Hannah learned several important lessons from receiving audience feedback on her music video and magazine advertisement projects. She found that regularly incorporating feedback helped her improve her work. While she took most suggestions, some went against her research and she didn't apply those. Most feedback was positive but some offered differing opinions. Overall, feedback helped make her final products appeal more to her target audience.

1. Evaluation Question Three:What have you learned from your audience feedback?Hannah Ram, Candidate No: 4730My target audience consists of both males and females aged 15-24

2. MUSIC VIDEO... Wordle word cloud of the target audience feedback that I received for the music video:

3. MUSIC VIDEO... Whilst editing the music video I constantly asked people for their feedback, so that I could improve the music video as I went along. After Anthony and I had edited about a third of the music video I uploaded it onto YouTube in order to get feedback from our target audience and I then posted the link onto my Facebook page so that my friends could give me their feedback on what we had so far. One of my friends Scarlett, who fits into the demographic of our identified potential target audience, commented on the initial minute or so of our music video and said that she thought that the lighting should be slightly darker for the narrative elements of our video because it was on a dark subject.

4. MUSIC VIDEO CONTINUED... We tried to take this on board when we were editing and thus, made the narrative shots at the beginning of the video a little bit darker. However, we were unable to make it significantly darker because when we tried to do this it pixelated the shots slightly and we didn’t want to compromise on the quality of the visuals. Thus, in order to take her comments on board what we decided to do was make the shots at the end of narrative brighter, as the female character becomes more hopeful, to contrast against the semi-dark lighting from the beginning of the narrative. We hoped that by doing this we would highlight the fact that compared to the end of the narrative the situation that the characters were in at the beginning of the narrative was negative, but that you can still have hope even in such a bad situation because the lighting wasn’t completely dark and therefore didn’t connotate hopelessness just despair. Therefore, although we didn’t do exactly what she suggested we found a compromise that worked best for the music video whilst taking the basics of what she had suggested on board.

5. MUSIC VIDEO CONTINUED... Example of the contrast between the dark and bright lighting:CU from the beginning of the video LS from the end of the videoThe majority of the feedback that we received, I am happy to say, was really positive and we didn’t get lower than an 8/10 when we asked our target audience for their feedback on our final music video. I think that this was because we took a lot of what people had suggested on board, whether it was something small like making a shot shorter or something larger like changing the lighting.

6. MUSIC VIDEO CONTINUED... However, there was some feedback that my group and I didn’t necessarily agree with and therefore, didn’t take on board. For example, one person said ‘if the band was in more locations I think it would be really good’.As a group we decided against re-filming the band in another location because we found that it would go against our research, as in most Indie music videos the performance is filmed in one location, rather than in a variety of different areas (e.g. the performance elements in Vampire Weekend’s music video for ‘Giving Up the Gun’ and in Razorlight’s music video for ‘I Can’t Stop This Feeling I’ve Got’ are filmed in one location). This taught me that just because a change has been suggested by your target audience you don’t have to apply their views to your final product, if it goes against you research.Overall, I think that one of the most important things that I have learned from my audience feedback is that you can please most of the people most of the time but not all of the people all of the time, as everyone has different opinions and different likes and dislikes. The feedback that I got for the final music video highlighted this as some people liked the slow cuts at the beginning more than the fast paced cuts at the end and some people liked it the other way around, but I think that by including the variety and by making sure that the cutting pace matched the tempo of the song we appealed to both types of people – the people that like the slow cutting rhythm and the people that like the faster cutting rhythm.

7. MUSIC VIDEO CONTINUED... By using the social networking website Facebook to get feedback it was easy to make sure that we were getting feedback from our target audience demographic, as we could check that the individuals giving us feedback were of the right age group.However, in some respects the feedback that we received could be classed as biased because all the people that I have on my Facebook page are people that I am friends with, so they are unlikely to be really horrible about what my group and I have produced.This is why I also uploaded the final music video onto YouTube, as YouTube has a degree of anonymity, that Facebook doesn’t, so people could be more honest and we could also reach a global audience. Essentially, all of the feedback that my group and I have received has been overwhelming positive or constructive criticism. This feedback has really helped my group and I improve our end product and has taught me many important lessons, such as how vital regular audience feedback is to producing a good media product.

8. MAGAZINE ADVERT... Wordle word cloud of the target audience feedback that I received for the magazine advert:

9. MAGAZINE ADVERT CONTINUED... As with the music video, the feedback that I received for the magazine advert was really positive. I uploaded the first draft of the advert onto Facebook to see what our target audience thought and many people commented on the fact that it looked ‘professional’ and that the colour scheme was ‘good’ and would ‘catch my eye’. Fortunately, many people also noticed that on the first draft the ‘Q’ was not quite centred amongst the stars, which was something that I had accidently missed, so I was then able to take their feedback on board and rectify this problem.final magazine advert

10. MAGAZINE ADVERT CONTINUED... After my initial draft I came up with another two possible drafts, but my group and I were divided as to which one we preferred. As we couldn’t decide we asked our target audience which one they preferred in order to guarantee that our final magazine advert would be the one that our target audience would find the most appealing. Essentially, my group’s potential target audience were really helpful and informative when I was constructing the magazine advertisement, as they helped me pick up on any mistakes that I had made and I think that ultimately their feedback was central to me being able to successfully produce a magazine advert that they found appealing. This is the straight edged magazine advert that had the band’s website on it. After asking our target audience we found that this was the one that they liked best.This is the torn edged magazine advert that didn’t have the band’s website details on it. However, our target audience preferred the other one because they felt that the straight edge went with the clean cut font and image of the band.