Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback received following the completion of our A2 Media product has been extremely useful in understanding the successes and failures of the project and improving my practical skills as a result.

In order to gather balanced outside impressions of the final music video, I created an online questionnaire asking respondents to first view the video then respond with multiple choice and written answers to questions surrounding the final product. I then distributed the questionnaire amongst people of various genders and age groups in order to gain a comprehensive response from all demographics.  Although the video itself, like the music and artist it is for, is aimed at a younger audience, the universal response to the video ensured different perspectives and interpretations could be made of the video and as much constructive criticism and possible hidden successes could be discovered and fed back to me as possible.

I wrote the questionnaire to answer the biggest concerns and queries I had for how audiences responded to the video. The first question “For the most part, did you enjoy the music video?” was simply to gain a general consensus of whether the video was a success or not. As all respondents answered that they “Yes” enjoyed the video, it reaffirmed my worries of how well the finished product worked and gave me confidence in my ability to direct further projects in the future.

The second question “Did you feel the video was appropriate for the song's genre and style?” was important as it would demonstrate the success of the video as one of its main purposes – to work as a legitimate music video in the alternative pop genre and the song itself. All but one respondent agreed that the video was indeed appropriate for the genre and style of the song. As a result, the response validated my own belief in my ability to create music videos appropriate to genre and style.

The third question, unlike the first two, split my respondents in their feedback. Half felt the music video was unconventional whilst the other felt it was actually conventional when compared to music videos of the same genre. In brainstorming ideas and writing the video in pre-production, we had hoped to remain conventional in some aspects of production such as in camerawork and mise-en-scene in order to keep the professional production look of actual music videos in ours. However, just like professional music videos in the alternative genre, breaking conventions to include more contemporary ideas and issues such as the way we included a lesbian relationship and had a non-linear timeline is customary of the genre itself. It was interesting, therefore, to see people’s mixed responses as to how they saw the video in this respect and enlightened me to the strength of crossing conventional aspects of production with non-conventional aspects to create something both fitting of the genre but also modern and unique.

In order to create a video that was as engaging as possible, it was important to include characters in the narrative that could be relatable and thus have a much greater connection between the audience and the video’s narrative. To do this we chose the narrative based around the two young-adult girls that would be the majority demographic for Walk off the Earth as well as alternative pop music as a whole. We also chose to centre the story on relationship issues as this too is a popular theme with music videos and the age group we had aimed for. The results of the question show many people did relate at least somewhat to the girls and the narrative; however, this was not unanimous. The homosexual relationship coupled with the absence of any male characters may have alienated a large portion of watchers who are underrepresented in the video. Whilst I still feel the general ideas of love surviving hardship are still visible to all, upon reflection, a more inclusive video to the target audience would have been more effective making for a better final product and is now something I will consider more deeply in the pre-production stages of future projects.

I also wanted to see if the themes and ideas we hoped to communicate in the video during its inception like the struggle of the couple and the emphasis on love overcoming the difficulties of modern relationships was received by the audience. We felt these two main narrative ideas were important in stressing the song's meaning focusing on 'holding on' as well as wider conventional themes across many real media texts of the alternative genre. The results show all respondents having recognised these themes of love and relationship issues. In addition to these desired themes, other popular responses included reconciliation of the couple, memories and the general nature of homosexual relationships, all positive ideas that further the video's meaning and effectiveness as more people feel able to relate to the concepts within the video. It therefore taught me that the way audiences decode products such as the music video can deviate from the message you are trying to convey but is not necessarily a bad thing.

Equally, I felt it was important to recognise what worked and what didn't in regards to what the audience liked and disliked most about the video. Surprisingly, I received a very wide array of different aspects of the video that people enjoyed. Many people enjoyed the flashbacks and memories that portrayed the happier times of the relationship as an interesting narrative device in addition to others simply admiring the plot with the argument at the beginning being a particularly popular part of the video. This demonstrated to me that the more unique and less conventional decisions can have a more impressionable effect on audiences if done well and fittingly. This question also furthered the impact of the previous questions results, underlining that the inclusion of a homosexual relationship was not only prominently recognised but also especially enjoyed as a unique contemporary issue, again highlighting to me the benefits of implementing more niche ideas into my media projects.

As for what the audience particularly disliked, only minor issues were highlighted with personal taste influencing some answers. Minor complaints over camerawork and editing smoothness are certainly valid and could have been improved with more experience and possibly more professional equipment such as steadicam for moving shots and more advanced editing software for shot cropping in post. Numerous respondents did say the video's acting was somewhat unconvincing at times; however, without any budget for, or contacts with, professional actors, amateur individuals are all we could use and as a result, this seems to have come across in our video. Overall however, I feel these complaints were more of an issue with having no budget and only the media department's good but not professional level of equipment. On the other hand, these responses have taught me the significance of how much the deployment of professional actors and equipment could have on production quality.

Finally, the last questioned asked if audiences members were able to follow the plot the whole way through. 8/10 said they could while one of the respondents who had not said that they could were confused by the flashback towards the end. We were worried in post-production whether it would confuse people and tried to emphasise the filters to avoid this. Unfortunately, clearly some people were confused by it and so more focus on making narrative lines clearer when using a non-linear plot is certainly something that needs to be worked on and possibly could have been avoided by showing the video blind to people before ending the post-production stage.

Overall, the audience feedback has been extremely useful in evaluating the successes and failures of the finished music video and progressing my media skills for future projects as a result.