Question 3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

For any further details on what I have learnt from audience feedback:

We used a number of different methods to collect feedback from our target audience. This was throughout the whole process from research and planning to the editing. The first form of audience research we used was from creating a vox pop. A vox pop is a technique used to collect the opinions of members of the public on a certain topic. They are not planned but instead have honest responses because the interviewees have not heard the questions previously. It is a good way of getting a fast and honest response from many different people. We used a vox pop in the early stages of planning for our music video and asked the following questions: What is your favourite music video and why?, What is your favourite music genre?, How/when did you last watch a music video/what music video?, What conventions do you like to see?. We asked people around school from different year groups, which was fortunate because we were planning to create a video for younger people. This meant that the feedback really applied to us and what we were planning to do. It was helpful because it gave us a mix of views that were honest. The only disadvantage of this technique was that because people were being put on the spot, they often became anxious about what they were saying and questioned whether they were giving the ‘right’ answer, so some ended up not being in much detail when we would have liked them to expand a bit more. I analysed the vox pop responses and from this drew some conclusions on how it would affect our video. For example, many people had said that they like to see performance of the artist in music videos, so we ensured that we include it. People also said that they liked close-ups of the artist and use of animation, and this did result in us using these elements. 

Another method we used was a focus group. This meant we got a group of ten people to answer a set of planned questions about the song we have chosen, our ideas for a music video and music videos in general. We made sure that the people in the focus group were of our intended age range. These are the questions we asked: What genre would you say the song is? Do you like the initial concept? Why/why not?   Do you think that this is an original idea? What target audience would this appeal to? Is there any part of the concept that you would change?. Within the focus group we used a range of different question styles, for example, for some of them we asked for a thumbs up/thumbs down reply. This would give us a fast response without too much detail or discussion; it was just a yes or no question. For other questions we invited verbal feedback and discussion to get the group talking about it. This would be quite a natural way of getting opinions because people would normally have conversations about things like this. We also got written responses which meant people could go into a lot of detail, and also their answers would not be effected by anyone else’s because they had not discussed what they were writing.  Similarly to the vox pop, I analysed the focus group so we could draw some conclusions from the responses. Again this was a very successful form of research. It gave a lot more detail than the vox pop, because the interviewees were more confident to put forward their ideas when they were just discussing it in a relaxed way. This detail gave us more information to work with when planning the video. I also liked the range of methods we used in the focus group because we could learn what types of method are successful from this.

Another form of audience research we used was simply asking people individually their opinions and writing them down to draw conclusions from. After drawing the storyboards, we showed them to other people and asked their opinions of them. This was useful because we could record both positive feedback, and constructive criticism to build on. We used much of the feedback we received from this exercise for reference when filming and editing the video. This was a very simple technique, and was helpful because we gave people time to look through the storyboards and come up with some helpful feedback.

One of the most helpful forms of audience research we used was using polls. We signed up to the website ‘PollEverywhere’ which was very quick and simple to use. We could set up a question for the poll very quickly and ask lots of people to respond and they would text their answers to us. We used this when we needed a vote on what actress to use, when we created an early cut of the promo and needed feedback, and when we needed a vote on which magazine advert design was the most effective. This method was very useful to us, because lots of people could give opinions that are concise. The responses would come up on the website as soon as the text is sent, so we could see all of the replies together and as they appear. 

In order to gain final research for our completed products, we conducted another focus group. This involved the same people that took part in the one we did much earlier in the process. We thought this would be useful because they could see how the finished products looked in comparison to what we had planned. We first asked them to tell us if they liked the video with either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Fortunately all of them gave thumbs up, apart from one person who put theirs in the middle. This was very positive for us because we knew that we had been successful in creating a video that is appealing for these people, who fell into our intended target audience. We then asked them why they enjoyed it, and they all gave verbal feedback. We then asked them to write down what could have been improved and to give it a rating out of five for originality. The scores for originality were: 4, 5, 5, 3.5, 4, 3, 4, 4. We were very happy with these results because they were mostly high and were not below three. This shows that they believe our video was quite unique and this is something we were aiming for. The improvements given were mostly to improve the lip syncing in some places, use more variety of shots and maybe use less of the split screen. We thought that these were good points, because there are some points when the syncing is out slightly and if we had had more time or were to do it again we would address this. I also think it was an interesting point about the split screen because we had considered having more sections when we did not use it, but instead chose that this was to be the style of our video and wanted to use it a lot. It would have been interesting to see what the video would have been like if we had longer sections without the split screen. (Below will be the video of our second focus group).

In order to get feedback for the ancillary tasks, we set up another two polls for responses from the people in the focus group and from others we asked. Below are the responses:

This was another useful piece of research because we received positive feedback and constructive criticism. The responses for the digipak and the magazine advert were positive overall with some ideas for improvements. It was nice to see that for the digipak someone had made a connection with the paint and the meaning of the song. They thought it was good that it linked to how messy relationships can become. A few people also mentioned that they liked the colours used, and also that the different sides go well together and have elements that make them link. The fact that we made the ancillaries link to the video was definitely picked up by many of the people we asked because they thought this was effective. Someone commented that they thought the handprints looked childish; however this was contrasted by another person who pointed this out as something that they liked. It shows that perhaps things like this are really just down to personal opinion and taste. Someone said that the tracks on the back could be more central, and someone else said that they were hard to read. These were useful points because if it is actually difficult to read the track names then this should be addressed.

For the magazine the feedback again was very positive; people liked that it was clear what it was advertising, the connection to the video, how it represents indie pop, the colours and how it is attention grabbing. Someone also made the connection to the Andy Warhol picture which was really good to see, because it felt like we had shown the achieved the intended style. Someone mentioned that we could have used the red and white colours that are predominant in the beginning of the video; however we felt that we would not use these because they would not go as well with the colours of the paint. We wanted to limit the colours we were using. Someone mentioned that the cropping of the paint could have had more time spent on and we agreed that if we had more time then this would be something we would improve. Overall we were really pleased with the responses we got, the people we asked seemed to like the designs and the video very much, with just a few ideas of how we could improve.