive for us, because the way we styled Holly and directed her to behave on the set was in order to create this sexual image, so I feel that was quite good.
We were slightly worried about the editing, as we felt in places in was perhaps a bit too jumpy - however, our audience feedback was heartening. We asked if they found it too jumpy, but they were all enthusiastic about it, saying it went very well with the song. The majority also felt it made the song' better and more enjoyable.'
One girl said she also enjoyed the 'cool effects' in particular the way Holly's face was 'shaking', as she felt that it 'went with the club scene', which of course, is what we were trying to create.
We moved on to talking about the animals, as we were not sure how well our narrative would come across, due to the fact we had to change it on the day because of bad weather. One girl said because 'they were so wierd, it was interesting', and when we asked what they thought they were there for, the responses were positive; 'animalistic', 'wild' and 'drug-like' were a few of the words used to describe the animals. In this respect, I feel that the animals worked well. One girl also said that they 'acted like the mask', and weren't 'just people dancing', which was encouraging.
One question we asked which was quite important was 'what you do think could be improved in the video?'
We got some useful feedback from this question - some people felt that the narrative could have been emphasised a little better, with 'more of a storyline'. One boy also said that he would have preferred to see more locations, for variety, which we agreed with. A girl from the group said that although she agreed, it made her want to see more of the video, which was positive because it shows it captured an audience.
We then moved on to looking at our digipak and advert. The first impressions of these were good - the mouth open made a girl think that they were a 'wild and out there' band. They also felt the band would be young and 'out of control' relating to our original ideas of resisting against normal, polite society, so it was encouraging that these ideas came across. They also felt that the mouth logo went well with the lead singer, as in the video there was a lot of emphasis on her mouth, showing the texts linked together.
We then asked what they thought the band stood for - some thought they seemed like a rock band, and some said teenagers, which was interesting because this was obviously not how we had intended for them to come across. However, lots of the focus group's ideas about the band image fitted with the one we tried to create - one girl said she thought if they had a slogan, it would be 'something quite dark'.
We were pleased that the focus group felt the band's target audience was around 16-25, which is what we had intended it to be. This showed that the ideas we were communicating in our texts were coming across as intended.
The last question we asked was what they made of the animals being there - it seemed that the storyline we had intended didn't really translate across to the audience - one girl said she didn't understand why there were there, but they didn't seem out of place within the video. This showed that they fitted well within the genre, but we could have made the narrative clearer (however, I think that was partly due to the change of plan because of the bad weather on the shoot day.)
In light of the answers we were given to our questions, I think that the main reason as to why an audience member would choose to watch our product is as a 'diversion' meaning that they would choose to watch the video as a way of escapism. We got this impression from comments such as 'wild' and 'drug like' - drugs are obviously used to alter perspective, and our video is out of the ordinary in terms of its narrative, therefore acts as a diversion from mundane daily life.
All in all, I felt that our focus group was incredibly useful - it gave us a new perspective on how our texts were received by our audience, and also showed us what worked and what didn't.
The other source we used was the comments on our Youtube video - however, as is in shown in the screenshot below, these were not particularily useful as they were mostly posted by the same user 'wilyam84', one of our friends, so the comments were personal rather that about the video itself. However, if the video gets more publicity on Youtube, then this could be a useful source if it is veiwed by more people from outside of the school who choose to leave feedback.
For this evaluation task, we used two different sources in order to get some feedback from our audience and also to see how our idea was percieved by people who saw only the finished product, and none of the research or planning.
We asked a focus group, made up of males and females aged 16 - 18, if they could come and give some constructive criticism and feedback relating to our video and ancillary texts, in order to help us understand how our texts were perceived by people outside of the production process. Unfortunately we were not able to get an audience of a larger age range, given the fact that we are at school, but it still gave us feedback from that audience category. We used a focus group as opposed to another method, such as a questionnaire, or using Youtube comments alone, because when you are asking questions in person, people consider their questions more carefully, and are able to give more detail in their answers. It also allowed us to visually see how the audience reacted to our product.
We showed them the music video first, and then the digipak and poster.
After showing the video, we constructed a set of questions to ask them (it was important that the questions were open ended, in order to get as much relevant feedback possible).
One of the boys in our focus group, when asked what they liked and disliked about the video said - 'was it meant to be jumpy?' This worried us slightly because the whole point of the video was to make it look like a trippy wierd dream, however when we said yes, he replied that he 'thought it was quite cool', which was a positive response, as we wanted to create something which was relevant to a younger audience.
One of the females from our focus group also said she thought the casting was good, and understood the contrast between 'the girl with the black hair', and 'Abbi in the white dress', which is what we wanted to achieve - a clear contrast between the innocent and the seductive.
Some said that they found the lip-synching a bit out of time, and slightly off-putting, however, this issue seemed to be divided in the focus group, as two of the boys said that they hadn't noticed it. One girl said she found it off-putting as 'you were concentrating on that far more', but when we asked for a show of hands as to who found it distracting, half did and half didn't.
Almost everybody noticed that Holly (our lead singer) was meant to be a sex symbol, and understood how we had presented her in this way in the video:
we asked 'how did you think she was supposed to be a sex symbol', to which one girl replied 'the rope, her costume and the make-up...and also the way she was singing into the camera.' This was positive for us, because the way we styled Holly and directed her to behave on the set was in order to create this sexual image, so I feel that was quite good.
We were slightly worried about the editing, as we felt in places in was perhaps a bit too jumpy - however, our audience feedback was heartening. We asked if they found it too jumpy, but they were all enthusiastic about it, saying it went very well with the song. The majority also felt it made the song' better and more enjoyable.'
One girl said she also enjoyed the 'cool effects' in particular the way Holly's face was 'shaking', as she felt that it 'went with the club scene', which of course, is what we were trying to create.
We moved on to talking about the animals, as we were not sure how well our narrative would come across, due to the fact we had to change it on the day because of bad weather. One girl said because 'they were so wierd, it was interesting', and when we asked what they thought they were there for, the responses were positive; 'animalistic', 'wild' and 'drug-like' were a few of the words used to describe the animals. In this respect, I feel that the animals worked well. One girl also said that they 'acted like the mask', and weren't 'just people dancing', which was encouraging.
One question we asked which was quite important was 'what you do think could be improved in the video?'
We got some useful feedback from this question - some people felt that the narrative could have been emphasised a little better, with 'more of a storyline'. One boy also said that he would have preferred to see more locations, for variety, which we agreed with. A girl from the group said that although she agreed, it made her want to see more of the video, which was positive because it shows it captured an audience.
We then moved on to looking at our digipak and advert. The first impressions of these were good - the mouth open made a girl think that they were a 'wild and out there' band. They also felt the band would be young and 'out of control' relating to our original ideas of resisting against normal, polite society, so it was encouraging that these ideas came across. They also felt that the mouth logo went well with the lead singer, as in the video there was a lot of emphasis on her mouth, showing the texts linked together.
We then asked what they thought the band stood for - some thought they seemed like a rock band, and some said teenagers, which was interesting because this was obviously not how we had intended for them to come across. However, lots of the focus group's ideas about the band image fitted with the one we tried to create - one girl said she thought if they had a slogan, it would be 'something quite dark'.
We were pleased that the focus group felt the band's target audience was around 16-25, which is what we had intended it to be. This showed that the ideas we were communicating in our texts were coming across as intended.
The last question we asked was what they made of the animals being there - it seemed that the storyline we had intended didn't really translate across to the audience - one girl said she didn't understand why there were there, but they didn't seem out of place within the video. This showed that they fitted well within the genre, but we could have made the narrative clearer (however, I think that was partly due to the change of plan because of the bad weather on the shoot day.)
In light of the answers we were given to our questions, I think that the main reason as to why an audience member would choose to watch our product is as a 'diversion' meaning that they would choose to watch the video as a way of escapism. We got this impression from comments such as 'wild' and 'drug like' - drugs are obviously used to alter perspective, and our video is out of the ordinary in terms of its narrative, therefore acts as a diversion from mundane daily life.
All in all, I felt that our focus group was incredibly useful - it gave us a new perspective on how our texts were received by our audience, and also showed us what worked and what didn't.
The other source we used was the comments on our Youtube video - however, as is in shown in the screenshot below, these were not particularily useful as they were mostly posted by the same user 'wilyam84', one of our friends, so the comments were personal rather that about the video itself. However, if the video gets more publicity on Youtube, then this could be a useful source if it is veiwed by more people from outside of the school who choose to leave feedback.
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