2. Throughout the making and developing of my products, I
constantly gained audience feedback in order to get an
outside opinion of my work. My audience consisted mainly
of my fellow classmates and teachers which was great
because they were aware of what I needed to be achieving.
However at the beginning of my course I was not taking on
board what people were suggesting to me due to the fact
that I was wrapped up in my own ideas and designs. I
started out with an actor that perhaps didn’t fit the
character in the song and was told this when I first started
to produce my tasks. Moreover because I had a plan, and
this actor was convenient and easy to meet up with to film,
I ignored these suggestions of a change of character and
learnt later to regret this idea. I later realised that the actor
I had chosen did not fit with the feel of the song and
decided to change the actor to someone with more of a
‘scruffy’ look. I learnt from this that audience feedback
was important and very relevant to what I was doing due
to the fact that I was supposed to be creating a music
video and ancillary tasks to please a target audience.

3. After this, I then took a lot of notice of the feedback I was
getting from people and tried my best to incorporate their
ideas into my work. When I was initially getting my ideas
together, we had a session in class where we shared our
thoughts on what storyline we were going for and what
ideas had come to mind from simply listening to the track.
I had come up with the ideas to include nightmare shots
and the slow, glum shots to suit the music and to almost
portray the unhappiness in someone's life. My classmates
agreed with my ideas and added that they would include a
story line including a troubled man who had lost his way in
life or lost the one he loves.

4. Their ideas inspired
me and it was good
to get ideas from
fresh ears and hear
what they would do
with the track. This
initial feedback
gathering
encouraged me to
gain more audience
feedback as others
may have ideas that
would work really
well in my video that
I had simply not
come up with.

5. I then continued with the tasks I had and carried on
producing ideas for my music video, digipack and
magazine advert. I did this until I got stuck and bored of
the ideas I had. This was when I realized that audience
feedback was what I needed to gain support and
appreciation of my ideas or to gain other ideas and
improvements to the ones I had already. I had an issue
with the clothing ideas I had for the actor and therefore
approached my peers for feedback on what they thought.
Alice said she saw the actor with ginger hair and wearing
no shoes. Emma, saw a bold character wearing a checked
shirt with the top button done up. I also got feedback from
my teacher who said that he thinks the character should
be 'messy and dirty' and wear plain, dark clothes.

6. All of these comments helped me
with my ideas and I then decided
that I preferred the ideas of my
character being ‘messy and dirty’
wearing boring and plain dark
clothes. I also got feedback from
my teacher about the photoshoot
that I had done purely to give me
confidence that what I was doing
was correct and he could see the
trail of ideas that I had been
getting. I was pleased to
acknowledge that he agreed with
the angles of the photos I had
taken and he also said that the
poses I had put my actor in also
connoted the correct message of
sadness and depression.

7. I then gained feedback on the song and artist names. I had
come up with ideas that I thought suited the song and
artist, however, I was struggling to narrow my decision
down to one choice. I got feedback from students that
were interested in alternative rock music as I thought they
would have more of an idea about what kind of names
come up in the genre. I didn’t want the names to be too
fancy or ‘pop’ as this wouldn’t display my artist in the
correct light. I approached my teacher once again as he
has experience in alternative rock and I also got feedback
from George and Georgie, two people who are familiar
with the genre of my track.

8. I then gained feedback on the song
and artist names. I had come up
with ideas that I thought suited the
song and artist, however, I was
struggling to narrow my decision
down to one choice. I got feedback
from students that were interested
in alternative rock music as I
thought they would have more of an
idea about what kind of names
come up in the genre. I didn’t want
the names to be too fancy or ‘pop’
as this wouldn’t display my artist in
the correct light. I approached my
teacher once again as he has
experience in alternative rock and I
also got feedback from George and
Georgie, two people who are
familiar with the genre of my track.

9. I showed them a list of the names I
had come up with and asked them to
decide which ones they thought went
best. It was evident that ‘bad dreams’
was the preferred name for the track
and ‘unconscious living’ was the
favourite for the name of the album.
Moreover none of the artist names
appealed to my audience and I
therefore researched ‘UK male names’
on google to give me some inspiration.
I liked the short name of ‘Dan Lowe’ that I had come up with
and this therefore changed to ‘Rob Young’ which my peers all
agreed with. I used ‘Unconscious Living’ for the album name
that has been suggested to me by my teacher and Georgie,
however I was not happy with ‘Bad Dreams’ as the track name
as it was too similar to the song.

10. I later found out that this was the actual name for the song
which also put me off. I wanted something different and
therefore discussed again with Georgie what she thought
of ‘The Bad in Me’. She liked this as it related to the song
as well as the album and artist name. It was good to be
able to discuss with her what name to use as she is
familiar with the genre and has a relevant opinion.
Georgie

11. I then got feedback from my classmates on the magazine advert. I
was able to produce a range of ideas, however I needed some fresh
eyes to help me distinguish the good designs and the ones that
were not as relevant. My classmates best liked the designs with the
character in the bottom left hand corner of the page. Therefore, I
showed them a page of these designs with different text colours
and also ones without the record label and ones with. I then asked
them which ones most appealed to them and Isaac and Emma both
said that they preferred the designs with the record label which
then encouraged me to produce more designs with this included. I
then came up with two designs and again approached classmates
for them to make a vote on which hone they liked best. I generally
like both designs and therefore this feedback was necessary for me
to be able to choose a final design. There was a vote on the two
final designs and there was a distinct favourite as one design got 6
votes and the other got only 1. I was happy with the design that
was the favourite and therefore continued with this as my final
magazine advert design.

13. There was a session again in
class where we were able to
show our ancillary tasks to our
classmates to get their opinions
on them. When I showed my
finished poster the feedback I
got was very positive and
encouraging: "I like the
continuity of the red with the
stars at the top and the record
label at the bottom, it works
well“ - Alice
"The space in the middle is
good, it demonstrates a rule of
thirds and constructs a heavy
feel“ - Emma
"I can see that it is alternative
rock“ - Isaac

14. I also got the same level of feedback for my digipack from
my classmates and friends who are interested in
alternative rock which was very helpful. I made a lot of
decisions for the digipack based on the ideas that I had
got from the audience of my magazine ad. This worked
really well as by this time, everyone was very focussed on
their work and had little time to view my ideas as I
developed them. I realized that feedback for the final
designs was what I needed as I found it difficult to make
final decisions on what ideas to use and what designs
should be used for the final product.

15. This audience feedback was also present through the
development of my music video. I commonly got my friends to
take a look at what I was doing and allowed them to comment
on what they thought would improve it. I think that audience
feedback is crucial due to the fact that I designed a music video
in order to please viewers and encourage them to watch and
buy my products. If I had not included this feedback, I would
have simply made my product to please myself and there may
not be any elements of the correct genre due to the fact that I
was not familiar with it. A final recording of my classmates was
made of them watching and commenting on my finished music
video. There were a lot of compliments on things they thought
worked really well and praised me for and there were also
points they made about what I could have done to make it
better. This was brilliant as it gave me a huge confidence boost
that my music video was decent enough for them to enjoy as
towards the end of producing it, I started to get bored and tired
of it.

16. To conclude, I learned a lot from my audience
feedback and the points I have made in my answer
demonstrate this.