1. EVALUATION QUESTION 3
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM
DOING AUDIENCE RESEARCH?
KATE LANKESTER AND SOPHIA DIAPER
2. WHAT IS AUDIENCE RESEARCH?
Firstly, it is important to understand what audience research is and why we have to do this as part of our
music video.
Audience research is conducted on a specific audience to gather information about peoples attitudes,
knowledge and preferences towards a certain product. In this case we are obtaining feedback about our
final A2 music video. Research must be done before we submit our final product to ensure that our video
appeals to our target audience and so that the story / plot is understood. It gives us a better idea of what we
could change or add in to make our video the best it can be.
We conducted our
audience research in
the form of a
structured interview.
We put together some
questions and asked
our interviewees for
their thoughts and
opinions.
Here it is on our blog.
3. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT
AUDIENCE RESEARCH?
Me and Kate wanted our audience research to be conducted via a video
interview, we gathered 4 people from our sixth form because they fitted
our target audience of 16-25. After posting our rough cut across social
media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and our blogs we received a
range of constructive feedback both of which were positive and negative.
Below are the people we interviewed.
4. POSITIVE FEEDBACK
• ”the song is very fitting and the video correlates well”
• “you have used a range of different camera shots and angles”
• “the locations you have used fit well with the story and work together
well”
• “the song is great! I’ve never heard of it before”
• “I liked the filter it made it obvious it was a dream”
• “the concept and idea is good and deep meaning – well executed”
• “fog looks good, good use of the weather to express the low mood”
• “lots going on to keep me entertained”
5. CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK
• “you could try to use a more familiar song so that people know the lyrics
and can sing along”
• ”your footage is sometimes blurry and lacks quality”
• ”the shot length doesn’t match the tempo of the song”
• “to improve you should make the camera less shaky”
• “could be more clear that he fell asleep”
• “was a bit confused on the story line”
• “one character wasn’t enough to portray the story, you could have
added another character”
6. CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK REVIEW
Our constructive feedback we received was mainly based on the editing
and the camera shots, this shows that we could have been more organized
in terms of organising our filming schedule and getting the most help /
advice possible during editing. For example ensuring there was a tripod
available so that our shots turn out less shaky and therefore look more
professional. It would have been easy to borrow a tripod, and myself and
Kate are disappointed we didn’t consider this as an important factor whilst
filming.
In terms of editing, I have realised how important audience research is
because it allows you to gather different opinions on ways to improve
which we hadn’t thought of ourselves, for example someone had
suggested we used another character to ensure the narrative was
understood. This feedback would have helped answer the criticism we
received whereby we were advised to add in another character because
they felt the narrative was lacking detail.
Rather than seeing the feedback as negative, we used it to ensure that in
the future we could constructively act upon this to make each element the
best it could be.
7. POSITIVE FEEDBACK REVIEW
Fortunately for myself and Kate the majority of feedback was positive. This
was a huge relief as we were both worried people would not understand
the ’jist’ of the story and therefore would be confused whilst watching. We
received comments such as your video is ‘unique’, has ‘deep meaning’,
which shows the storyline can be understood and people appreciate the
message we have tried to convey. This is also a compliment towards
Charlie because it shows his acting was professional and well presented, it
also shows that people relate to the struggle he is feeling towards being
an outsider because of the emotion they felt after watching our video. It
was important that our audience understood our
Story because mental health is an important topic in todays society,
especially amongst our 18-25 age range, and it is essential people are
aware of ways to deal with it.
On the other hand, it was very difficult to find a song which was
appropriate for our concept and videos, we spent many lessons deciding
which song would be best and eventually we found a song recommended
to us by our media teacher which neither of us had heard before. We
chose the song because the lyrics were very fitting and it was very pleasing
to hear that our audience enjoyed the song despite it not being popular
8. After we had completed our final video it was shown to year 12 media classes and the other year 13 class. They
were asked to make 1 positive point and another constructive point, this was helpful because once everyone had
given their feedback we could see where we were going right and where we needed more work. In terms of the
editing process, it would have been useful if myself and Kate constantly asked for feedback so that each stage
could be developed by our target audience. We also screened our video to both year 13 classes, this was the most
useful feedback we received because they were all media minded so we were able to get more in depth detailed
feedback.
We were lucky using Charlie as he is an A level Drama student so he had much more knowledge in terms of acting.
We were fortunate that he was willing to give advice on how he could perform to the best of his ability, for example
whilst filming he would ask ‘can I do this’ or ‘it would be better if I was shown doing this..’ and this was helpful. It
also benefitted Charlie because he was able to practice the skills he has learnt in drama.
Audience research is an important factor to concluding your final media product, me and Kate spent a morning
gathering more footage in school so that the song would finish at the same time as the footage. We spent a
morning on Friday filming during an assembly which took a while because again these needed splitting and placing
in between each clips.
