Sunday, 3 April 2011
Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Whilst publishing my music video, as seen in a previous post, I constructed a deep analysis into what my target audience felt about the creation as a whole and its different elements, portrayed in a Powerpoint presentation. These questionnaire results and the commencing analysis help to directly address the evaluating question so I shall post the presentation once more.
questionnaire results
Constructing this questionnaire was very valuable for me. Whilst I also posted my music video link onto Facebook, the above results are more reliable in the sense that the answers come from those who would be the target audience and main consumer of my product, rather than looking in from a more skeptical eye. There is also no form of bias in that the Facebook link was commented on by my own friends.
However, they still offer me a lot of valid opinions and watches, due to the fact that my video received 7 likes and 9 comments.
All of the comments had something positive to say about my music video and I was very happy with the responses. People liked the running theme of the hearts disappearing so therefore my televised bard theme was received well by my audience. They also noted that the narrative/storyline of the song and the visuals that went with this were very clear and effective, showing that they understand and appreciate the use of the lyric and visual link convention.
In relation to what improvements could be made one person pointed out that the actors were happy in the fight scene, unfortunate for the feeling but showing that fun was had during the filming as a plus point. There was also a comment about personally not liking the added glint in the eye of the female character, however they understood that this was a matter of personal preference and why I included it for establishing the more cheesy feel.
Whilst appearing on YouTube, my video has had some interaction. YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month, who make for an estimated 92 billion page views each month so I had to try and get my video out into the wider environment. It is difficult to get any kind of publicity on YouTube however so data can be slow to collate.
Since its upload on the 14th March, my video has received 156 views, 3 likes and 1 dislike. I am pleased with this figure due to the short amount of time my music video has been active. In terms of finding out who liked and disliked my video, it is difficult due to the mystery of what demographics are included yet it does offer me a unbiased view as they are not Facebook friends like my other link. Additionally, I do not know if my target audience viewed the video so there is no way to tell who disliked; this is why I created the questionnaire to target my intended audience and really get a feel of how they felt about my product.
Overall, reviews and audience feedback has been generally positive from all the parties that I have asked. In terms of my ancillary products, I asked for some kind of feedback from my peers and they noted the fact that the print publications linked back successfully to my music video and liked the idea of taking the hearts as the main theme rather than just the artist for my magazine advertisement. This was also highlighted in my target audience questionnaire as a feature they wanted to see so I am glad that this was recognised and appreciated by a wider audience.
My feedback has offered me some ideas for how to improve my products if I was to do this project again as highlighted by constructive criticism but I am generally pleased with responses received about my work.
questionnaire results
Constructing this questionnaire was very valuable for me. Whilst I also posted my music video link onto Facebook, the above results are more reliable in the sense that the answers come from those who would be the target audience and main consumer of my product, rather than looking in from a more skeptical eye. There is also no form of bias in that the Facebook link was commented on by my own friends.
However, they still offer me a lot of valid opinions and watches, due to the fact that my video received 7 likes and 9 comments.
All of the comments had something positive to say about my music video and I was very happy with the responses. People liked the running theme of the hearts disappearing so therefore my televised bard theme was received well by my audience. They also noted that the narrative/storyline of the song and the visuals that went with this were very clear and effective, showing that they understand and appreciate the use of the lyric and visual link convention.In relation to what improvements could be made one person pointed out that the actors were happy in the fight scene, unfortunate for the feeling but showing that fun was had during the filming as a plus point. There was also a comment about personally not liking the added glint in the eye of the female character, however they understood that this was a matter of personal preference and why I included it for establishing the more cheesy feel.
Whilst appearing on YouTube, my video has had some interaction. YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month, who make for an estimated 92 billion page views each month so I had to try and get my video out into the wider environment. It is difficult to get any kind of publicity on YouTube however so data can be slow to collate.
Since its upload on the 14th March, my video has received 156 views, 3 likes and 1 dislike. I am pleased with this figure due to the short amount of time my music video has been active. In terms of finding out who liked and disliked my video, it is difficult due to the mystery of what demographics are included yet it does offer me a unbiased view as they are not Facebook friends like my other link. Additionally, I do not know if my target audience viewed the video so there is no way to tell who disliked; this is why I created the questionnaire to target my intended audience and really get a feel of how they felt about my product.
Overall, reviews and audience feedback has been generally positive from all the parties that I have asked. In terms of my ancillary products, I asked for some kind of feedback from my peers and they noted the fact that the print publications linked back successfully to my music video and liked the idea of taking the hearts as the main theme rather than just the artist for my magazine advertisement. This was also highlighted in my target audience questionnaire as a feature they wanted to see so I am glad that this was recognised and appreciated by a wider audience.
My feedback has offered me some ideas for how to improve my products if I was to do this project again as highlighted by constructive criticism but I am generally pleased with responses received about my work.
Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In addition, to make certain conventions even clearer, I would have liked to have included a greater amount of lip syncing to match music videos much more. However, the actor that volunteered to appear did not know the song at all so it was difficult to get him to perform more than one line so I worked with this; being a conceptual clip rather than a performance one made this less of an issue.
As well as this, the lyrics tell of the 'sun sinking low in the sky.' Unfortunately, on the day of filming, the weather was not brilliant with a lot of cloud cover so this lyric could not be as successfully matched to visuals. I could not film on another day as I did not want to be an inconvenience to actors who had given up their time on this certain day so continued on regardless - ideally, if it were possible, a nice exotic sunny beach may be better but it can be said that the weather does match the mood of the main character in a pathetic fallacy type fashion so the impact isn't lost too much.
The following Powerpoint relates the evaluation question to my ancillary products.
evaluation question 1
Changes to my Music Video
Whilst I have deeply analysed changes that I have made from my plans to my ancillary tasks, I have not yet talked in detail about the improvements and choices that were considered and appplied in my actual music video.
For instance, I had in mind the fact that certain conventions had to be met that fit with Andrew Goodwin's theory in the typical occurrences that feature in music videos and I knew of the message that I wanted to convey within my own text. The first noticeable difference from my storyboard to my final music video is the inclusion of labelling and added effects such like the 'POW!', hearts and 'GRR!' Whilst editing, I was able to manipulate the Final Cut Pro editing software and Photoshop to incorporate these kinds of elements. The effect that I wished it to convey was to add to the definition of the genre in making the music video a little less serious and more cheesy like a typical pop music video where ideas are not so literal. The clear narrative that I followed shows a fight scene and whilst I wanted to stick closely to matching visuals with lyrics (a convention), I did not this to be the main focus of the song and the theme taken from unrequited love to bullying. I have stated that I wanted my music video to fit into the conceptual clip, televised bard type style with the main theme of love coming through but I wanted to find a happy medium between conveying genre, visuals mathing lyrics and the overarching style of music video and I hope that this does not defer too much from any such piece. It can also be said that adopting this cartoon type style brings the convention of intertextuality to the creation from the media form of comics.
Another addition that was not captured in my storyboard is a lot more shots of hearts washing away/disappearing. As I have developed and progressed through this project, I have wanted to focus on the theme and televised bard style more and more as I feel it is good to be able to categorise my music video effectively. Therefore, by showing many more shots of hearts disappearing than I originally planned, I have been able to connote the idea of the main character and artist's love being lost through the same principle of shot yet in different styles, diversifying the music video in general and offering a type of identity to carry through onto further ancillary products.
Location ideas have also diverged slightly. For instance, my storyboard shows a shot of the main character waking up in bed, shocked to the line 'I wake up scared to phone her.' Whilst ideally this shot fits better with the lyric, I wanted to base my music video in the one location so the beach could opitamise all the emotions that the character felt, in the isolated location where he finishes up alone - the main feeling of the song itself. Some may say that this weakens my music video slightly as most music videos show a variety of locations, however whilst this may be the case, I has difficulties in terms of transport and actors so wanted to get my filming done as soon as actors were avaliable as well as containing the location as far as the underlying messages were concerned.
The final feature that appears in my music video but not on my storyboard is the aspect of titles showing the name of the song and artist performing it at both the start and end of the sequence. I included this as it is a typical convention of music videos in general so offering a sense of realism in that when the audience consume my video, they can really see that it would fit in with distributors such as The Box, popular music channels playing real songs. I used the programme LiveType on the Mac computers to create this effect and I am glad that I looked to incorporate it as the simple idea is very effective for making my music video look more professional.
Overall, I feel that I have stuck to my storyboard quite well in terms of shot ideas and the general messages that I looked to portray, only making additions and changes that work to improve the concept and amplify certain ideas. It shows that I had a clear view of what I wanted to produce yet was not afraid to take on extra ideas and exaggerate present principles to clearly offer set meanings to the audience about my music video.
For instance, I had in mind the fact that certain conventions had to be met that fit with Andrew Goodwin's theory in the typical occurrences that feature in music videos and I knew of the message that I wanted to convey within my own text. The first noticeable difference from my storyboard to my final music video is the inclusion of labelling and added effects such like the 'POW!', hearts and 'GRR!' Whilst editing, I was able to manipulate the Final Cut Pro editing software and Photoshop to incorporate these kinds of elements. The effect that I wished it to convey was to add to the definition of the genre in making the music video a little less serious and more cheesy like a typical pop music video where ideas are not so literal. The clear narrative that I followed shows a fight scene and whilst I wanted to stick closely to matching visuals with lyrics (a convention), I did not this to be the main focus of the song and the theme taken from unrequited love to bullying. I have stated that I wanted my music video to fit into the conceptual clip, televised bard type style with the main theme of love coming through but I wanted to find a happy medium between conveying genre, visuals mathing lyrics and the overarching style of music video and I hope that this does not defer too much from any such piece. It can also be said that adopting this cartoon type style brings the convention of intertextuality to the creation from the media form of comics.
Another addition that was not captured in my storyboard is a lot more shots of hearts washing away/disappearing. As I have developed and progressed through this project, I have wanted to focus on the theme and televised bard style more and more as I feel it is good to be able to categorise my music video effectively. Therefore, by showing many more shots of hearts disappearing than I originally planned, I have been able to connote the idea of the main character and artist's love being lost through the same principle of shot yet in different styles, diversifying the music video in general and offering a type of identity to carry through onto further ancillary products.
Location ideas have also diverged slightly. For instance, my storyboard shows a shot of the main character waking up in bed, shocked to the line 'I wake up scared to phone her.' Whilst ideally this shot fits better with the lyric, I wanted to base my music video in the one location so the beach could opitamise all the emotions that the character felt, in the isolated location where he finishes up alone - the main feeling of the song itself. Some may say that this weakens my music video slightly as most music videos show a variety of locations, however whilst this may be the case, I has difficulties in terms of transport and actors so wanted to get my filming done as soon as actors were avaliable as well as containing the location as far as the underlying messages were concerned.
The final feature that appears in my music video but not on my storyboard is the aspect of titles showing the name of the song and artist performing it at both the start and end of the sequence. I included this as it is a typical convention of music videos in general so offering a sense of realism in that when the audience consume my video, they can really see that it would fit in with distributors such as The Box, popular music channels playing real songs. I used the programme LiveType on the Mac computers to create this effect and I am glad that I looked to incorporate it as the simple idea is very effective for making my music video look more professional.
Overall, I feel that I have stuck to my storyboard quite well in terms of shot ideas and the general messages that I looked to portray, only making additions and changes that work to improve the concept and amplify certain ideas. It shows that I had a clear view of what I wanted to produce yet was not afraid to take on extra ideas and exaggerate present principles to clearly offer set meanings to the audience about my music video.
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