Question 3 Evaluation

What have you learned from audience feedback?

IntroductionI decided to receive my audience feedback by creating a questionnaire . One of the strengths of using a questionnaire was that I could collect both quantitative and qualitative information from my audience. I asked a wide range of people who would watch my video to see what they liked and disliked about it. Although, a disadvantage of handing out a questionnaire is that participants may not always communicate their options fully or entirely truthfully due to the questionnaire's impersonal nature.

I received my information from my group of friends at school, and a few people I know who are older and younger than me. I also posted my questionnaire along with my video on the social networking site ‘Facebook’, in which I could receive my information quickly and thoroughly. I asked for all my answers to be back by a certain date so I could evaluate each question and the received data thoroughly.

My target audience is young girls aged 15-25. I decided not to hand out my questionnaire only to my target audience because I wanted to see whether my video could stretch to a wider, more mainstream audience. I asked males and females from aged 14-30. I therefore ended up receiving information from a total of 22 females and 14 males. Furthermore, the people I asked are likely to include mixed preferences of music genres, meaning that the feedback I receive isn’t just from my target audience who prefer pop music; therefore the feedback I received wasn’t entirely representative of my target audience.

In order to evaluate the quantitative data I put the responses into tables, keeping the responses of males, females and age group separately so that I can analyse and compare the results of each group. This will make it easy to see any popular trends between the groups.

My Questionnaire Please circle the appropriate: 1 = worst, 5 = best• • 1 . How much did you enjoy the video? 1 2 3 4 5 • • 2. How well do you think the camera work and editing held your attention?

1 2 3 4 5• • 3. How would you rate the quality of the mise-en-scene? 1 2 3 4 5• • 4. How well did you respond to the costume and styling? 1 2 3 4 5• • 5. How much do you think the visuals fitted with the lyrics? 1 2 3 4 5• • 6. To what extent do you think the lip-syncing was up to scratch? 1 2 3 4 5• • 7. To what extent does the video reflect the genre of the music? 1 2 3 4 5• • 8. Would you watch the video again? -yes- -maybe- -no-

Question 1How much did you enjoy the video?

These results could be better, although fortunately a majority of the answers are above 3. The overall mean for how much my audience enjoyed my video was 4. I also worked out the mean for each age group and each sex. I can clearly see form this table that the females enjoyed my video 0.8 more than the males. I think this is fairly accurate because I designed my video for a female audience, therefore I am quite please with these results. The age group means are fairly similar, this is not too surprising because a quote from Dr Oliver Sacks “humans are a musical species”, explains that the different age groups are bound to love music and the video because everyone is submissive towards it. I was expecting the older teenagers to respond in a better way towards my video than the younger because they are more likely to take it more seriously, and relate to it. Younger teenagers would prefer a video that was perhaps more upbeat. I find it interesting that the people within their mid 20s dislike the video much more than the people in their 30s. this may be because the older people are more likely to be a lot more generous in their opinions towards my video.

Question 2How well do you think the camera work

and editing held your attention?

These results are quite a lot lower than my first question. I think the reason for this is that I have not used very complex camera movement, or simply because the question was rather vague. Once again the males results are lower than the females, this may because they have a harsher view than the females, and perhaps more modest. If the males already marked a lower score for whether they enjoyed the video or not, they may already have a biased view on the other elements of the video. There is a slight increase in the means of the age group as the audience gets older. This may be because the younger audience don’t understand the significance of camera and editing work. From the answers to this question I have learnt that the shot types have to be more interesting and upbeat to appeal to a younger or male audience. Luckily, my target audience is for late teenage girls, and early 20s women, therefore I have fairly succeeded in this subject of my video.

Question 3How well would you rate the quality of the

mise-en-scene?

The mise-en-scene within my video concentrates on the shot types, lighting, editing, costume and props. I notice for the age groups, there is a dip in mean for the 16 and 17 year olds. Mid teenagers would typically be more interested in modern style videos, so they may not have liked the costuming in my video. Once again the females responded better overall for mise-en-scene because the video is targeted for them.

Many comments from the females of all ages says that the choice in costuming and locations particularly stand out the them and help them believe the story. Others describe the decisions I made as ‘creative’ and ‘imaginative’.

Question 4How well did you respond to costume and styling?

I received fairly positive feedback for the costume and styling of my video, this is very good for me because they were the main focus that would attract my female audience. I received a few 3s from my male audience and one 2, this may be because the costuming was fairly romantic and girly, therefore, I am not too surprised that I have lower marks from my male audience in this part of the video. There is once again a dip in results for the mid teenagers, this may be because they would prefer something more modern in terms of costuming. My older audience seems love the classic styling which I chose for my video, this may because they would appreciate it more.

I am very pleased with these results because this question was the main factor I was focusing on when creating my video. I wanted to gain attraction through the styling of my video as it would therefore be the theme in which my artist will be known for.

Question 5How much do you think the visuals fitted with the lyrics?

Once again I received very pleasing results for this part of the questionnaire. I needed good results for this because my video was primarily narrative based, therefore the visuals needs to fit almost perfectly with the lyrics. I would like to find out why some people thought this question was worthy of a 4 rather than a 5 as I personally thought my visuals fitted perfectly with the lyrics. This may be because not all the words were exactly literal to the lyrics.

Question 6 To what extent do you think the lip-synching

was up to scratch?

Lip-synching was very important in my music video because there was a lot of lines that Samantha said as a performance element in my video. Not all of it was up to scratch according to my feedback. I have learnt that I should spend more time making my lip-synching a lot better and clearer. I would do this by using a time-strech or moving my shots about to find better ones. There was a few times in my video where Samantha may had said the line slightly wrong, and therefore, due to time issues, I have had to use the shots and not had time to do it again. In the future I will plan my work and timing a lot better so I can afford to make little mistakes and correct them.

Question 7To what extent does the video reflect

the genre of the music?

I have learnt from this set of results that a majority of people think that I am presenting my artist in the right way within my video. The females seem to think that I am doing a better job of this than the males, I think this might be because I am trying to portray the pop genre, although in slightly less conventional ways. My video and song is in the pop genre because of the lyrics and simplicity of the music. I challenged this idea by having a more sensible and serious storyline within my video, whereas the pop genre would have more performance based views within the video.

Question 8Would you watch the video again?

Age Females Males

14 Y, y, y, m

16 y, y, m Y, m, n

17 y, y, m, m, y M, m, y

18 n, y, y, m, n, y, m, m,

25 m, y, y, y, m, y

30 y, y, y, y

Y = yes, n = no, m = maybe

Once again, I am not surprised by these results and the fact that there are a significant more ‘y’s in the female audience than the male audience. I think if I were to do my project again, I would try and stretch my target audience to a wider, mainstream audience so I would receive better results on a question like this. I originally planned to have a female target audience so I have achieved my goal, but I would like more positive feedback from a wider audience.

ConclusionIn summary, I have learnt some key thing about my music video form my audience feedback. For example I learnt that the strongest aspects are the editing and camera work. I also importantly found out that the music video was more popular among the female audience as I expected. This is successful to me because my target audience was young females. Although, I did not expect the male audience to respond as well as they did towards my video so I am generally very pleased with the results. I think I am particularly successful with my female audience because my artist and main character of the story is a woman, and typically portrays the man in a bad light. My purpose for this was to relate to my young, female audience so I create a sense of unity and team with women, and to form a relationship between my audience and my artist.

I originally thought that the camera work and editing would not be so important to the audience, as typically, it is not what viewers tend to concentrate on when watching a video. As the results to question 2, I see that this aspect of music videos is crucial to hold the audience’s attention. In the future I will make sure I make the camera and editing work as interesting as possible.

By using a questionnaire to collect my audience feedback, I have learnt that some viewers may have a biased view on my video. I think the people in their 30s are more likely to give me better reviews on my video because they would want me to do well. The younger audience are more likely to be honest towards my video because they are my peers, and therefore more critical towards me. I have taken this into account and therefore brought the older audience’s reposes lower, in order to create a more realistic outcome and opinion from the audience.

Another point that I found surprising was the way there was always a dip in results for the 16 and 17 year olds. I think this may be because they would not take my video seriously enough to appreciate it, unfortunately I set my target audience up to be females aged 15-25. I have found out that my video is more suitable for a slightly older audience, this is perhaps because of the classic styling and the storyline.

Overall, I am pleased with my results even when i have to change certain parts of my presentation of my project. I have learnt that my strengths in my video is the styling and location, and the lower points would be the lip-synching and the inability to relate to a wider audience.