Final Music Video

Evaluation 4

Evaluation 3

Throughout my media project, audience feedback has been the basis of my work and has helped me a great deal when i am in need of improving my work in order for it to better appeal to the target audience.

The first piece of audience feedback we received was when we presented our pitch to our media class. We gained feedback through the use of a guided conversation, in which they wrote their thoughts and feelings down based upon a set of qualitative questions which we set out for them. Our audience feedback helped us to make a rather large valuable decision within our project, as we had first planned to film our music video on a beach setting. However with the help of our target audience we decided that this option was not a sensible one, due to a number of reasons including the distance. This helped us extremely as we were able to come up with a more feasible option of filming our video in the forest nearby.

Later on in the process we then gained some audience feedback on the rough cut of our music video. We asked a group which we felt fitted our target audience to watch our rough cut, and provide us with information on what aspects of the video they felt were good, and which they felt needed improvement. From the audience feedback, once again we gained valuable ideas as they pointed out that the performance element of our video was not up to a professional standard and found that the lip syncing was very off. Therefore from analysing our feedback we have been able to further improve our video for our final cut, by producing an improved performance element, which we are much happier with, and which our target audience also feel is much more geared towards our target grade and gives a much more professional image. 

When I started creating my print products I also gained a range of audience feedback. First off I ensured that my target audience played a key part within my creation of the print work by asking them which font and colour scheme they preferred. After taking their views into consideration I then went on to use their choice within my print work. This paid off as I then gained feedback for my final pieces of print work. They found that the products looked very professional, but needed a few adjustments in order to make it look professional and up to date.

How have the audience read the values expressed in your video?

The cultural studies approach states that there are three ways in which media texts can be interpreted, preferred, negotiated or oppositional. From the feedback we gained from the rough cut, I believe that our video has had a preferred reading. As they noticed that the video was aimed at teenagers due to the fact that we used people of a similar age to our target audience within our video. They also recognised that the brand of our video was indie, due to the style of clothing in which our actors wore.

To ensure that our audience feedback gave us a clear insight into what our target audience truly thought we ensured that we used qualitative research throughout. This meant that we used open ended questions when interviewing our target audience in order for them to be able to elaborate on their initial thoughts and to allow them to give us feedback that would help us identify what we have done well with our project, and what aspects need to be improved on in order for us to reach a higher grade and to create a more professional, appealing package.

If I were asked to complete this project again I think I would ensure that I experimented widely with a different variety of techniques for my print work, in order to create something that totally appealed to the target audience by getting them more involved within my decision making process. I also would ensure that we had more time set out to film our music video, as we were quite rushed for time due to the fact that we had to re-film the performance element. 

Evaluation 2

Evaluation question 2 from bethfrancis

Evaluation 1

Where have your ideas come from? How were you inspired to do what you did?

As a group we decided to use ‘Cala Cola’ by The Miracles as we felt that this song gave a truly indie feel, and was typical of the range of songs that we listen to. After looking at music videos produced by bands that offered the same sound as The Miracles, such as Vampire Weekend, The Wombats and Noah and The Whale, we found that the beach was a common theme throughout the genre. So therefore we decided to plan our own music video around this convention. We brainstormed a number of ideas, and planned to document a road trip to the beach within our music video. However due to our location, we decided that the beach was not a feasible option as it was too far away. We therefore adapted idea and decided to keep the idea of a road trip but with a different location, camping in a forest. The idea of a forest came from Noah and The Whale’s video ‘First days Of Spring’. We felt that this idea would conform to the tastes of our target audience, as through research we identified that road trips were an interest for the genre. In order to document our brainstorming ideas, we compiled them all onto a prezi, in order to present to our fellow media students in order to gain some feedback on our ideas, which proved to be successful.

For my print work I researched a number of indie digipak’s and adverts in order to identify common connotations used throughout the genre that would link with my own project. Each piece of print work represented the style of the artist and reflected parts of their personality, which I tried to produce within mine also. I realised that each digipak/advert had strong links with the music video, which I also tried to incorporate within my print work. 

How did audience research direct your creativity?

 Throughout each stage of my project I have used audience feedback in order to identify possible improvements I can make to my work in order to make it appealing to the audience and to make a professional product. I have used the opinions of my target audience to improve the music video by firstly allowing them to identify the problems which we would face when filming at the beach, followed by then allowing them to identify that the performance element of our music video needed to be improved. Alongside this the target audience have helped me to decipher which fonts/colours schemes would be best suited to my print work. Throughout the whole project I have referred back to my mood boards and audience profile in order to ensure that my ideas for each stage would appeal to the target audience, and to ensure that the theme of my project was consistent in order to ensure a professional product was produced at the end.

How different are your products to ‘real’ media products?

Due to factors such as time and budget, our video was not able to look as professional as ‘real’ music videos as we did not have the money to cast professional actors, nor to use top of the range cameras and editing footage. However we were able to use an extensive range of camera angles and shots, lip syncing and editing in order to try and represent ‘real’ music videos to the best of our ability. For my print work budget and technology also restricted me on being able to produce a product that had the conventions of a ‘real’ media product. However I feel that our photo shoot portrayed a slight essence of professionalism, and that I was able to use ideas that I had identified through researching print work earlier on in project such as positioning of text, filters, copyright logos and so on in order to try and portray a typical convention of a media product. 

To what extent have you been ‘original’?

I believe that our video has a mixture of entropic and redundant elements. Within our genre a range of artists sometimes use very entropic videos that can often be complicated and not necessarily make much sense to the audience. This can be a risky option as unless the band is well established, it can often have a negative effect on the brand image. Therefore we decided to conform to the redundant theme that other artists in our genre have used by following a journey within our video, which is used in many music videos throughout many genres. Therefore by basing our video around a redundant plotline, we were able to use a few entropic features in order to differ ourselves from other music videos to make it interesting, but not so much that we were at risk of making the video to complicated or diverse for people to not enjoy. We wanted to create a simplistic theme that would appeal to the audience due to the fact that it connoted some of the activities in which they participated in. we have used entropy slightly within our music video as despite the fact that a journey very few videos have documented a road trip. The use of entropic settings such as within the car, the petrol station and picking the actors up all make the video relatively different from others as they are not a general convention of music videos. This therefore makes our video different and from what we have gathered from our audience feedback, very successful. For the performance element of our video we tried to produce an entropic theme by performing within the settings of the road trip, which we show in our rough cut. However from our audience feedback we established that this was not appealing to the audience. In order to make our video more professional we decided to use redundant performance elements by having them in a performance setting with a blank canvas behind them.  

Digipak Feedback

In order to gain feedback for my digipak I asked my target audience one question: 'What aspects of my digipak are good/bad and are there any improvements that you feel I could add to my digipak in order to make it look more professional?' These are the answers that they gave me:

'that looks great, the colours and the font connote the indie genre well. However I think you need to add some elements such as the logo of the record label plus some copyright info, apart from that great work!'

'Everything works well together, like how you have chosen to use a white font as it makes it stand out extremely well. My only criticism is that you do not have a barcode on the back cover, which is shown on the majority of digipaks, and also you haven't got any copyright information.'

'really like the choice of photographs used, i think they show off the artists brilliantly and that the filter you have used gives a vintage feel to the pack. But as the others have said, you have not included any form of copyright information or barcode, which is what will make your work look more professional, you also need to add a website for the band as this is also a typical convention of a digipak.'

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