Evaluation –

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I wanted to test what impression my media products would make in a real world environment. I asked 3 members of the public to watch my video and look at both my ancillary texts and tell me what they thought of each product. I provided them with a questionnaire to answer the relevant questions.

Let’s start with feedback for my digipack. All of the feedback I received was very positive about my digipack. They felt it was eye catching and appealing to look at and would encourage the audience to look at the album if it were on a shelf in a music store. They felt the use of the band logo was very effective in identifying the artist of the album as a photo of the artists is not visible on the front page. Instead I have an image of the female actor from the narrative section of the music video. So clearly stating a motif to identify the band by was a good idea to know who the artist of the band is.

Another point one of the feedback forms stated was they like the overall theme that’s continues through the digipack and other products. The outside cover used more black and white elements to make the most important objects in the picture stand out. I also tried to follow the feel of the narrative scene on the outside, with the use of my narrative artist and wooded scene, ...>

and followed the performance theme on the inside that featured many images of the band in the music video performance

setting. The feedback I told me that to use this method

where I try to make all products look similar in

nature and part of an overall product worked in

my favour. I didn’t receive any negative feedback on

my digipack so felt the design I used was very

successful.

I will now move onto the feedback for my website. In the questionnaire I asked the audience to comment on both the design and features of the website. By features I mean such things as the blog, photo gallery, music tracks and live twitter feeds etc. Again the overall responses to my website were very positive. Users felt the design of the website was very appealing a fit well with the rock genre due to the use of the colours red, white and black.

They also felt I used a suitable font style that gives the ‘rock’ look by having a bold font type that was very angular in shape and appeared to have certain sections of each letter missing. I tried to make all fonts used in my projects similar by ensuring they are all very bold and angular in appearance, and therefore keeping the design and feel of all 3 products consistent.

Users also felt they were lots of features that brought on more interaction between the band and the fans such as the online blog, live twitter feed and facebook profile links. These features let users see what the band was currently getting up to and gave the users a feeling of ‘knowing the band’ personally, which is what fans want when browsing a bands website.

Finally I moved onto the music video I created and asked users the comment on the range of shots used and the quality of them as well as what they thought to the storyline, costumes and mise-en-scene. I got mixed reviews about my music video overall and had some very good comments, but also some weaknesses to my video which I thought of improvements that I could do if I ever performed this project again. Viewers appeared to like the high range of shots I used, I tried to use a wide range of shots and include some more advanced motion shots such as the pan and zoom shots that I used often throughout my video.

Viewers also liked the narrative to my music video as they thought it was engrossing and interesting to watch. I hoped to have this reaction as I felt a full performance video would be too boring and viewers would lose interest so I was pleased to hear the narrative benefitted my music video. It also fit with the common conventions for rock music videos which says there is often both a narrative and performance section (which often consist of some type of stage performance with instruments). I was pleased to receive these good comments however not all comments were positive as user did have some bad points to say about my music video...

Some viewers said the shots used in the performance video were of a poorer quality to the ones used in the narrative section and brought the impression of the video down slightly. I realised this was because the setting used to film the scenes was indoors and had poor lighting, so the shots appeared dark and slightly fuzzy. I took into account what the viewers said and thought of a solution to the problem if I ever did this project again. I came up with the solution that I could make sure all locations were outside during daylight to get maximum lighting or could buy or rent some professional lighting equipment which I could place around the room outside the view of the camera frame. These should improve the lighting inside the room greatly and give the same crisp clear quality shots that I had with the narrative scenes in my music video.