Evaluation Task 3What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?

Introduction

Audience feedback is the response which is received from an audience in correlation with a product. This tells the creator/producer of the product whether it was successful or not, and what to improve in order to make it more successful for the consumer.

Audience feedback was important for our product due to the fact that we had to build a product which would attract an audience, and market it accordingly. The success of our product wasn’t only determined by whether people liked or disregarded our product, but whether we could successfully attract a larger audience.

After we had conducted the audience feedback, we were able to make adjustments to make our product more successful.

How did you get the

Feedback?

We conducted the research by asking the following variety of people:- Peers- Teachers- Other students- Family- Friends from outside of school- Members from my production group

This research was conducted in a variety of different formats, namely in a video format, voice notes, and in a written format.

What were the key aspects of the feedback you

received?

The general feedback which was related to our website was the fact that it is very conventional and easy to navigate around, which would make it attractive for the audiences. We also got feedback on some of the negative aspects of our website in its first draft-stages, and therefore we were able to make the changes accordingly.

Overall, the feedback which we received for our music publicity campaign helped us to understand that we created a cohesive campaign which worked well together, and helped to convey the brand/star image. We also successfully conveyed our USP, namely turning the old into something new.

How did you use the

Feedback?

The feedback was useful to us because it helped us to see what elements from our website, music video, or digipak were successful. Therefore, we were able to create a strong music publicity campaign in which the products work well together and help to properly engage the target audience in what we were trying to achieve in the first place. We used a range of different people when conducting audience research and feedback, which therefore gave us a large diversity (as our target audience is also essentially a large range (or so we thought, looking at the YouTube statistics may tell us otherwise).

Most of the audience feedback conducted in correlation with the music video did not have any effect on the final outcome due to the fact that the research was conducted after the video had been created. However, this is alright as it helps us to reflect on the work we have created, and helped us to create a digipak and website which targeted the audience properly.

Overall, we did end up making changes to elements within the website and on the digipak following advice and feedback from peers and teachers.

Presenting your Initial

Ideas

The first kind of audience feedback which we conducted and received was in correlation with presenting our initial ideas to the class, and seeing what they thought. Once we got into groups, we gave feedback to each others ideas (presented to the right) and evaluated which ones would be the best, and which ones would have to be eliminated due to the fact that some of them would be too difficult to create. We discussed and came up with three concepts for the tracks Scarlet, Big Yellow Taxi, and Home, of which we never used any (because we ended up not being inspired by any of the tracks.

Some of the ideas were too stereotypical, whereas others were too difficult to work upon, however the ideas which we did pitch at the beginning were plausible and therefore we looked at them further, especially “Home”, until we decided to change our track.

Pitching to Luke

When pitching to Luke, we wanted to see what he thought of our idea and whether it was plausible to pursue. At the time we had the idea for the song “Home”, in which we wanted to create somewhat of a scene “punk” band, including an element of a dark room. The feedback which we got here was mainly positive, because Luke liked the idea and found that the dark room was good. However, he wasn’t too sure with the other ideas which we had for this type of music video, which is why he asked us to alter them.

We did change the idea for this music video a few times, which we attempted, however without his suggestions we couldn’t get anywhere and it made it quite difficult to come up with new ideas. Which is why we had to come up with a new idea as fast as possible afterwards.

Because we couldn’t come up with any more ideas for the song “Home”, we decided to change to the song “Beatophone”, which was originally one of Chris’ ideas. After brainstorming the sense behind the idea, we came up with the idea of transforming an old element to a new one, in correlation with the electro-swing genre.

When pitching this idea to Luke, we found that he liked the idea, however gave us advice in accordance with the shoot which helped us to create a more successful product. This also allowed us to consider how we would do the transition within the video, and helped us put our final idea together. The transition in the video was create by using clips of a tap dance with funky lighting, and using a smoke machine and the mad scientist as an aid.

Preliminary Audience Feedback

We got some audience feedback concerning our initial idea by making an interview and asking peers of their opinion. First, we made them listen to about 45 seconds of the track, and then told them of our idea, and asked them what they thought of it and how to improve our idea.

The feedback helped us to assess whether our concept was plausible or not, and whether our initial target audience would be interested in the video which we were planning to create, or not.

The feedback also helped us to understand that what we had in mind was similar to what the audience would imagine for this track as well, which helped us to create something conventional in tone with the music and genre which we had chosen.

Animatic Feedback

We created a storyboard animatic which helped everyone in our production group visualise what we intended our video to look like, and also slightly helped with the timing. We asked the audience to see what they thought and whether they had any suggestions.

Unfortunately, as it turned out through audience feedback, our storyboard animatic was very unclear and that it was quite ambitious for what we were trying to portray. Many thought that the mad scientist was a woman watching TV. However, this issue may be due to the fact that the drawings were not the most professional.

From this feedback we were able to draw any conclusions and make any changes to our idea that may have not been clear. Therefore we were able to change some things.

Focus Group

After we had created our music video, we held a small focus group to respond to our media text which we had created. This allowed us to show our product to a small audience and allowed us to get their input. The focus group consisted of two males and five females in the age range from 16-18, and decided to hold it right before we exported the video to make some quick changes before making it final.

The audience feedback we received was generally positive, as it showed us that we had created an effective product and the leap from the 1920s to the future worked well. However, the audience thought that the dancers were aliens in the futuristic part, which was not intended. Half of the audience also mentioned that they liked the mad scientist, whereas others said that they didn’t. Another piece of feedback that was given was that the futuristic part should have happened earlier.

Despite these small factors, they all enjoyed the video and found that it was a success.

Outsider’s Perspective

In addition to the audience feedback which was collected at school, I decided to go ahead and conduct some research outside, asking friends and family what they thought. This gave a more unbiased opinion, as these people did not know the actors and actresses within the video.

The feedback was very positive overall, and it was very nice to know that many found it very impressive to watch. Many thought that the storyline was very impressive and that the idea was clear when it was conveyed. They also said it was completely different from the other ones which they have seen.

A few of the audience members had mentioned that the jump in time reminded them of Doctor Who, which is very plausible now that I think about it. We were quite surprised when the audience pointed out that they loved the mad scientist, which is something the audience at school would have changed. The set design was also completely different to usual ones and was more creative than others.

Unfortunately, one of the audience members pointed out that the camera work was a little poor due to the framing at times, however that is only a minor issue.

Feedback on the Website

We showed our first design of the website to our class, in order to receive feedback and what we should change. Above is the first draft, below is the second (and final layout). The feedback which we received was:- Font needs to be bigger- Tabs look like links- Change the band name- More copy needed- More simplistic style needed- Change location of shows- What record company?- Album review and the music video need to be included

This feedback allowed us to create a brand new website which looks much more sleek and allowed us to connect the other to ancillary texts with this one, making it an entire campaign, easy to use for the target audience.

Feedback on the CD Digipak

We also conducted research about our CD digipak to see what the audience thought. The initial feedback was that the band name “Aether” had to be bigger than the album name, and that we needed a track listing. These were not difficult to include and allowed us to create a digipak which was effective.

Other audience feedback which we got from teachers and peers was the fact that we should include images of the band on the digipak to make it clear that it is this band. However, I think that this is an unnecessary comment as the band is a part of the electro-swing genre and it is very conventional for the band not to be portrayed on the digipak, or anywhere else. This reflects the organic nature of the band, and therefore I feel that it does not have to be changed.

Feedback found on YouTube

From the feedback which was gathered from youtube, we found that our video has over 3,000 views, and that most of these views came from the UK (64%). A lot of the other views came from the U.S, Canada, Switzerland, and Russia.

Something that was so interesting to all of us in the group is that the audience which watched our video the most was prominently male, and in the age group from 18-24. Also, we found that a lot of our users were watching our video on their mobile phone.

Therefore, we were correct that our target audience ranges in audience, however, isn’t prominently female. This is quite an interesting aspect. However, this shows that our video is shown to a variety of age groups.