A-Level Media Coursework

1. QUESTIONTHREE
HannahWicks

2. Making my survey
■ I collected market research for my products through a website called 'surveyPlanet', this allowed me to design
my own questionnaires and send it to friends and family on the internet.This was the easiest way for people to
access my survey and quickest. I choose to design two separate surveys for my productions, therefore I would
not feel restricted to making the survey to long.Therefore I emailed two links to my surveys, when opening
upon my surveys I used the website to display a link to my music video, this allowed people to watch my music
video and thus allowed them be able to answer my survey to the best of the ability. I also displayed pictures of
my print productions for the same reasons. I chose to use my survey to ask both quantitative and qualitative
questions, I asked a total of twenty questions, in both I began by asking demographic questions such as 'How old
are you? and What gender are you?", this allowed me to identity the type of audience that responded best to my
productions based on their age and gender. I also decided to ask their music habits, such as how they listen to
music, whether that be online or through the means of CD’s or vinyl's. I also chose to decide questions that
would improve my skills for any further productions
■ Within my questions I chose the best way for my participants to answer would be through a scale, I gave them
the option to pick from 1 to 5, for example on one question; How likely would you be to likely to buy the Cd
based on the album cover alone?.This scale allowed the participants of my survey to not feel confined to either
yes or no. However if I had done it again I would have used a scale of unlikely, maybe, likely and definitely as this
goes with my wording of my question and it is easier to collect data from this. I asked this question however to
evaluate how effective at advertising Finns Doherty's album after all that is the purpose of a CD cover, it needs
to be professional and showcase the artists brand identity.

8. My findings
■ From analyzing my data, I am able to see that I had a well balanced gender survey, I can see this from the pie
chart that states 50% of answer were from women and 50% men.This gives a good indication of who responds
best to my productions yet is no biased towards one gender if I had more answer from one gender than the
other. Because of the nature of my own age 50% of the participants were of the age group of 15-25, although
this could be a particular strength as this is the exact target audience I am intending my productions to targeted
towards.Therefore it is helpful to have the opinions of this age group.
■ From my findings, I can see my particular strengths and weaknesses of my productions, I can see that my print
productions were effective through communicating my genre of music, all of the answers I received back from
the questions ‘ Is the genre of music communicated clearly through the print productions? If so, what genre is it”
said that they communicated that of the indie genre. Also, I can tell that I have been successful in creating a
professional print productions of high standards through asking the question ‘Do you think a high standard of
production has been achieved?’, 50% answered with a score of 5 indicating they strongly agreed, if I had done
this question again I would have designed a simple yes/no question as this would have been easier to interpret.
Improvements collected
from my survey
Editing
More flashbacks
included
Props
Shots in the park to be
replaced with more shots of
the lead by herself

9. My findings continued
■ I received a mixed result from one of my questions, I asked ‘Was the music video too long, too short or
correct length?”. 40% of my participants answered too shot, this tells me that if I was to create this
music video again that I would need to extend the length.When editing I found myself having to cut
down the song as it was originally too long and I felt that it would be boring if it was over three
minutes long. Especially because my target audience is relatively young, therefore anything longer
perhaps would not hold their attention as well. I can back this point up with another question from my
research, ‘did it hold your attention?’, all answers came back with ‘yes’.
■ If I was to do my market research again, I think I may look at finding a different survey creator, this is
because the one I used gives me anonymous results.Whilst this is helpful as it ensures I get the most
honest answers back, I am not able not break down my results and find patterns in the answers
through the demographics.This would have been helpful for me to understand more about my
audience, for example I could have analyzed that perhaps young males responded better to my print
productions but older female responded better to my music video.This information could have
helped me target my audience a more niche market.
■ It is clear to see from my survey that my print production was particular strength compared to my
music video, for example 66.6% said they would be more than likely to buy the album based on my
print production alone.This suggests that I have achieved a high standard of work and thus
accomplished a professional level also. However, my music video on the other hand I can see maybe a
weakness of my project as many participants could think of a part of the video I can improve, however
this is a helpful feedback for maybe possible future projects.

10. ■ In reference to Stuart Hall, the audience that watched/saw my productions could have
decoded the meanings a different way.This being that a producer, i.e. me, have encoded
their products with a specific and deliberate meaning, then the audience decodes these
meanings within away that is effected by their gender, class and nationality. However,
with this being taken into account I have received mostly positive results from my market
research which tells me that I have been successful in encoding my meanings for my
productions to such standard that everyone who answered my research survey has
decoded it in the way I intentionally meat them to.This was because I did not make my
music video for me, but rather for my audience with awareness of my target audience.
However, I was conscious to appeal to a wider audience, thus this can be seen through the
positive responses from my questionnaire, although it is towards mostly my specific
targeted age range, I still received positive results from an older age range.This proves
that although I am targeting a specific audience, my productions are still appealing to a
wider audience.

11. Did my productions target the right audience?
■ From the quantative questions in my survey for example age, gender, music preferences
reveled that most of the candidates that took part in my survey were those of my target
audience (16-24), therefore they were the ideal participants for my survey and will also be
the most helpful and valuable for my market research.Although, in saying this, it is also
interesting to see the results from participants as such that were not my target audience
as I can then see if my productions target a wider audience.This revealed to me that by
asking people above the age of 24 I can see that my productions are also successful in
targeting people that don’t necessarily listen to music in the most of conventional ways,
for example through streaming online.
■ I think I have targeted the correct audience through 90% of participants rating the music
video good or higher and 77.8% saying they would watch it again.This conveys that I have
reached a high level of work by 77.8% of the participants saying they would watch it again.

12. Feedback from teacher and friends
■ Through the entirety of the time I spent making my productions, I received many
helpful comments from my teacher and my peers.This enabled me to see how ideas
would be responded to by my target audience, because of this I was able to reject bad
ideas and bounce ideas off my teacher and peers.This was incredibly helpful as I was
able to brainstorm with people and gain extra feedback that I may have not received.
Teach feedback was the most helpful response of all as I was able to gain feedback
from an experienced academic that has seen many productions through teachingA-
Level Media studies for many years.

13. Conclusion
■ From my market research, I have learnt that my targeted audience have responded to
my productions overall and several particular areas, I learnt that my particular strength
in this project was my print productions with my audience finding little for me to
improve on this and my designs exciting. I also learnt that there were aspects for me to
improve upon in my music video, for example props and adding extra flashbacks
scenes as my audience responded well to these. However, I learnt that my themes
were obvious to my target audience through my productions and the participants of
my survey were able to create links between my productions.Therefore, overall I am
proud of my productions and believe I have constructed a successful brand identity
whilst targeting the appropriate audience, although I have learnt there are areas that if
I was to recreate this project there are aspects I could improve upon with the feedback
I received.