Evaluation Question 3

Question: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The initial target audience for our music video and ancillary products was teenage girls ranging from the ages of 15 to early twenties, as young girls are becoming young adults meaning they are experiencing difficult challenges in their life therefore suggesting they can relate to this song. We created the image of our artist to appeal more to women than men, this was done through her appearance (binary opposites of revealing and covering costume) and positioning with props or camera in locations to indicate a message that women would easily recognise e.g. the VHS tape covering the artists eyes to conceal her identity and the people walking past the young girl in the tube station as if her . Furthermore, although the age gap of the target audience is wide, we were mostly focusing on attracting mid-teens. This is because the message we wanted to portray to them is more relevant to mid-teens than any other age; that everyone is free to be who they want to be. However, I believe that our music video is accessible to most age ranges due to it being a pop music genre as it is extremely popular genre.

Research

• Strong messaged was conveyed throughout not only through the lyrics but the expression of the artist and editing techniques used

• Vibrant location choices were one of the main element that stood out for people

• All media products linked well with each other

• Professionally edited (transitions, overlays, effects)

We wanted to research more about current audience activities in the general public, a popular way of interacting with wide audience is through vlogs where anyone can post any opinion about music videos or other categories. Vlogs are used by the audience to promote certain music videos such as reaction videos, and I see that media industries have used this as a way of publicizing their media products in order to reach a wide audience fast and gain helpful feedback. From researching vlogs i have learnt how audiences find ways to connect with the artist, find inspiration within their songs and influence artists to create more music as fans approval is what inspires artists talent therefore leading to further promotion of the artist and their talent.
Reaction videos are a great way of publishing a music video. They are viral, meaning that they reach audiences in a global scale, as well as promote an artists image and previous music they have done.
We also researched a lot of other promotion techniques, such as behind the scenes footage, mini documentaries, influencing audiences to create covers etc. A personal favourite of mine is behind the scenes footage as I think they help let the audience get a personal glimpse of the artist's personality and not just the image that we've created to promote the music video. We have uploaded images onto our blog throughout the process of creating our music video, although they are implanted within the music video to create the image of the artists. We wanted to upload stills of our locations or working to show what footage we thought would be successful or not and give our teachers and peers a further insight to what we were doing for inspiration. When experimenting with a range of theories and genre types we created short clips e.g. Todorov's theory to show our understanding, I believe this counts as behind the scenes footage as it gives our audience an insight to our additional research.


Another thing we have researched are charts as we wanted to see what types of music genres are currently popular within society. Unsuprisingly, pop was the most popular genre, this is an advantage for us as our song choice would be liked by the majority of society. This helped us get an idea of what the audience were expected from an image/spectacle type music video.

Planning
Class Designs

These are the ideas that we came up with individually for a CD cover which best represented our genre and artist. We experimented with vibrant and dull coloured images as well as font types to see what would fulfil the codes and conventions best. our target audience felt that one of the ideas was too bright suggesting a joyful atmosphere which does not support our song choice, however they felt that it was a good idea to have an image of the artist on the cover. This feedback influenced us to use Stuart Hall's Reception theory so we could help our audience understand the concept of our final design.

This is this part of our class designs for our digipack. We did an idea each, then combined the ideas to create our final digipack. This way we could generate more than one idea, and combine what we liked from each other. We also had peer evaluation where we showed our individual design to our peers, and they give us an evaluation of what works and what doesn't for our genre. The VHS tape used we felt related to our song choice and even though it has no appearance in our music video would stand out on our ancillary products as our audience would feel intrigued due to the identity of the artist being concealed. We chose to do this as we have learnt from our research how visual elements can draw audience members in and also give the a further insight to the connotations of the VHS tape as the lyrics explain the feeling of having no identity or place in society.

This is the original design of our magazine cover which we had created using elements from a photoshoot we carried out to show representations of our artist. This was a quick task we did in order to decide what we thought was essential to go onto the cover along with the information that may appeal to audiences as well as the image presented. We received feedback that suggested our design was appropriate due to the link between this cover and our cd cover but we needed to make it look professional and appealing to our target audience as well as referencing the lyrics. 

This is now our final our magazine advert, which is similar to our digipack as we feel it will be recognisable by our audience (as we used our target audience feedback to improve), however, the styles differ to avoid repetition. This was so that we can be consistent, and start to create our brand image.  
From doing these designs i have learnt that every technique used or prop or costume has an affect on the way the audience view the artist as an individual which can then influence an opinion on their music. The image shown to the audience through the ancillary products is how they connect to the artist before the music is heard as a message is being sent out therefore meaning each component is equally important to the design.

Wordle

We used Wordle to see which lyrics stood out the most within our song, to enable us to come up with a theme and how to use theories such as Stuart Hall's reception theory (Encoding-Decoding) to fulfil audience expectations, codes and conventions. Our wordle refers to Hall's theories as well as Semiotics as symbolic codes are used such as our wordle shape (cocktail glass) encoding the stereotype that all teens result to alcohol but the audience decode a deeper message about a teen struggling with life alone which leads to a dark path including the wrong choice 'maybe I've had too much to drink, to smoke, to swallow'.

Audience Interviews and Pitch Feedback

We showed our target audience our initial song choice and asked a few questions afterwards about their expectations: Locations, Mise-en-scene (clothing, props...), and genre. From this we concluded that the audience was expecting more of an image based genre (due to the artist being a female, which is a common response)which focused on the artist. One audience mentioned challenging the stigma of the video looking all miserable and depressing due to the lyrics and making the issue more subtle by placing the artist out in the open.They also linked the idea of spectacle as that is a common genre that intrigues audiences. In terms or mise-en-scene the audience wanted to see glamorous clothing, with exaggerated makeup. We used these ideas in our final music video, creating an image and spectacle based video while also building the artist's image with her costume.

Survey Monkey Results
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/63HZ52Y
This is part of our results from our Survey Monkey Interview, where we asked the general internet audience what they would expect from a pop genre music video. This shows what they expect from pop genre music video, this was helpful in generating ideas for our music video. For example for editing and M-E-S we were able to show binary opposites as well as fulfil audience expectations.


Interim Evaluations
Facebook

On Facebook we have uploaded updates of our Final Design pieces, like our digipack. Using social media is helpful for connecting with the target audience as well as our peers about what is successful or not. Comments were sent via facebook messenger which were positive explaining how they enjoyed our music video and what components stood out to them the most. This comment is from our first rough cut video. We used this feedback as a way to progress forward with our filming and editing ensuring our audiences would be satisfied with the next draft.

Peer Evaluations

These are peer evaluations from our 1st draft of our final music video. They evaluated how much our music video supported the mark scheme and their opinion on how we could improve the video or leave questions about what they were unsure about. We thoroughly looked through all the feedback in order to decide on what we believed was the most important detail that needed to be fixed first and went on from their, so that we could fulfil all audience expectations, codes and conventions. I think this has helped improve our work significantly to enable us to receive the highest grade possible for the standard of work completed.

This is peer evaluations from our final digipack, as the feedback we got previously from our digipack draft was minimum e.g. add the record label on the front cover. We are satisfied with the positive feedback we have received about our ancillary product and hope the audience are satisfied overall.

Final Feedback
We got positive comments when asking our audience about our final music video and ancillary products including: 

• A strong message is conveyed throughout
• The editing techniques used help represent the genre more clearly
• The audience can easily understand how the artist is feeling due to the cinematography, lyrics and acting.

Summary
Ultimately, our audience feedback helped us to refine all our media products. Especially from our initial design to our final design, which can be seen from our digipack and magazine advert along with our working progress pages throughout the design process. I believe that the audience's comments are important as it's their expectations we are meeting as well as ensuring we fulfil codes and conventions. I believe we were successful in creating 3 products that portray our creativity and skills along with satisfying our audience and peers.