Audience research: pitch feedback
To collect some initial feedback from my audience, regarding choices of genre, cinematography and choosing ancillary tasks on offer. We decided a survey was most fitting for collecting and then fourth analysing findings to shaping the direction our coursework would be taking in the year.
Tiff and I gathered the feedback from the pitch we presented via a survey produced on SurveyMonkey. Here are the results and our analysis of the outcome. We will highly consider this information when producing our final product then we can see what will be well received and what doesn't work. Most of the questions we included give us qualitative feed back because we thought would be more valuable that quantitive feedback as we can narrow down the responses and see what people will actually want us to include. below are copies of our questionnaires followed by the analysing of the results collected:
audience feedback results
QUESTIONS 1 + 2 - AGE AND GENDER
Through these two questions, I asked the basic demographic information re-guarding my audience. I asked the age range of the participant and the gender of them, Through this i found out and could form, that nearly 60% of audience are female and nearly 40% are male, showing a almost equal but slightly female dominated gender base, i asked the question other to see if there were any members of the community we were trying to portray through the representation in the music video, as this could help us build accuracy, this other bracket could cover people's gender such as non binary. Also only 10% are aged 19-21, meaning the majority of the participants 16-18 (this is a slightly biased age range as the majority of answering participants were in our media college class, therefore skewing our data slightly. Nevertheless 16-21 will be our target audience age range for our music video as this is the range that answered the questionaries and therefore the direction of our music video will be influenced by this, also the teen and above age limit helps because as our music video has some heavier themes it will require a certain level of understanding regarding some subject matters. Therefore because my audience is between 16-21 it defines the idea that this is a productive feedback sample.
QUESTION 3 - SEXUALITY
We decided to add this question to our feedback survey as because our music video is based around LGBTQ+ representation and relationships and the stereotypes surrounding sexuality, the question would not only help us devise a more clear view of our target audience but help us specifically who we are creating for. We want to educate others about this topic through our video and to represent it in an accepting way to normalise the idea of same sex relationships. Most of the audience are heterosexual so the video won't necessarily be aimed at them but the purpose of the video is to help develop those with a low level of understanding about the subject, we decided on the results for this question to add in a major part to the storyline, which was influenced by our heavily based heterosexual audience, this means we will be adding a different sex couple in, this will contrast with the same sex couple and the girl in the different sex couple will be struggling with the idea of sexuality when she is introduced to the same sex couple.
QUESTION 4 - MUSIC VIDEOS
This question regarding whether people watch music videos was included to see how relevant the participants answers would be and how accurate their existing knowledge is of the music video industry and because only one person answered no to watching music videos it means that every person, but one, answers will reflect on their experiences with watching music videos themselves. This helps us get an outside judgement when deciding certain elements of our three tasks. This will help our work be more diverse and successful.
QUESTION 6 + 7 - REPRESENTATION
The first question shows that the audience recommends that we explore three representation: Gender (30%), Age (15%) and Sexuality (55%) in our music video, this is a helpful result as these three representations were the three we were aiming to look at and were hoping the target audience would identify with and choose. Originally we based our music video around sexuality and over half of the feedback suggest we go towards that representation, so we will include this subject matter in our main task, as well as exploring youth (AGE) and the idea of relationships which falls hand in hand with sexuality. For the second question the majority of participants suggest we explore two representation so I think we should consider doing multiple representation which was already planned. All of the responses are valid and help us re affirm and solidify our ideas and help us to refine our ideas and understand what will be the most effective choices.
QUESTION 8 - LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION
The final question in the first survey regards a concept relating to the theme of sexuality in our pitch, we asked this because we have based our whole video around the idea of going against the typical stereotypes of LGBT+ norms portrayed in the media. We wanted to know if this was a good idea so we asked "Do you like the idea of going against LGBT+ stereotypes?" and everyone without exception answered yes. This reassures us that this idea will be successful and not only the representation of sexuality as a whole is something they want to see in a music video but the idea within the theme is something the target audience would be interested in seeing, and considering the target audience falls under the heterosexual category this shows that even if the target audience do not directly identify with the LGBT+ theme, it is something everyone would like to see, which reaffirms the idea this is a whole in the pre existing market.
QUESTION 9 - OVERALL IMPROVEMENTS
When looking at the results of this question which focuses on the improvement aspects of the pitch, it was clear that participants believed mise - en - scene and Cinematography were the two highest ranked with nearly 30% of participants picking these areas each. As this was our first pitch for the project we do believe this helps us critic our work and improve vastly, therefore we have decided for the near future to improve and refine our ideas regarding those two aspects of the main task, meaning we have now got a much clearer detailed plan regarding these two sections, as can be seen in our story board and shooting plan.
QUESTION 10 - EDITING STYLE
With this question we were able to shape further the kind of editing that would be used on our main task, music videos come in such variety that when it comes to editing, the choice of continuity and discontinuity is up to you. We pitched both discontinuity ideas we had such as slow motion editing and reverse editing style, and also continuity ideas such as the rules of continuity editing such as match on action and eye line match, as our work will be concerning real world struggles and dilemmas, but also is in the form of a short music video, we wanted our work to capture some more eye catching editing pieces, the target audience seemed to agree with this (majority of 92.86%), therefore upon this result we have decided to also add in fast motion/time lapse editing, although 7.14% of the participant disagreed we decided to keep some of the more conformative editing style such as match on action, therefore adding some continuity and seamlessness fluidity to our work.
QUESTION 11 - INSPIRATION
In regards to this question focusing on music video inspiration with the theme of LGBT+ representation. We asked the participants of the survey, if through their own experiences do they have any inspiration suggestions. This would help us not only reflect our target audience but help build more and more accuracy and ideas around the area. out of the 14 people that answered the second survey 5 of them did not have any suggestions, with three skipping and the other two offering explanations such as the main inspirations we featured in our pitch were already good ':)' and one person saying 'i don't know the genre'. 4 people agreed with inspiration source 'Same love' by Mackelmore and Mary Lambert, saying the source shows 'clearly' the representation, and another person suggesting look more into these artists, which we did looking at Mary lambert's other works, one of which regards other representations and themes such as mental health, this helped us take away a more detailed viewpoint on how to portray serious topics.
There were two other artist and their work suggested one being, Panic! at the disco, shown to the left, this is a small American band, their work includes themes of abstract thoughts with a huge teen following, girls girls boys by the band was suggested twice as a inspiration source, as me and tiff are fans ourselves of the band we had already seen this source but found it helpful to come to the knowledge that people thought this was a good form of media to take inspiration from, as this music video does also explore themes of sexuality, there was a third participant that also suggested looking at other song 'i write sins not tradegies'
The other artist suggested was Declan McKenna, with two suggestions of his work. McKenna is a small young artist based in England, His work is based around politics and other social struggles, 'Kid's don't wanna come home' looks at youth as a representation and 'Paracetamol' looks at LGBT+ themes, this was an interesting video to look at, tiff is a huge fan of the artist and got me into his work about 6 months before this project, as tiff has seen both of the talked about artists a few times in concert this gives us a unique understanding of there work.
QUESTION 12 - IMPROVEMENTS TO IDEAS
For this question, I asked a question focusing on improvements to the ideas behind our pitched music video, 3 people skipped this question and a following 4 people answered 'no', therefore this suggests our idea is already on its way to being complete and thought out, these no's were followed with comments such as 'sounds great' and 'pretty good all round' affirming our beliefs behind our main ideas, four participants answered regarding the narrative, one asking 'do the characters go on a journey?', this was an error made on our half with not explaining in the pitch as well as we would have liked, therefore to make sure there is no further miscommunication we will aim to make sure we portray the 'characters journey' in our work, the other 3 narrative comments regarded working and developing the 'storyline', when we pitched the idea we did not include how the story line finished as we were unsure ourselves at the time with many brain stormed endings, but after all of the pitch feedback analysis we have done we have now focused down onto one, as previously talked about a girl in a straight couple struggling with her sexuality. Other comments included use of 'a variety of backgrounds', building off 'videos already done' and one participant being 'unsure', these are all useful general improvements we will take into account when creating our music videos.
QUESTION 13 - SONG CHOICE
For this question, I asked a question focusing on the song choice a very underlying important decision, this is true as it effects and is what we base our entire project around. Out of all of the 14 answers to this survey, every participant agreed the song was a positive choice overall with no one picking 'bad choice' or 'a song you think could work better'. Therefore again helping us solidify our song choice. The majority of 78.57% of participants believed the song was a 'Good choice', this is slightly disappointing as only 21.43% believed the song was an 'Excellent choice', But with no other potential ideas we have decided to stick with the song making sure we do everything in our power to make sure the song fits the construction to an excellent standard.
QUESTION 14 - PITCHED INSPIRATIONS
For this question to confirm and assist us in finding the best sources of inspiration, we asked which of our sources of inspirations we pitched were most helpful, to then help us refine the material we should be taking into account. 71.43% of participants believed Macklemore's - Same love video was the most 'helpful', therefore we will refer to this as the most important inspiration source, this as well as the 4 participants re affirming the fact that this was the 'best' inspiration in question 11 has helped us make this decision. Other answers such as the 1975's chocolate video and the song we are using's video by the artist herself were also voted for, we will also use these but keep them in the back of our minds, Ally hills - space video and ALT J's Breeze blocks were not voted for at all, but this could be to the fact we did not play these videos only showed the thumbnails in the pitch, we shall take this information away for further pitch processes, meaning we will play all videos on the slide.
QUESTION 15 - ANCILLARY TASK SUGGESTIONS
For this question, It was hard to validate the answers as a whole as only 8 out of 14 people answered the question which is only around half the participants, but i read through the qualitative data and sourced some brief categories, 4 suggestions were colour based, with suggestions such as 'lots' of colour. 'colourful', 'bright' colours and 'dark' colours, bringing quite a variety of opinions to the table, overall we decided to used multiple colours as there was no opposing opinions to this, with maybe a mixture of dark and brighter colours featured, we also decided for continuity to keep the a similar colour theme through the ancillary tasks and main task, this was suggested by one participant who suggested keeping 'links to the artist and music video'. three other suggestions were regarding the artist, suggesting the artist make an appearance on the tasks, one person suggested as far as to have the artist in an open space as the ancillary cover. two other suggestions were regarding the LGBT themes of the work, saying the poster should include 'anything to do with LGBT', another person also suggested having two girls on the cover. We will take these into consideration when shooting.
Overall Conclusion of analysed findings
After a detailed look at all responses collected for all 15 questions in my questionnaire's to participants, I have come to the conclusion that I should take into account and use the most popular answer option from the questions, from ideas and song choice to ancillary task ideas and representation in my 3 tasks.
Although i do also think i should include my own ideas to add uniqueness to my tasks, so it is unlike all other main stream music videos and complimenting tasks more personal, and by using my own ideas rather than results form the questionnaire if i believe it works slightly better as my participants perhaps went off of norms and existing stereotypical ideals of the indie genre. I think a combination of these two will create the best music video and other ancillaries possible.