Evaluation 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
During the creation process of my three products – a music video, CD digipak and magazine advert – I have received a range of feedback. This feedback has helped me to improve my products (by either developing or changing them completely) to make them more successful. Of course, it would be vital to understand the audience that my music video would be aimed towards. To do this, I used the 'UK Tribes' website. I had already decided that I wanted my target audience to be alternative and leading edge, and so it was appropriate to choose particular tribes under these headings. Ultimately, it was apparent that the Young Alt and Scenester tribes fitted my desired audience most: both tribes are regarded as having alternative tastes, as well as setting contemporary trends. Since my music video is featuring a niche song, it is likely that my audience would fit into these tribes because they avoid the mainstream. Furthermore, I decided that my target audience would consist of both males and females between the ages of 16 and 24; youth is a prominent aspect of the music video and so a young audience would be able to relate more to it. My audience would be more interested in the smaller, upcoming bands that the alternative scene has to offer, and they would be on the lookout for the latest gigs: independent venues take precedence over larger ones. There is not a set style for our audience because that would defeat the purpose of individuality. They do, however, avoid mainstream style choices. All this brief research allowed me to construct and create my music video and ancillary texts more reliably, since I was aware of what my target audience was.
Music video
.The initial critique that we received was regarding our music video. My group and I made a pitch which included elements such as: style, inspiration, location, costumes and lighting. In a short video, we summed up our narrative/mise en scene ideas. This proved to be useful because we could receive insightful feedback from our peers which would ultimately help us in deciding on a finalised idea. I also found that this was helpful to have at that point in time because this was when we were gathering and finalising any ideas we had. Furthermore, our class age ranges between 17-18 and consists of both males and females, meaning that they make up our target audience.
many of our peers liked our choice in setting. We felt that this was an important aspect to receive feedback from because it is probably the most significant element: choosing the “wrong” setting could result in our music video becoming unsuccessful. We had to take into consideration that using an autumnal setting would give us a time constraint since autumn is most prominent in the months of September/October – thus we would need to finish filming by then. As well as this, filming outside could pose as a risk since lighting is constantly changing, and so getting feedback encouraging us to film outside reinforced that using an outdoor setting would be a sound idea.
Another area of feedback that we received was about our choice in. As said above, there was feedback that our narrative could be considered a bit too generic. This was an important piece of feedback since our music video is of the alternative genre; having a narrative that is boring/generic would conflict with our genre since being ‘alternative’ centres around individuality. Therefore, my group and I made the decision that we would make our narrative/video more engaging and unique through our use of camerawork and mise-en-scene. Ultimately, I think receiving this feedback helped to improve our video since we were able to finalise ideas and narrow our audience down.
As well as getting feedback from our pitch, I also decided to produce a survey for my music video to gain an accurate insight into what my audience may desire from a music video; this was important in ensuring my music video was a successful product. I managed to collect a good range of results: the majority of which came from our desired target audience. There were some outliers, which is to be expected, but I felt that it would be best to ignore those results since our video would need to cater to a specific audience. Despite this, we didn’t rule out any possible feedback from these results since there were still viable answers for us to learn from. I decided to ask the question of what type of music video my audience preferred; choices included narrative, performance or both.
I received some somewhat balanced results. However, the most popular was narrative. Despite this, the fact that plenty of others chose performance/both, we decided it would be appropriate to create a music video that used both performance and narrative elements. This decision was then consolidated in another question: ‘would you expect to see a narrative or performance video for an alternative music video?’ I noticed that a majority of our audience would expect to see a blend of narrative/performance in an alternative music video. Thus, since our music video is alternative, I felt that this would help to conform to what consumers might consider to be alternative.
As well as featuring questions about the “type” of our music video in my survey, I also decided to ask my audience about the aesthetics of it. I thought it would be useful to ask: ‘what colour scheme would you expect in an alternative music video?’ The reason I asked this question was that I thought it would be important to receive feedback on how our video should look since it would help us to reach our target audience more effectively. the results suggested that we should use simplistic, tonal colours – which we did. The use of these colours is perhaps more commonly associated with the alternative genre (in contrast to the bright colours associated with pop) and so I think getting feedback on the aesthetic of our video helped it to conform to genre conventions. We then filmed a draft version of our music video, which was only one-minute long. The reason for this was so we could receive feedback/improvements from our teachers. Despite not being in our target audience, this feedback would be insightful since media is obviously their expertise. Therefore, it was valuable to have feedback from them in order to improve our video and make it successful. Once I had posted our draft on my blog, my teacher gave us the feedback via a Word document.
The next significant piece of feedback we received included:
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Camera work is a bit too shaky – consider using a tripod
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The pan on the first shot is very jerky and should be smoother
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The band performance isn’t convincing. Singular performances aren’t convincing
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Shot framing on band needs to be tighter  Lip syncing lacks intensity and doesn’t match the song
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You’ve used too many long shots
Evidently, there were plenty of areas that we needed to improve upon in our upcoming music video drafts. We had used a tripod for our first draft, but we realised that the footage was too shaky: this was improved in our final video by using a sturdier tripod and taking care not to shake the camera when filming. In regard to the band performance/lip syncing, I think we improved this massively; in our first draft, we didn’t have any instruments (due to logistic issues) and so this affected the verisimilitude of the video. In our final music video, everyone is playing instruments and so the overall band performance is far more convincing. In terms of lip syncing, Fin (our vocalist) wasn’t super comfortable in our first draft, which is perhaps why his lip-synching was ineffective. This changed, however, in the upcoming drafts/definitive version since he became more comfortable with the concept of singing in front of a camera and so now his performance matches the intensity of the song well.
Another criticism we received was that we used too many long shots and that our shot framing needed to be tighter: after reviewing this, we agreed and noticed that it impacted the pace of our music video significantly. Therefore, in the last version of our video, we ensured that the shots of the band were much tighter, and that we included less long shots.
I think that this critique helped us to improve our music video: reducing the number of long shots helped to increase the pace of the video, which matched the pace of the song more. As well as this, receiving feedback on the performance of those in the music video was useful since it assured us that having a convincing performance in a music video is vital – particularly for a song of the alternative genre.
CD Digipak
When designing my digipak, I initially decided to design it without any audience input. This was unsuccessful, and I received feedback from my teacher with things to improve. Therefore, I felt that it would be a clever idea to create a survey to identify what features my target audience might want to see from a CD digipak. Since my initial effort was a “flop”, I felt that having feedback from a survey and critique from my teacher would help to guarantee that my digipak was a successful product. In order for my digipak to achieve this, however, I would need to ensure that it conformed to alternative genre conventions: hence why I decided to consult my target (alternative) audience through a survey.​
I thought that asking my audience what colour(s) they expect a digipak to be would be useful feedback since I could then design my digipak based on my audience and what colours they expect to see. From my survey, I discovered that there was a predominant split between monochrome and simple, tonal colours. My original digipak design was monochrome, since that was a direction that I personally wanted to take. After receiving feedback that black & white was an expectation from my audience, I decided to follow my personal choice of taking a monochrome approach.
Another question that featured on my survey was: ‘Would you expect to see the artist on the digipak?’. This was a question that I felt was important to include; would my audience need an image of my band (Sadgasm) to associate the digipak and the band together? From my own research, I decided this wasn’t the case – there are many album covers/digipaks that lack any images of the artist. However, I thought it was appropriate to consult my target audience so that my CD digipak could be more successful.
I discovered from my audience that having the band on the digipak is either not important or doesn’t need to be included. This was useful, since it allowed me to make a final decision on whether to use images of my fictitious band or not; I decided not to include any images of my band, since my research of alternative CD digipak led me to believe that alternative digipaks often lack images of the artist. Therefore, my final digipak design conformed to alternative conventions and was subsequently more successful in attracting an alternative audience.
As well as having feedback from my audience survey, the next significant critique I received was from my teacher; again, this feedback was useful (despite not being from my target audience) since they are knowledgeable in the media field. They told me that I needed to include more legal information (small print) on my digipak, and that certain text needed editing. As well as this, my draft digipak wasn’t formatted correctly and so I changed this on my final version. Overall, I made a number of decisions/improvements because of my audience feedback, which proved to be successful.
magazine advert
The initial critique that I received about my draft magazine advert was from my teacher: I made the mistake of creating a poster that advertised an album release party, as opposed to the required task of creating a poster that advertised the album itself - this was rectified in my final version. Because of this mistake, another critique I received was that there wasn’t any information on the album, such as the formats it is released on. Therefore, in my final version, I included a number of different formats: cassette, vinyl, CD and download. I deliberated over what formats to include, in order to target my desired alternative audience. Those who are associated with the alternative genre are likely to have niche interests, which is why I decided to include the cassette and vinyl formats; they aren’t associated with the mainstream (despite a recent resurgence) and so, therefore, my advert targeted those who are more individual and alternative. I was also considering including streaming as a listening format. however, the feedback from my teacher warned against this since streaming doesn’t make artists as much money. Therefore, excluding streaming as a listening format meant that my magazine advert was more realistic, professional and subsequently successful. Another decision I made was to include a Bandcamp link as well as a website for my band. The reason I chose to include a Bandcamp link was that, again, it is somewhat niche and thus aimed at my targeted audience. Overall, I made a number of improvements because of vital feedback, which proved to be successful.
