Evaluation: Response to Audience Feedback

This is the visual audience profile that was created earlier on in this project to captivate and portray the interests of my audience in one large collage. This was done by using the questionnaire tool on the right-hand margin of the blog and sharing the link for people to answer.  This audience feedback gave a strong indication of what I was to be put into the music video to directly appeal to my audience: musically, visually, contextually and referentially. Some examples of this are the abstract,montage editing that was to include artistic and creative content: the psychedelic flares, vivid imagery, landscape shots, experimental slow-motion and split screening (or a combination of both!). 

Using the profile, I judged that as a young audience of 16-19 would use some sort of online networking such as Twitter, fa Facebook or Instagram. For this reason, I used these  media forms to share the music video to the public to view. This proved effective, as it gained a substantial amount of views considering small scale of the video in such a short period of time. 

Examples of hypothetical texts including the Spotify streaming service, as well as iTunes downloads can be seen in this Prezi taken from this post:

These are screen shots of my personal use of social networking to publicise my music video. The use of social networking not only conformed to a convention of media texts and their way of publication, yet also would directly target my target audience. This is due to the majority of my friends/followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram being the same age as me. Also, as a free method of publicising the music video, was completely, 100% efficient. 

The feedback received wasn't exactly technical or helpful, yet received good reception from the people who did decide to check it out. With this in mind, I thought that the best way to receive a relevant feedback from people who actually know what they are talking about, with media jargon in their vocabulary, thus could get feedback from a media class. I chose an AS class and used anonymous question sheets with the following questions to answer after viewing my music video:

- How does the video visually match the audio, 'Tessellate'?
- Of these (multiple choice) which type of narrative is this video: Abstract, Performance, Narrative, Animated or other (please state)?
- Strengths?
- Rooms for Improvement? 

I received 14 feedback sheets with a variety of positive and negative aspects about my music video, written in  more elaborate and evaluative way than simply 'good' or 'bad'. The questionnaire proved useful as the anonymity of these feedback sheets meant that the class wouldn't fear offending me, thus would be truthful in their feedback. 

The answers to the questionnaire varied, yet here are some responses:


- How does the video visually match the audio, 'Tessellate'?:

• "I think the way the image flickers to the beat is very effective and your overall imagery is fitting to the music, almost hypnotising. Very interesting"
• "it matches the audio as it reflects the sort of psychedelic atmosphere"
• "the cuts match the beat of the music. Scenes in the video make reference to the lyrics."
• "The approach emphasises the theme of tessellation so abstract shapes and patterns interlocking together and with the music"
• "the hypnotizing mood of the song matches the section with the bright coloured patterns"

- Of these (multiple choice) which type of narrative is this video: Abstract, Performance, Narrative, Animated or other (please state)?: 

All of the feedback sheets read "abstract" yet one feedback sheet included the addition of "narrative, animated"

- Strengths?:

• "I think the way you edited the clip was interesting and created lots of different effects. Also, the camera angles used throughout, and the cinematography subject like the clip where a rock is being thrown into water, created a very abstract, meaningful feel."
• "Editing effects of switching between each clip (faces). At the beginning, the tree effect looked really good. When one person was running and one was walking all in the same clip. Reversal of clip (smoke)"
•  "creates a sense of mood that evokes the track unusual and hypnotic use of graphics/patterns and shapes - juxtaposed with the faces. The idea of creating a visual collage of tessellating images on a video is intriguing."
• "Very well thought out. I loved the vibrant colours and great effects" 
• "Lots of nice lights works well. Matches the music. It is simple but not boring and the video is in sync with the beats of the music. The whole video has a good flow. The wild west shoot out is really good! Random, not sure how this matches the video but it works"

- Rooms for Improvement?:

• "maybe the part when the river goes on a tiny bit too much, I would cut that out maybe once"
• "It looked too simple in parts. I would encourage more enthusiasm, location-wise - setting was dull"
• "Too much going on at the same time. Maybe there doesn't need to be as much editing. It's just the pace of the whole thing which creates a good effect. There could be a small amount of editing, but more pace used throughout and would still come across as pleasing"
• "May have concentrated on emphasising the hypnotic mood - some ideas a bit cliched such as the reverse motion of smoke being exhaled. Not falling into the unified idea of 'tessellation'. A good video that doesn't quite follow through with its main concept, but a swift re-edit would solve this." 
• Many of the comments criticized to the loose narrative involved in the music video. 

Here is Alex talking about my music video. This response was completely spontaneous and he used a notepad to put any positive/negative points about the video. I left the room whilst he watched the video to avoid any influence on his notes as I wanted them to be his own honest opinion. 

                                                                                                                

Feedback is essential to see the flaws in your work that you are unable to see, especially when the feedback is from the target audience of my product. It is vital to consider the feedback as highlighting the products strong points as well as giving a basis for improvement, if there was time to edit the product or for future prospects if a similar project was to happen. 

From this feedback, I have concluded that my target audience have identified with the psychedelic/hypnotic visual style that I attempted to portray through moving coloured graphics. Coupled with this is the use of the 'strobing' effect and flickering images, a show of how editing has been successfully used to create an intentional visual collage. This is also shown of my ancillary texts, where feedback shows that the hypnotic visuals and the geometric patterns that have been followed through to the digipak and album cover. Additionally, the audience have appreciated that the video has been rhythmically edited, a careful procedure that took extra fragility with clips and placement of the footage. It is apparent that the audience have appreciated the prominence of editing and its impact on the visual portrayal of the video.  

It is obvious that there is some content in the video that weakens it. As the constructor of this text, I am able to understand the meaning and reason for certain shots in certain places, which is actually an elaborate construct, yet in hindsight some of the audience may not understand this. For example, some of the feedback showed that the audience did not understand the inter textual reference to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. However, this was the basis of my video: to depict the active audience from those who were unable to relate to this reference and it's significance to the narrative of the video ('three guns and one goes off'). 

Criticism showed that there was no explicitly obvious narrative construct embedded within the video, yet some of the audience disagreed with this point. This again relates to the previous point about an audience who understands the context of the narrative and those who don't. This makes it clear to me that my target audience is more of a niche than expected, which is split in terms of who understands and can relate to the narrative and those who are unable to.