Overall evaluation of question three - 'What have you learned from your audience feedback?'

1. EVALUATION QUESTION THREE
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
David Leighton

2. AUDIENCE RESEARCH – FEEDBACK PRE-VIDEO
Initially from our audience research we had decided to research what it was people liked about Maroon
Five’s video’s in order to be able to replicate this in our own video and hopefully make it a more
satisfactory product for our viewers. The immediate impression from those we asked (both in and out of
our video ‘Audience Research’) was that people liked the quirky, and sometimes humorous style
Maroon Five used in their own videos, whilst they also liked the fact they retained the serious style and
how they portrayed love sometimes as well. We incorporated this into our video with some lighter
hearted parts of the stop motion such as the coffee cup trick and the spinning of the table, however
during the ‘band performance’ sections of our video’s the characters had a painful look on their face like
love had hurt them, making it seem a bit more heart-felt performance and keeping some elements of
that serious tone. Furthermore whilst producing our video we made sure we played up elements of
‘style icon’ as most people in our audience research had noted
or commented on ‘Adam’ (the lead singer) but did not seem to
who the other band members were, showing that Maroon Five
were incorporating elements of ‘style icon’ in their videos, so we
did also.

3. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK - ROUGH CUT
Our second main piece of audience feedback came when we showed our ‘rough cut’ to our peers during a group
‘video sharing’ session. We found that people were mostly impressed by our use of editing effects (such as the
typing and transitions) they found the camera angles all to be clear and it an easy to watch video. Mostly people
were a great deal impressed with how we incorporated stop motion into our video at such length and so effectively.
So effective, some people commented, it was that they did not even realize it was stop motion originally. However
some of the comments had criticism in them and these were as followed:
• The lip syncing at the end of the video is slightly out, this could be changed easily.
• Instead of using only one shot for the lip syncing perhaps incorporate some other shots of more than one
person during this period.
• Some of the ‘text added’ editing seems a little long and perhaps in places unnecessary.
We found these comments to mostly ring true, furthermore we also edited changes in our final cut to ensure most
of these problems were removed completely. These were the changes that we applied in our final video:
• The text intersection ‘No Trust’ we removed completely as it did seem rather unnecessary and served only to
slow the video down.
• The text intersection ‘Psychopath’ was sped up, whilst people had felt this was effective they also felt it slowed
the video down somewhat, however instead of removing it completely we simply sped it up considerably, this
people seemed to respond to quite positively.
• We used myself, as well as Bradley for the lip syncing performance at the breakdown part of the song, we
also added in a lot of transition between the two singers (Bradley and myself) in order to make it a bit more
fast paced and the switch between the two characters always occurred during a beat, meaning it fit in well
with the tempo of the song as well.
• The slightly out nature of the lip syncing was immediately corrected and as far as it stands is now very nearly
perfectly synced.

4. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – FINAL VIDEO
Our feedback (both vocally and online) has been
mostly quite positive. People have commented
that overall it is an effective video that they
enjoyed watching, Bradley and myself are quite
pleased with this and have only made a few minor
changes since this final cut.
We have however had some criticism, some recurrent comments about some of the less finely tuned
aspects of our video are that there is a little too much editing and it seems to slow down the video
somewhat and can, in places take the focus of the main feature (the stop motion), it seems that
despite removing some elements of the editing (as mentioned in ‘AUDIENCE FEEDBACK ROUGH
CUT’ people still feel perhaps there is a little much. However some people do prefer it. We received
one comment stating the stop motion seems to make little sense in parts, however this is because
the storyline is not entirely diegetic and the stop motion is suppose to represent the mundane nature
of daily life (in the earlier stop motion where the comment was mostly directed at) which means the
character does simple things that seem to have little or no relevance but are really just acts of
‘getting through the day’. Another good observation of criticism we have noticed is one
‘LPatterson93’ noting how during some of the ‘life performance’ shots, when under rapid movement
the quality of the camera quality degrades a little, unfortunately this was entirely due to the
equipment we were working with, a better camera or slower movements would solve this were we to
film again.

5. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – ANCILLARY PACK
DEVELOPMENT & FINALIZATION
Resulting in the fact that whilst creating the ancillary text for our product I was
back in the classroom where the technology for this task was most readily available
I received a lot of feedback and criticism both during the creation of my ancillary pack
and once it was finished.
The largest piece of feedback that I had asked for (and received) was when I
sent an informal questionnaire around the class asking whether the image (as shown bottom right)
should have been blurred (as shown top right) or not. The resulting impression was that whilst people
appreciated the effect given by the blurred version, they much preferred the un-blurred version. Due to
this I inevitably used the un-blurred version of the photo for our final digipack.
Furthermore constant advice and criticism from my peers made sure I kept self evaluating my product
making sure it fit in with the theme of the video. This resulted in most images being turned to back and
white, and even the coloured images having some of their colour toned down somewhat.

6. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK – ADVERTISEMENT
One criticism I received about my advertisement in my
ancillary texts was that the text did not seem to fit in
particularly with the text. I realised this myself however
found myself but found myself in quite the quandary.
The type of text I had used was the same colour as
used in our music video, and the same font as used in
the rest of our digipack. I felt this was important to
contain both elements as the advertisement was for a
‘life performance’, meaning it was both part of the
video, and part of the digipack that it essential l
advertised and I wanted to make sure consumers knew
what they were purchasing by almost giving them a
sample of it before they had even bought it. As A result
of the above reasons I left the advertisement text the
same and feel I made the correct decision in doing so.

7. SUMMARY OF AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
Overall, after extensive audience feedback with both those things we changed and those things we did
not I have learnt that evaluation is key, and would change later videos and make sure they did not have
the following problems:
• Make sure lip syncing is perfect from the start of the editing, as this makes it entirely easier to edit
later on.
• Make sure you ask peoples opinions (be it a questionnaire or just an informal polite question) and
take these into consideration when making decisions with the creation of your product(s) that affect
your audience.
• Make sure any editing contained does not slow down the video and is entirely relevant/effective
rather than just there for the sake of it.
• If the quality of the camera is as so it will degrade when movement is rapid either use a better
camera or use slower camera movement in order to reduce/remove this effect.
Overall I believe that despite some criticisms with the overall video, I believe it is an effective product
and I am happy with it, if not proud. Furthermore I believe that mostly our audience find/found it
enjoyable to watch.
David Leighton