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A variety of feedback we got on social media about our music video

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AUDIENCE FEEDBACK INTERVIEW

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THIS IS THE LINK TO MY ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE 

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OUR SURVEY MONKEY FEEDBACK

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USES AND GRATIFICATION

Many theorists have argued that audience members use the media text for themselves. It asks "what people do with media" rather than "what media does to people" (Katz, 1959). For example I feel that our audience could see our music video and relate it to a point in their life when they gave up on important people and went through a rough point. Or people could watch our video for the fact that it reflects an alternative rock lifestyle and that's what they like. Uses and gratification has to fulfill one of the following - identity - educate - entertain - social interaction Our audience feedback suggested that our audience were 'entertained'. They watched our video because it was 'alternative' and our research showed that most people liked this subgenre the most.

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HYPOTHETICAL INTERPRETATIVE CODES - STUART HALL

From our audience feedback we found that a lot of our audience had a 'dominant' reading. This means that they fully shared the texts code and accepts the preferred reading. They 'naturally' saw the point we wanted to create without having to verbally tell them. They saw the music video as a warning to not loose the people who love you to try and fit in with others.

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Examples of our feedback from the questionnaires we handed out during college time.

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If you had to conduct research in the future, what would you do differently?

on reflection i have realised a lot of things that I could have done which would have made my audience feedback more useful to me. for example I would have simply conducted more feedback sessions. I could have selected random people who didn't really know me and asked their opinions. they would be more honest and wouldn't be influenced by our friendship. I could have also asked people who listened to alternative rock if they felt that it fitted the conventions they expected to see. This would have told me if my music video looked professional. I could have had a comparison session. for example I show an audience an alternative rock music video such as 'robbers' by The 1975 and then my music video to see if they could make any connections between the two. this would tell me whether I was sticking to conventions.

the only issue with verbal feedback is that it is difficult to record. It would have been hard for me to listen and write down everything the person was saying. therefore I could use my phone to record the whole conversation meaning that I didn't miss crucial pieces of information.

I also feel that I could have used social media to a greater advantage. Although I posted the link to my surveys on Facebook, I could have posted the final video in order to gain a wide range of feedback. It would have reached a wider audience instead of just a dozen friends from college.

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What did you learn about the process of audience feedback?

I learnt that when asking young adults your age for feedback, they can sometimes not be as helpful as you would like. When we asked them to fill in written questionnaires they would a select few would write sarcastic answers. for example one of our questions was 'Why do you like music videos?' and they would respond with 'because I do'. We were trying to conduct professional research and they were not taking it seriously. This in turn taught us that it is important to reach a large audience when carrying out audience feedback. If we had only asked 10 people for feedback and 6 of them gave unhelpful feedback it would really ruin our overall progress. However if we asked 30 people and 6 of them gave unhelpful feedback it wouldn't be such a loss. When we conducted the feedback on SurveyMonkey we got 30+ responses and most of which were helpful because we were reaching a wider audience. I have also learnt that it is more useful to get verbal feedback. When people are having to write their responses they are less likely to go into detail whereas if I sat down with them and listened to what they said and recorded it myself, they would have gone into more detail. this extra detail could have been crucial and really improved my piece. I was inspired to pursue this technique when my friend who was creating a magazine came to me and asked me to comment on her work. she encouraged me to develop what i was saying so that I was really getting my point across. she told me about how useful she had found this kind of feedback. I started doing the same with my friends and I was able to make some important changes to my work. An example of when I asked my audience to influence the construction of my magazine is when I asked them about colours. I didn't know whether to add some colour to my digipak in order to break up the stereotypical alternative convention of black and white. they said that too much colour would break the conventions but that the coloured noise I used as a background for my ancillary task created a realistic VHS effect.

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our final music video for Blue Route Service by The Carousel

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How did it influence the construction of your product as well as the final production piece?

During the construction process we didn't always use formal forms of feedback such as surveys. we used verbal feedback from others around us. I would take screenshots of our work on my phone so that I always had a copy with me. I would then show these screenshots to my friends around college and they would give me feedback. I particularly asked them if they thought it fitted the conventions of alternative rock. It was also important that we conducted feedback because we were looking at our product all the time. We could have been going in a completely different direction and ignoring what could have been improved. An outside opinion would really help. For example we originally planned to add a black and white effect throughout the whole video because we thought it would add a grunge feel to our week, but during audience research we discovered that the audience felt that this would make the video look 'fake'. We were four people working together and we all had different and innovative ideas. it was important that we received feedback from audience members throughout the process in order to know for sure that we weren't going too crazy with clashing ideas and ruining the professional look of our final product. The audience feedback taught us that the audience wanted to see a relationship between the music and the images on screen. We kept this in mind and edited our magazine to fit this wish. For example when the music slows down near the end of the song, we slowed down the speed of the clip of the lead being beaten up. We then speeded it back up when the tempo increased again. 

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PROS AND CONS OF EACH TYPE OF FEEDBACK

surveys;

pros 

Could specifically target our target demographic

Find out basic wishes of our audience. 

Ask what style of video they wanted to see

cons 

Not a wide range of answers, only around 10 surveys filled out

People could put immature answers - not helpful

peer feedback;

pros 

The people were going through the same process

More sophisticated answers

Knew what we needed to create

cons

Didn't know each other well 

Didn't want to be harsh

survey monkey;

pros

More useful answers

Wider range of audience

cons 

Some people left the spaces blank when they didn't understand the question.

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how did your primary research help with the production of your product? why was your audience feedback important? what was the response you got from audiences?

While we were beginning to look into ideas for our music video we wanted to collect feedback so that we would be creating ideas that would suit our target audience. Our chosen target audience were 16 to 24 year olds. This is because we felt that they are most likely to watch music videos and are 'digital natives' (prensky). This means that they will have grown up with technology and depend on it to give them entertainment. We also felt that the genre of alternative rock was listened to more by this age range and therefore we wanted the music video to be relatable 

We created a questionnaire that we would give to our friends around college. This questionnaire asked several things;

The first thing we asked was 'What genre of music do you prefer?'. We asked this question because we wanted to make sure that the music genre we were using was popular amongst our target audience. If not we would have had to have changed the song we were creating the music video for. Most of the people we asked from these surveys chose rock as their favourite genre.

We then asked people what type of music video they preferred. We gave them the option of 'narrative', performance or hybrid (mixture of both). Depending on what choice the majority picked we would have to make decision in the production process. If they had wanted a narrative music video we would have to hire actors but if they had wanted a performance video we would have to have talked to the band about when they were available.

The next question was 'do you feel the music video is important to the overall single?'. We felt that this question would help our production process because it would help us see how important people in our target audience found music videos. It highlighted whether there was a bond between the two. the majority circled yes. This means that we had to really reflect the bands ethos and the genre of music in the video. We could do this by including 'stereotypes' (Lippmann) this would help the audience to make quick connections with the images on screen and the genre of alternative rock. If we made these links it would show that we had included strong conventions making the music video appear more professional.

Another question that would help us in the production process of creating our music video was 'What do you want from a music video?'. This is where the audience could discuss what they wanted to see in the video. Whether they wanted to see a story being told or a clear link between the beat of the music and the editing. Many said that they wanted the music video to relate to the song. We took this advice on board and decided to look through the lyrics and create a story line from there. This meant that the video and song would be joined together --------------------------

Because we wanted to create an alternative rock video we wanted to ask our audience 'what is your favourite music video'. As we thought many of them would choose rock as their favourite genre, we guessed that they would leave a music video that was based on our chosen genre. We ourselves could then search these videos on YouTube (the platform our audience said they watched most music videos) and gain some inspiration. We made a note of the main conventions we viewed in the majority of the music videos. A lot of these were smoking and drinking and so we added these to our story boards. This convention portrays that the characters are 'cool'. Teenagers can be very easily influenced and so if they see this behaviour they may see it as 'exhilarating'.

Another way we gathered feedback was having a peer assessment with other members of the class. I sat down with two people who were creating their own different music videos and discussed my groups initial ideas. I showed them my storyboards which they said were clear and flowed smoothly to tell a story. I also showed them how I had organised my work so that the work load was easier to manage. Their feedback helped me because I could see where I still needed to improve. They suggested that I find more locations to film so that it was more interesting to the audience. Having diverse backgrounds would help create different atmospheres. For example we could use dark locations to create an eerie atmosphere which would be perfect to connote the danger when the lead male is beaten up.

I also put a survey on SurveyMonkey which would help us make decisions during the production process. I pasted the link on my Facebook so that it would reach an audience of mostly 16 to 24 year olds. Using social media meant that I got a more diverse range of answers. Just using our friends who we probably have a lot in common with would give us very similar answers whereas by posting the survey on a website where people can anonymously fill it in meant that we got a wider range of answers. the questions on this survey included similar ones to our printed survey. survey monkey also worked out the mathematics for us. we could see that an equal percentage of people preferred performance and hybrid videos. we also learnt that 67% of the people we surveyed watched music videos on YouTube. this told us that we should look for feedback by posting our video on YouTube.