Q3. What have you learned from your

Audience Feedback?

By Robbie Marshall-Andrews

Why is it important?

Audience feedback is one of the most important aspects of creating anything, without it many firms would be selling products nobody wants and musicians would be shooting music videos that nobody will watch.

It is very important to have audience feedback so that whatever the media product is, can be presented to its intended audience in the most effective way possible whilst including important aspects that the target audience want to see.

In the case of my music video and the two ancillary texts it was very important to receive audience feedback about what was good and what could be changed. Overall the audience feedback that we received definitely helped to improve the quality of our finished work which is, after all, the point of audience feedback.

First Questionnaire The first taste of audience

feedback I had was from producing a questionnaire seeing what our target audience would want to see in a music video and what makes it repeatable for them so they watch over and over again. For this aspect we made our video quite abstract and thought provoking in order for our audience to play it again to catch things they maybe missed first time round. It also helped us to find out what media platforms our target audience watch music videos on most frequently amongst other important information.

Discussion with staff

Whilst in the midst of editing we had constant discussions with our teacher Mr Zaidi about what we thought would look good. After editing up to the first chorus Mr Zaidi made suggestions about us having some performance based shots and lip syncing within the video. We decided to take this advice and in the end it really paid off as it adds a new element to our video that definitely appeals to our target audience effectively.

We also received feedback from the media assistant Michael who helped us to improve the editing and give us some ideas of possible shots we could do. At first I think we tried to put too much editing into the video which Michael commented on and we quickly noticed the same and changed our video for the better.

Social Media Feedback

I also used social media as a platform to receive audience feedback for my video. I posted the video on my Facebook timeline for people to view and give feedback on. I received some messages for audience feedback which was used to rethink some of our shots and see what we did well.

This gave us an insight into what our actual target audience think of our video which was very helpful. Most people who gave feedback just said that they ‘loved it’ and that they thought it was ‘technically impressive’ but we wanted more detailed responses so we chose 4 people who fitted into the category of our target audience to expand in more detail on their thoughts of our video and ancillary texts.

Audience feedback Question 1 and 2

Audience feedback Question 3 and 4

Audience feedback Question 5 and 6

Audience Feedback Questions Summary There was primarily positive feedback from the questionnaire with a few constructive

criticisms which is really useful for us to see where we could have improved from the target audience’s perspective. From the response we got quite a lot of feedback on the narrative element of the video, and a few mixed responses. A comment that came up was that the target audience member wanted more back story so they had a bit more insight into what was going on. I completely take this comment on board and appreciate that some people might not look deep enough into the video but the idea of our video was to be quite subtle and let the mind do a lot of thinking throughout to keep them wondering what is going to happen, and then it is revealed at the end. In a way it is also left to interpretation a bit and I am personally a big fan of leaving things to people’s own interpretation because it allows you to think about it and almost fill in the blanks yourself, but again that is more personal preference than anything.

It seemed like they enjoyed the technical aspects of the video too which was really good to see as we put a lot of time and effort into making it look visually appealing and interesting and used a lot of different editing techniques to really emphasise that concept aspect. If we had more time and were to go back and re adjust things we would definitely take on board everything people have said, like incorporating more of our ancillary tasks into the video and maybe developing the narrative a bit further in places. This is why audience feedback is so important because it gives you areas to improve on from the kind of people that are most likely going to be viewing the product and the constructive criticism can help to fine tune bits of the video that could make it that much better.

Digipack

For our digipack we had some audience feedback which helped us to create the perfect digipack for us. Our first draft originally had a while background but with constructive criticism we changed that idea to have it red which looks much better. It brings out the central image much better and attracts the eye to it in a much more aesthetically pleasing way.

Poster

For audience feedback for our poster it helped us realise it wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as we wanted it to be. It had too many dates on and not enough quotes; it also wasn’t interactive enough. So we decided to take these constructive criticisms and make our work a much higher standard so that it fitted even better with our other ancillary text and our music video. To make our poster more interactive I decided to add a QR code to the bottom left of the poster which would take anybody who scanned it to Royal Blood’s website.

To conclude...

Overall audience feedback has played a major part in the success of our music video and our two ancillary texts. It really helped us to understand what our target audience wanted to see and how we could deliver that to the best of our ability.

I feel as though I have learnt a lot from collecting audience feedback and acting upon the comments. It has definitely improved my media skills and my promotional package as a whole.