Evaluation Question Three - What Have You Learned From Audience Feedback?

Prior to finishing our video, we posted a rough cut of it on the social media sit, 'Facebook,' this enabled us to get some feedback and make improvements for our final version. By posting this version on a social media site it allowed it to get some exposure to a wider audience, some of which are outside our target audience (16-23). Sharing the video and receiving feedback allowed for us to see what our audience didn't like about the video therefore, giving us some improvements to work on, equally showing that we value our viewer's opinions, even those who aren't in our target audience - I found it interesting to see whether these viewers had a similar taste to our target audience, which we soon found to be true.

Our target audience also includes males as well as females, this is because we felt that our chosen artist's music (Lana Del Rey) appeals to both men and women. We asked around some male friends and our findings were that most of them liked Lana's music, in addition, Lana is an attractive woman and has a large sex appeal to her male audience. Although both sexes can relate to heartbreak we feel that women will relate to Lana's music as she sings a lot about heartbreak and her emotions, this is something that stereotypically, women tend to be affected more by these topics which is therefore a reason why females are also our target audience.

Members of the public older than 23 liked and commented on our video saying that they found our project 'Highly enjoyable', this is also evident through our target audience. As mentioned in a previous blogpost, our viewers didn't enjoy our original ending, or the alternative ending we showed them - they felt that we needed something else as it wasn't the same standard as the opening of the video; we all agreed on this, it confirmed some of the doubts we were already having. As a result of this we decided we had another filming day in the studio and created a whole new ending. The images below show that we took the criticism on board.

Before audience feedback

After audience feedback

We felt that these changes were necessary to keep our audience happy and make our video the best it can be. The changes were successful as the indoor location added a new flare to the overall look of the video, this was because none of our locations were in a studio, they were all out on location, so by having something different thrown in the mix, it implements a whole new dynamic. By having a studio location it sticks to typical conventions of music videos, a large majority of current music videos have a mix between studio locations and outdoor locations - I feel that it is helpful to adhere to typical conventions as it shows some tradition in our video and is more familiar to an audience however, having a mix of locations can also be seen as unconventional so there is that to think about.

Another comment that the audience made was how they didn't like one of the red ivy shots as they felt that when Nova's hair covers her face you cannot see what she is singing, although they liked the concept of the shot. To overcome this issue we deleted the clip and replaced it with one of Nova singing on her bed - this fits well as there are more scenes in the same location, therefore some continuity was shown.

After making the improvements mentioned above, we decided as a group that we were happy with the final outcome and that we should put it on YouTube. It was important to us that the video was uploaded to Youtube as it is the biggest video sharing site on the internet that absolutely everyone can have access to, we want our video to be seen by as many people as possible as we value everybody's opinion regardless if they are in our target audience of 16-23 or not. This upload is also important as it will allow us to get some male opinions as everybody in our media class is female therefore, we needed some opinions from boys as they are also in our target audience.

Within the first day of the video being uploaded we received 21 views an 4 thumbs up, we did not receive and dislikes, this told us that so far the video has been successful. This was a great start for us.

The next thing we done was create a survey on Surveymonkey to get some more specific results, this allowed us to see the exact things that our audience liked or disliked. We wrote the survey for our target audience however, it was open to everyone as we want as much feedback as possible.

This is our survey

We were fairly specific with our questions as we wanted straight forward answers. We created a mixture of both open and closed questions to give ourselves detailed statistics, the questions are below...

The questionnaire received a handful of responses.  The graph to the left shows that 20% of responses  were male and the other 80% were female. Even though this is a large difference, it was still important to us that at least one male could answer the questionnaire so that we have feedback from both sexes. Also, Survey Monkey allows us to see each respondents specific answers therefore, we can see exactly what the male has said, giving us more detailed statistics, this

also allows us to compare the answers to the female respondents.

One of the most significant questions that we have asked is , "What is your age?" This was so important as tells us whether respondents were in our target audience bracket or outside the bracket. The results tell us that the respondents were all within our target audience bracket of 16-23; this information is useful as the respondents are the age group that we aimed our video and auxiliary products at therefore, we have very appropriate answers.

We were also eager to ask whether they thought our video was a success or not - the graph shows that 100% of respondents thought our video was successful, which not only shows that we have catered to our target audiences needs but, also that our artistic flare and creativity has been recognised. As this was a closed question we thought it would be a good idea to create an open question which allowed the respondents to develop their answer.

 One answer that particularly stood out to me was one recognising the 'home video' vibe we were aiming to capture, this respondent stated that they found it effective. When carrying out our artist research, we noticed that Lana Del Rey more often than not has this vintage type of footage running through majority of her videos. We liked this idea and thought it was quite unique therefore, it was something that we wanted to implement into our video; we thought that it would add a nostalgic touch, fitting our storyline perfectly.

This positive feedback reinforced the success of our original idea of interpreting some of Del Rey's retro inspired shots in our own video.

The respondent also stated that one of they favourite parts was Nova singing in front of a projection of waves. As a group we agreed that this was a unique part of the video that hasn't been seen in many existing videos therefore, we should give it a go. It is evident in our video that we are very experimental, this includes the projection scenes -  we use trial and error to create our outcomes and the audience appreciate them.

We asked for any improvements that the audience would have made in the video. We made sure that the question was extremely open so that they could give as much detail in their answer.

One answer that stood out to us was one that referred to the bed scene. They stated that they thought Nova was on her bed for a long time, they would have broken it up into separate pieces - this is also something that our teacher had pointed out to us but, after telling him that it was to give the audience a break and allow them to focus on the whole situation and that we wanted to break from typical conventions of music videos, he thought that this was a good idea. We never really thought of splitting this part of the video up, therefore, this shows how important audience feedback is as it allows us to find ideas that we might not have thought of. We felt that this scene is one that stands out amongst the others, which isn't always a bad thing, also, out teacher is out of our target audience therefore, his feedback isn't 100% correct for this video but, we are always open for different opinions.

Another piece of constructive criticism that we received was that our audience felt that they should see more shots of the camera tracking the artist as they are waking directly towards the
camera. This is because they felt that it was very successful and that it should be featured a few times to create continuity. As a group we agree with this statement as we personally like this kind of shot too and think that adding in more would be successful. However, we didn't think that out video lacked continuity as we have repeat this tracking shot within the video yet, we understand that filming another tracking shot like the would be successful.

Another question that we asked was which location was their favourite location. These answers were very beneficial for us because each one states a different place, suggesting that we reached all of our audiences preferences.

One respondent said that the windy beach in Margate was their favourite location. On this filming day we thought that the weather was not in our favour so, to have our audience really like this location, it shows that we can make something good out of something negative. The fact that they said it was relatable is good as this is a response we were hoping for, we used lots of Point of View shots to make the audience feel included.

Another person stated that their favourite location was the art gallery and that it was something they have never seen before. This is successful as our aim was to be original in comparisons to existing videos - videos that use the same ideas tend to merge together, which is not what we want.

The male respondent stated that his favourite location was the studio - this is important for us as it shows people praising the new ending to our video, this shows that we have taken on previous feedback well and made something that our audience likes. The fact that it was a male who said this proves to us that our video applies to both genders.

We have asked whether the audience feel that our video is appropriate for our target audience . 100% of respondents said yes, reinforcing the fact that we have catered well to our audiences needs. 100% of the audience is within our target audience age range therefore validating this answer.

                                 

                We then created some questions for our audience to answer on our digi-pack.

One respondent said that they liked the colours, this is something that we also liked as it brings some subtle brightness to the mono-tonal image.
some constructive feedback we received said that we should maybe fade the border of the black and white image so that it blends in a bit, although  can see where they are coming from, i disagree with this as we needed a sharp outline of the image to make Nova stand out, this is because as this is her debut album, she needs to be the main focus and a soft outline would jeopardise this.Someone else had stated the fact that the cover looked 'professional' which is exactly what we were aiming for. They also understood our aims by saying that the geometric shapes supported the album title 'Fragments' which shows that our idea is successful.

When asking about our tour poster e got extremely positive feedback that suggested that our work was very professional; this is excellent news for us as it shows that our aims have been met.

Every single comment stated that the poster looked professional which is what we were striving for during the creation process. It is great to see that other viewers from our target audience thought this about the product too. One of the respondents left us some constructive criticism, saying that we could have incorporated some colour into the text to make it stand out further. Although we could see how this would be a good idea, we like the fact that we only chose around two colours to go on the poster (blue and white) as it creates a professional appearance. We feel that adding in even more colour could possibly lose the maturity which is why we have kept it as it is although I can definitely see how adding colour could brighten it up a little.

                                   

                                    

Another question we asked was whether or not they thought the inside of the album was effective. Again, we received very positive feedback as well as some constructive criticism.

They had said that they would 'maybe change the style of font'. We can see where they are coming from as this font is fairly plain to any of the other font we have used before. However, we felt that as it was a personal message from the artist herself that the font could be justified by it being a casual more everyday font type- this also makes it more relatable between the audience and artist.

Another outlet we used for getting feedback was Facebook, this is because it is a form of social media that majority of our target audience have.

Kate sent the link to our video to one of her friends via Facebook Messenger to see what she thought of it. The respondent said what she liked from both the video and the digipacks. One comment she made was that she thought the artist was styled really well and her mise en scene matched the locations well - this is something that we wanted to hear from our audience.

                                                 

                                                   

Lastly, we asked people in person who were outside of our target audience what they thought about our music video. Comments we received included ''the artist looks great and the lip syncing has perfect timing''. This proves that our video appeals to people older than our target audience of 16-23 which is a good thing.

Overall, we feel that it was a really good idea to post our video online to see what our target audience and beyond thought about it. It really helped us to see whether both our video and ancillary products were successful and to see whether they appealed to our target audience.