The first pieces of feedback were taken following our pitch to our peers. They liked the name of our band -Perplexa - as they felt it was important to our target audience; 'to perplex' means 'to confuse', so when the target audience was late teens/early 20's, the name Perplexa highlights the confusion of the teenagers in the world, tying in with political matters and the idea that it is hard being a teenager - this was received well with our pitchees. They also approved of our challenging of the convention of flashbacks in our video. As normally flashbacks involve a darker, more abstract effect being applied to them through editing, the idea of changing this in our video to a brighter, lighter effect was met with positive feedback.
My teacher also liked the inspiration we had selected, such as Devlin's 'Community Outcast (for its simplicity, which we particularly tried to emulate) and Eminem's 'Not Afraid' (for the conveyance of its message)
After submitting our draft music video, the feedback received was positive, yet there was much to be improved on. Our teacher advised us to change a number of things, the majority of which we agreed would make a more effective, realistic music video.
We then hosted a 'premiere' of our music video to gain extra feedback from people in our age group who could be possible target audience. We gave each viewer a questionnaire to fill in concerning their music habits and their opinions on the video. A copy of the questionnaire is available below, as well as footage of our premiere, and our reaction to just some of the 45 questionnaires we gave out.
As you can see, our feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Our video didn't score a rating below 6 out of 10 (mostly 7's and 8's), and the themes we were trying to convey - loneliness in the 'Big City Prison' - were received effectively. Themes of 'emotion', 'loneliness' and 'sadness' were frequently identified by our audience on their questionnaire.
Our audience also accurately said our music video was either part of the Rap, Hip-Hop or R'n'B genres. It is unclear actually which genre it falls solely into (there is some overlap) so we were happy with the above 3 being chosen. It is arguable that our song falls into all 3 genres - the rap part obviously belonging to the rap genre, whilst the sung part is more R'n'B.
Much like what our teacher said, our audience commented on the high standard of Andy's lip syncing and rapping. Several viewers said this was their favourite part of the video; therefore it was good that we acted on our teachers feedback to include more of him.
The good thing which we found from conducting this research is that, whilst the audience we showed it to weren't all necessarily in our target audience (they had varying music tastes) everyone rated it highly. This pleased us as it meant we could 'reach out' and maybe gain some viewers not just from our target audience, but also from outside it. This universal appeal is something all artists try to do, so to feel that we achieved it made us very satisfied. Viewers were also asked which TV music channel they would expect to find our video on. Many replied with MTV and AKA, which pleased us because those channels feature quite well known songs whose target audience is very vast. If our video fits in with this in terms of popularity, we have not only achieved what we set out to do (appeal to a certain target audience) but much more; we have expanded our audience to one that is much bigger and more varied than we expected.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In order to answer this question, we hosted a premiere of our video to an audience of mine and Alex's form which consisted of males and females aged between 14-18 and so these all fell into our target audience age range. We then asked them to fill in a questionare on what they thought of the video and also what music they listen to themselves to get a view of whether or not they enjoyed our video even if it was not there kind of music as well as if they enjoyed it if it was there kind of music.
We had a variety of different responses in the questionares from many different music lovers, most who liked the video we made and some who didn't. In our video as shown above, we have read out all of the questionares comments with parts cut out as it became a 25 minute video altogether and so we have trimmed it down to 10 minutes.
Some postitive comments which were on the questionares for the question 'what is your favourite part and why?' included 'the rap bit because its catchy', 'Andy's rap', 'the rapping section','Andy Day rapping and dancing'. From all of these comments we have recieved we have leart that having Andy as a rapper worked very well within the video and that we made the right choice of having him as the artsist for this job as he fits the part very well. Also as we have comments on the editing like 'edited well to fit in with the beat' and 'editing works well', i am happy with as before we were told by the teacher that we should have more performance of the rapper and so we took this feedback in and then added more perfromance of the rapper. We were then told that the editing was spot on for the rapping part and so i have learnt that our editing skills are up to a good standard.
From the queston on the questionare which said 'what TV music channel would you expect to find this on?' most of the comments said 'MTV' or channel 'AKA' which were happy to hear as these are channels which this genre of music would be found on.
For the question 'what genre of music do you think the video is part of?' there were simlar answers which included 'Hip-Hop' as a main one which is what we hoped for as this is the genre of music the song is and so as the audience were able to identify this, i have learnt that the video we made went well together with the soundtrack as a whole. Also people had commented saying the genre was 'R&B', 'Rap'. The R&B response i can understand as there are elements of R&B in the video and some of these comments were from people who listen to things like alternative rock and also heavy metal themselves, and so they are not used to these kinds of songs and therfore picking out this genre i feel they get the idea that it falls into the Hip-Hop genre as R&B is close to some Hip-Hop and can be mistaken for it. Having said it is Rap as well, this category falls again, into the Hip-Hop genre and so these answers i have understood that they mean the same as Hip-Hop as rap is part of Hip-hop.
For the question 'What themes can you see in the video' we were given similar responses including 'Emotion, Saddness', 'Lonliness', 'being trapped', 'lonliness in a big place', 'Inner city life', and also 'depression'. All of these responses were exactly what we had wanted to show in the video, as our theme was about the artists and characters within the video being trapped in the city and to show their lonliness within the city, and these comments hit the nail right on the head and we have learnt from this feedbak that we were able to encorporate these themes within our video as the audience were able to identify them. The feeling of depression was something we didn't exactly mean to put across as it was just supposed to be the characters and artists being trapped, however it does fit into the video well as the artists and characters would be depressed from being trapped and lonlely and so this is something i am happy with having as a piece of feedback.
For the question 'what is your least favourite part of the video and why?' we had mixed responses from the audience which we were expecting there to be as the video im sure is not everyones cup of tea and these included things like 'when the person walks into the woman, it don't look real' and from this i have realised from watching back as well that maybe at this point in the video we could have edited it a bit better. Another comment was 'when they start rapping' and this person themselves listens to pop music and so it is not expected that they enjoy rap music and so i can understad why they wouldn't like this part of the video. There was a comment which said 'the picture is dark', however we wanted the picture to look dark which is why we edited it intot he video when editing the clips on Sony Vegas as it fits with the theme of being trapped, as you can relate darkness to being trapped. There was also a few people who commented saying 'the repetitiveness' but when it came to creating our stroyboard and video we were told by teachers and also other students who have done the same, that repeated shots are a good element in a music video a you dont want too much variety amongst the shots as it would not have good continuity.
All of the questionares answered all gave a rating out of 10. The lowest answeres we got were 6's and the highest we got was one 10. There were a few 7's, most were 8's and also a few of them were 9's and so i feel that the ratings averaged out to about an 8 as these were the most used ratings. From these ratings i have learnt that we were able to create a video to a good standard as a school project and that working as a team gained us good feedback as our ideas encorporated together were useful and effective when producing our video.
For my digipack and poster i recieved different types of feedback which enabled me to act upon it and create my ancillary products as best i could with my ideas.
For the poster i was happy with my potential end result, when a piece of feedback to add something more to it would increase its likabliltiy was to include a barcode which could be scanned by phones which would idealy take the audience to a website of the artist which i feel looked good on the poster and offered more for the audience to get from the poster as it is an advert for the album.
During the procedure of deciding on the text colours for my tracklist it was simply a black or white situation on what looked better and so i asked a few members of the class to decide which looked better and in the end i went with what most of them said which was white and this contrasted the front cover of the CD and i think made it look better as they did too.
A comment i recieved from a member of my target audience said 'the fonts are good for the cover because they go well with the background', this i agree with as i wanted to choose a font which i think would fit into the theme of the album and artists as a kind of Graffiti type of font witht he edges as a white spray paint effet to emphasise the blackness of the text and after reciveing this feedback i learnt that from the font i chose i was able to edit well to make it fit with the shot i used for the CD case as well the theme.
Overall from the feedback i recieved i have learnt that from the few crtisisms which i acted upon, i am able to change the conventions of the digipack/poster and make them better for the audiences pleasure. Also from the positive feedback i have learnt that i am able to use photoshop (for the digipack and poster) to make a good product which i am happy with.
