My response to the question 'What have you learnt from your audience feedback?'

1. What have you learnt
from your audience
feedback?

2. Research stages
In the research stage the main purpose of our audience feedback was to
actually discover who our audience were. This would ensure that any planning
going forward would be focused towards a specific group, making it more
likely that we create a successful product.
In our research we found that one good way of defining our
audience was through a method called LifeMatrix, which
organises people into different groups based on their
motivations – the most popular ones within our audience
can be seen on the left. We applied this to our questionnaire
and found that the largest section of our audience consider
themselves to be ‘high aspiration, low economic status’.
‘Digital, free spirited, creative young singles’ and
‘aspirational, fun seeking, active young person’ were
prominent.
This was helpful because it allowed us to develop on the
audience of ‘rap fans’ and gave us a more specific target to
hit with our final product. For example, the anti drinking
message we created in our video caters to those with high
aspirations.

3. Research stages
Other ways that we established our audience was through more traditional
methods such as age and the ABC1 C2DE method. Our questionnaire was targeted
towards members of our college and us such the main age range was 16-19.
We also found that rap fans are generally part of the ‘C2DE’ half of the method,
which is lower middle class to those who don’t work at all. However due to the
vagueness of this category we settled on using the LifeMatrix method as this gives
us an insight into what motivates an audience as opposed to their monetary
status.
These motivations are also easier to reach with our products than an idea such as
‘working class’. It gave us specific traits such as aspirational that we could address
in our texts. The other significant groups such as the ‘digital group’ also resulting
in us ensuring that social media links were included in our texts.

4. Research stages
Within our questionnaire, we also wanted to find out what our audience looks
for in media products as well as who they were. This would ensure that in the
planning stages we could work towards making our preferred reading (an idea
of Stuart Hall) as clear as possible.
One important question we asked was whether our
audience preferred music videos to have a message or
not. This question was inspired by the research we had
done into the genre which found that it doesn’t appear
to be essential, with theorists such as Lyotard
identifying the decline of a singular narrative in media
products.
We found that most of our audience wanted a video to have a message, or to incorporate a
message into an entertaining video. The least popular choice was no meaning at all. This
result arguably lead us to our song choice and the way that we constructed the video;
‘Swimming Pools’ allowed to us to have a clear message whilst remaining entertaining.
This also lead to the Next Steps analysis where I highlighted the idea of the golden flask
which made the final product.

5. Planning stages
Having established our audience, we continued to look for feedback from them in the
actual planning of our video. This was key in ensuring that we were creating a product
with a clear audience in mind. One way we did this was when it came to font choice.
Having found these fonts on DaFont.com we decided that we should get some feedback
in order to help pick the most suitable one. Looking at the graph, River Drive was the
most popular. However on this occasion we chose not to follow this feedback and this
was partially due to a mistake we made with the questionnaire. It was given to only
members of the ‘High Aspiration, Low Economic’ group and we felt the results didn’t
suit this group or the genre of rap as a whole. This was mirrored in one response which
said that River Drive had a ‘hipster’ feel to it which wasn’t what we were aiming for.
Therefore we decided to choose Nervous as the font for our magazine ad.

6. Planning stages
Another step we took in the planning stage was the creation of a preliminary
video. This would ensure that we understood what went into making a music video
and also give us another opportunity to get audience feedback and ensure we were
going in the right direction. We recreated the video for Roses by Outkast.
We decided that we wanted more quantitave data in
order to ensure that anything the audience wanted to
share with us about our video came through. Some of
the feedback given can be seen below:
“Brilliant, but it bugs me that it cuts out halfway through a word”
“The timing is good, the shots are good too”
“Brilliant video, good job guys”
With this feedback, we found that the general response to what we were doing and what we
were working towards was good. Elements such as the editing and shots were aspects that
were highlighted. Although retrospectively, we could have gained more from this chance for
feedback, as this didn’t follow up on ideas from previous questionnaires such as the
preferences for narrative nor did it address whether we were going in the right direction with
this video. Despite this, techniques such as cutting to the beat which we found to be
successful were continued in our final video.

7. Other ways we got feedback
Being in a class of media students, who are all young people and many of
whom have an interest in the genre that we are aiming to cater towards was
extremely helpful during the actual creation of our texts.
For example, when we found that our font questionnaire had some flaws in it,
asking other members of our class for their ideas helped us settle on a font
that suited the genre.
Our teachers were also a very helpful way for us to get feedback as they have
seen many other groups create similar products in the past so they
understand what elements can be successful.
An example of this is in our video; one of our teachers suggested a shot that
had been used in the past, where the camera tracked the face of our main
character, and we decided to include this in our video.

8. Feedback on the final product
Once the final products were completed, we sought feedback in order to judge the
success of our three texts. It also allowed us to judge the response to our text and
whether we got a ‘preferred’, ‘negotiated’ or ‘oppositional’ response (Hall).
We got a good amount of feedback on our final product as we showed the video and
ancillary tasks to all of Year 12 in assembly and provided them with a questionnaire to
fill out.
Learning from our previous mistake of not identifying an audience one of the questions
we asked was if the viewer was interested in rap music. This would give us an
understanding of if they are part of our desired audience.
Here we found that 27 of the 32 people asked had at
least some interest in rap so this gave us more
confidence in the answers to the questions.

9. Feedback on the final product
One question we asked that gave us an understanding of its response (Hall)
from the audience was how Brandon (the main character) ‘represented
drinking in excess’.
The preferred response we had for this video was an
anti drinking message however we also wanted to
create a fun looking video to make it more accessible
and also create a reflection on how drinking can often
look fun but in reality is dangerous when not done
responsibly.
Looking at these results, it is appears that for the most part we have created a preferred
response to our video. The vast majority of our audience picked up on the message we
wanted to give and I think that this could have been due to scenes where we showed how
his friends responded to his excessive drinking. Although some people did not pick up on
this message which could suggest a negotiated response. This may have been due to the
fact that we gave the video a fun feeling to watch through techniques such as cutting to the
beat, which we previously found created a visceral response.

10. Feedback on the final product
In order to get an idea of our product as a whole we also asked if the audience
felt that there was a good match between our main video and our other two
texts. This was important as it is a key factor in creating synergy between our
products, and also if we used convergence of old and new media effectively.
Here we can see that 25 of the 28
people who answered felt the print
texts matched the video. This showed
us we have done this effectively. I
think this is largely due to elements
such as the consistent colour scheme
throughout the texts and also the
icons that we included in all three
texts.

11. Feedback on the final product
Having established that the
audience for this questionnaire
suited the audience we had been
catering to, this question was an
essential way for us to judge
whether or not we had made a
product that fit the genre and it’s
audience or not.
It is clear to see that this is the case, the vast majority of our audience felt that
the video was an effective promotion for the product. This would suggest that we
did in fact meet the needs of our audience and that if this we released to a wider
audience it would be a successful campaign.
One thing that I would change with this question retrospectively would be to ask
not just if the video was an effective promotion, but whether the combination of
the three texts were effective instead. This would have allowed us to evaluate the
product as a whole.

12. Conclusion
Overall, along the way the audience feedback played a key role in shaping the
product that we created. This started with identifying the characteristics of
our audience, and developed along the way as we ensured that this was being
met by the work we were doing. In our evaluation of the product we found that
this was successful, in that our audience told us that the video was an
effective promotion.