Initial Target Audience Research
Becka and I distributed 20 surveys to people aged 12 - 30 to get a wide range of feedback on what young and older people want from a music video. Although we are mainly aiming our video at older teens/young adults, we were interested to see why people of other ages watch music videos and what they like to see. The feedback from our survey is on an 'infogram' presentation.
The results were:
- All of our TA wanted to see 50% performance shots with the stars looking into camera and 50% narrative shots. We believe that we did manage to differentiate the shots well and incorporate both in our music video.
- 50% of our initial audience wanted to see our video filmed at an outside location and the other 50% wanted to see an inside location, such as a studio. We think that we used an appropriate amount of both inside and outside locations, which suited our genre accordantly.
- We asked our audience if they like to get a feeling from the video, 13 people said no, therefore Becka and I didn't feel pressured to create a certain mood or atmosphere.
- Our TA results showed that they are mostly attracted to a music video because of the artist and the song so when we created our promotional package we took this into consideration.
- The majority of our audience said that they would like to see a change in colour of shots. We think that we did this successfully because we decided to use black and white for performance shots and sepia/colour shots for our narrative.
From our initial research we successfully found out what our audience wanted from our music video so this enabled us to decide what conventions to develop and challenge. If we were to do this task again, we would definitely conduct a paper survey again because it was very effective and we received a wide range of feedback.
According to McDougall's (2009) audience theory, he suggests that the online age is getting harder to identify and argues that an audience is 'just a hypothetical group of people, imagined for the sole purpose of having a target for a media product'. This theory proposes that our audience feedback isn't very significant and will not necessarily advise us on how to improve our music video.
We conducted a focus group in the early stages of editing whereby a group of people aged 16 and 17 watched our first rough cut of our music video and gave feedback. We received mixed responses and this is what a few people said:
Male, 16 - "I like the different shots and colours but not sure what the concept is."
Female, 17 - "I like the way the shots have been put together with transitions but I'm not keen on the inserts because they look too sharp. Also, I like how the video is similar to a story too."
Female, 16 -"I really like the concept of the music video and I like the scenery shots of the trees and lake, so it would be nice to see more of this."
Male 16 - "The piano shots look good because it shows the instruments and I like the nature feel to the video of the lake and trees."
Male 17 - "Overall I liked the music video because of the combination of performance and narrative shots but I don't like the curtain background because it makes it look less professional."
Our results showed that the majority of female viewers understood the 'love' and 'relationships' concept of our video although some of the males didn't. From this, we decided to add more narrative shots of the children with their parents and Becky with Will, this was so there was more of a story line to follow and it was more understandable. Something that was mentioned by more than one person was the backdrop on the performance shots. This was something that Becka and I found very difficult to hide and no matter how many filters or colour masks we put onto it, it just didn't look any better. However, boosting the contrast and brightness did help along with the black and white effect. We added a few inserts onto some of our shots which acted as flashbacks but one person said they looked too sharp and someone else said they didn't understand why they were there. To resolve these issues we removed most of the inserts but kept one or two and changed the outline so it was softer. Also, we used Goodwin's theory by showing a relationship between lyrics and visuals so that it was easier for the audience to understand.
Some of our target audience really liked the shots of the lake and the trees and didn't feel there was enough of these type of shots, so we decided to incorporate more into our video. We didn't want to remove any of the other existing performance or narrative shots so we changed the opacity to layer two shots together. Overall, we received positive reviews with a little criticism which we took into consideration and helped us to make changes to meet our target audience demands.
This is an example of how we added more scenery by changing the opacity of 2 different shots.
This is an example of how we changed the colour of shots and upped the brightness and contrast to discuise the curtain background.
We also conducted another focus group interview when our music video was finished. The group responses varied.
1) All people understood the concept.
2) Most people thought our shots and star image worked well with the genre.
3) Our audience enjoyed our lake shots and understood the concept.
4) All people thought our shots looked professional.
5) However, some people said our shots could have been focused better.
Becka and I also posted our Music Video on YouTube to get feedback however no one commented a response to our video therefore, on reflection we could see that this didn't help us in any way. Also, from this we have learnt that if we were to conduct this research again, we wouldn't rely on YouTube for feedback and possibly use a social network such as Facebook or Twitter.
This is really a repeat of what you did in the research & planning stage. You need to evaluate if your MV met TA needs. Also, you should complete focus group responses. Perhaps you could present your findings in the form of a bar chart? Additionally, you say there is a embedded prezi.however there isn't.
ReplyDelete