Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

While carrying out the research and planning for our music video, we conducted a focus group to see if the ideas that we had would appeal to our target audience. A 'focus group' was defined by Wimmer and Dominick as "a research strategy for understanding audience/ consumer attitudes and behaviour".We found this very helpful because it enabled us to create a video that would be appropriate for the target audience.

Feedback before we made the video:

We also created a Facebook group and added people who would be in our target audience. This allowed us to post working progress in the group and gain feedback to try and help us improve.

We realised that from the feedback that we gained, our target audience liked the half finished video that we uploaded.

When we finished the entire video, we uploaded it onto Facebook to gain feeback from the audience for the final video. We also uploaded the following questions into the group and asked the members to answer them:

1) Does the performance look convincing?
2) What genre of music would you say this video is aimed at?
3) What did you enjoy most about the video?
4) What could of been improved upon in the video?
5) Does it remind you of any other music videos/tv shows etc?

Although we received some feedback from Facebook, we felt that it would be more useful to create another focus group. By creating a focus group, the participants we able to elaborate more on their answers and overall give more detailed and appropriate responses compared to those received via 'Facebook'.

We set our focus group up with 4 people that would fit into our target audience. We played the final music video to them and asked them open questions. By doing this, the group were able to elaborate more and explain the answers that they were giving and why they were giving them. We also included another A2 media student within the group because we felt that she would know how to answer the questions that we asked in a useful way:

Ways in which the audience were affected:

From the audience research that I have carried out in reference to my final music video, I have come to the conclusion that the audience have been affected in a positive way. They seem to have enjoyed the video and have been able to relate to the 'party' scenes. I think that this was quite expected, as the video was meant to portray people similar to those who fall into the target audience. I think that the audience liked the quirky doll like scenes at the beginning of the video, but may have thought too much into them, rather than just taking them for what they were. This was a risk that we had to take when creating the entropic opening scenes of the video, as challenging forms and conventions can be risky and may cause problems with audience response. They might not like it, they might not understand it, they might not recognise it as belonging to the genre of music that we decided to use. For example, when we asked them if they liked these scenes within the video, they were slightly hesitant to reply and seemed slightly confused: "I like it yeah, I really like Cheung. Why is Sam a doll?" This could be seen to suggest that because these scenes contrasted so much with the predominately mainstream party scenes, the audience got slightly confused and did not understand it fully. Therefore, if we were to make changes to the video, we may have to consider whether or not it is appropriate to show the strong contrast between the entropic scenes at the beginning of the video and the redundant scenes at the party.

Cultural Capital:
The audience research also suggests that the focus group are using the cultural capital of 'teenagers' and 'music' to make sense of the text. It appears that the audience feel as though they can relate to the characters, and are used to seeing the sort of behaviour that was evident in the video on television shows such as 'Skins'. However, someone of a different generation may not use the same cultural capitals when watching the video and may therefore not be able to appreciate it or relate to it as much as those who fall directly into the target audience. This could be seen to suggest that for our video to be understood fully, it has a very specific target audience. 


Uses of the Text:
The audience also seem to be making use of text. For example, in the focus group we asked "Would you like to be friends with the people in the video"- they all said that they would, and all specifically mentioned 'Leah' (left). This could be interpreted to suggest that they use the text to aspire to be like the 'hedonistic party leader' character demonstrated within the video and could be using the video to try and shape their own identity.

Pleasures offered from the text:
From the feedback that we have gathered, it seems that the audience really liked the costumes and the make-up that was demonstrated within the video. They also seemed to enjoy some of the 'funny' shots incorporated within the video, such as the scene where Em gets 'twat' written on her head.

I also gained audience feedback for my print work. I aimed to find out if the audience thought that it was suitable, and whether or not they could see the link between it and the final music video:

From my audience research, I have concluded that the target audience liked the print work and enjoyed the video, but may also have read too far into the entropic undertones. This could, however, be seen to be a positive thing because the video has made the audience think without making them feel stupid and not enjoy the video. 


Overall, from my audience feedback, I have learnt that to improve my video I could have had more cast members at the party to make it look more 'wild'. If the party was more wild, the target audience could possibly use the text more and aspire to have a group of friends like the characters demonstrated in the video.