Q3 WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED

FROM AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Audience feedback research is simply the answers that are
received from the respondents of a questionnaire. This is most
definitely a crucial element in preparation for deciding on an
conclusion for the final product. Throughout the project, there
was many questionnaires that had taken place such as pre/
post production questionnaires and focus groups. Without
audience feedback there wouldnt be any knowledge for my
group and I to create a music video that would satisfy our
chosen target audience which is of young people.

Pre- Production Questionnaire

At the beginning of the course, my group members and I had

decided that we would focus on the pop rock genre. As a group,
we all decided that we would take contribution to think of
potential questions that we would use for our pre-production
questionnaire.

My group had already had a rough idea to what age range we

would like to target our music video at however, before we
happened to finalise our decision on this, we wanted to find out
which age is more available to us more in order for us to gain
as much feedback as possible. We distributed our preproduction questionnaire though a website called Survey
Monkey which we sent to teachers and sixth formers in our
school. Our first question was based on age range. It appeared
that the majority of respondents were teenagers/ young adults
who are between the ages of 16-20. This is because we issued

the survey out to a heavy amount of young people which

created this large amount of responses from young people. As a
group we slightly went beyond the dominating age group from
our responses to the ages of 16-25. This put my group and I at
an advantage since we fall almost between the middle of these
ages therefore, we can also contribute our visual and musical
preferences to our finalised audience.

Our second question was

based on gender. It
appeared that most
respondents were female
which successfully
matched our rough idea of
including a female actress
in our music video. This
made us aware that once
we create our music video,
the female gender will be
the most predominant one to then sympathise for our chosen
actress. Although we had approximately 36% male
respondents, it also gave us the idea that there will be a fair
amount of male audiences for our music video who can relate
to the main lead singer of our group. Therefore, our music video
would be able to satisfy both genders of young people between
the ages of 16-25.

We was very unsure to what artist we should select a song

from. For question 3 we asked which artist would they prefer.
We listed a variety of pop rock artists which gave respondents
the opportunity to select the artist that is/ near to their
preference. As a result to this question, the groups that were
chosen the most frequently were Cold play and Artic Monkeys.
As a quick decision, it appears that Cold Play fits more with our
chosen genre of pop rock. Therefore, since there was a tie

break between the two bands it wouldnt really matter to the

audience to our choice.

As my group fall under the young people category, before we

discovered what record labels were we was rather in a pickle
about what each group varies in. Since at the beginning we
never knew, we was prepared/ aware that we wouldnt be given
a fair respond in the two listed record label companies. it
resulted that the majority of our respondents Dont Mind
which simply indicated that they are knowledgeable on what
record labels are since it doesnt appear to have an impact on
the variety of music that they listen too. I found that this was
the most challenging questions from our pre-production
questionnaire because it is based on something that our
audience doesnt naturally know about. Perhaps we could have
given examples to what types of artists are with which record
label to give them an insight of what they are. As a result for
our unpredictable decision, as a group we would decide on
what record label that we will securely choose once we have
done in depth research about them. Whichever record label
that we would choose wouldnt really matter to our viewers.

Our final question was based on video style. Our respondents

were not familiar with the different types of video styles such as
performance, concept and narrative. The purpose of this
question is to find out what our dominant respondents wanted
instead of following the typical conventions of the pop rock
genre. As part of our findings of the genre performance plays a
massive part in pop rock. Because we didnt gain any
knowledgeable responses it was down to us to decide which
was of course include the convention of performance and
include narrative to conform a hybrid of the type. This also was
a challenging question for our viewer. We should have given a
brief description to give a rough idea to what they would prefer
the most.

Overall, the results from our pre-production questionnaire was

in hands of 50% of our audience and 50% from my group. Even
though some of the results were to be relied on us, we are also
young people ourselves which wouldnt create a strong impact
on our final music video.

Post Production Feedback

Once we had finished creating our music video it was vital that
we should create a questionnaire alongside presenting our
music video. This questionnaire was created specifically to
make my group aware whether we had accomplished the
satisfaction of our target audience and whether the final
outcome was clear that is part of the pop rock genre. Since our
target audience is young people, we decided that we would
show our music video and hand out our paper questionnaire to
our media group and also invite outsiders of our music video
group. Not only did we do a hand out questionnaire, we had
also submitted our questions on a new online questionnaire
website called Survey Nuts. This website is new to myself and
group therefore it would be great to try out a new website for
the sense of experience. Both the paper hand out and online
version held the same questions. The purpose of the hand out
survey is to be able to hand out to people that we would see
physically and get them to answer the questions of the spot.
The online version is aimed at people who prefer digital factors.
One of our first questions was based on genre recognition. We
asked audience what genre that they thought our music video
is representing and what was the reason for their choice.
According from the results that we gathered from both sources
of our questionnaire the genre recognition was successful. Most
of our respondents mentioned that they thought it would be
pop rock. This is because the casual clothing worn and the
colourful elements within the music video. The second frequent

answer was rock since there was performance based elements

that was heavily eye catching to viewers. Overall, my group
and I were happy that we were able to accomplish genre
conventions of pop rock.
The second question of our questionnaire interlinks with the
first question by referencing the use of actors and location and
the genre that our respondents chose. How did the use of
actors and locations conform our chosen genre? Even
though some of our target audience doesnt listen to the pop
rock genre they were aware that the use of young people as
part of the actors of the music video made it specifically clear
to viewers of the genre due to the awareness that young
people tend to listen to genres that are pop/ rock related.
What features/scenes did you most identify with? It appears
that it was clearly noticeable of the music technique used of
narrative. All of our respondents managed to figure out the
narrative within the music video suggesting that it was shown
as love story and an element of negative representations of
young people of today.
The most important part of our questionnaire was asking about
possible improvements that could have been made it make it
our final outcome be a highly successful music video.
Predominantly, the quality of our music video could have been
improved by using a better quality camera to show quality
focus for the duration of the entire music video.
I personally feel that the paper version of our questionnaire
gained the best results because on paper, the respondents
were able to expand on their answers in depth whereas for the
online questionnaires, respondents were limited. Our
composed focus group links in with our post production
questionnaire that I will be talking about later on in this
evaluation.
Focus group
The focus group that we had arranged included the same
questions that were used for our post production questionnaire. I
personally thought that this was the best methods of gaining

feedback since it allowed

my group to see the
presence of our intended
target audience. This is
because we was able to
visualise the facial
reactions to our final music
video. It also differs from
other research methods such as paper/ online questionnaires
that we had previously used which were quantitative research.
In this case, the focus group feedback was actually qualitative
research since we gathered information from a small group of
people to find out in depth information/ results for my group to
consider. I think that we could have improved on the questions
that we asked by asking personal questions whether they have
seen the activities that we have shown within our music video
especially being a young person themselves since young
people tend to have different ideas that adults. Additionally, we
could have composed a focus group of elder people to find out
about what they have noticed and their personal opinions on
young people.

Uses of Gratification Theory

In reference to the uses and gratification theory, our audience
would be selected for personal identity. This is because in the
media they are perceived as a troublesome age group feared
by the public. Instantly, through our results, our audience had
addressed that our negative representations were to represent
young people. As a young person myself I have the knowledge
of young people. I know a range of bad and good teenagers.
Bad appears to be the most powerful in contrast to good.
Therefore, the perception of the good are hidden away from the
media because it is not powerful enough to dominate the
negative representations. In our music video at the beginning
we begin the video with negative representations of young
people with drugs and alcohol to make viewers engage and
continue with watching the video. The masks hide the identity
of young people. If my group and I had decided on representing
positive aspects of young people it would make it difficult for
viewers to identify the group. As oppose to this we have used

negative representations as a way of influencing young bad

people in visualising bad activities on the screen as a way of
putting them off not continuing the bad activities that they are
doing. In reference to the people within our focus group one of
the people mentioned that

In conclusion, I think that if we had the opportunity to gain

feedback from our chosen audience, I would change the types
of methods that we used to carry out research. For example our
very first part of research was our pre-production questionnaire.
I liked the way it was conducted but we could have done a
second pre-production questionnaire once we finalised the age
group that we was going for. As an extension I would like the
opportunity of gathering young people between ages 16-20 and
do a video recording of them with additional questions based
on aspects that we didnt touch base on such as location. This
would successfully enable my group and I to have a head start
on the appearance of our chosen group. Even though we are
young people ourselves it would be great to see what people
between the ages of 20-25 look like which are more mature
than us and probably hold different personalities that we have
never experienced with people of the same age as us.
Additionally, I have learned that audience feedback is a crucial
element in order to attract a specific target audience and also
in relation to my music video as a way of picking out elements
from audiences which they can relate to by including it into
visuals.