QUESTION 3 - AUDIENCE

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

<---- MUCH EASIER TO READ THIS IN FORM OF DOCUMENT ON LEFT CLICK TO OPEN (BUT VIDEO EMBEDS + PICTURES ARE NOT ATTACHED)

Survey Monkey - Video Feedback Survey - 'the first final draft'

I decided to conduct survey’s regarding my construction products, I got 15 members of my target audience to view each product and answer the surveys. as well as these computerised surveys done on www.surveymonkey.com, I conducted some focus groups.

Q1 - Did you enjoy it? Would you change anything about it?

PLEASE STATE ONE STRENGTH AND TWO WEAKNESSES

'I enjoyed it and wouldn’t change anything about it, I liked the editing and the narrative’

Overall, the target audience response to the main construction task of the music video was very positive, with the majority of the participants saying they enjoyed the music video. With 9 people saying they enjoyed the video or wouldn’t change anything.

The storyline was particularly pointed out saying it was ‘strong’ and ‘clear’ to follow with 5 people commenting on how good the storyline was. The editing style was also highlighted upon, with comments like ‘Excellent’ and the techniques used being ‘Impressive’. Other positive feedback includes comments on the Lip Syncing, and, also the transitions, angles and camera movement used, continuity, as well as song choice and How well the representation has been covered, this is good as the song choice and the representation goes hand in hand, we were also happy that the song choice and mise en scene was pointed out as a strength as this helped us understand that people can see that this is related to the genre. We also were glad to find that people enjoyed the lip syncing/studio work, with people commenting saying they found this 'very professional' and 'set our work apart' as students.

Some of the feedback regarding how to develop my work included 'colour correction' and making the colour scheme more apparent throughout, to look at this we went through and adjusted the brightness and contrast settings in the video to make it more vivid the female actors acting skills as she laughs in the video and that there is too much kissing and ‘not PG enough’. These are all fair points and we will try and attempt to change some of these, but in regards to the acting we went through the clips and cut the clips where the actor laughs down so the laughing is cut out. it was also touched upon hat the male main actor role of the boyfriend was played by two different boys, with more time this would be an issue we would fix, but as our male actors are hard to get hold of this would be extremely hard to refilm but as an alternative we have decided that we would also cut these clips to try and make the male actors more continuous throughout with the second actor's (joe) face less visible in his shots, we also tried to keep this continous by the clothes the actors are wearing.

STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

We decided to keep the kissing in the video to make the point/statement that the kissing is not too much and is only the same as how heterosexual sexuality would be portrayed in music video's, I have included these examples below, as our teacher suggested, this response may be down to the fact that people are not used to this type of representational act being shown so openly, we did not want to take this out the kissing parts also as this may take away from the storyline and narrative. we did refilm these parts but after showing others, it was decided that this may jeopardise the relationship between the two girls, as it makes them look more like best friends then relationship.

We also decided to break up the kissing a bit, to compromise with the views of those who believe the kissing is too much that we would break it up with the contrast of the unhappy relationship and arguing.

*PLEASE IGNORE SOUND ON THESE CLIPS - CLASSROOM CHATTER*

Q2 -

Does the music video fit the indie alternative genre? suggestions to change anything to make this more apparent?

With every participant answering yes to this question, this showed me that there is no doubt that through forms and conventions of the genre I had used that i was successful in connoting the genre to the best of my ability. comments included that the 'clear storyline' and 'interesting narrative' with the 'representation' and 'song' choice of the LGBT+ community all add to the genre as the less explored representations tend to be explored in the freedom of the indie genre. and overall three people said the video fits the genre 'extremely well'.

With only a couple of suggestions made this also helps reassure the fact that i have covered all possibly areas to show the genre within the video. the suggestions suggested 'darker lighting', which is fair enough but after looking into this found that if the video were to be made darker you would not be able to see the people and their actions. the other comment suggested was that the video could also 'show the pop genre', this is not nessaceraly a bad thing, and could show that my video although primarily belonging to the indie/alternative genre could be included in the sub genre of indie pop.

Q3 - Does the mise-en-scene used connote the genre well? which works best?

Here we can see that the locations, acting and costume were voted best for connoting the genre therefore this is our strongest iconography and we therefore focused on working on our props and lighting to connote the genre better.

Q4 In our narrative and performance section of our video was these parts successfully conveyed? Would you suggest changing any parts to make the story more flowing/understandable?

with 13/15 confirmations that both narrative and performance sections were successful this leads us to learn that we were successful at using our research on both section within our work. this could also be seen by the comments included with these confirmations that our narrative was “easy to follow and had a clear understanding of what was going on” and the ‘story flows well’ and someone going as far to say “Narrative was easy to understand and I wouldn't change anything” this helps us learn that our narrative section was well carried out

in regards to the performance section this was also a success in the comments with the lip syncing being described as going “well and matched the music” with “the filming” being “well done in the video”

There was a couple of improvements in which me and my partner will take very seriously and try at this stage to change within our video these improvements were to two people suggesting to have more scenes with Sammy (the new girlfriend) and tiff (the main character), this is something that on reflection me and tiff changed within our work we added a flashback sequence to answer the enigma codes of how Sammy became tiffs girlfriend we also elongated the scene where tiff looks at Sammy across the room.

The other suggestion was more of memories between Tiff and boyfriend where she wasn’t happy, this is also something we improved upon after seeing the comment we added some more contrasting cinematography for example we used the lesbian couple kissing and had the boyfriend and tiff fighting straight after, again this also funnels into the binary opposition we have tried to carry out throughout the video.

The last minor improvement was to put “some of the scenes in a different order” without knowing what scenes then are referencing this was harder to carryout but hope that with the improvements mentioned before this would be resolved.

Q5 We have tried to incorporate a colour scheme within our work of yellow and blue, do you think this suits our video and genre, was it successful?

'As its consistent it does fit the video well and the genre. Its quite clear that these colours are the theme so it is successful.'

The feedback regarding this question was almost 100% positive with 1/15 people disagreeing with the colour scheme choice therefore we learn here that the colour scheme was a successful choice and something we shall keep and not tweak in our next draft. our colour scheme was described as “was successful and it created a clear difference” in reference to this difference they are talking about this helps us learn that our plan to use binary opposition has worked as a contrast between the two colours can be established.

We also learn that not only was the colour scheme a success but the colours “fit well within the genre” this was something that we were sceptical about as darker colours are most conventional within the genre but bright colours are not unheard of for example in Halsey’s video she used light baby blues and pinks.

It was noted though that the blue was more apparent then the yellow with feedback saying “defo noticed that blue is good” and that the yellow could have been slightly more obvious with the suggestion of using a ‘yellow flare’ to counter the blue flare, we had set out to do this with the yellow powder paint but can see in hind sight its perhaps too subtle, we tried to rectify this but found that shipping time on the yellow smoke bomb is too long and therefore if we had enough time we would have changed this but found in someways it is more interesting to have the blue smoke bomb and tiff contrast the yellow powder paint and one of the lesbian couple to further connote the atmospheric happy and sad theme.

“Didn't really see yellow and blue throughout the video (only at certain points was it noticeable). The colours do fit in with the indie pop genre”

Other improvement suggestions include things such as using the theme more through the video which is a valid point but as we didn’t want our product to lose maturity of a serious topic by making it all about the colours we decided earlier that this would not be appropriate. the last suggestion to mention is the editing idea of putting the whole video in back and white and having the colours of yellow and blue visible the whole time, this is something we tried in the process of making the first draft but on reflection decided it was not the approach we wanted to take the video in as many people thought it looked better in colour as loses its quality.

Q6 Is the representation of sexuality well represented within the music video? would you improve this in anyway?

"Yeah it's really clear. Girls rock"

"representation is very clear and holds a key part of the video"

I asked this question to learn what the target audiences views were regarding how we have represented sexuality and wether it was a accurate representation and if we need to change anything regarding this, and the feedback suggests that the way we used representation was good and “clear” and brought a good light on the subject of LGBTQ+ sexualities which are “not often seen in music videos” and a specific example of where it was done well was the ‘flashes between the different characters when in the same location.’ this is in reference to the studio scene where the characters all flash by in the same position whilst lifting their heads.

One of the responses brought up the issue that we had considered to come up of “too much kissing” but we put this down the fact of personal comfortablilty with the subject matter of homosexuality. with some people believing that ‘it wasn’t too explicit’ and ‘just the right amount’ and we aimed to do as previously spoke about above in question 1 nothing more or less than what you would see a heterosexual couple do in a music video.

Q7 Out of all the editing effects we have used which do you think were the most effective? And if you think we could add something please state below?

(one as the most effective and 10 least effective/no improvements)

i asked this question as to find out the style of editing that worked the best and therefore perhaps add more of and which did not work so well or are viewed as not important to the success of the video by the audience.

we found out that the title and lyrics was considered very high on the list therefore will add more of this into the video.

fast motion was also high on the list over slow motion, therefore we will look at cutting down our slow motion footage and using more fast shots or a combination. Reverse motion was also favoured and therefore we will potentially look at putting this in more.

At the bottom of the list short cuts and other improvements were present, short cuts is something we can look at extending but as shorter cuts are used as a convention in most music videos there isn’t much we can do regarding the matter as to keep the video interesting it needs to move on fast pace to propel the narrative.

The fact that other suggestions was bottom of the list helps us understand that there is no problems with our editing and therefore nothing to improve on in the audiences eyes

Q8 Out of the cinematography used please rank effectiveness and if you have improvements please state below?

I asked this question for similar reasons as above to find out which elements of our cinematography worked and which were less successful. we can see that drone photography and underwater shots came above the rest with the most people voting these the best, followed by match on action, handheld, studio and screen recording therefore we can see that although drone and underwater filming were considered more effective then the rest, the rest ranked of a similar effectiveness therefore all cinematography was effective with other ranking lowest again.

Q9 THIS IS WHERE TO STATE EDITING AND CINEMATOGRAPHY SUGGESTIONS

‘no suggestions as video was well made’

As there was a lack of responses to this question (9/15 and 3 of those being improvements) this would suggest that our videos editing and cinematography are successful therefore we could focus on other important things.

The three suggestions were more drone shots in which we added two drone shots, a member of the lesbian couple in the pool in the sun to contrast the main protagonist when she is sat alone and dreary.

the other couple of suggestions were more lyrics which as previously spoken about we fixed and also a POV shot of the person falling into the pool, in hind sight this would be a good thing to add but due to the location being unavailable we had to leave this out.

Q10 Did you think the vinyl at the beginning was an effective opening to the music video?

I asked this question as i was unsure of the effectiveness of the vinyl (used as is a alternative music player to connote it is part of the alternative genre) and we can see here that the majority of the audience agree that it was an effective method to open the video, with one person disagreeing and another giving their opinion of it is a good opening but associated with older times, which in someways is a good thing as the alternative genre has many links to a more vintage style.

From this survey this gave us the initial feedback we needed to improve upon our products to make them more of a success.

Survey Monkey - Ancillary Survey - 'the first final draft'

Do you think that my ancillary task links well with the music video? is there anyway you think this could be improved?

I asked this question to learn wether the audience believe that there is good synergy between all of my products as from my textual analysis i can see that this is an aspect that creates a successful media product.

we can see here that 13/14 people believe that they link well with no suggestions therefore the majority reaffirm this.

Does the blue and yellow colour scheme work well between both ancillaries?

as we can see here the colour scheme is agreed upon by the entire audience that it works well therefore now we know that throughout all three products the colour scheme is a success.

Do the two fonts used connote the genre well and work with the ancillary tasks?

Again here we can see that my typography choices work well to conform to the forms and conventions of the genre as well being a success on the appearance of the tasks.

Do the images used within the ancillary make sense? Would you change any of them or switch them around?

We can see here that the audience believe there should be no improvements made to the images used on the ancillary tasks.

Do the ancillary tasks link well with the alternative indie music genre? Any suggestions to improve this?

Here again we learn that the entirety of the target audience believe the ancillaries connote the genre, which allows me to learnt that the conventions of the genre i used were the correct ones and they recognise the iconography of the genre i have used.

Strengths and improvements to the ancillaries over all?

The 14 strengths mentions were as following:

Colour scheme:

Good colour scheme throughout and interesting to look at

Good use of vibrant colours

All coloured coordinates and links together

Colour scheme

They have bright and eye catching colour schemes

Genre:

Fit in well with the genre

Continuity:

Be and link to video well

Works well with video

Majority/Others:

Colours, images, text

The colour scheme, photos, font and everything basically

good imagery

good theme

Therefore overall we can see that the colour scheme came highly as a strength in my work therefore i will not be changing this, also the images and genre as well as good continuity was compliment and these will be aspects of my coursework that i will be focusing on less now.

The 9 improvements were as following:

Font:

crazy font

Make the writing less slanted as might be able to read easier

The font is a bit difficult to read on the tour poster

Maybe make some of the writing clearer to read

Nothing:

3 suggested changing nothing

nothing

Therefore overall we can see that there is more strengths then weaknesses which is a positive along with three of the 9 improvements turning out to be do not change anything’s which is good the only improvement suggested was the font being slightly ‘crazy’ and ‘difficult’ to read therefore i added two fonts, one for big amounts of writing and smaller writing that is much more basic typography and one that is slightly more stylised for the big words such as the title and artist.

Overall which was the most successful part of the project? Posters? Or digipak?

I learnt here that the convention cd disc digipak was considered the most successful part of the project with 9 votes followed by the vinyl seen in the music video with 2 votes and that my posters got a vote each therefore, i believe that my posters shall be the ancillary task i look at improving.

Do you believe the vinyl concept for the digipak, adds to the genre?

I had asked this question to see if my theory on the idea of an alternative vinyl player connoting the alternative genre was correct and therefore by using a vinyl as part of the digipak therefore conforms further to the genre and I can learn here that from audience feedback it does.

Do my ancillary tasks follow the forms and conventions of a digipak and poster? Did any form or convention I had carried out work particularly well?

I asked this in regard to whether my basic convention knowledge of the digipak and poster production are good and used well within my product, with all audience members agreeing they did I can see here my conventional knowledge is up to standard.

From this survey again I learnt the criticisms of the first final draft and how i could improve upon my work which i went away and did.

LGBTQ+ Member - Video Focus Session - The second draft

I conducted a focus feedback session regarding my music video with one individual this individual is a part of my target audience in age, gender and also sexuality therefore her feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Name: Madaline Abrook

Age: 17

Location: Farnham

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

Occupation: Restaurant worker/Dance Student

Preferred Music Genre: Indie

Favourite Band/Artist: The Hunna (Alternative genre)

Q1 - What elements of the video did you like the most? And what could be improved?

I asked this questions to find out the general view of the video, madaline answered that she liked alternative music player saying the vinyl help show song is from the indie genre, this helps to confirm that the vinyl was a good choice.

The focus member believes we should take the song title in the yellow writing out as it was obvious from the record that was playing just before which is a fair point and if I had more time I would adjust this.

She also believed it Represents bisexuals and the sexuality of bisexuals as well as straight and gay in a way that’s more interesting than other similar narratives such as same love by Macklemore. this is good to know as though our product feedback is mainly been that the ‘lesbian/gay’ audience would be happy with the representations presented but also the bisexual community.

Q2 - are there any elements that look particularly professional like a real media product?

I asked this question to get a view on whether my product could reflect the standard of a real media product.

It was commented that the cinematography aspect of the drone looked particularly professional and madaline particularly thought that the screen recording was a 'effective tool to show us what is going on' this comment was an interesting one as once again this was good feedback to know if it was a form that the audience liked as this was a cinematography aspect we were sceptical about as we had not seen this in real media products and perhaps this was a good risk.

The mise-en-scene was also complemented with madaline suggesting that the ‘Clothing and main characters hair colour go well with the genre’, she used the example of Melanie Martinez hair this in some ways could be also seen a real media convention therefore glad to know that our mise-en-scene is up to real media product standard.

Q3 - Are all questions you had answered by the end of the video?

Madaline believes that the Flashbacks are useful and showed how the girl meets her partner, therefore after adding this in after the first draft this has proven to be a successful decision.

Q4 - Anything else you want to add?

Madaline added that she believes the strongest part was the argument scene and that the whole thing is put together well and shows 'skill and talent’ she went on further to say the colour scheme was used throughout was good and due to that in my next feedback focus group i will add a question about the colour scheme in.

LGBTQ+ Member - Ancillary Focus Session - The second draft

For this session I got the focus member to talk through what she thinks is strong about the ancillary products and what she thinks is weak.

She fed back that she thought the 'Image on front clearly being the characters from music video as it’s the same top and the same yellow colours Also font colour is yellow to match Like the subtle hint of blue in shading to add to the details” therefore from this we can take away that she believes the colours and images used are successful.

We can also see that she likes how the lava lamp is in the video and how its seen in the digipak which is a very subtle detail we added, she also believed that this more vintage lamp adds to the genre which has elements of vintage style in it similar to with the vinyl player. she had a similar opinion also to the ink used as seen in video and how it is still yellow and blue to match colour scheme.

She also liked the way the ink “continues onto spine and how spine is detailed and says name of song and artist” this shows that the forms and conventions of the digipak I research were successful in translation to my own products.

Another aspect of the digipak she liked was the ‘Back has another character from music video which is good and as its blue shows contrast to yellow on front’ this is something i had set out to achieve and am happy the target audience like this also

The last comment the member had was how good the “detail that’s gone into making own production company and how barcode is personalised” was and therefore this has shown me that the extra convention developments I added in were successful.

Typeform - Feedback Questionnaire - The final draft before posting to youtube

I used one more questionnaire this time using a different collection platform called type form.

Question 1 - Which of the following images fo you find most appealing for a cd relating to the video?

This question was to see if the images i had used were the right images and with 4 votes for both images featured on my finalised digipak i am happy with this result.

Question 2 - what age would you say my outcomes are most suited for?

The target audience agree that the audience my product would be most suited for and therefore attract is the 16-18 audience and perhaps even the 19-25 audience therefore i might use the slightly older audience as a secondary audience.

Question 3 - what gender would you say the products are most suited to?

Here we also learn the target audience would consider the products to be targeted at females whilst we hadn’t particularly intended to attract only a female audience it is easy to see why, as the singer is a female therefore females will identify with her better as well as the majority of the cast being a female dominant cast.

Question 4 - If you had to picture an individual from the type of audience that would view this media product which of the following would they be? (factoring your previous answers in)

I asked this question to find out what type of audience my target audience believe my audience members for my product may look like to analyse the results i have grouped them into categories and used the highest vote for each category as the characteristic of the audience member.

Sexuality:

Homosexual - 14

Struggling - 13

Another part of the LGBTQ+ Community - 6

Heterosexual - 2

Genre of music:

Indie - 11

Pop - 4

Rock - 1

Classical - 0

Occupation:

Student - 11

Employed - 3

Unemployed - 3

Build:

Masculine - 10

Feminine - 5

Hair Style:

Short - 10

Dyed - 9

Blonde - 7

Brunette - 6

Long hair - 5

Smoker?:

Smoker - 8

None Smoker - 6

To see the bigger picture of the type of audience member the target audience believe would view my products I have written a short media pack of the ‘audience’ this is done in magazines such as heat and empire.

The audience member for my products would be a 16-25 year old female who is ‘out and proud’ as a homosexual or struggling with their sexuality. She loves to listen to indie music in her free time and while she is studying at college or university, she takes great care when it comes to her short dyed hair.

In some ways the audience have identified the characteristics of a ‘stereotypical’ lesbian seen in mass media with characteristics such as masculine build and short hair such as ‘big boo’ in tv show orange is the new black but our video challenges these stereotypes by using real life archetypes rather than exaggerated stereotypes using characteristics such as more feminine builds and long hair to show that anyone with any mixture of characteristics can belong to the LGBTQ+ Community.

In some ways regarding the short dyed hair choices the audience picked this could be a reflection on identification with the protagonist of the video, tiff who also has short dyed hair. but this is also using related to the type of singer in the genre already as previously mentioned by madaline in the focus group above.

Question 5 - Would you agree that the representation of sexuality is represented accurately within the video?

For this question i asked for feedback in a 1-10 rating and with 12/15 people agreeing that representation in 10/10 this helps me understand that our product has used representation in an accurate way that does not use misleading stereotypes. The other three votes were for 9/10 and i am still happy with this result.

Question 6 - How would you say the target audience is attracted to the video and digipak and poster?

I had aimed in this question to learn the main ways in which i would attract my target audience with my products.

I therefore learnt from the feedback that I would attract many LGBTQ+ members through the use of three women with two of those kissing and therefore you would want to know the story behind it, and also as these women are kissing it gives the LGBTQ+ audience something they can relate to and identify with. as well as being inspiring for people who are struggling to come out.

not only could the LGBTQ+ community identify with having females on the cover but also just the female gender in general may find this an attraction according to my feedback, as well as having ‘teens’ on the cover would attract the younger target age.

It was also suggested that as i have used the colours and fonts and images that i have (being of a slightly different nature) this would attract and indie audience as it has all the iconography they are used to seeing but adds a unique twist which makes it stand out within the indie product range.

On top of this the thumbnail on youtube entices the audience with the main character almost breaking the fourth wall by looking directly at the audience member and that this would entice the audience to watch the video.

again the ‘eye catching colour scheme’ of blue and yellow was suggests as a feature that would attract the audience as the colours ‘pop out at you’ with the audience suggesting that ‘Yellow is a very distinctive colour so this could attract the audience a lot’.

Question 7 - What Genre do you match this to?

With most people deciding that the genre they would match my products to as indie this just re affirms our beliefs that our product uses all the appropriate codes and conventions of the genre and that it would fit within the genres industry, with other people voting for alternative and pop genre this helps us establish again that our genre may be a hybrid of the three and this is something we need to consider, in my next chance to ask for feedback i will ask for an elaboration to why the audience believe our video belongs to the pop genre.

Question 8 - Do you feel as though a wide range of cinematography concepts such as shot types and techniques were used in the video?

I asked this to find out whether we had used a good range of cinematography concepts within our video and if not this would be an area to explore and develop but as the audience answered 100% yes we can establish that our cinematography is wide ranged and new concepts do not need to be brought in.

Question 9 - Did you feel as though the media products looked professional, like a real media product?

This question was asked to try and back my opinion that our media product is that of a professional standard to answer question 1, therefore i can see that the audience 100% believe this and therefore will use this within question 1 evaluation.

Question 10 - Did you think the editing of the video was used well?

Again i asked this for reaffirmation purposes and discovered the editing used needs no improvement as the audiences answered 100% yes.

Media Students - Focus Group - The final draft before posting to youtube

MEDIA FOCUS GROUP FEEDBACK ANALYSIS

As part of our feedback process we decided to gather feedback from a focus group, this allows us to learn feedback from a group of people who not only are part of our younger target audience but who do the media a level course therefore also have more knowledge regarding the specific techniques used and media theories that we have incorporated. We began the focus group by showing them each construction task we had created (music video and separate ancillary digipak’s and poster’s) as well as preliminary task.

We then asked them the following 13 questions:

Question 1 - “What demographic do you think our products should be targeted at? For example, age or gender race sexuality?”:

The aim of this question was to discover the type of target audience our video might have. (question 3 audience evaluation)

Question 2 - “Do the technologies such as drone and underwater add professionalism to our product?”:

The aim of this question was to find out if the technologies we used added to our product and were successful as well as find out a clearer picture to whether our product reflects a real life media product. (question 1 evaluation)

Question 3 - “Do you think all of our tasks link well together, so our music video and then our digipak and poster, and in what ways such as text and images?”

The aim of this question was to discover whether our products show continuity and combine effectively (question 2 B How effective is the combination of your main task and ancillary products?)

Question 4 - “Can you see a visible improvement from our prelim task?”

The aim of this question was to see if our skills had developed from an audiences perspective from our preliminary task (question 2 A)

Question 5 - “State some strengths in our work and areas of improvement”

The aim of this question was more of a general aim, to learn the audiences more general views on our work and to help the post production stage of this in which we will/would if we had more time go back and re edit or shoot.

Question 6 - “Does anything look particularly professional like a real media product? Use examples”

again this was aimed in relation to finding if our product reflects a real media product and what aspects of it specifically do to allow for deeper evaluation of question 1

Question 7 - “Are all the enigma codes (questions about the narrative and storyline) answered by the end of the video?”

this was aimed at finding out if the audience believed the narrative reflected a real media products narrative which would include barthes enigma codes (question 1)

Question 8 - “Does the happy and sad scene (blue and yellow) connote Levi Strausses binary opposition theory?”

this was aimed at finding out if the audience believed the narrative reflected a real media products narrative which would include levi strauss theory (question 1)

Question 9 - “In what ways does it represent genre?”

this was aimed at finding out if the audience believed the genre used iconography, steve neales theory which a real media product would use (question 1)

Question 10 - “Does our video follow narrative theories such as Propp and Todorov does it has like a clear beginning middle and end?”

this was aimed at finding out if the audience believed the narrative reflected a real media products narrative which would include prop theories (question 1)

Question 11 - “Do character types from props theory such as hero and villain appear in our music video?”

this was aimed at finding out if the audience believed the narrative reflected a real media products narrative which would include prop character theory (question 1)

Question 12 - “Does our compilation of products our music video and digipak and posters work well together and do they clearly link?”

The aim of this question was to discover whether our products show continuity and combine effectively (question 2 B How effective is the combination of your main task and ancillary products?)

Question 13 - “Can you also see like the difference between like our digipaks cause like we have done the same but differently?”

Question 13 continued - “Like there different things but they both relate?”

The aim of this question in relation to answering question 2 B How effective is the combination of your main task and ancillary products?

DEMOGRAPHICS AND PSYCHOGRAPHICS

Here we discover and learn the demographics of our focus group and the psychographics and nature of the group

“this is our focus group for our evaluation part of our research, please tell us a bit about yourselves”

“What’s your favourite genre of music and name two bands”

We can learn hear through the demographics and psychographics presented more about each members audience profile.

Name: Tia Parker

Age: 18

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Bisexual (Part of the LGBTQ+ Community)

Occupation: Sainsbury’s/Media student

Location: Aldershot

Preferred Music Genre: Indie

Favourite Bands: Coasts (Alternative genre) and Front Bottoms (Rock genre)

Here we can see that tia, is a younger female who belongs to the LGBTQ+ community, her demographics would fit her as part of our target audience therefore we learn here that her feedback would be crucial to our project.

As our product is aimed at younger aged people predominately 15-25 and focusing more on student age, this means that the class bracket we are aiming our product at is a ‘poorer’ class bracket as by default the majority of students are poor.

We can also here see tia is a member of our target audience as she is a listener of the indie and alternative and rock genre with interests in bands from the genre.

Name: Rachel Matthews

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Straight (Strong Beliefs backing gay rights)

Occupation: Costa/Media student

Location: Ash

Preferred Music Genre: Indie

Favourite Bands: Moose Blood (Alternative Genre) and Hotel Books (Alternative/Spoken Word Genre)

Here we can see that Rachel, is a younger female who although does not belong to the LGBTQ+ community has strong beliefs around gay rights and equality, her demographics would fit her as part of our target audience therefore we learn here that her feedback would be crucial to our project.

We can also here see Rachel is a member of our target audience as she is a listener of the indie genre with interests in bands from the genre.

Name: Laura Slater

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Pansexual (Part of the LGBTQ+ Community)

Occupation: Pub worker/Media student

Location: Crondall

Preferred Music Genre: Indie Rock

Favourite Bands: Nothing but thieves (Alternative genre) and Feet (Alternative genre)

Here we can see that Laura, is a younger female who belongs to the LGBTQ+ community, her demographics would fit her as part of our target audience therefore we learn here that her feedback would be crucial to our project.

We can also here see Laura is a member of our target audience as she is a listener of the indie rock and alternative genre with interests in bands from the genre.

Name: Rhiannon Jones

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Straight

Occupation: Sainsbury’s/Media Student

Location: Farnham

Preferred Music Genre: Indie/Rock

Favourite Bands: Declan McKenna (Alternative genre) and R5 (Pop Genre)

Here we can see that Rhiannon, is a younger female, her demographics would fit her as part of our target audience therefore we learn here that her feedback would be crucial to our project.

We can also here see Rhiannon is a member of our target audience as she is a listener of the indie and alternative genre with interests in bands from the genre.

TARGET AUDIENCE VIEWS:

Here we discover and learn what kind of audience we would attract with our music video and if that is reflective of the audience we had planned to attract

Question 1 -

“What demographic do you think our products should be targeted at? For example, age or gender race sexuality?”:

In this section of our focus group I learnt who our focus group would suggest from viewing our media products they believe the products reflect

When asked what demographic our products should be targeted at views generally suggested a ‘younger’ age and ‘female’ audience.

"I think your audience will be good for younger females”

Also that our target audience should include ‘gay people’ (correct term LGBTQ+ community)

Tia elaborated on this saying that our video includes ‘a lot of gayness’ and as a younger person herself says that generally younger people want to see that whereas older generations don’t generally.

Rachel added to this saying again that it should be aimed at ‘gay people’ because our video includes ‘alot of stuff’’which is good’ representation wise of the gay community.

Laura developed this by agreeing that it should be aimed at gay people but not only gay people but also ‘any race’ as our video isn’t based around the representation of race therefore doesn’t solely focus on one race and therefore its ‘including of all’.

Rhiannon also agreed saying that our biggest representation in the video is gay people, which she believed is good as not a lot of music videos use it as its a controversial representation

This is good as it helped us to build a better picture of who our target audience is and that we should include an individuals sexuality as part of our target audience, and not only this but also that in some ways this will attract an audience as it is not seen in

Laura brought up the valid point of having the narrative choice as a girl who is discovering her sexuality and that journey engages with the lgbt target audience as well as someways a younger audience who may go through this struggle through teenage years, Laura said it may give “them the confidence to come out and that they don’t have to hide behind a false relationship.” therefore our product having a message or support behind its narrative that makes it easier for people to relate to.

GENRE VIEWS:

Here we discover and learn how well we have connoted the genre of the indie alternative music industry and whether our iconography was appropriate or if we portray another genre

Question 9 - “In what ways does it represent genre?”

The general view on our product and it whether it connotes the genre well was yes it did.

Laura believed the genre was reflective of this pop indie genre, this is a hybrid of genre, this was also previously suggested in our feedback by an anonymous survey monkey response, as we couldn’t ask the survey monkey response to elaborate due to the anonymity, it was nice to hear the explanation for this which was as following:

“because indie is all about like its different and it’s not following the mainstream like sort of stereotypes because talking about sexuality people don’t talk out loud about it as much and it needs to be its a topic that needs to be bought out more and people should be more open with it and in the music video it does that [brings out the good conversations that need to happen about sexuality] by following the indie part and its pop due to the fact that you’ve got like the party scenes still relating to the teenage target audience that you initially had”

Therefore here we learn that the audience believe through the iconography used within our music video, which is the party scenes this relates to the pop genre as audiences are used to seeing these party scenes in the genre of pop, therefore we could consider our media product to be a hybrid of genre not only being indie alternative but indie alternative pop.

We also learn here that the audience confirms and reaffirms that our audience is indie as it steers away from stereotypes and main stream representations seen in other genres and because of these facts it reflects the alternative genre in which more free thinking view points that aren’t dominant ideologies are explored.

Also that this reflects a teenage target audience which is also good as it confirms the age we are trying to target.

Rachel also added that she also believes that it reflects the indie genre through iconography such as flares but disagrees with laura’s view of our video being part of the pop genre also explaining that “you just you don’t see stuff like that you don’t see like forests and the way you had like dressed the cast” she believes this was more iconography of mise en scene seen in the indie genre “like tiff dress is very indie anyway so it just kinda fits in”.

PROFESSIONALISM VIEWS

Here we discover and learn how well we have made our product and whether it could fit with real media product standard amongst other music videos.

Question 2 -

“Do the technologies such as drone and underwater add professionalism to our product?”

Again the feedback for this question was positive, with everyone agreed overall that the technology choices added professionalism to our product therefore we learn that our product does reflect a real media product.

Tia added that our music video is set out from other college music videos as you wouldn’t usually see drone and underwater filming in one as well as our camera angles being different and of a more professional standard than basic shots, which rhiannon also agreed with saying that the “gives different perspectives of the different shots which makes it more interesting to watch.”

Rachel believed that the drone and underwater camera shots make “it look high budget which you wouldn’t get in a normal music video made by students”.

Laura again being of the same opinion that “the drone and underwater makes it a lot more professional and it’s a lot more out of the box compared to other music videos”

Question 6 -

“Does anything look particularly professional like a real media product? Use examples”

Again here views on the matter were positive tia referred to the underwater camera being professional and brought up a specific example of where editing was completed well saying “when he landed in the water with the match on action from him falling to landing that was really well done.” Therefore we learn here that our use of continuity editing was reflective of a real media product.

Where as rhiannon believed our clear narrative was reflective of a real media product therefore confirming our use of narrative theorist was a wise decision.

“You can see a clear storyline in the music video which a lot of indie videos have which makes it professional”

COMBINATION/DEVELOPMENT VIEWS

Here we discover and learn how well we have used continuity through all of our tasks and whether our skills have improved

Question 3 -

“Do you think all of our tasks link well together, so our music video and then our digipak and poster, and in what ways such as text and images?”

It is confirmed through the audience views that yes they believe our products link well and work as a combination with tia commenting that specifically the colour schemes match on all products and the editing style used also is apparent through all tasks.

“Yeah I think they link really well the colour schemes match from the digipak to the posters and the music video they are the same and the editing of it.”

Question 12 -

“Does our compilation of products our music video and digipak and posters work well together and do they clearly link?”

It is also seen here later in the focus group where a mistaken repeat question is asked but this wasn’t necessarily a negative error as tia elaborated in more depth her views saying:

“they all work really well like they all have a connection between them which is like noticeable but there not like a carbon copy of each one not like your poster is your digipak and your digipak is exactly like the same as your video like i wouldn’t see it and be like oh that was a cop out kind of thing like it was you thought about what are the gaps in your music video that you really wanna highlight and you took them into your digipak and posters and then used that as the link its just really good like the colours and people”

Question 13 -

“Can you also see like the difference between like our digipaks cause like we have done the same but differently?”

*this was followed by my partner tiff elaborating on the question to make it more clear what was meant*

Question 13 continued-

“Like there different things but they both relate?”

We also learn here that it is clear our individual work is done separately and is good to know that although working together our work is still of different styles which adds good different approaches to the topic and also helps us evaluate how well we worked as a team on the project.

“they are of a similar like thing they link they are obviously separate pieces done by separate people.”

Question 4 -

“Can you see a visible improvement from our prelim task?”

As their were two different elements to question 2 one regarding combination of our current tasks and one regarding the combination and development from our preliminary we thought it right to ask the audiences views on the matter and therefore we learnt that they agree that there is development from our preliminary task, “as much as it was really good and it was still in the indie area you went for the very obvious indie concepts like smoking in cars and some of your angles were quite generic whereas this year you went to better places and used more technologies like a drone and underwater camera.” this suggests that it has improved our skills not only through shots and general media skill but also through professionalism and that our work has become of a more professional standard.

“Yeah I was going to say something the same like how the technologies have improved and also the mise-en-scene and the whole video has improve and also it fits with the genre with the colour scheme, it all fits together” this suggests that the genre iconography we use has also improved and that through our mise-en-scene we have managed to portray the genre better than before.

NARRATIVE VIEWS

Here we discover and learn our audience views on how we have portrayed narrative in our tasks and whether this was a success

Question 7 -

“Are all the enigma codes (questions about the narrative and storyline) answered by the end of the video?”

The feedback for this question was mixed with one comment being positive coming from Laura who agreed “all of the questions were answered by the end” saying that this was because you see that tiff and the male are ageing and “not knowing where the relationship is going” and by the time of the end of the narrative you see that the relationship is over and the girl is in a new relationship with the girl which makes “you realise she’s found herself and sexuality”, therefore this confirms that our enigma code structure worked as we wanted it to within our narrative although Rachel argued that she was confused the first time she watched it as to who the girl was at the end and the whole story surrounding that and the way this could have been improved would have been to have her in the video slightly more but after looking into this Rachel realised that she was referring to a first draft of our video rather than the actual video and that we fixed this by adding memory flashbacks to answer these questions.

Question 8 -

“Does the happy and sad scene (blue and yellow) connote Levi Strauss’s binary opposition theory?”

For this question regarding another theorist (Levi Strauss) it was agreed that binary opposition was “subtle yet effective”, with it not being seen straight away when watching it but its a positive that it doesn’t ‘scream out’ Levi Strauss and that its more of an undertone which adds to its professionalism.

examples that were suggested where this was present was “moments of really sad and angry when you’re having the argument to like moment when its blissful when they are so happy” therefore we can see here that my partner and i’s plan to use the yellow/happy and sad/blue binary oppositions has worked and was “made really clear to anyone watching it you can see that in the scenes where tiffs alone holding the blue smoke bomb and when she is with Sammy and like the scenes before Sammy it’s the yellow ink showing that she’s happier when she’s with her girlfriend”.

Question 10 -

“Does our video follow narrative theories such as Propp and Todorov does it has like a clear beginning middle and end?”

Our group stablished with no trouble the beginning, middle and end with tia explaining:

Beginning - “it starts when it starts she’s with this guy like she seems like fine and like um like it starts its fine”

Middle - “and then it becomes like the issue and thats where you are at the party and you see like your tryna interact and he’s just like not wanting any of it and thats where you see like the issue and as you go though you have that argument and you're trying to resolve it and fix it”

End - “and then it gets to the end your like the characters with the person she wants to be with which is Sammy and thats like the classic happy ending narrative”

This is good as we can see that our music video does follow a beginning middle and end narrative structure and in some ways tia has identified the 5 stage narrative without knowing it:

1) EQUILIBRIUM (comfort) - “starts she’s with this guy like she seems like fine”

2) (DISQUILBIRUM) DISRUPTION BY EVENT - “it becomes like the issue and thats where you are at the party and you see like your tryna interact and he’s just like not wanting any of it”

3+4) RECOGNITION + ATTEMPT TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE - “Thats where you see like the issue and as you go though you have that argument and you're trying to resolve it and fix it”

5) RESTORE/NEW EQUILIBRIUM - “and then it gets to the end your like the characters with the person she wants to be with which is Sammy and thats like the classic happy ending narrative”

Therefore we can see that as planned our video uses successfully many conventions of narrative theorists, with events following a chronological order and also follows the concept of a clear beginning middle and end through swell as these basic classic narrative structures below you can see traits of some other narratives:

Todorov as tia explained-

Equilibrium - we see the main character in a state of comfort with her life and happy with her boyfriend

Disruption by event - we see the main character spot the two lesbians, she then questions her own sexuality

Recognition - when she is going through her phone and realises she is not happy in her relationship

Attempt to repair damage - we see this when the main character argues with boyfriend and they break up

Restore/New Equilibrium - Main Character happy with new partner

Another thing that was picked up on in the focus group was our use of flashbacks to not only answer enigma codes but show how the narrative has progressed over time therefore we can see that our video uses devices of time compehrensions these are flashbacks and flash forwards through time.

We can see therefore through audience feedback that not only does our product follow a clear narrative but also uses the narrative conventions of real media products.

Question 11 -

Do character types from props theory such as hero and villain appear in our music video?

The group believed that the presence of character types are apparent in the video as the following characters were identified

Rachel identified:

the villain as “the boyfriend”
the hero as “tiffs new girlfriend”

these are two of the biggest character types and therefore are impressed that we portrayed these well

Laura identified:

the helpers as “Madaline and Elisha” (the lesbian couple) and when asked to explain why she thought them as the helpers explained that its shown in the scenes “where you are flicking between the three of you it shows that you all have something in common and it shows like the three of you are some how connected and thats proven by you coming out with your sexuality and sort of helping you to kind of find yourself just in a really subtle way yeah”

We are glad that not only two bigger roles were identified but also the smaller roles of the helpers were visible in our work too, following is how we had planned to show our characters:

Hero - The hero in this narrative is the protagonist, Tiff. the girl struggling with her sexuality she saves herself. we see her overcome a challenge in order to achieve an important goal of self discovery of her sexuality

Villain - the villain here is the boyfriend in some ways as he tries to stop the hero, tiff from achieving success in her task of self discovery, as he wants to stay with her and doesn’t understand her problems, we can even hear him say at one point in their argument ‘don’t look at her’.

False Hero - In some ways the boyfriend is also the false hero as he seems like the hero and then isn’t.

Donor + Helper - The donor who helped the hero by providing an essential object and the helper who helps the hero on their mission, these characteristics can be seen in the lesbian couple, as they even though is unknown to them help the girl identify herself sexually and the Instagram post one of them posted is the object that helps the hero achieve success.

Princess - the princess in someways although is not a physical princess is still a reward for the hero, this does not have to be a princess this can be a conceptual award such as peace or justice. In this case it is the new love interest of the main character at the end of the music video the new girlfriend.

Above is a list of all of Propp’s character types

GENERAL FEEDBACK VIEWS

Question 5 -

“State some strengths in our work and areas of improvement”

Overall the response in regard to general feedback were hugely positive with our videos editing being described as looking “very professional” and not only this but the way i printed out my ancillary digipak being a nice feature.

as well as these Laura fed back that our products all link and that the biggest link is through colour and that this would help attract target audiences as it would be more visible and people would “recognise it for the colours and for the same cast member being in the video and posters so they all link making it easier and more identifiable for a target audience to recognise”

and with improvements being minor things suggests that our video does not need massive improvement further reaffirming it was successful, improvements included elements such as “colour scheme could’ve been more visible in your video” this is a hard one as there are so many contradicting views with some loving it, some believe its subtle others believe its in your face and they like that aspect of it and others believe its too subtle or too in your face therefore we will leave it down to personal preference. the other improvement suggested was “use the same cast members the whole way through.” which me and my partner tiff do agree that ideally this was not good and would be changed if there was more time although after showing a group that did not know the cast members (the group above know both male characters) they said that you wouldn’t be able to tell if you didn’t know them.

I believe this focus group was incredibly successful and helpful in regard to feedback on our products as we got a unique insight into how a group of people who know the media techniques and conventions deemed our video.

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Youtube - Feedback - the finished product

We also found out from the upload platform youtube directly that our video had received positive feedback in the form of comments, an example of this is below

with one person saying they believe our video is an ‘amazing video’ and she was ‘loving the storyline’ followed by an clapping emoji this suggests she is applauding our work, another comment was a male young man who commented four thumbs up emojis this suggests he feels positively about our video as well as these comments we have at the time of writing this received 205 views on our video this for a student made video i would consider incredibly successful with other videos receiving 0-10 views therefore we can see here that the general public and users of the youtube platform believe our product to be a success.

Conclusion

I have learnt a huge amount from our audience feedback, and most of this being important and crucial to the success of our media products, they have also helped shape the way our products are.

I learnt from a variety of audience feedback gathered, through online forms such as survey monkey and type form not only this way but through video focus groups and audio interviews published on sound cloud, as well as comments from youtube and views, as well as teacher feedback and more general feedback such as friend and family. I believe by using such a variety of forms of collection of feedback this has helped to form a wide and quality feedback result.

By collecting feedback from a variety of individuals of all ages, educational levels, gender and background, this has allowed us to establish further who our target audience may be, for example we found the older people we asked, (example in interview below) they found the product interesting but not something they would watch personally, and suggesting themselves that the product would be based more for younger people.

It is also interesting to see how my products have transformed over the process of audience feedback and see the transition they have made as the adapt to the audiences needs.