Question Three
What have you learnt from audience feedback?
Throughout the process of creating our music video and ancillary tasks, we relied on audience feedback at every stage to ensure we were adhering to our audiences’ wants and likes. By keeping to certain conventions and changing other elements, we gathered information to ensure our products were working and representative of the pop genre. We also had to make sure our audience found them interesting and captivating as it was reliant on the audiences’ opinion whether our products would do well in the real world.
When retrieving audience feedback on our magazine advert, the main issue we faced was the lack of appraisal for the typography. Many people commented on the fact that the band name and album name were written in differing fonts, and also mentioned that the font for “Hair” wasn’t very feminine. To begin we didn’t agree with the audience view, as we felt the differing font was effective as the way we had written “HAIR” was supposed to be flowing like real hair. After trying the same font as the band name for the album name, we felt this did work better, as reviewing the old font, it appeared almost Japanese looking, which didn’t fit the genre or band image at all. The font we ended up using was still san serif, which meant it still appeared youthful and fun, but looked much more professional than before.
Many people also criticised the black outline that traced around the image of the girls. We agreed with this thinking, as it did appear unprofessional and messy. We removed this completely and opted for a more natural looking editing technique and layered the image straight onto the background as it was. This appeared more professional and gave a more finished-looking final product.
The first step towards our finished product was completing the magazine advert and digipak. We created multiple drafts of both, and gathered information on these drafts from our target audience (teenage females) to see what elements needed altering and what elements they liked and wanted us to keep. After analysing our audience feedback, it appeared clear that our digipak had good colours, which represented the pop genre and appealed to the audience. However on our final draft, people picked up that the back cover didn’t match the rest of the digipak, which upon revision we agreed with. We decided to remove the star pattern that was on the back, as this wasn’t seen anywhere else in our product, and replace them with random splatters of the same pattern that runs across the front cover and our magazine advert. This created better synergy of all of our products, as paint splatters can also be seen during the performance scenes of our music video. When completing a second round of audience feedback on the improved digipak design, we received much more positive and approving responses than we had previously. This indicated to us that we had achieved the desired effect of portraying the pop genre effectively, and appealing to and attracting our target audience. By creating stronger synergy, our audience were more able to identify our products and relate them to the band’s star image (Richard Dyer) of youthfulness. We also received some comments on the colour of the typography. Originally we used black for the band name and white for the album name. Considering most albums use white, as it stands out against the background, we understood why our audience felt the black title looked random and out of place. Black also appeared too harsh of a colour against the brightness of the rest of the product. Similarly to the magazine advert, we received comments about black outline around the images, expressing how unprofessional it made the image look. By changing this we feel we increased the appeal to our audience.
When finishing our music video draft, we were already aware of certain elements we wanted to change in order to improve the final product. Instead of going off of our own opinions, we showed our music video to our audience, to gather their views on the progress we had made thus far. Generally our audience agreed with our thinking of the elements that needed improving. Mainly, the ending needed to be refined so that all four girls spoke at the same time, this made it clearer to understand what was being said and also made them appear more united together. Other comments made included the repetition – of shots such as those at 0:37 being shown again at 1:36 – made it appear boring and uninteresting. In order to improve this, we reversed the second showing to change up the look of the video, and also keep with the pop genre by making it fun and youthful. This worked well as it made the overall finish more appealing to what the audience specified would make the video better. Another issue with shots like the party scene at 2:22 was the length they were shown without a cut. Many people commented on the fact it became boring to watch as it was one long scene. In order to appeal more to the audience and make the video more interesting, we changed this to reverse some of the scene, and added some cuts between certain parts. This broke up the scene more, and made the editing faster paced which fit with the rest of the music video and the pop genre. By doing this, the scene is much more interesting to watch. We also received some comments on the lack of energy in the performance scenes, and the fact that the lip syncing wasn’t as accurate as it should be. We decided to completely re-film all performance scenes to ensure everything was much more upbeat and fitting with the song. In the draft video, we had to improvise in some areas and introduce zooms to try and focus on the band members that were lip syncing more accurately. This didn’t work in our opinion, and was picked up by some audience members as well, which implied to us we needed to reshoot the performance, and do some differing shot distances, in order to show off lip syncing. We also took this as an opportunity to introduce some dance moves rather than having the girls stand still in a line. This created more energy and fit more with conventions of pop music as dance moves are often seen. Finally, the writing used in the music video didn’t fit at all. Everyone commented on the fact that the colour wasn’t correct and it brought down the professionalism of the video. We agreed with this and so tried holding signs with the writing on instead. By having the band members hold the signs, it related more to the video as the girls are the main focus of the story. This therefore ran more smoothly and looked more interesting to the audience. We also used the same font as we used on the digipak and magazine advert, which created a higher level of synergy and made the overall look more professional.
