how did your primary research help with the production of your product? why was your audience feedback important? what was the response you got from audiences?
While we were beginning to look into ideas for our music video we wanted to collect feedback so that we would be creating ideas that would suit our target audience. Our chosen target audience were 16 to 24 year olds. This is because we felt that they are most likely to watch music videos and are 'digital natives' (prensky). This means that they will have grown up with technology and depend on it to give them entertainment. We also felt that the genre of alternative rock was listened to more by this age range and therefore we wanted the music video to be relatableÂ
We created a questionnaire that we would give to our friends around college. This questionnaire asked several things;
The first thing we asked was 'What genre of music do you prefer?'. We asked this question because we wanted to make sure that the music genre we were using was popular amongst our target audience. If not we would have had to have changed the song we were creating the music video for. Most of the people we asked from these surveys chose rock as their favourite genre.
We then asked people what type of music video they preferred. We gave them the option of 'narrative', performance or hybrid (mixture of both). Depending on what choice the majority picked we would have to make decision in the production process. If they had wanted a narrative music video we would have to hire actors but if they had wanted a performance video we would have to have talked to the band about when they were available.
The next question was 'do you feel the music video is important to the overall single?'. We felt that this question would help our production process because it would help us see how important people in our target audience found music videos. It highlighted whether there was a bond between the two. the majority circled yes. This means that we had to really reflect the bands ethos and the genre of music in the video. We could do this by including 'stereotypes' (Lippmann) this would help the audience to make quick connections with the images on screen and the genre of alternative rock. If we made these links it would show that we had included strong conventions making the music video appear more professional.
Another question that would help us in the production process of creating our music video was 'What do you want from a music video?'. This is where the audience could discuss what they wanted to see in the video. Whether they wanted to see a story being told or a clear link between the beat of the music and the editing. Many said that they wanted the music video to relate to the song. We took this advice on board and decided to look through the lyrics and create a story line from there. This meant that the video and song would be joined together --------------------------
Because we wanted to create an alternative rock video we wanted to ask our audience 'what is your favourite music video'. As we thought many of them would choose rock as their favourite genre, we guessed that they would leave a music video that was based on our chosen genre. We ourselves could then search these videos on YouTube (the platform our audience said they watched most music videos) and gain some inspiration. We made a note of the main conventions we viewed in the majority of the music videos. A lot of these were smoking and drinking and so we added these to our story boards. This convention portrays that the characters are 'cool'. Teenagers can be very easily influenced and so if they see this behaviour they may see it as 'exhilarating'.
Another way we gathered feedback was having a peer assessment with other members of the class. I sat down with two people who were creating their own different music videos and discussed my groups initial ideas. I showed them my storyboards which they said were clear and flowed smoothly to tell a story. I also showed them how I had organised my work so that the work load was easier to manage. Their feedback helped me because I could see where I still needed to improve. They suggested that I find more locations to film so that it was more interesting to the audience. Having diverse backgrounds would help create different atmospheres. For example we could use dark locations to create an eerie atmosphere which would be perfect to connote the danger when the lead male is beaten up.
I also put a survey on SurveyMonkey which would help us make decisions during the production process. I pasted the link on my Facebook so that it would reach an audience of mostly 16 to 24 year olds. Using social media meant that I got a more diverse range of answers. Just using our friends who we probably have a lot in common with would give us very similar answers whereas by posting the survey on a website where people can anonymously fill it in meant that we got a wider range of answers. the questions on this survey included similar ones to our printed survey. survey monkey also worked out the mathematics for us. we could see that an equal percentage of people preferred performance and hybrid videos. we also learnt that 67% of the people we surveyed watched music videos on YouTube. this told us that we should look for feedback by posting our video on YouTube.Â
