SOFIA MORANA

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience

feedback?

PRE-PRODUCTION

In order to gain feedback for my music video before creating it, I gathered together a focus group of 26, asking them various questions on the genre. I then created a mood board to reflect my feedback and gather ideas. I felt this was effective as it helped to bring my feedback to life and create an accurate representation of what I wanted to create. I focused on two people out of the group, the two in my research mood board, and found that they not only enjoyed the song but they represented my ideology as one of them said "As long as I've got good company, good music and a cigarette then I can have a laugh anywhere." This fitted in with my genre and influenced some of my ideas for the style of my video. They also said they loved watching live performance which I wanted to originally include it in my video as they said "You just get carried away with the music and the atmosphere, you can’t help but go a little crazy and you always enjoy yourself". I also came to the conclusion that my video should reflect a love life, as even though the song is of the genre ‘rock’, my audience felt that the lyrics were ‘deep’ and therefore I felt it would be good to include. By including a mix of ages in my audience research I also found that a wide audience enjoyed rock music and felt therefore that by including a wide age in my video I would be able to directly address my audience.

DURING PRODUCTION

I have changed quite a few things between my first draft and practice shots. This was because of my audience feedback. It started with hot desks in the classroom. Through that I was able to notice places where the camera wasn't steady, or the shots didn't match up. First it was an idea to add in an effect of some kind to make it easier to distinguish between the flash back and the present day. To do this I changed the luma wave form over the shots to create surreal kind of atmosphere. As my first attempt at filming was not so successful it was an idea to do another shoot, and instead of trying to create such a strong direct link between the visuals and the lyrics, try and create more of an individual narrative. Also quite a few of my class mates were questioning the reason for a walk so I decided to include a dog in the video. It is only briefly throughout the video just to give it some context. Finally it was an idea to change my location to one more similar to my Ancillary products. In my ancillary products, I made a number of changes from audience feedback. My audience told me to include a website and include a digipak on the advert and I did both these things. This ensured that the digipak was recognisable to my target audience and the website directly targeted my audience as it gave them more information.

POST-PRODUCTION

Again, I held a focus group and asked a number of questions. Firstly I asked whether my product fitted the codes and conventions of the industry. They replied by saying I had managed to create a distinctive brand style through the use of similar pictures and the same font. I was happy with this feedback as I felt I had achieved what I wanted to achieve following my pre-production feedback, as my brand had addressed my target audience, especially as they noted the Twitter and Facebook pages on the back of the digipak. They also noted that it clearly fitted the rock and alternative rock genre, which showed I was successful in creating the ideas reflected on my mood board. I also asked for improvements and they said a number of things. Firstly they said there was places where I could have jogged the camera, I agreed with this feedback as I feel next time I would brush up on my filming skills in order to create a more effective and smooth cinematography. Next, they said I should have matched the video more with the lyrics. Again I agreed with this, and in certain areas I incorporated it, especially the story of love, but I felt if I had included live shots it would have further reiterated these lyrics. They also commented that I should have been more creative and had tighter editing; again this would be something I would endeavour to improve on next time if I were to create another product.