To answer this question, we created another survey monkey, this time attaching the video and asking our respondents for feedback on specific sections. Once we received the responses we used them to write a report, analysing whether our original intentions had been achieved. We decided to present this in the form of a Prezi so we could include pictures and screenshots of specific audience responses.
Transcript
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Before even considering the production side of our project we had to establish a target audience to which we would tailor our music video. We decided to work with a band in the indie-rock so used this as the starting block for our research, this way we would gather a basic foundation of the particular audience type that were going to be viewing our video. To do this, we investigated similar bands within the genre to discover which members of the population tended to listen to this type of music. For this audience research we used YouGov to explore bands such as Biffy Clyro, Kasabian and Foals. YouGov gave us a result which illustrates the average listener for the certain band so we collated the results from numerous indie-rock groups to come out with an average primary and secondary target audience. We found a clear link between each band’s general audience following - all the bands we looked at had a primary target audience of teenagers of both genders (with there being only 1.4% average difference between the male and female audiences) and a secondary target audience of 40-50 year old males.
We also created a survey on the website ‘Survey Monkey’ which we posted on Facebook to reach a wide audience base. This was a very successful piece of audience research and got nearly 50 responses from people of a variety of age groups and genders which allowed us to clearly identify patterns and trends within the data. This was exceptionally helpful and allowed us to learn loads about our intended audience and how to appeal to them. We already had an idea from our YouGov research that our primary target audience would be around 16-25 year olds however, our survey allowed us to narrow this down further, seeing that the indie-rock genre was more popular amongst our female respondents than males. As we were working with a band we had to take on board their ideas and desires for the video, one of these being that they requested a narrative to help convey the message of the song (raising awareness for homelessness in Leeds). Our audience research survey showed women to be much more interested in narrative music videos than men, with 20% more women selecting this as an element of music videos they enjoy. Therefore, this survey allowed us to clearly identify our primary target audience as women aged 16-25.
Our secondary target audience was males of the same age group as the gender split was so close we know this genre of music and video conventions will also appeal to a male audience base. Although our YouGov research did show another potential target audience of men aged 40-50, we knew this was a young band with a teenage following, rather than bands such as Pulp and Blur which attract a more mature audience. So, to appeal to this target audience, our narrative featured a young boy struggling with homelessness,with this young protagonist further helping us appeal to our target audience.
Therefore, audience research was exceptionally helpful in establishing a clear primary and secondary target audience, allowing us to clearly see the audiences typical of this genre as well as specifically those who enjoyed the conventions of indie-rock videos. It also directly impacted the construction of the video itself, with our questionnaire asking audiences about their lighting preferences and preferred style of video (e.g. vintage, documentary style, stop motion animation). These results influenced our video’s construction as we made sure to include those options picked by our primary and secondary target audiences - black and white lighting and narrative videos.
We had some young respondents stating that they preferred black and white colour schemes but also quite a lot of support of the ‘sunset lighting’ option which depicted quite a deep, colourful scene. The band also stated that they liked colours and would prefer to have some kind of colour within the video; therefore we decided to compromise by creating a colour shift - beginning the video in back and white and gradually adding colour. We really liked this idea because it allowed us to present the homelessness in black and white (a colour scheme we believed really reflected the protagonist’s bleak situation) but the addition of colour in the later stages reflected the improving circumstances of the character. This change of tone also allowed us to create a more clear narrative helped us to achieve a dominant reading of our text by audiences. The feedback we received from this was exceptionally positive - the vast majority of our respondents noticed the colour change and said it “reflected the uplifting feel of the storyline”, with one person even commenting that it was too minimal, stating we could’ve made “the colour change even more dramatic, its a really good idea so should be exaggerated more”. This is really positive audience feedback and showed us that we could even be more bold in our artistic decisions
Without an understanding of our target audience we wouldn’t have been able to construct a suitable and effective meaning and purpose for our video. Having the right target audience allowed us to use audience theory correctly, therefore maximising the impact on our chosen audience. The Uses and Gratification Model states that audiences are active in the consumption of the media texts and use them to gratify their own needs. Audiences may use the text for purposes of escapism, education or to help them resolve issues of identity, and this model can be applied to our video as audiences can use it to further understand or remind themselves and others about the struggles of the homeless and as a motivator to promote change. This is in contrast to The Hypodermic Model which states that we are passive in our consumption of media texts, leaving us unable to prevent the influence of the product. This could be applied in a positive manner to our video as audiences may simply absorb the positive messages we encoded about helping the homelessness, resulting in a positive social change. However, this model often considers the effects of the text to be negative, with famous cases including the banning of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in 1971 which led to a number of copycat violent attacks and rapes, leading to a moral panic. In this case, our video could be said to promote violent or dismissive behaviour towards the homeless and general society, therefore having a negative effect on our audience and possibly not achieving our intention. However, our audience feedback suggests this was not the case, with almost 90% of our responses stating they understood the narrative of the music video to be “Raising awareness for homelessness”. As we created the video for a specific audience, including numerous genre conventions and a clear narrative,we hoped to achieve a dominant reading in reference to Reception Theory. This was proposed by Stuart Hall in the 1970s and states that texts are encoded with meaning by their producers and then decoded by audiences. We believe we have put enough points within our narrative and chose a relevant enough issue to achieve a dominant reading - when the audience decodes the message as the producers intended it and agree. However, the theory also states that audience members sometimes reject parts of the encoded meaning or oppose it entirely. We had a small percentage of our audience who seemed to take a negotiated reading of the text, understanding it but believing it promoted a capitalist message almost more than raising awareness for homelessness. This was obviously not our intention but could be a misreading of our text in accordance to this theory. This helped us learn a lot about our product and how it could be misinterpreted, therefore making us more sensitive in our sharing of it, being sure to pass on the correct message intended. However, overall 50% of respondents believed our narrative and message was very effective with the other 50% thinking it was only slightly effective; no respondents selected the “not very engaging” or “boring option” which is a very positive response to the video regarding audience theory.
We had really positive feedback to the digipak and poster, stating that it “linked to the video really well”. Creating the final products was a long process, with us showing the different stages to focus groups throughout. Feedback on our early products focussed around the font being less effective than it could've been, stating it was either too blocky and “in your face” or too slight and “not noticeable”. Therefore we went to a separate website in order to find a font that specifically fit our needs for the ancillary products, eventually finding a slightly ‘grittier’ one which fit nicely with the tone of the pack and the rest of the video. This enabled us to create a better cohesion between the digipak and video and the within the overall tone of the digipak itself.
We also used social media to create an online presence and raise awareness of the production of our video. Unfortunately, because the band wanted to keep the video a secret, we couldn't post anything relating to the band or song online, however we were able to play on this restriction by creating a buzz through the idea of a secret which would soon be revealed. This enabled us to post ‘sneak peaks’ of shoots online, particularly to platforms such as Instagram to reach a wide audience through our use of hashtags. This allowed them to keep up to date with our production whilst complying with the needs of the band and our online response to certain posts allowed us to determine whether we were on the right track, based on the number of likes we received. This enabled us to keep our video tailored to our target audience throughout the process in order to produce a video that would be successful amongst fans.
Another very important force within our production and planning process was the band themselves. As we were making the video for them as a client it was essential that we listened to their feedback and applied it to the video in order to create something that met their needs and expectations.This happened throughout the process - we met with them at the very start to have a brainstorming session, ensuring the plan for the video was in line with the tone and messages they intended with the song. We then referred to them throughout the construction of the video, sending them images and clips and asking for their opinion to make sure we were not straying from our original, agreed vision. For example, we had issues with the sound quality in the early videos which they picked up on, saying it was distorting, bringing this issue to light and allowing us to fix it by lowering the volume in the video, causing it to distort. Their feedback on the final product was exceptionally positive, stating the video was “excellent” and that we’d managed to “capture a few of the topics of the lyrics really well”, even saying they’d be “more than happy to use this as the 2017 version of the music video fro tempered tides”. This is amazing and we are so happy that we managed to create such a successful product through our continual response to their feedback.
Overall what have we learned from our audience feedback? We initially learned how to design and structure our video due to the expectations of our target audience which was based on the audiences of similar bands in the indie genre. This design element to our video changed throughout the production period as once we released rough cuts we could see which of our idea were accepted by our audience members and which ideas they disagreed with or offer alternative ideas. Therefore, linking to the idea of reception theory. After collecting all the results, our video got an overall rating of just over 4 out of 5 stars from our audience. This means that the video was a success with our target audience and we were able to learn from what they wanted to improve the success of the video.
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