Evaluation question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before even considering the production side of our project we had to establish a target audience which we could aim our whole project at. Seeing as we were working with a song from the indie rock genre we investigated similar bands within the genre to discover which members of the population we need to aim our product at. For this audience research we used YouGov to explore the audiences of other bands. Using this method, we explored bands such as: Biffy Clyro, Kasabian and Foals. YouGov gave us a result which illustrates the average listener for the certain band. After looking at several bands we found a link between all their target audiences. All the bands that we looked at had a primary target audience of teenagers of both genders and a secondary target audience of 40-50-year-old males. Therefore, we used this link to create our target audience. Without an understanding of our target audience we wouldn’t be able to construct a suitable and effective meaning and purpose for our video. Having the right target audience allows us to use audience theory correctly therefore maximising the impact on our chosen audience. The uses and gratification model states that our target audience will enjoy our content to relax and escape from their own experiences. Seeing as we have created the video especially for our specific audience they should all accept our meaning due to the reception theory. However, the theory also states that audience members are welcome to disagree with the meaning or suggest their own meaning. We produced a survey to ask audience members what they thought the meaning was and how effect it was portrayed. 100% of our focus group said they understood the meaning and though it was effective to an extent. 50% believing it was very effective with the other 50% thinking it was only slightly effective.

Things we did in response to target audience:

·      Indie rock stereotypes

·      Colour integration

100% of the people in our focus group enjoyed and recognised the colour change and the reasoning behind it. However, one member commented that it was minimal, and the colour could have been enhanced even more. 

·      Black + white

Our black and white section of the video had a mixed response from our audience. Some people didn’t like the appearance of the black and white aesthetically however the black and white look was a convention of the genre therefore this audience feedback contrasts with our original feedback which states that our target audience enjoyed the black and white aesthetic in indie music videos. However, this was a minority view as only 30% of our focus group stated this as a problem.

·      Titles

·      Diegetic sounds

·      Pre and post song visuals

·      Negative storyline with a positive outcome

Our audience recognised and appreciated the narrative however they said that the acting could have been exaggerated to highlight the importance of moving off the streets and in with his friend. 

·      Dark colours on digipak

·      Instagram account, audience could also live the filming process with us, so we could keep them up to date with our content.

Issues with me band meant that we couldn’t publish much content as it would be against copyright licencing and could cause legal issues. 

·      Ideas from the band on what they wanted for their audience and how they impacted decisions we made for the video.

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 4.1 out of 5 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.