Question 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience Research
When creating a media product one of the main features
of it is its ability to appeal to its target audience. As my
media product was going to have to appeal to an
audience within the Synthpop music genre I decided to
start by researching into the genre and finding out exactly
who its audience consisted of. This initial audience
research helped to shape my basic understanding for the
Synthpop audience and helped me to gain a better
understand on who to potentially use for my audience
feedback. From researching into the Synthpop genre I
hoped to be able to find out the demographic of my target
audience.
Audience Research
My most useful piece of research was found on
Lovestarrs official Facebook page. The page allowed me
to see statistics relating to their followers and some
details about them. From this piece of research I was able
to determine the main age range of their followers and in
turn of my target audience, which was 18-24 year olds.
Finding my Target Audience
With my target audiences age range in mind I created both a questionnaire on an
online survey website called SurveyMonkey and some physical questionnaires to
help narrow down my search and find some potential participants for my focus
group that would help within my project to give me feedback on my media
products. I featured the online questionnaire on my blog and sent it to a few
people from my college and I asked some people around Norwich to fill in the
physical questionnaire. By creating a questionnaire I was able to look into the
target age ranges musical preferences and find out which of them enjoyed the
Synthpop genre and would enjoy the type of music video I was creating, which
was mainly narrative with some more concept based elements.
Online Survey Results
I ended up receiving a total of 20 online and physical
responses to my questionnaire. However, in order to
make the analysis easier I transferred the physical
responses onto SurveyMonkey as the website had a
feature that created graphs from your responses and by
having all of my data online it all be in one place and
would minimise the risk of losing some responses. The
main aim of this questionnaire was to find people within
my target age range that were interested in the genre of
music that my music video would be classed under as
well as being helpful with ideas when it came to the
construction of my music video as they’d understand the
style within which it was classed under.
Online Survey Results
The first two questions were aimed to find out the participants actual age within the target range
and their gender. As the genre of music that my artist falls into is quite popular my target
audience can be quite wide, although I decided from the results of my survey that I should focus
more on teenagers and people within their early twenties. Due to this I was be able to pick
people within my survey who varied within the age range, such as a young teenager, a person
who was quite near the end of their teenage years and someone within their twenties, so that I
could get ideas and opinions from varying ages within the age range. In regards to gender It was
nearly an even amount of males to females, however there were 2 more females than males. I
felt that the music might appeal more to females though as it's sung by a female artist and so
getting more female responses might help to get more opinions that will be relevant to the style.
However, getting almost even results from both genders helped to make it easier to decide my
focus group as I was able to include people from each gender within it so get feedback from
both genders that ended up varying from the other.
The main questions that helped with the process were questions 3 and 6. The
third question I asked was designed to find out how likely the respondent would
be to liking the sort of style of music my band produced. When looking at
everybody's individual responses to see exactly who selected what genre I found
that 3 people had selected both pop and electronic, which was what I hoped to
find as the genre of my artist is Synthpop and so comes under both the pop and
electronic options that were listed within the survey. It was also one person from
each of the age ranges that I was interested in; a young teenager, a person who
was quite near the end of their teenage years and someone who was within their
twenties as well as one of them being a male. The sixth question I asked was
designed to find respondents who preferred the music video styles I was planning
to work within. It was noticeable that the same 3 who answered the third question
best also preferred the two styles I was planning to work within. By having them
vary either concept or narrative I was able to get their opinions on the different
sections and get a better overall view on how to change them.
Focus Groups Responses
These were the responses from the participants I decided
to pick to be my focus group.
Audience Feedback ; First Draft
After I had created the first draft of my music video I sent the
video to each of the three members of my focus group and
asked them to state what they liked about the video, what they
thought needed improving, if they thought the narrative and
concept elements worked well together and what ideas they
had for the unfilmed clip.
Due to the different ages, music video style preferences and
even possibly due to their gender I was expecting the
responses to be very varied. In a way I was right, each of them
enjoyed different elements of the video and thought the two
music video styles worked well together for different reasons.
However, I was surprised to find out that their thoughts on what
parts needed improving seemed to highlight the same sort of
things.
Focus Group ; Member 1
What do you like about the video?
“It’s cool that the video is fast and matches how
fast the music is going.”
What do you think needs improving?
“I think the static effect should be used more.”
Do you think the narrative and concept elements
of the video work well together?
“Yeah, you can follow the storyline and the static
effects work and look cool with it.”
What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip?
“More of the static effect maybe.”
Focus Group ; Member 2
What do you like about the video?
“I like how you have interpreted the lyrics and matched the video
to them, such as the rewind clip, I thought that was very well
done.”
What do you think needs improving?
“I think that the clip at the train station showing all of the people
should have the effect added onto it as I feel it looks slightly out
of place.”
Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video
work well together?
“Yes they work really well together and help the video to fit with
the style of music and help make it look like other music videos
with that kind of music. ”
What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip?
“I think you should follow the pattern of interpreting the lyrics and
matching them to the video. The lyric mentions bubblegum so
you could include that somehow.”
Focus Group ; Member 3
What do you like about the video?
“I thought it was very well done, it looks like an actual music video fitted to
that music genre and the narrative is easy to follow and works well.”
What do you think needs improving?
“The scenery when the girl looks outside could be edited slightly to work in
with the concept based parts of the video. Adding different effects that
change the colour or possibly distort the image might look interesting.”
Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well
together?
‘They work well together and help to separate the music video up and
make it more interesting to watch. I like that the concept elements link in
together and can easily be identified as being concept based footage as
opposed to narrative footage.”
What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip?
“You could include another piece of footage from the train station and add
to the concept based parts of the video, it would break the video up and
add more of the concept elements.”
Analysing and Using the Responses
I was really glad that they all seemed to enjoy the music video and that they found
the narrative easy to follow. I was also really glad that they liked how the visuals
matched the audio as I was worried I might have overdone this slightly.
I understood their ideas on improving it and definitely took them into consideration
when re-editing the video into its final version. I added some more of the static
effect, both in the section that was previously unfilmed and also added the effect
to the train station scene. However, I didn’t change any of the scenery clips as I
wanted them to appear narrative based as I wanted them to help emphasise the
idea of her moving and didn’t want to distract from that by adding different effects
to them.
I was happy that they thought the two styles worked well together and didn’t
overpower each other. I’m pleased that they thought that by incorporating the two
styles the video was more interesting to watch and matched that of actual music
videos within my specific genre.
I liked their ideas for the unfilmed section of the video and as can be seen from
my final version I combined some of the ideas together. I liked the idea of staying
true to the matching of the visuals and audio and so I incorporated the bubblegum
by having the character blow a bubble with it and to work in the idea of adding
more of the static effect I added it to the clip.
Audience Feedback ; Advertising Poster
Once I had finished the first draft of my advertising poster I emailed it to my focus
group and asked for their opinions on it.
They all commented on the paint dripping effect and how it worked with the paint that
was seen covering her face. They seemed to like the colour scheme I chose. However,
in my first draft the text at the top with the ratings and the logos at the bottom were pink
in colour and the majority of them seemed to find it to be too much pink and found that
it took away focus from the subject of the poster. Due to this I changed the colour of
them to white as it linked in more so with the ‘Bullet’ text anyway and looked much
more appealing as well as less distracting. The font used on the website was originally
all the same, however it was pointed out that it was very text heavily and appeared
quite cluttered and so I changed some of the text, the website address and the ratings
text, to a less stand out font which I think looks much better and definitely makes it look
less cluttered. One member suggested I add in images from the actual music video but
I didn’t think that this would work with what I had in mind. As the music video included
concept based elements I wanted the ancillary texts to be heavily concept based to link
them together and I thought that by adding images from the video that would draw
away from this and also make the poster appear quite cluttered, which was a factor the
other members didn’t like about it beforehand.
Audience Feedback ; Digipak
Much like my advertising poster I showed the first draft of my digipak to my focus group
in order to get their feedback on it and see the ways in which they thought that I could
improve it.
They all liked that the front cover was the same as the poster and felt that it really
helped to link the two together and make it more understandable that they were for the
same product. Taking that into consideration they also liked the fact that the rest of the
digipak was of a similar theme to the front cover, they thought it tied in well and helped
the digipak to relate to the other ancillary textl. For my first draft I used a different
version of the text panels, I used images as opposed to the screenshots and they all
commented on the fact that it was difficult to read the texts and they didn’t understand
the change in the backgrounds when compared to the other panels. Due to this I
changed to the screenshots and found them to be more successful and easier to read.
One person suggested that I use a different colour to pink for the digipak but I wanted
the digipak and the advertising poster to be strongly linked and recognisable as
advertising the same product so I didn’t want to change the colour as I thought that
would go against what I wanted and I also used the pink because it linked to my artist,
whereas if I used a different colour I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to link it and add a
reasoning behind it in regards to means and intentions.
Audience Feedback ; Conclusion
In conclusion I’m very pleased with the focus group I ended up
selecting. I feel that the people that I selected from my target
audience to help me with my media products really did help me
and took it very seriously and did their best to give me useable
feedback and help get the media products to their fullest
potential. I’m very happy with my final results and feel that the
input that they gave me was very useful and detailed and some
were ideas that they gave me were ones that I wouldn’t have
thought of myself and so I’m glad that I had them to help
suggest ideas that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. I feel
that selecting people of different ages, genders and music
video style preferences helped to get the best feedback as they
helped to give me feedback from all different sub-areas within
my genre that ultimately will help it to appeal to a wider range
within the genre.

Question 3

  • 1.
    Question 3 What haveyou learned from your audience feedback?
  • 2.
    Audience Research When creatinga media product one of the main features of it is its ability to appeal to its target audience. As my media product was going to have to appeal to an audience within the Synthpop music genre I decided to start by researching into the genre and finding out exactly who its audience consisted of. This initial audience research helped to shape my basic understanding for the Synthpop audience and helped me to gain a better understand on who to potentially use for my audience feedback. From researching into the Synthpop genre I hoped to be able to find out the demographic of my target audience.
  • 3.
    Audience Research My mostuseful piece of research was found on Lovestarrs official Facebook page. The page allowed me to see statistics relating to their followers and some details about them. From this piece of research I was able to determine the main age range of their followers and in turn of my target audience, which was 18-24 year olds.
  • 4.
    Finding my TargetAudience With my target audiences age range in mind I created both a questionnaire on an online survey website called SurveyMonkey and some physical questionnaires to help narrow down my search and find some potential participants for my focus group that would help within my project to give me feedback on my media products. I featured the online questionnaire on my blog and sent it to a few people from my college and I asked some people around Norwich to fill in the physical questionnaire. By creating a questionnaire I was able to look into the target age ranges musical preferences and find out which of them enjoyed the Synthpop genre and would enjoy the type of music video I was creating, which was mainly narrative with some more concept based elements.
  • 5.
    Online Survey Results Iended up receiving a total of 20 online and physical responses to my questionnaire. However, in order to make the analysis easier I transferred the physical responses onto SurveyMonkey as the website had a feature that created graphs from your responses and by having all of my data online it all be in one place and would minimise the risk of losing some responses. The main aim of this questionnaire was to find people within my target age range that were interested in the genre of music that my music video would be classed under as well as being helpful with ideas when it came to the construction of my music video as they’d understand the style within which it was classed under.
  • 6.
    Online Survey Results Thefirst two questions were aimed to find out the participants actual age within the target range and their gender. As the genre of music that my artist falls into is quite popular my target audience can be quite wide, although I decided from the results of my survey that I should focus more on teenagers and people within their early twenties. Due to this I was be able to pick people within my survey who varied within the age range, such as a young teenager, a person who was quite near the end of their teenage years and someone within their twenties, so that I could get ideas and opinions from varying ages within the age range. In regards to gender It was nearly an even amount of males to females, however there were 2 more females than males. I felt that the music might appeal more to females though as it's sung by a female artist and so getting more female responses might help to get more opinions that will be relevant to the style. However, getting almost even results from both genders helped to make it easier to decide my focus group as I was able to include people from each gender within it so get feedback from both genders that ended up varying from the other.
  • 7.
    The main questionsthat helped with the process were questions 3 and 6. The third question I asked was designed to find out how likely the respondent would be to liking the sort of style of music my band produced. When looking at everybody's individual responses to see exactly who selected what genre I found that 3 people had selected both pop and electronic, which was what I hoped to find as the genre of my artist is Synthpop and so comes under both the pop and electronic options that were listed within the survey. It was also one person from each of the age ranges that I was interested in; a young teenager, a person who was quite near the end of their teenage years and someone who was within their twenties as well as one of them being a male. The sixth question I asked was designed to find respondents who preferred the music video styles I was planning to work within. It was noticeable that the same 3 who answered the third question best also preferred the two styles I was planning to work within. By having them vary either concept or narrative I was able to get their opinions on the different sections and get a better overall view on how to change them.
  • 8.
    Focus Groups Responses Thesewere the responses from the participants I decided to pick to be my focus group.
  • 9.
    Audience Feedback ;First Draft After I had created the first draft of my music video I sent the video to each of the three members of my focus group and asked them to state what they liked about the video, what they thought needed improving, if they thought the narrative and concept elements worked well together and what ideas they had for the unfilmed clip. Due to the different ages, music video style preferences and even possibly due to their gender I was expecting the responses to be very varied. In a way I was right, each of them enjoyed different elements of the video and thought the two music video styles worked well together for different reasons. However, I was surprised to find out that their thoughts on what parts needed improving seemed to highlight the same sort of things.
  • 10.
    Focus Group ;Member 1 What do you like about the video? “It’s cool that the video is fast and matches how fast the music is going.” What do you think needs improving? “I think the static effect should be used more.” Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well together? “Yeah, you can follow the storyline and the static effects work and look cool with it.” What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip? “More of the static effect maybe.”
  • 11.
    Focus Group ;Member 2 What do you like about the video? “I like how you have interpreted the lyrics and matched the video to them, such as the rewind clip, I thought that was very well done.” What do you think needs improving? “I think that the clip at the train station showing all of the people should have the effect added onto it as I feel it looks slightly out of place.” Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well together? “Yes they work really well together and help the video to fit with the style of music and help make it look like other music videos with that kind of music. ” What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip? “I think you should follow the pattern of interpreting the lyrics and matching them to the video. The lyric mentions bubblegum so you could include that somehow.”
  • 12.
    Focus Group ;Member 3 What do you like about the video? “I thought it was very well done, it looks like an actual music video fitted to that music genre and the narrative is easy to follow and works well.” What do you think needs improving? “The scenery when the girl looks outside could be edited slightly to work in with the concept based parts of the video. Adding different effects that change the colour or possibly distort the image might look interesting.” Do you think the narrative and concept elements of the video work well together? ‘They work well together and help to separate the music video up and make it more interesting to watch. I like that the concept elements link in together and can easily be identified as being concept based footage as opposed to narrative footage.” What ideas do you have for the unfilmed clip? “You could include another piece of footage from the train station and add to the concept based parts of the video, it would break the video up and add more of the concept elements.”
  • 13.
    Analysing and Usingthe Responses I was really glad that they all seemed to enjoy the music video and that they found the narrative easy to follow. I was also really glad that they liked how the visuals matched the audio as I was worried I might have overdone this slightly. I understood their ideas on improving it and definitely took them into consideration when re-editing the video into its final version. I added some more of the static effect, both in the section that was previously unfilmed and also added the effect to the train station scene. However, I didn’t change any of the scenery clips as I wanted them to appear narrative based as I wanted them to help emphasise the idea of her moving and didn’t want to distract from that by adding different effects to them. I was happy that they thought the two styles worked well together and didn’t overpower each other. I’m pleased that they thought that by incorporating the two styles the video was more interesting to watch and matched that of actual music videos within my specific genre. I liked their ideas for the unfilmed section of the video and as can be seen from my final version I combined some of the ideas together. I liked the idea of staying true to the matching of the visuals and audio and so I incorporated the bubblegum by having the character blow a bubble with it and to work in the idea of adding more of the static effect I added it to the clip.
  • 14.
    Audience Feedback ;Advertising Poster Once I had finished the first draft of my advertising poster I emailed it to my focus group and asked for their opinions on it. They all commented on the paint dripping effect and how it worked with the paint that was seen covering her face. They seemed to like the colour scheme I chose. However, in my first draft the text at the top with the ratings and the logos at the bottom were pink in colour and the majority of them seemed to find it to be too much pink and found that it took away focus from the subject of the poster. Due to this I changed the colour of them to white as it linked in more so with the ‘Bullet’ text anyway and looked much more appealing as well as less distracting. The font used on the website was originally all the same, however it was pointed out that it was very text heavily and appeared quite cluttered and so I changed some of the text, the website address and the ratings text, to a less stand out font which I think looks much better and definitely makes it look less cluttered. One member suggested I add in images from the actual music video but I didn’t think that this would work with what I had in mind. As the music video included concept based elements I wanted the ancillary texts to be heavily concept based to link them together and I thought that by adding images from the video that would draw away from this and also make the poster appear quite cluttered, which was a factor the other members didn’t like about it beforehand.
  • 15.
    Audience Feedback ;Digipak Much like my advertising poster I showed the first draft of my digipak to my focus group in order to get their feedback on it and see the ways in which they thought that I could improve it. They all liked that the front cover was the same as the poster and felt that it really helped to link the two together and make it more understandable that they were for the same product. Taking that into consideration they also liked the fact that the rest of the digipak was of a similar theme to the front cover, they thought it tied in well and helped the digipak to relate to the other ancillary textl. For my first draft I used a different version of the text panels, I used images as opposed to the screenshots and they all commented on the fact that it was difficult to read the texts and they didn’t understand the change in the backgrounds when compared to the other panels. Due to this I changed to the screenshots and found them to be more successful and easier to read. One person suggested that I use a different colour to pink for the digipak but I wanted the digipak and the advertising poster to be strongly linked and recognisable as advertising the same product so I didn’t want to change the colour as I thought that would go against what I wanted and I also used the pink because it linked to my artist, whereas if I used a different colour I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to link it and add a reasoning behind it in regards to means and intentions.
  • 16.
    Audience Feedback ;Conclusion In conclusion I’m very pleased with the focus group I ended up selecting. I feel that the people that I selected from my target audience to help me with my media products really did help me and took it very seriously and did their best to give me useable feedback and help get the media products to their fullest potential. I’m very happy with my final results and feel that the input that they gave me was very useful and detailed and some were ideas that they gave me were ones that I wouldn’t have thought of myself and so I’m glad that I had them to help suggest ideas that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. I feel that selecting people of different ages, genders and music video style preferences helped to get the best feedback as they helped to give me feedback from all different sub-areas within my genre that ultimately will help it to appeal to a wider range within the genre.