What have you learned from you audience feedback?

Introduction

Audience feedback was a crucial factor to the overall construction of our music video.

Seeing as the video is made for the audience, it is very important to listen to what they have to say in terms of expectations and desires relating to the videos content.

The feedback helped me recognise what types of conventions to include too e.g. costumes, locations, camera shots etc.

Another benefit in audience feedback is how they can identify any limitations in the video, which we can then alter based on their feedback.

Restarting Our audience feedback was pivotal to our entire coursework. Originally, we had a music video with a narrative. However, our audience

feedback revealed to us that the narrative didn’t suit our genre, and that it wasn’t very engaging. They also said that the song didn’t suit the narrative either so we changed from Earl Sweatshirt’s ‘Chum’ to Earl Sweatshirt’s ‘Hive’.

Therefore we decided to do more research on professional music videos. Whilst many videos do have narratives, there are also multiple that do not. So

we decided to conform to the non-narrative convention. Examples of videos without a narrative are ‘Chum’ and ‘Hive’ by Earl Sweatshirt’, as is ‘Collard Greens’ by ScHoolboy Q feat. Kendrick Lamar.

By doing this we still conformed to our genre and the expected conventions whilst creating a entertaining music video.

If it wasn’t for our audience feedback, we would have continued to produce a low quality and confusing music video.

Focus on lyrics In our old music video with a narrative, we didn’t have much lip

syncing. Consequently, our audience feedback revealed to us that we

weren’t putting much emphasis on the lyrics and their meaning. For this reason, we decided to include more lip syncing otherwise

the content would have taken attention away from the artists intended message.

This message was about how Earl is perceived by the media and his critics, therefore he is trying to address this. Although, if we only filmed action-based content, then no attention would have been paid to his message.

With the inclusion of more lip syncing, our audience now has a better understanding of the songs purpose.

Conventions Our audience feedback has revealed to us what conventions they expect from hip-

hop music videos. This is a reliable method because our audience are hip-hop fans, so they have an understanding of what is required in this genre.

Costumes -> when our audience was asked what costumes they expect to see, they stated brands relating to skateboarding e.g. Carhartt. In addition they also stated that we should include The North Face too, so we did in order to conform to the ‘entertainment’ element of the Uses and Gratifications theory (below).

Locations -> our audience revealed to us that they would like both rural and urban locations. The Uses and Gratifications (Blumer and Katz) theory states that when viewing media, in order to interact with it, we must experience an element of ‘entertainment’, which makes it logical to incorporate our audience’s demands. For this reason, we included scenes from rural woodland, but also shots from urban housing. This would obviously entertain the audience, otherwise they wouldn’t have stated it in our feedback.

Conventions: Part 2 Camera shots etc -> as a result of our survey, our audience stated that they

preferred a variety of camera shots instead of consistent simple ones. This has taught me that the audience wants to see something new and complex rather than play it safe. I believe that we achieved this as we included low angle shots, long panning shots, car mounted shots and we also used a fish eye lens.

Skateboarding -> 100% of people who completed our survey stated that they liked skateboarding and that they would like to see it in the video. Joey Bada$$ also uses this convention in his music video ‘Waves’. This feedback has taught me that skateboarding is a connotation of hip-hop due to the genres relevance to street culture, so it was vital to include in our video.

Lighting -> in our survey, the audience stated their preference of black and white lighting and colouring. Whilst our video isn’t in black and white, there are still very dark features in the woodland and driving scenes. This has taught me that hip-hop fans prefer a convention of darker lighting.

Ancillary Task: magazine advertisement

Final

Drafts

We opted for our final magazine advertisement on the left because of our audience feedback. A combination of questions revealed to us that they thought there should be some textual information to reveal the artist, the song name and release date. The image on the left displays this, whereas the others do not. Our audience feedback also identified that they wanted the model to be the focal point. On the middle draft, the model is merely a small aspect if the entire image, and in the other ones he is covered by a logo and/or textual information. Additionally, when asked about colours and backgrounds our audience told us they wanted something camouflage based, therefore we adhered to their demands in having our photoshoot in a woodland location.

Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory

By conducting and acknowledging audience feedback, it has allowed us to conform to an element of Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory.

Previously, our work have influenced an Oppositional reading on our audience. This means that have no relationship to the media text, and are consequently resistant to it.

However by listening to their demands and creating a product devised based on their expectations, we have achieved a Preferred reading, which is where the audience can relate and empathise with the product.

This successful conformity has been enabled through audience feedback.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our audience feedback was very significant because it opened our eyes to the prospect that our narrative wasn’t clear, and consequently that our video wasn’t up to a high standard.

With thanks to surveymonkey.com, we created multiple questionnaires to identify the flaws in our video and alter them accordingly.

Our audience feedback revealed to us what they wanted in terms of a magazine advertisement.

Based on the points on the previous slides, it is clear that we have learnt a lot from our audience feedback, and that without it, our video wouldn’t have reached its final , high quality standard.