What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Throughout the planning and creation of all three texts I have always made sure my audience is involved in every step possible. I decided to go with an alternative rock genre of song as I have not watched many alternative rock music videos so I thought I could use this to my advantage. I had ideas in my head for the genre but I made sure my audience swayed me towards the right directions in decision making whilst trying to bring my own interpretation of alternative rock through. Throughout the process I have discovered that using your audience is key to create products which they would want to buy out in the public. If I did not use the audience to help my decision making, all three texts would have solely been my ideas which may not have been what an alternative rock audience want.

The first bit of research I decided to do was back in September 2011, which was a lyrics questionnaire. I had chosen the song and wanted to know what the audience thought about the lyrics without hearing the song.

Hear is the lyric questionnaire I made and I got them to write down what they thought as tick boxes made have influence their decision. This helped me a lot on the mood the lyrics were creating in the song so I could relate my ideas to the audiences ideas. The audiences responses from this questionnaire were some responses I didn’t think about before so if I didn’t do the questionnaire I wouldn’t have thought about all the possibilities of the music video that the audience had thought of.

These answers I put in red was to make it easy for me to see what the audiences ideas were about the lyrics. The audiences ideas gave me ideas I didn't originally think up myself as the alternative rock audience will have a more genre related imagination on music videos, which I discovered was highly useful for me to generate final decisions.

Another source of research I did in September 2011 was the spider diagram I created with all my ideas for the audience to chose from. I decided to list ideas of my own instead of getting the audience to chose off the top of their heads for a more stable and secure decision. This spider diagram had the audience circling their preferred thoughts from this to generate my final ideas and decisions.

Using the audiences feedback I was able to make the final decisions from all my ideas I had. Not knowing much about alternative rock, the audience was very useful in influencing the final decisions

The results from the spider diagram circling was set up as so on a PowerPoint slide show so it easily showed the preferred options in various forms, including, number of answers, percentage, and rank which gave me a better prospective on what the audience decisions were.

Using the audiences feedback from the location/s I should use in the music video, I decided to go ahead with what the audience decided to create a video which the alternative rock audience would enjoy watching.

The props feedback wasn’t used in the end as I decided that props weren’t necessary in the narrative music video I was creating. However the feedback gave me a prospective of what the alternative rock audience like to use as props for that genre of music videos.

The costume decision making from the audience was very useful to me. As I don’t know what type of clothes the alternative rock genre of audience wear I needed the audience to help me choose outfits for the male and female character within my music video.

I went with the audiences decisions of casual and stylish for the male and Floaty and light for the female. As I personally do not wear the rock style of clothing it would have been very hard for me alone to pick out a rock outfit. With my style being fashion girly, I would have probably applied some of my own fashion knowledge to the dress style for the rock outfits. This would have created more of a popgenre so the audience feedback for costuming was essential to give the alternative rock genre their style and what they want to see.

1. Would you expect a rock/pop music video to be performance, abstract or narrative?2. Should the lyrics and visuals hold a relationship? 3. Should the music and visuals hold a relationship? 4. Would you like to see a message in the music video? 5. What would you expect a rock/pop artist to be dressed in? 6. What would you expect a female character that has a sweet nature to her be dressed in? 7. What colours would you expect in a rock/pop music video? 8. Is there anything that you would like to see in a rock/pop music video?9. Would you like the music video to include elements that are not expected? 10. What genre of dance would you expect to see in a rock/pop music video? 11. Would you like to see dancing in a rock/pop music video? 12. Would you like to see flash backs in the music video? 13. Do you think a rock/pop music video should include slow motion?

The next step in planning for my music video was to get the audience to fill in a questionnaire about what the typical forms and conventions of alternative roc music video was to them. The feedback I got from the questions made many decisions for me to make sure the styles I was including in the music video were keeping with the genre.

The answers I got from this questionnaire is on the blog and definitely made some decisions for me. With the audience feedback stating that a narrative music video will be more interesting to watch made my final decision to create a mainly narrative music video. The audience wanted an interesting setting so I thought the location I would definitely use is the forest which was preferred in a previous questionnaire also. With the rock genre audience like to see flash backs and slow motion I decided to include them slightly within the music video. All ideas I finally generated from this questionnaire and is happy with the results it made me think of. The feedback was very successful to keep the music video in the rock genre.

Another form of audience research I used was mood boards. I found this useful to create three varied mood boards, each with their own connection to alternative rock style.

The third mood board is what the audience chose and their feedback gave me much inspiration from the images which they liked within it. I used the majority of styles the images portray and I kept to what the audience wanted. This made sure I created a music video which was worth the rock genre audience to watch.

With the audience wanting a narrative alternative rock music video which I agreed with I got the audience to listen to the song and give me an narrative I can base the music video I create on. The audience gave me feedback listed below:

- Lost a loved one.- Natural disaster.- Living in his head.- He can see dead people.- Chasing.- Scary.- Ere atmosphere.- Dark.- Though someone had died but they didn't.

This feedback from the audience gave me many ideas to choose from and after deciding on ‘love’ to be the narrative of the music video, I was glad the audience gave me other options as well to chose from. Without the audiences feedback I wouldn’t have generated all those ideas myself and wouldn’t have had many to chose from as the ideas would be mine alone which may not appeal to the alternative rock genre audience.

First Name: - Vince - David - Oscar - Alex - Eddie - Craig

Last name:- Rock- Cooper- Steel- Manson- Lee

To create a name for the alternative male solo artist I decided to ask the audience as they would know what names they would like and fit into that genre. I set the names out as so:

Alex Steel

The audience feedback helped me create the perfect name for my artist and I am very happy with it. For the audience to chose the name themselves will make a better relationship and connection between the artist and the audience, also it is a name that the audience are happy with listening to as an alternative rock genre.

After deciding I wasn’t happy with the image I had chosen for the front cover of the digi pack, I edited two more images of which I thought connected and looked better and asked the audience to chose which front cover they thought looked the most appealing to them.

The audience chose the image on the right so I followed through with their decision. The feedback has given me and insight to what kind of images the alternative rock genre enjoy viewing and find appealing to them so I now know how to please the audience with images.

The last bit of feedback I got was for the watching of my finished music video. I gave 7 people a questionnaire to fill in after they watched the music video.

The audiences feedback from this questionnaire came back very positive and helped me understand the positive features of my video that the audience saw. It gave me great confidence that I can create professional media products to a good quality standard as I didn’t get below 4 out 5 in the feedback.

I have learnt from this particular audience feedback what I could improve on and I now understand what the audience sees in my music video. The feedback helped me find parts of the video which they thought was a slight downfall. However, for future references I will be able to create other media products keep in mind the feedback I got from this questionnaire.

Did the narrative fit with the song choice? The score I got for this overall is 32/35 which is a very high score and I am very pleased with the feedback. With including the audience in the narrative decisions I think this helped towards giving the audience the narrative they wanted and resulted in excellent ratings.

How original is the music video compared to other rock music videos? Overall I got a score of 30/35 which I am very pleased with as creating something new is hard to do as most ideas have been done. I tried my best to be original with my ideas but the audience helped me with the majority of decisions so I tried to include elements with what they want to see whilst developing my own ideas.

How would you rate my editing skills? I am very pleased with 32/35 for the editing skills as I found the editing one of the hardest parts. I discovered some ideas and decisions would not work when it came to editing but I tried my best to work around it. When trying to add fades into the music video it created some problems which I had to find a way to work them out to make the editing continuity editing throughout.

How easy was the music video to watch? With a rating of 35/35 and 100% of the audience asked gave me 5/5 for this rating I am extremely happy. For the music video to be easy to watch I had to create story boards which flowed and the narrative make sense, also making sure I use continuity editing effectively using clips which are at the best of quality.

How would you rate the lighting? I got an overall score of 31/35 for this rating and I am happy with this as I only used natural lighting but I I had to manipulate it by placing the characters in good and interesting lighting making sure it isn’t too dark or too bright on the days we filmed on.

How would you rate the camera techniques? Receiving a score of 32/35 has gave me great confidence in my media skills as I found that the tripod I used was not very tall so I had to have a steady hand to film higher up shots by hand without the tripod. Also by making the shot list I was able to know what camera angles I wanted to use and use to make a dynamic music video.

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Did the narrative fit with the song choice? Ill lIll

How original is the music video compared to other rock music videos?

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How would you rate my editing skills? Ill Illl

How easy was the music video to watch? 0 lllIl ll

How would you rate the lighting? Illll Il

How would you rate the camera techniques? Ill lIll

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Overall the feedback was a major influence on ideas and decision making within the planning and creation of all the media texts and I doubt I would have had such high marks from the feedback sheet if I hadn’t involved the audience in the decision making.

With me attempting this project with very little knowledge of alternative rock I wouldn’t have been able to make true alternative rock genre products. It has helped me understand the different ideas myself and the audience have as I came into this project with a very open mind about alternative rock and thought I’d be able to make decisions myself, however after receiving feedback I discovered the difference in imagination and I now understand how different genres are so different from one another. The feedback helped me understand what alternative rock is and what makes alternative rock.

The audience decided on the details such as costume, setting, names, layouts etc, and all of these decisions created the products with the other elements of each text fitting into place nicely.

If I didn’t do or take on board audience feedback then my end products would have been something which the target audience would not want to watch as they wouldn’t have elements they want to see in them.