Evaluation question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In terms of evaluating our media piece by looking at the feedback we received, we received lots of positive feedback and some constructive criticism that could be and was used to improve our video.
The first feedback we received was from a year 12 media class, to gain this feedback we showed them all our video and gave them a feedback sheet to fill in, the sheet included a mark out of 10, good point and bad points; the results were very pleasing!

This pie chart shows the marks that we were awarded by the students, in the blue is the proportion of students who gave us 9/10 and in the red is the proportion of students that gave us 10/10. The class we showed it to was a class of 16 and the actual number were, 13 gave us 10/10 and 3 gave us 9/10; so as is clearly evident the video was a great success!Another positive aspect of this form of feedback is that the feedback was gained of students who make up a very large part of the target market for music videos, proving that our video appealed greatly to its target market, once again confirming its success.

In addition to the quantitative data collected above, we also got some qualitative data from the feedback sheets; we asked the students to list 3 things they liked or thought were good about the music video, things that came up a lot included:

Good use of stop motion
· Impressive editing - in time with the music
· Lighting
· Use of colours
· Originality
· The roundabout scene
· Had a consistent flow
· Imaginative intro / ending

The fact that ‘Good use of stop motion’ and ‘Originality’ came up the most shows us that we understood the conventions of stop motion and developed them so that we put our own twist on the idea of stop motion and used it in conjunction with a loose narrative and in a music video.
The last part of the feedback sheet was asking the students to write 3 things that they thought would improve the video or make it a better viewing experience overall. Some of the constructive criticisms are listed below:

· Some photos were blurry
· Some photos had a glossy finish to them due to the flash on the camera
· The background could have been more interesting
· Becomes slightly repetitive

All of these comments are fair and have a completely valid point, not just because I myself agree with some of them, but because these students are our target audience so if they feel it would improve the video they are almost definitely right, as they are the people who will be watching them and who have seen many official music videos. For example, if we could film again we would look at filming or photographing in better day light so we would not have to use the flash and we would not get the flash visible on the glossy photo paper, we could use more imaginative or varied backgrounds for the photos to travel along and perhaps vary the techniques or possibly use more animation (Like in the chorus) to reduce the impact of repetitiveness.

Our second source of feedback was the social networking site ‘Facebook’ we uploaded our video onto Facebook in the hope of getting some feedback and it was hugely successful as we got loads of feedback, again from people who are bang on the same age group as the target audience for music video. Here are just some of the 44 comments we received:

· "That is actually amazing considering the resources and technology we have to work with, it wouldn't look out of place on MTV."
· "That is crazyyy, its profeshh. and a lot of effort."
· "What i like most is that it's photos of photos, which is really imaginative"
· "Awesome you all obviously put in the effort and got your reward"
· "Mentally good! on the feedback sheet I couldn't say anything bad about it! this belongs on MTV!"

Another big point that people made was that they thought we should send it off to different institutions in hope they would use it in one of their promotions or that it ‘Belongs on MTV’, this again reassured us that we had hit the target audience perfectly.

Right at the end of the video, you see the photos hanging off balloons and then being placed back into an envelope from the bed, this was not initially how our video ended, however, we decided that upon hearing a few comments from people within our target audience expressing the view that they thought the ending could ‘Be better, and not end in such as abrupt way, perhaps having more of a conclusion’ we decided to re-shoot this scene and feature the balloons and envelope again. I think it worked perfectly as the photos going back into the envelope refers back to the start and them coming out of the envelope and the balloons add a new and exciting idea into the blog. The initial people we received the constructive criticism off felt that ‘The ending has much more of a conclusion now, it wraps it up perfectly’ which once more shows that we have pleased and satisfied our target audience.

However by far the most pleasing piece of feedback we received was from Owl city’s Marketing Director and their Manager. We did not initially intend to send them our video, however, when two of my friends who have worked within the music industry for a long time saw it, they persuaded us that it was good enough to show them! Olivia Nunn Owl city’s marketing director said ‘This is absolutely amazing! I’m very impressed!’ she then added ‘The video has been sent to Adam (Owl City) and if I get some feedback I'll let you know. His manager loved it." We have not yet heard back from Adam, but the fact that we received this feedback from his manager directly and that he thought it was so good that he decided to send it to Adam himself reaffirms that it has done its job as there are very few people as trustworthy when it comes to feedback as the artist or the artists manager as it is there music, reputation and livelihood at stake if it is a bad media product. So the fact they praised it so highly clearly states that we understood the conventions of music video and carried them out in a stylish and imaginative manor ensuring that our video stood out from the crowd.