Thankfully we managed to upload our video as a private link to youtube which has enabled us to show it to audiences to get some feedback without breaching the copyright terms. Although this is a rough cut so there is much more editing we need to do, it has allowed us to get a feel for the audience reactions and responses to the video.
Overall, they have been pretty positive. Everyone who saw the video understood the general gist of the narrative, reporting back their understanding that James had managed to turn his life around from homelessness. This is very reassuring as this is the main purpose of the video - to show that homelessness is a recoverable issue. They also said that it looked very professional and that the narrative was easy to follow despite being interspersed with the 'live performance'.
However, what was commonly not picked up on was the idea of the circular narrative, the fact that the story repeated itself. Although people understood that Jame's circumstances had changed due to him being given money to buy a train ticket, they didn't pick up on the idea that this happened in an alternative version of the same reality. A potential issue is the fact that several viewers picked up on the repeated shots but didn't understand what they meant, resulting in us looking like we didn't have enough footage to fill the video so had to re-use the same shots. This is definitely not the effect we wanted it to have and could make our video appear amateurish. To combat this I am going to show the video to more people asking them to take specific notice of the narrative and question them on whether they think the repeated shots were intentional or a mistake. This way we can determine our audience's interpretation of these shots instead of presuming they thought it was an accident.
Upon further questioning, the problematic shot appears to be the repetition of the bus pulling out of Leeds station. People are unsure of why this is being repeated as it isn't a shot of much significance (like the ones on the train or with the cup which are used for direct comparison). Therefore, I think we should either completely scrap the repetition of this shot and use footage of the band or add in more of the original establishing shots so we can demonstrate how we're back at the start again, rather than it appearing as a one off bus repetition which our audiences clearly don't understand.
Unfortunately, the feedback I received was very complementary of the colour change from black and white to colour. They said it reflected the improving storyline which was exactly what we wanted it to do and added another dynamic to the video. They also raised the idea of it representing new life, like springtime emerging from winter, which I thought was a really nice interpretation of the video that we hadn't actually considered. Therefore we now need to consider keeping this colour change in the video rather than it remaining in black and white. We have a little footage left to film in Leeds and we could focus this on getting some really interesting colours in the shots, possibly of James in front of lights and billboards so when the colour is introduced it is more striking and interesting rather than just being a bit bland.
I asked my audience if they thought the video matched the song and they were very complementary about this. They really picked up on the 'turn the tides' lyrics and linked these to James' life turning around. This improved their understanding of the narrative so our decision to begin the second storyline at these lyrics was definitely beneficial.
We were complemented on the 'smoothness' of our shots and the overall look of the video which we were told was professional and clean. I even asked my audiences what they thought of the differences between the footage of the band and the narrative and they didn't pick up on anything, suggesting that we don't actually need to re-shoot this section which is a big bonus for us.
We have been complemented on our editing too, they liked the way we accented beats and said it fit nicely to the pace of the song. We are really happy about this because we put a lot of effort into working out our pacing and deciding on the bars of music where we wanted to have certain events taking place. We are really glad this has come through in the overall editing of our video.
Audiences also enjoyed the jump-cutting effect repeated throughout the video to show the passing of time and create a motif through the video. They thought this made the video distinctive and gave it a point of differences to other narrative music videos, making it more memorable. This is really positive feedback and we're so happy that our audiences have picked up on the smaller details which we put into our editing process.
Overall, this rough cut has been given quite positive feedback. The majority of our decisions have been recognised and complemented, specifically our editing techniques and storyline, however, there's some pretty significant aspects we need to reconsider such as the presentation of the repeating narrative and the decision as to whether we remain in black and white or shift to colour.
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