Question 3What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience ResearchWhen creating a media product one of the main features of it is its ability to appeal to its target

audience. As my media product was going to have to appeal to an audience within the Synthpop

music genre I decided to start by researching into the genre and finding out exactly who its audience consisted of. This initial audience research helped to shape my basic understanding for the Synthpop

audience and helped me to gain a better understand on who to potentially use for my

audience feedback. From researching into the Synthpop genre I hoped to be able to find out the

demographic of my target audience.

Audience ResearchMy most useful piece of research was found on

Lovestarrs official Facebook page. The page allowed me to see statistics relating to their

followers and some details about them. From this piece of research I was able to determine the main

age range of their followers and in turn of my target audience, which was 18-24 year olds.

Finding my Target Audience

With my target audiences age range in mind I created both a questionnaire on an online survey website called SurveyMonkey and some physical

questionnaires to help narrow down my search and find some potential participants for my focus group that would help within my project to give me feedback on my media products. I featured the online questionnaire on my blog and sent it to a few people from my college and I asked some people

around Norwich to fill in the physical questionnaire. By creating a questionnaire I was able to look into the target age ranges musical preferences and find out which of them enjoyed the Synthpop genre and would enjoy the type of music

video I was creating, which was mainly narrative with some more concept based elements.

Online Survey ResultsI ended up receiving a total of 20 online and physical responses to my questionnaire. However, in order to make the analysis easier I transferred the physical

responses onto SurveyMonkey as the website had a feature that created graphs from your responses and by having all of my data online it all be in one place

and would minimise the risk of losing some responses. The main aim of this questionnaire was to find people within my target age range that were interested in the genre of music that my music video would be classed under as well as being helpful with ideas when it came to the construction of my music video as they’d understand the style within which it

was classed under.

Online SurveyMy initial survey influenced my ideas as the respondents of the

questionnaire were generally of a similar age to the age range I had wanted to be my target audience, 18-24 years, after I’d found out that

specific age range when carrying out my audience research. These results helped to finalise my ideas for the target audience having an age range of around 18-24 years and so helped influence me when planning the music video as I knew the sort of stylings that typical teenagers from within the target audience age range prefer when watching music videos as that is

the same age range as myself and one that I can very easily research into as I am surrounded by it on a daily basis, therefore giving me easy assess to feedback. My artist didn’t necessarily have a specific gender targeted, however, the singer within the band is a female and so I wanted to target females more as I thought they’d connect more with the music as it was

sung by someone they could possibly relate to more than males. My survey results helped to influence my ideas as there were slightly more

female respondents than males and so there was more potential to have females within my focus group to help criticise the music video from a females perspective. Also, my idea was to have a female be the main

character within the music video and so by having more female respondents they’d be able to connect more with the main character and

gain a better understanding of the music video.

Graphs

These are some results from my survey that helped to influence my ideas when it came to constructing my music video. These results helped me to finalise my target audiences age range and also the preferred gender that I would be trying to target. I finalised my target audience as being 18-24

year olds and decided that I wouldn’t necessarily try to target one specific gender, however, with my ideas it would most likely appeal to females

slightly more so than males.

Focus Groups ResponsesThese were the responses from the participants I

decided to pick to be my focus group.

Audience Feedback ; First Draft

After I had created the first draft of my music video I sent the video to each of the three members of my focus

group and asked them to state what they liked about the video, what they thought needed improving, if they

thought the narrative and concept elements worked well together and what ideas they had for the unfilmed clip.

Due to the different ages, music video style preferences and even possibly due to their gender I was expecting the responses to be very varied. In a way I was right, each of them enjoyed different elements of the video and thought the two music video styles worked well

together for different reasons. However, I was surprised to find out that their thoughts on what parts needed

improving seemed to highlight the same sort of things.

Focus Group ; Member 1What do you like about the video?

“It’s cool that the video is fast and matches how fast the music is going.”

What do you think needs improving?

“I think the static effect should be used more.”

Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well together?

“Yeah, you can follow the storyline and the static effects work and look cool with it.”

What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip?

“More of the static effect maybe.”

Focus Group ; Member 2What do you like about the video?

“I like how you have interpreted the lyrics and matched the video to them, such as the rewind clip, I thought that was very well done.”

What do you think needs improving?

“I think that the clip at the train station showing all of the people should have the effect added onto it as I feel it looks slightly out of place.”

Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well together?

“Yes they work really well together and help the video to fit with the style of music and help make it look like other music videos with that kind of music. ”

What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip?

“I think you should follow the pattern of interpreting the lyrics and matching them to the video. The lyric mentions bubblegum so you could include that somehow.”

Focus Group ; Member 3What do you like about the video?

“I thought it was very well done, it looks like an actual music video fitted to that music genre and the narrative is easy to follow and works well.”

What do you think needs improving?

“The scenery when the girl looks outside could be edited slightly to work in with the concept based parts of the video. Adding different effects that change the colour or possibly distort the image might look interesting.”

Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well together?

‘They work well together and help to separate the music video up and make it more interesting to watch. I like that the concept elements link in together and can easily be identified as being concept based footage as opposed to narrative footage.”

What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip?

“You could include another piece of footage from the train station and add to the concept based parts of the video, it would break the video up and add more of the concept elements.”

Analysing and Using the Responses

I was really glad that they all seemed to enjoy the music video and that they found the narrative easy to follow. I was also really glad that they liked how the visuals matched the audio as I was worried I might have overdone this

slightly.

I understood their ideas on improving it and definitely took them into consideration when re-editing the video into its final version. I added some more of the static effect, both in the section that was previously unfilmed

and also added the effect to the train station scene. However, I didn’t change any of the scenery clips as I wanted them to appear narrative based as I

wanted them to help emphasise the idea of her moving and didn’t want to distract from that by adding different effects to them.

I was happy that they thought the two styles worked well together and didn’t overpower each other. I’m pleased that they thought that by incorporating

the two styles the video was more interesting to watch and matched that of actual music videos within my specific genre.

I liked their ideas for the unfilmed section of the video and as can be seen from my final version I combined some of the ideas together. I liked the idea of staying true to the matching of the visuals and audio and so I incorporated the bubblegum by having the character blow a bubble with it and to work in

the idea of adding more of the static effect I added it to the clip.

Audience Feedback ; Advertising Poster

Once I had finished the first draft of my advertising poster I emailed it to my focus group and asked for their opinions on it.

They all commented on the paint dripping effect and how it worked with the paint that was seen covering her face. They seemed to like the colour scheme I chose. However, in my first draft the text at the top with the

ratings and the logos at the bottom were pink in colour and the majority of them seemed to find it to be too much pink and found that it took away

focus from the subject of the poster. Due to this I changed the colour of them to white as it linked in more so with the ‘Bullet’ text anyway and looked much more appealing as well as less distracting. The font used on the

website was originally all the same, however it was pointed out that it was very text heavily and appeared quite cluttered and so I changed some of the text, the website address and the ratings text, to a less stand out font which

I think looks much better and definitely makes it look less cluttered. One member suggested I add in images from the actual music video but I didn’t

think that this would work with what I had in mind. As the music video included concept based elements I wanted the ancillary texts to be heavily concept based to link them together and I thought that by adding images from the video that would draw away from this and also make the poster appear quite cluttered, which was a factor the other members didn’t like

about it beforehand.

Audience Feedback ; Digipak

Much like my advertising poster I showed the first draft of my digipak to my focus group in order to get their feedback on it and see the ways in which

they thought that I could improve it.

They all liked that the front cover was the same as the poster and felt that it really helped to link the two together and make it more understandable that

they were for the same product. Taking that into consideration they also liked the fact that the rest of the digipak was of a similar theme to the front

cover, they thought it tied in well and helped the digipak to relate to the other ancillary textl. For my first draft I used a different version of the text

panels, I used images as opposed to the screenshots and they all commented on the fact that it was difficult to read the texts and they didn’t

understand the change in the backgrounds when compared to the other panels. Due to this I changed to the screenshots and found them to be more successful and easier to read. One person suggested that I use a different colour to pink for the digipak but I wanted the digipak and the advertising

poster to be strongly linked and recognisable as advertising the same product so I didn’t want to change the colour as I thought that would go

against what I wanted and I also used the pink because it linked to my artist, whereas if I used a different colour I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to link it and

add a reasoning behind it in regards to means and intentions.

Audience Feedback ; Conclusion

In conclusion I’m very pleased with the focus group I ended up selecting. I feel that the people that I selected

from my target audience to help me with my media products really did help me and took it very seriously and did their best to give me useable feedback and help get

the media products to their fullest potential. I’m very happy with my final results and feel that the input that they gave me was very useful and detailed and some

were ideas that they gave me were ones that I wouldn’t have thought of myself and so I’m glad that I had them to help suggest ideas that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. I feel that selecting people of different ages, genders and music video style preferences helped to get the best

feedback as they helped to give me feedback from all different sub-areas within my genre that ultimately will

help it to appeal to a wider range within the genre.