2. Target audience I asked Ricky, Dan & Cate because all three are part of my target audience for my music video. As my video is aimed at both sexes but focuses on the male gender, I thought it was more accurate to ask more males than females. This gives me both sexes’ opinions, making the feedback more accurate overall.
4. Can you tell which genre this music video belongs to? All three of my target audience members could all tell which genre our music video belonged to (Dan’s reply was cut off by accident, but the transcript read; “ermm.. Yeah rock... (how can you tell that?) ..The clothing of the band members and the fast editing” For Cate, it was the casting choices which allowed her to understand the video was part of this genre. She claimed that it was due to the guitarists’ long hair which made him look ‘indie – like’ which made her recognise the genre of the video, suggesting we were successful in casting our video accurately. Ricky and Dan both recognised the video as part of the Rock genre, whereas Cate recognised the video as part of the Indie genre; suggesting that our video was successful as part of the hybrid genre of Indie/Rock, as each audience member could tell it belongs to one of these genres.
5. Do you think the target audience of this video will like it? All three audience members agreed that the target audience of this video will like our music video. Ricky said that the use of teenage actors throughout our video will attract and address this audience of teenagers. Cate’s response interested mw however. She said that; “it’s very Indie.. It’s ‘go with the flow’ and that they’ll like it as its like everything else that they like” This was an interesting comment to hear, as it suggests our music video is redundant and like other videos of the same genre. This suggests that we failed (in Cate’s opinion at least) in being entropic as she believes our video is ‘like everything else that they like’, and suggestibly seen. Either way, each person I asked believed that the target audience would like our music video, whether it be because its ‘like other (videos) they like’ or because of the teenage actors, suggesting it was a success in attracting this audience.
6. What specifically do you think will address this audience? When being asked this question, Ricky believed that the teenage actors throughout the video will attract the target audience, as they will be teenagers also. Because of this, I believe me and my partners’ casting decisions were successful, as the scarecrow (acted by Will) had a way with connecting with the audience throughout the video. Dan believed that the costume of the hat and the choreography of the dancing attracted the target audience, as he is part of this audience and it attracted him. This suggests that the narrative of the scarecrow’s character was a success in order for the scarecrow to dance. This is a sigh of relief after the other set of feedback suggested that the audience didn’t understand the narrative much at all. Cate believed that the editing of the over layering of two images would attract the audience, which again was one of our main focuses when producing the video, making it a success.
7. What specifically do you think the audience will dislike about the video? The only decent response I got back from this question was from Cate, who suggested that the singer lacked enthusiasm when lip syncing to the song. After editing this video, me and my partner noticed the same thing but due to timing issues, we didn’t have enough time to reshoot. As a result of this, we tried using as little clips as we could of him lip syncing, and I believed the final product reflected this and in the end, lacked band performance. If I were to re-film this music video, I would use a real band and therefore; a real singer to make the lip syncing more believable.
8. Does the narrative make sense to you? Is it interesting? The feedback I received from these audience members was rather disappointing. Neither of them understood the narrative throughout the music video, with only Ricky understanding it with the new equilibrium suggested by the black tile of ‘what is reality?’. Dan and Cate however, even after this re-equilibrium, still did not understand the concept of the majority of the video being a dream. This suggests that these two too an Aberrant reading of my music video, as they had no clue whatsoever what was actually happening. At the end of the video, Ricky at least took a preferred reading of the text, as our intentions were to confuse the audience throughout, as this was one of our main themes throughout, only making sense at the end.
9. Narrative continued... Because of this, I decided to look at every answer I received about the narrative from the feedback I had collected, to get a better understanding of whether the narrative was totally lost by the target audience. This chart suggests that the majority of the target audience did indeed understand the narrative of the story, with 8 people answering ‘yes’ compared to 7 answering ‘no’. Despite this suggesting a success of the music video, the fact its so close suggests otherwise. Because of this, if I were to re-do this project, I would reconsider the narrative of the music video and make it less complex to ensure the audience understand what is going on.
10. ... The Cultural Capital theory (Pierre Bourdieu) cannot be used to explain this close gap between yes and no, as part of our target audience (as each person interviewed was) suggests that they would all watch music videos on a regular basis and therefore would be used to watching and judging music videos. However, this does support the reception theory, suggesting that the target audience were active in making their own decisions about the video, instead of just watching it and taking it at face value. This is evidenced throughout the Aberrant readings of the texts being shown to them.
11. Do you think the editing suited the song? From the feedback, it is clear that the target audience asked believed that the editing did suit the song, as Ricky commented on how it matched the ‘beats of the song’ which was our intention, so it was pleasant to see this was a success. Cate thought it was ‘cool’ and Dan also believed it suited the song and genre. Dan’s suggestion about making it ‘misty’ I believe, was interesting as thinking about it, it would have given the video a more ‘dreamy’ feel, and if I redid this project, I would definitely try this out to see if it worked.
12. What did you make of the ending? Both Ricky and Dan appeared to like the ending of the music video (the black tile with ‘what is reality?’ written on), as Ricky claimed that it ‘summed up the whole video’ which was our intentions (to question and suggest that it was a dream.) This reinforces their preferred reading of the text as they read it the way it was intended. Cate however, reinforced her aberrant reading here, as she claimed that she just ‘accepts music videos as ‘strange’ and moves on’. This also questions her activeness as an audience member, and suggests her as a passive member, only watching videos for entertainment purposes and not giving two thoughts about what’s actually happening.
13. Does the video look professionally produced? All three of the audience members which I asked all say that our music video looked professionally produced, suggesting our success in making a music video which could be shown on music channels such as Kerrang! And Scuzz (where our video was aimed to be shown).
14. Does it remind you of any other media texts? Ricky and Dan both claimed that our music video did not remind them of any other media texts already produced, suggesting our entropy and originality when creating the video. Cate however, did claim that the hand held camera of Will in the woods, reminded her of a Florence and the Machine video, which is also of the Rock genre, suggesting we were successful in sticking to genre conventions, as although this was unintentional, it reinforces the fact our video looked like a Rock video.
15. Do you have any other general comments about the video? Dan & Ricky both claimed that they liked our music video in this section; there were no dislikes, changes etc, suggesting we were successful in our task :D
16. conclusion To conclude, I believe we were successful in creating a music video for the Indie-Rock hybrid genre, as the majority of our feedback suggests that the target audience were able to recognise the genre of our video easily, suggesting we were, to some extent, redundant enough to use typical conventions of this genre in order to get it recognised, but entropic enough to the point only one person had seen something rather similar, and even then that was due to the camera movements, not the actual video itself. Overall, as with nearly anything, if I could redo this project I would change some specific details (like a less complex narrative), I am very pleased with the outcome of this video, reinforced by the fact our target audience liked it too
