What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To me audience was one of the most important factor when creating my music video as ultimately we are creating a media text, for an audience, thus I made sure that I got regular feedback thought the production of my video.

Firstly I established my genre and song choice and then thought about what who my target audience is. I then took inspiration from a wide range of media texts such as match.com adverts, Taylor Swifts 'Mine' music video, Rihanna's 'We Found Love' music video and various conventions from [500] Days Of Summer. I also created a poll asking what films and music my target audience preferred to insure that I was on the right track.

After making decisions about my music videos direction I explained my ideas and narrative to my target audience and this was their response. This gave me the 'all go' for my music video to take place and for me and Emma to start filming.



After creating a first draft of each of my ancillaries, I showed my peers the products and asked for their opinions as to which areas needed improving. From this, I found that the fonts needed to be bolder in order to stand out, but overall the feedback gave me confidence in my products. As you can see below I added a 'soft blur' and darkened the text on 'Wouldn't it be nice' to my audience could read it more clearly. 

Before

After

I also asked my peers about what they thought about my second rough cut and this was their response. From this exercise I understood that although my video was on track as it had a very positive response there were still a few tweaks need to make the overall product even more successful. For example - Cassie, aged 16 said: "The ending needs to be more definite, as it seems to trail off pointlessly. It would be a better ending if it faded out earlier on. Also, I don't understand the beach scene at the end!". Thus edited my video to appeal to her wants. 

Perviously we'd previously used a long zoom of the scrapbook, followed by a shot of the sea which faded to black), so we cut the ending earlier, blurring the scrapbook until it faded to black. This was a much more effective ending, as the closing of the book in itself brought the narrative to a definite end. This is demonstrated below: 

Before

After

I posted my video on Twitter and Facebook to get more audience feedback as I understand how important social networking influences media consumption as this is how one can create a 'buzz' about certain media product.

By sharing my end product enabled me to directly adress and target my audience for honest and instant feedback. I have now found out that my video appeals to both genders, however this contrats my initial thoughts about who my target audience are as perhaps it is wider than I originally thought.

Two members of my target audience 'favourited' my music video on youtube and I asked them why: 

James said that although he was not a fan of the music or romance genre he appreciated the video for its creativity and skill as the locations, shot choices and editing techniques were excellent. However quite excitingly James said he related to our quirky male protagonist well and liked that our music video didn't feature a classic 'hentch' alpha male.

Rachel also 'favourited' our video as she really enjoyed lots of aspects of the music video and let us know as she often uses Web 2.0 to watch music videos so she watched the video on her iPhone and commented on it using Facebook on her phone!