What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Initial audience researchFor our feedback we decided on a target audience to aim our product. We used GRASS to help us outline our target audience.,

G - both male and female R- mainly of white ethnicity, but our product could really appeal to people of any raceA – 12- 21S- C1 to E ( lower middle class through to Subsidence)S – mainstreamers

We used demographic and psychographic profiling to help us to determine what audience our product would target.

From using the socio economic scale of demographic profiling we had worked out that our target would be grouped from C1 through to E, this includes: Lower middle class(skilled non manual eg. Sales assistants, shop floor advisors), Skilled working class (skilled manual eg. Electrician, plumber), Lower working class (semi skilled eg. Assembly line workers, cleaners), Subsidence( unskilled, pensioners and the unemployed)

Psychographic profiling assumes the audience to be complex and to have certain needs which must be gratified. We used Young and Rubicams crosss-cultural consumer characteristics which characterises people in terms of their own personal aspirations. The group we decided our audience belonged to was the mainstreamers; which is basically 40% of the market, which is the largest section of the market. This is a group that seeks security in conformity and ‘fitting in’, tending to go along with the masses.

Demographic and psychographic profiling

Maslows’ hierarchy of needsWe looked at Maslows’ hiearchy of needs which is his theory on audiences’ needs, which links in with the uses and gratifications theory of how audiences use media texts to fulfil their basic needs. The theory basically outlines how humans strive for ‘self actualisation’ to be unique from others and fulfil their own potential in life. There are physiological needs, safety and security needs, belonging needs and esteem needs. I think our media product successfully fulfils these needs, which important for any media text, if they want to reach their audience.

How did we set out to appeal to our audience?

We had used a variety of techniques when producing our product, in order to help our product appeal to our audience and visibly attr,acting.This included, green screen, split screen, a variety of different shots, colour grading and editing effects. These all helped to make our product visibly attractive and look like a professional video.

Colour grading and editing

To keep our video visually interesting and to keep it looking professional we used appropriate editing techniques in final cut to produce our final product. We used colour grading, which helped to give the video the retro look we wanted on the narrative, also the fact that somne of the narrative illustrates past tense events, the colour grading makes it easier for the audience to establish that these are events that occured in the past and can be seen as flashbacks. We also experimented with the pace in order to keep the visuals in correspondance with the beat of the music; speeding up parts as well as slowing down parts of the vide. Near the end of the video, we rewind time to the present tense of the narrative, this helps make the whole story in the narrative much more interesting and keeps the audience entertained.

ShotsIt was important we used a wide variety of different shots to keep our audience visually engaged on the music video. Shots like the close-up shots were particularly important in able for the lead singer to gain a connection with the audience. We had medium shots of the whole band, in able to establish them as a band and show them all together .We included low angle shots and high angle shots that kept the video visually interesting and constantly changing so that audience wouldn’t become bored.One of the high angle shots in particular of the fox on the park, works really well as we can tell this is a shot were the fox is upset and lonely and high angle shots work well at almost demeaning the subject. All in all this would make the video look much more professional.

ShotsClose up, Two shot

Close upOf lead singer

Long shot

Medium Shot of Whole band

Low angleshot

High Angle shot

Split screenTowards the end of the music video, we knew we needed to keep the audience engaged as they could get bored, we used split screen using a variety of shots, some split screens with close up or medium shots and a variety of angles, this would keep the audience entertained and again, increase the professional look to our video. The audience can watch whats going on on both sides of the screens and this looks visually interesting and appealing to the eye.

Green screen

Green screening was really important in our music video; with the performance shots we could really establish them as a band, especially the shots of the whole band with the logo in the background. Using green screen worked really successfully with our music video and definitely gave it more of a professional quality.

Audience testingBefore publishing the final edit of our music video we knew that audience testing would help to give us an insight into what our chosen audience did actually think of the video. We asked them questions related to the video. We videoed students in the studio and filmed their responses, the videos are on the audience testing of the evaluation.

Questions included: what aspects of the video made it unique or stand out to other music video?, we found out that the main aspect that they found unique was the ‘dancing fox’ which they thought gave the video a ‘fun and bubbly’ feel to it. This is something we had set out to do from deciding on the branding of our band and how we would reflect that through the video.

Another question: Do you think the product looks typical of a music video? And what aspects of it were most convincing? An answer we got to that the narrative worked really well and helped the video to look convincing. Another answer was that the main singer worked well, with accurate lip synching.

We also asked: Do you think the music video corresponds well with the music pace and genre?We were told that yes it did, what mainly helped was the shots of the instruments in time with the beat, which we knew would be important as for our band belonging to the indie-pop genre, performace with instruments was an important aspect.

With our ancilary task feedback we found that they thought using a theme (the mug shot theme) worked best and made it much more appealing and eye catching to look at, like it would grab your attention if you were to see it on a shelf.

We found the audience testing very successful and useful before the publishing of our music video. We were able to be sure that things that we had specifically done in our music video, like for instance the fox had worked well and in the way that we intended; we could be sure that our decisions in the production of our music video were good decisions and had the desired effect on the audience that we wanted them to. We asked if there any improvements that they personally thought could be made to the video and they replied that there wasn’t any improvements that they felt should have been made, which was a very pleasing answer.