Question 3) What have you learned from your audience

feedback?

Here is a brief summary of the audience feedback we received for the music video and the ancillary tasks.

Audience feedback from our music video

•Your music video made us feel excited.

•The video set the right tone for the song.

•The video featured contrasting elements of peace and protests

•The lip syncing was successful through out the majority of the video.

•The jumpy editing makes you feel as though you are part of the music video.

•Professional

Audience feedback from our digipak and magazine

poster

• It looks realistic -

The labels

Song listings at the back

Other generic conventions of what you would find in a CD album cover

• Good use of different images but they look pixelated.

• It looks interesting

Our initial idea for our target audience was to appeal to the key demographic audience of 14-21 year old. As you can see from our blogs we were targeting both

males and females however they had different interests in what they like and dislike.

We found our target audience based on the target audience’s of various music groups such as Fat Boy Slim, Oasis, The Blur and Jimmy Eats World.

We also spent some time focusing on other bands that fit around the ‘Jamie T’ genre such as; Kasabian, Kate Nash, Kings Of Leon and Mark Ronson. YouTube provided to be a great help when it came to looking at who was commenting on

the music videos. Yes, however this was not as accurate, as we based the commenter’s YouTube channel to see their age group. From, someone YouTube

account we were also able to view other videos that he or she had looked at, giving us a well rounded idea of the musical interests of that person.

Our own personal questionnaire that we created and asked various youths to fill out also provided to be of great help as we learnt that our genre was the most

popular genre of music to listen to in comparison to R&B as well as Rock music.

Our questionnaire consisted of 8 questions which are listen below in bold. The typing after the question explains why we decided to feature this question in our questionnaire, as well as the various information that we found out.

1) Are you male or female? – This question is very important, as we had to ensure that we were not bias in our research ensuring there was a balance between the males and females that we asked.

2) How old are you? – This question as well, is very important, as it helped us to understand who we were asking to fill out our questionnaire – therefore leading us to decide on having 14-21 year olds as our main target audience. This also helped us with our music video as we are either 17 or 18 years old we could work out what would be appealing to youth our age, or around our age.

3) What is your favourite music genre (the people who did the questionnaire selected from a list.) – From, here we could understand more about the people we asked. This question was used in our questionnaire to help us understand what was a popular genre – in order to make a music video that is appealing to an audience, we have to make sure that it features a song that they would like. The popularity of rock/pop through out this question helped us to finalise on the genre of the music we were going to use for our music video.

4) Who is your favourite artist? – This question was features in our questionnaire as this question informed us of the various artists that attract and are appealing to an audience. We saw various links between genres and artists and we noticed who were popular artists, and who were artists that not even any one of us had known! This was refreshing for us as a group, as it showed us that there are many artists out in the music industry, but which artist to chose was to be based on what our audience want and whether we could offer it to them.

5) What would you expect to see in a music video and why? – This is a key question in our evaluation – as it provided a lot of help when it came to planning on what our music video would look like. It was an essential help to our animatic. We learned that the majority of the people we asked, expected to see camera shits of the artist or the band – which then tied in with our next question. Many boys said they prefer a music video where there are ‘beautiful women’ within, whilst the girls would prefer a music video which had a dance choreography. Location shots were also mentioned – this made us understand that for our music video we would have to research as well as film in more than one location.

6) Do you prefer music videos with a storyline or just band shots and why? – To see band shots within a music video was one of the least popular choices chosen by our audience. A music video with a narrative was the most popular, however not far behind was the mixture of a narrative and band shots. Therefore we decided to do both, to add variation as well as to appeal to the target market.

7) How often do you listen to music? – This question isn’t as relevant as previous questions were as this doesn’t really impact our music video. Yet, it does let us understand more about our target audience. If someone was to listen to music very often, then it is only natural that they would have a look at that song’s music video – therefore showing us that we have asked people who are relevant to us.

8) How do you listen to music? – This question isn’t as relevant as previous questions, yet it showed us the various ways in which music is distributed and listened to by our target audience.

9) How do you purchase your music? – This question did not really impact our music video, but from the results we were able to learn that downloading music from iTunes was more popular than buying a hard copy CD.

When it came to use arranging focus groups, we decided to ask a mixture of males and females in our sixth form. We avoided asking media students – as we felt as though they would have a more “media-bias” opinion on our work. The students we asked ranged from the ages of 16-18 and consisted of both males and females. There were three people within each focus group, as we felt that three was a better number to cause a conversation between the students. Yet – we found that this only worked when we asked friendship groups to take part in the focus group.

When we were doing our first focus group, this was based on the animatic we created for our music video. In our opinion, we feel as though the comments were received were very helpful and enabled us to understand what it was that our audience wanted to see. We asked various questions on our animatic focus group. We decided that it was best to do it in stages, by first letting them listen to the song to see if they can come up with their own idea of what the music video could involve. We then asked them what their thought on the song was and what they thought the music video would entail. After this, we decided to show them the animatic, showing them what we want our music video to look like, and to receive comments on whether they though it was suitable and appealing to them. Hearing the positive feedback from our focus group as well as guided advise on how to make it better, it made us as a group and a team feel better and more confident on how to go about creating our music video.

From our focus group, we were able to use a few tangible elements that our focus group has suggested for our music video. One of the people within our focus group said that they imagined our video to be ‘quick paces’ and ‘upbeat’ therefore, when it came to the editing of our music video we had quick edits. There was also suggestion to cut out the bad language, we considered this, as we felt as though it can be offensive to some of our target audiences, however by cutting out the lyrics such as “shit” and “dick” , you lose the impact and the attitude of the song – therefore we decided not to cut out the language.

We also had a suggestion to film in London, therefore we decided to film half of our music video in London – coincidently, as a group we got tangled up in the London Student Protests, which provided us with great and unique footage that we knew would match our song and, it can appeal to the target audience, as it is unseen footage of a real life event which hasn’t been staged for entertainment purposes.

One girl in our focus group suggested that it would feature the lead singer and his friends, - as a group we liked this idea as it challenges the concept of a music video featuring only the band member and the people of the narrative, however in our music video we had our lead singer with his friends giving out the message as though they are all in the same one band.

When it came to showing our final music video to our target audience, we felt as though we received a lot of mixed feelings and emotions to the music video. Firstly, they all enjoyed watching the music video, as we could see this from their facial expressions.

One of the feedbacks we received was that one of our audience’s said they felt violent after watching the music video, which is not one of our intentions, however we understood that this message could have been conveyed through the protests. Luckily, the majority of the focus group said that they felt excited after watching our music video – which was one of our own personal objectives of the music video.

As a group we decided to use the method of hand held camera shots at the protesting, firstly because due to the environment it would have been hard for us to use the tripod, yet, when we discussed it more, we felt as though it would match the messy, fun and energetic appeal of the song itself – which is something one of our focus group member had noticed.

Lip-syncing was consistent through out however, as our audience had noted, - yet they did mention that there were some areas on the music video, specifically on the golf buggy where they felt as though the lip syncing was not in time with the music video. Which was a shame for us to hear.

To reach this audience when it came to the marketing of this music video, then we would suggest that we would use the strengths of our music video to encourage viewers to watch the video. Our strengths would be that we have unseen footage of the London Student Protests, filmed in the point of view of us, as students. The quick paced editing makes our music video interesting and fun, therefore appeals to our target audience, who would essentially want to watch something that is fun and energetic.

We would broadcast our music video on YouTube and Facebook as well as other networking sites, in order to show our music video to the world.

However, another option would be to release the animatic of our music video first, perhaps gaining some of our target audience’s interests, and then release a teaser trailer of the music video – which would be our rough cuts. Finally, we would then release our music video. This all would be done with a few weeks of each other – therefore gaining a lot of target audiences as they would feel excited for what is to be released next until they see the final product. – However this concept ties in with the marketing and release of a film, as it first releases a teaser trailer, then a trailer, and then the film itself. This can also tie in with the release of Modern Warfare 2, where the marketing and release of the game decided to release small clips, gaining audience interest before the final game.

In our opinion it was a shame that the feedback we received for our target audiences and our focus groups were not as elaborate we would have liked them to be. Conversations rarely developed between the groups, therefore answers were similar, as they would copy the other persons answer.

As a group, we should have encouraged the idea that we wanted an argument between the focus groups, pointing out the positives and the negatives. We also should have encouraged more elaborate answer – as we believe that with a more elaborate answer then we could have received a lot more feedback which would impact our music video.

Perhaps, it would have also been better, if we used the same people for all of our feedbacks, from the animatic to the digipak and magazine poster. This would have been an essential help to us, because this way the people watching it would have seen the development of our project, as they would have seen it from the beginning up until the end. This would have affected their opinions on the project as well as their overall thoughts.