What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When constructing our music video, it was imperative that our production was influenced by the opinions of others. With audience input, we could: change, adapt or elaborate upon features of our video which either had a positive or negative effect on the viewing positivity for the audience. There were a variety of techniques we used in approach to our audience feedback which enabled us to have direct access to comments, views and opinions of the audience in response to viewing our video. The significance of audience feedback is vital- it provides an insight to the way we have addressed our audience through our music video, and how this can be improved to refer to them more effectively. One of the techniques we used when obtaining audience feedback was devising a focus group; this enabled us to sit with a group of people who complied with the constraints of our target audience and discuss the pros and cons of our video giving us advice on how we could improve our music video. A focus group works like a test screening, which has been used by the film industries since the 1920s- it identifies if you have effectively identified, targeted and appealed to your audience to determine whether or not the video has been a success or failure. We handed all of the participants a questionnaire which helped to guide them in delivering constructive feedback to us. The questionnaire used useful questions which helped us to work upon specific features, below are the questions: Do you feel that the music video works well with the music itself? (grade 1-5) Perhaps an idea that is overlooked often within the industry is whether the concept of the video relates to the music itself. Therefore, this question enabled us to identify whether the visuals of our music video applied to the music we used, which we felt was a key concept we wanted to be successful in as our video had a narrative structure. The feedback we received upon this question was positive, as we averaged 4-5, which revealed we had grasped this idea of applying relevancy to the music. Do you feel that the music video targets its audience effectively? (grade 1-5) This was perhaps the most significant question asked within our focus groupultimately, if a music video doesnt meet the demands of the target audience, it will not be successful in appealing to the most critical audience there is who can access the video. The average score we achieved on this question was 4, which is fairly good, however this demonstrates to our team that we did not fulfil the full target audience requirement, as there was obviously room for improvement. I think we did not score 5 on this question is because our target audience was difficult to specify- as it is EuroPop, it does not have specific intentions which you

generally comply with, unlike genres such as Rock and Indie. I feel if we had slightly more inclusion of other countries, we may have scored higher- as although our video appeals to multiple European nations, it still displays the streets of England and specifically has a British appeal to it.

Who would you say is the audience for this music video? This question was designed to establish whether we had included the correct genre conventions, specific to our audience, which appeared obvious enough to the audience for them to be able to know who the video was designed for. This question proved effective in determining whether we had met the criteria to meet the needs of our desired target audience, and it proved positive too. In our responses, our focus group suggested that the target audience was young adults and that the video supports the football fan ethos that is created by the song. This was pleasing to hear, as this was our exact target audience; we had already prior to the focus group researched football fan as this is something we could appeal to, due to the European compatibility of the song.

What do you think is the most effective feature of this music video? Establishing the most effective features of our music video enabled us to establish what we should keep in the video, as it obviously worked well judging by the audiences response. The responses we got were particularly helpful, as they established key ideas we worked hard on to make an effective video. AS outlined by our participants, we created a fun video which conveyed a multicultural attitude with a carefree ideology combined with comments like a good reference from lyrics to visuals. These comments allowed us to ensure we had created the correct atmosphere from our video, reassuring us upon the features we had executed effectively.

Are there any features you think are not effective? This was perhaps the most significant question in the questionnaire, as these comments would mean these are components of the video we could work on and improve. As these were weaknesses in our video, it was imperative we accepted the constructive criticism; using it to redesign section so they appear more effective from an audience perspective. Some of the comments we received included issues with editing, as some people said The lip syncing is a little inaccurate and Some of the editing could be slightly slicker. With these issues highlighted, we began to address them by: going back to the editing programme,

evaluating the video, identifying editing issues and eradicating them for a much smoother watch. As you can see, the vitality of constructing a questionnaire is unquestionable with regards to establishing your addressability of your audience as well as obtaining the knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses. The quality of the feedback we received was highly important in improving our video- Due to the set-up of the focus group, we managed to retrieve specific opinions and views on our video that helped with the post-production of the video. If we had not used this focus group, I fear we may have missed issues with the video, thus resulting in a poorer final product.

We decided to use social media sites in order to obtain feedback from a much wider field- as we could connect with not only people we knew but also users of the website from all over the world. Social media has became a highly significant figure in the filming industry due to the ease of accessibility for the users as well as the feedback you can receive from numerous people. When using social media sites, the chance of advertisement is potentially there as well, as you can generally target your friends so they have easy access to viewing your content should you decide to share it. Sharing our video on Facebook was a good idea, as it allowed our friends to access our video content, and give their views or opinions on whether they liked it or not. Additionally Facebook has a Like button, which in internet social terms, generally means the participant has a positive view upon your content. My other team-member, Perry, linked the video from YouTube to Facebook asking for others opinions on the video, as you can see pictured left. The video subsequently gained eight likes, all from people who are within our target audience, which gave us an indication that our appeal was effective to the desired audience. The use of Facebook advertised our product effectively as well, as our views of the video significantly increased because of this- raising the popularity of it on websites where it was accessible. As you can also see below, we uploaded our video to YouTube, where also anyone in the world can access our video and give their own opinion on whether they have a positive or negative reception. Rather like Facebook, it has a thumbs up, thumbs down feature which enables people to tell you whether they

like the video or not. Fortunately, we have 3 thumbs up and no thumbs down, therefore, no one has voiced a negative opinion on our video.

Additionally, I wanted to gather the opinion of the producers of the song, Colin and Matt. I managed to contact the duo explaining how we have created a music video and their opinion would be great to hear. Fortunately, they replied with great enthusiasm as they were excited to see our interpretation of the song. This response to our work was most pleasing, as we could get a direct opinion from people we highly regarded with relation to our music video- therefore their positive input or issues with the video were great to hear about. Below is the email response I initially received from them:

After uploading the video to YouTube, we received a comment directly through YouTube from their channel, voicing their opinion on the video, here is evidence of their views:

Receiving feedback such as this reinforced belief in how hard we had worked, as we had managed to achieve recognition from our target audience as well as the song producerswe couldnt really ask for much more. The comment Its like you took the video out of our minds shows how we interpreted the correct target audience, applied techniques which addressed these members and then tailored our video to ensure full application of conventions and themes were present to have total approval. This outlines the sheer significance of audience feedbackwithout it, we would not have been able to identify what worked well and what could be improved. Receiving positive as well as negative feedback ensured we could produce a product that both we were happy with, as well as the audience.