Evaluation Question 3:

What have you learned from your audience

feedback?
Introduction
As for any media text,
an understanding of
audience is crucial for
the marketing and
distribution. Audience
refers to the people who
are the consumers of a
media text and target
audience refers to who
the producers think their
media text would appeal
to the most. When creating a new media text it is essential to
have a target audience to create a product bearing in mind who
the main consumers would be so that they will hopefully

interpret the texts in the way in which we intend.

Target Audience
Before I created my music video, digipak and magazine advert,
I visualised the following demographics and psychographics of
my target audience:

Gender: male and female.

Age: 16-24.
Nationality: British.
Music Taste: alternative rock, pop, indie.
Hobbies: listens to music regularly, plays an instrument,
active, enjoys going to concerts/gigs.

The reasoning behind the age group of

our target audience is because our artists
music does contain some explicit
language in some songs. I felt that the
star image of the artist was best suited to
be targeted at young people because he
is also young. We targeted people who
have an interest in music, enjoy going to
concerts and incorporate music into their
daily lives because we felt that they would have the optimum
enjoyment from our innovative artist. Our production aimed to
suit people who like to create memories of certain times in their
lives through the use of music, because we wanted our artist to
connect with his audience. Finally, although we did not make
our target audience gender specific, it could be noted that our
music video appeals to young males more because the artist is
male, so this may enhance a connection.

Methodology for Feedback

Feedback from our audience was an essential part of my
Advanced Portfolio because it helped with making
improvements to the music video, digipak and magazine advert
and being able to tailor this to our audiences desires as they

are the ones who would consume

the products. It is important to
analyse the findings of audience
feedback because it helps with
making improvisations, as
producers are always looking to
better their work.
To gain feedback from our
audience on our main and ancillary products, we used the
following methods:
Questionnaires
Filming a focus group
Surveys

Initial Research Focus Group

Before I even started to create the music video, I held a focus
group to gather inspiration. The group consisted of 5 teenagers
aged 16-18, who were within my target age group. The idea
was to show them similar products to the concept of what I
aimed to create and get their opinions, to ask questions about
their personal music tastes and to understand what my target
audience likes and dislikes within music videos. I showed the
group two music videos (Coldplay Adventure of a Lifetime and
Arctic Monkeys Do I Wanna Know) which are classified under
the Indie/Rock genre of music, which was the same genre as
the song I created my music video to. We then discussed what
the participants liked and disliked about these music videos and
I wrote down any interesting thoughts from them. After this I
analysed any correlations from their answers and noticed that a
common theme was that the participants found both videos
confusing because they had no clear narrative and they did not
like that there was no lip sync element from either artist. After
the discussion, we presented the participants with a
questionnaire which regarded their own personal music
interests to gain an insight as to what music means to them.
Overall, I feel that this was a useful piece of research to
conduct before we started pre-production because we were

able to see what our target audience liked and disliked,

therefore we were enabled to create our music video to tailor to
their enjoyment, which in turn made the production a greater
success.

Photos from the

focus group
session.

Feedback from First Draft

After the post-production of the first draft of my music video, I
gathered another focus group which consisted of 3 of the
teenagers that contributed in the previous discussion. I
followed the same format as I did before, asking leading
questions to create an informal discussion to gain opinions on
my product. However, what I did differently this time was I used
my smartphone to film the discussion so that I did not have to
take notes of what the participants said as I could simply watch
back the footage when analysing my findings. When I showed
my audience the first draft, it was not completely finished and
there were still elements that we needed to film to fill in gaps,
but I wanted to show this draft to the audience to see as a
starting point if they liked the concept of the video before we
progressed any further with the construction. My findings from
the session were:

 The general consensus was that the audience enjoyed the

concept of the music video, however, they found that it
was uneven from the production sense. This was because
some shots were out of focus and the lip sync edit was not
perfectly timed.
Feedback from a teacher suggested that the shot of our
artist who was singing into a mirror felt disconnected from
the audience because the shot was too long. I agreed with
this point as if the audience are disconnected from the
artist, it limits the sense of verisimilitude so we decided to
film the shot closer up to rectify this.
One member of the group also suggested that the lighting
in our studio shots was not as good as it could have been,
which consequently made the image quality grainy. I also
agreed with this point and as a result we used two soft box
lights instead of one main light to enhance the quality of
the visual.
This audience feedback was highly useful to our construction
because it gave us some ideas of how we could improve it from
the first draft, by using better lighting, using more close up
shots and obviously filling in the gaps. We took our constructive
criticism from the feedback and used it to our advantage to
create a better second draft. I have embedded a YouTube link to
the video of our audience feedback for the first draft below this
document.

Feedback from Second Draft

After re-drafting a second video, we uploaded it to Vimeo and
created a survey using Survey Monkey, which used closed,
multiple choice questions and a comment box for the
respondents to give detailed feedback. This enabled us to
analyse results in both a quantitative and qualitative way so
that we had objective and detailed results. To target people to
answer the survey, myself and Casey used Facebook to post

the Vimeo link to the video as well as the survey to encourage

participants to give us feedback. Using Facebook was useful
because it allowed us to get a wide range of responses from
people we knew and we also posted it to a local group, so we
also received responses from people who we did not know. The
survey was mostly anonymous (the only information we
received from our respondents was their basic demographic:
age and gender) meaning that the results were not biased. In
total we received 38 responses on the survey, which was far
more than the 3 people who gave us feedback on our first draft.
Using Survey Monkey was useful because it allowed more
people to respond as it was easy to share a link. Also because it
was a short survey, more people were willing to give up some
time to answer it, meaning we got a wider range of feedback.
By logging on to Survey Monkey, it is possible to view the
responses that people gave and it automatically creates a
graph and percentage to easily summarise the results. I have
embedded a SlideShare presentation below this document
where I have shown the graphs from the survey.

Findings:
84% who answered the survey were female, 16% were
male. This was a negative aspect of the survey because it

is severely gender biased, so effected the validity of our

results. I believe that this was because we shared the
survey on Facebook to invite participants, so perhaps
between our two profiles, we had more female than male
friends.
The ages of those who answered the survey were:
32% Under 18
26% 18-24
8% 25-34
16% 35-44
13% 45-54
5% 55-64
Although the age ranges of those who answered the survey
is unbalanced, the majority of people who answered were in
the categories under 18 and 18-24, which was the age range
of our target audience so this was a positive because the
feedback we received was representative of our target
audience.
92% of the participants enjoyed the way we styled our
artist in the video. This was a positive for us because
the artist is the main focus of the video, so overall it
meant that participants enjoyed our star image.
42% of the participants loved our video, 50% liked it,
but 8% of the participants were unsure or thought that
it needed improvement. Overall this is a positive
outcome because the vast majority liked or video, which
was humbling for us as producers. However, it did not
appeal to some of the participants so we wanted to redraft a better version to try and get a 100% enjoyment
rate.
55% of the participants understood the narrative of our
video, but 45% either did not understand it at all or
were unsure of parts. This was a negative part of the
feedback because our aim at the pre-production stage
was to create a clear, easy to follow narrative which our

audience understood and could engage with. Because

such a high percentage did not follow it, we wanted to
re-draft using less lip sync shots and more narrative
shots to make it clearer.
82% of participants agreed that our narrative fit with
the song, so this was more positive than the previous
question because although the narrative was unclear in
places, the participants felt that the overall idea fit with
the song. This was positive because it meant that we
did not need to re-draft our narrative completely.
97% of participants agreed that our music video style fit
with the Indie Rock genre of music. This was positive as
it meant that we had done the style of video justice to
the genre of music under which it is classified.
84% of participants agreed that they would share our
music video to family and friends. This was a positive
finding because our artist is new to the industry, so the
aim of the construction was to help present his new star
image to an audience and to gain a following.
95% of participants believed that the target audience of
the music video was teenagers and young adults. This
was a positive finding because this is exactly the group
who we were aiming the video at.
Finally, we added a comment box at the end of the
survey inviting people to provide us with more in depth
feedback of their thoughts on the video, and if they had
any constructive criticisms for us to improve.

After analysing the results of the survey, we decided to re-draft,

re-film and edit a cleaner, final version of the video. This is how
we decided to improve:

We have decided to add greater clarity to our narrative by

adding in more shots in the field which tie the concept
together better, as some participants did not understand our
narrative.

We have also decided to cut the studio performance

elements and replace this with a lip sync outside, as some of

the participants felt as if it did not fit with the rest of the
video.

Also, a few comments were made on the performance of

our main singer, suggesting he did not show enough
enthusiasm or star image which was a downfall for the
camera work, editing and video as a whole. This was a
noticed problem as our singer did not fully know the lyrics to
the song, so because it was unfamiliar to him, the
performance was not as good as it could have been. So to
rectify this, we have asked our singer to learn the lyrics to
the song fully.

Audience feedback on the second draft of our music video

really helped us to improve our production because we listened
to what our audience thought and made a new version to suit
them. This is because the audience is crucial to the success of
a production, so if the majority did not enjoy it, it would not
have been a success.

Audience Feedback on Digipak and Magazine Advert

After finishing the final edit of the music video, I created two
ancillary products to accompany it which was a digipak and a
magazine advert for the artist. I sought after some further
audience feedback on these again by using Survey Monkey. I
did not do this on as large a scale as I did with the second draft
of my music video because I wanted to get the opinion of those
in my media class to get specific feedback because they
understood key media terminology, whereas the general
audience would not.

Findings:
The majority felt that my digipak and magazine poster
looked professional, used conventions of real media texts
and felt that the two combined created a good synergy.
A comment was made that a disadvantage of my digipak
was that it was all one colour. I understand that a lot of
digipak's make use of bold colour in order to stand out on
a shelf, however, I am not going to change this on my own
design. This is because I have created a brand for a new
artist who is not yet well known and this was the
reasoning for the black and white digipak and magazine
advert, to keep things simple and to the point so that my
artist can gain a following.
Another comment was made that the CD panel on the
digipak looked fake and unrealistic, which I agreed with, so
I changed the appearance of it for the final version.
Furthermore, a participant commented that my magazine
advert needed more information. I did not want to
overwhelm the reader with information about the artist so
like the digipak, I kept things simple and to the point.
However, I did add more information to the bottom half of
the poster, stating that the album is available to pre-order.

 Finally, a suggestion was made that I remove the star

ratings from the top of my magazine advert to the bottom
where the majority of text is because having it at the top
makes the picture half appear too busy. I agreed with this
point so I changed this for my final version.
Overall, the audience feedback I received to my ancillary
products was both positive and constructive, which helped me
to finalise my designs and create a successful final version.

Conclusion

To summarise, audience feedback was one of the most crucial

aspects of my Advanced Portfolio. It was useful because the
feedback that I received helped me to construct and re-draft
three products which appealed to my target audience. Because
audience is crucial to the success of a media text, it is essential
for producers to create a media text which appeals to the
audience as if it does not, the product will not be as successful.
I learnt from the feedback of both drafts of my music video that
it was of greater use to gather more participants for feedback
because it enabled me to get a wider variety of comments and
opinions. In the first draft feedback I only had 3 participants in
my focus group compared to 38 participants on the survey I
created for feedback on my second draft. This subsequently
meant that I had a clearer idea on how to improve the second
draft as I was able to draw common consensus views from the
audience on what they liked and disliked. I think that using
different techniques to gather feedback was beneficial because
using triangulation methods I was able to analyse a range of
results. Overall, by gathering feedback at different stages of
the construction of my products I was able to produce three
successful final outcomes which appeal to my audience.