2. Target Audience…
It is important that during this project I gained lots of feedback from my target audience. The target audience for our video is
teenagers aged from around 14-20. Initially we were aiming our video at girls as they are the people who are most likely to
listen to pop rock/alternative rock. However, in order to make it appeal to a mass audience, we believe that some teenage
guys may enjoy watching it too. By gaining audience feedback, it has allowed me to improve on my products and it ensures
that my products will appeal to the target audience well. I gained audience feedback in many ways including: polls, social
networking, visiting classes, showing teachers and peers and also getting lots of feedback along the way from friends.
Below I have created a wordle, which shows what type of people my products are aimed at...
3. Polls…
To easily gain people’s opinions, I created two polls on my blog at the start of
this project. I wanted to find out whether people liked our chosen song and
whether they liked the storyline that we had planned. From this, I was able to
find out whether my video had a chance of being successful or not. As you
can see 48/56 people said they liked our chosen. This is important because
if the target audience didn’t like the song then they are less likely to actually
watch the video. In the other poll 42/45 people said they liked the storyline
for our video. Again, this is important because if they don’t find the storyline
appealing then they won’t be interested in watching the video. By creating
polls, I can easily find out different people opinions about my ideas. They are
quick and easy to create and have been useful to me. If the majority didn’t
like the chosen song, then I would consider changing my ideas in order to
make it more appealing to my target audience. I have learnt that obviously
not everyone enjoys the same type of music and not everyone likes a ‘love’
storyline as there are some ‘no’ and ‘not sure’. However, from this I can see
that the plans for our video appeal to the majority of people and therefore will
hopefully be successful.
To encourage people to vote on my polls, I did a post of facebook. This is
a good way to easily and quickly reach my target audience…
4. Friends/Peers…
During this project, audience feedback has been extremely useful. Along the way,
I have been talking with friend asking for their opinions. As well as showing my
product to the class to gain the opinions of my peers. From doing this, it has
allowed me to gain honest critical feedback about each of my products. I have
learnt how important it is for my product to appeal to the intended audience as if it
doesn’t appeal to them it means my products will be unsuccessful if were to be
produced for real. Feedback from my friend and peers has really helped me to
improve my products and in the following slides I will be showing the progression
of them.
To the left are some of my friends giving me some feedback. As they attend
the same school, I can easily talk to them at any point. They have all provided
me with good useful feedback during this project. In the left of the image, is
Tom, the actor from our video. I decided to get feedback from him about my
ancillary tasks as he is present in the video and will therefore be able to relate
to the video well.
Also, I spoke to our artists, Jonny (Jono) a lot, who also provided me with lots
of good critical feedback. His responses were honest and gave me more
ideas on how to improve. I think it is important to gain feedback from him as
he is the main feature in the video, therefore he knows the video really well.
Also, I felt it was nice to show our actors the final products and to get an idea
as to what they think of it.
5. Social Networking…
I put a copy of our rough cut onto facebook in order to find out what our
target audience thought of it. I used facebook as it is a popular social
networking site, where the majority of users are aged around 14-20. This
allows me to easily and quickly access feedback and shows how the
development of web 2.0 has helped harness this. The feedback that I got
was very positive and it made me feel more confident about my product.
Although the video was more specifically aimed at girls, I learnt from the
comments that there was a mix of both genders who found the video
appealing.
The two charts above show why I decided to use facebook to gain some
feedback. As you can see, the time people spend on social networking
sites is rapidly increasing, meaning that feedback is very instant and
feedback would be readily available. From the pie chart, you can clearly
see the divide of the different age groups that use social networking sites.
The target audience for my video are the most common users, showing
how useful social networking is in being able to easily reach my target
audience.
Most of the feedback that I received was very positive so not many
changes had to be made. However, I did speak to friends so they can
truthfully tell me what they thought of it. We decided that the timing could
be improved slightly, and we could add a few more transitions, as well as
edit the brightness and contrast of a few more shots.
6. Screen Shots…
Here are some screen shots of the different websites
where I published the video in order to get some
feedback. Facebook was the most useful as I gained
useful feedback from friends. Using twitter is also another
way to gain some feedback, as shown in the screen shot
in the top right. I published our final video on Youtube,
this allows many people to search and view for the video.
Again, it is a way to gain useful feedback from others as
Youtube is popular with people within our target
audience.
7. Video Changes…
The majority enjoyed our video and couldn’t think of much changes that
needed to be done. Some thought the timing was slightly out, so we
ensured to improve on this. Also, we decided to add more transitions to
some of the shots, as well as edit the brightness and contrast of some. By
doing this, it helps to make the shots more appealing to the audience and
also improves the overall flow of the video.
The transitions we added include
cross dissolve and cross blur.
We added the cross dissolve
transition when the shots linked
to one another, such as the bits
of the couple together. We
added the cross blur transition
when it contrasts from Jess and
Jonny’s new life's. By doing this,
it ensure that the video flows
better from one shot to another.
We changed the exposure, brightness, contrast and saturation of some of the shots. By doing this
it helps to make each of the shots more appealing and eye catching. It helps to make each shot
more varied and interesting for viewers. Here are some of the shots where we have changed the
adjustments of the shot…
8. Classes…
Gaining audience feedback was very beneficial. I learnt about how important audience
feedback is and the fact that the text has no meaning until it is decoded by an audience.
Everyone is different and therefore there is going to be a variation in the ways which different
people decode and read the text. The way I, the producer may read the text may be totally
different to how the audience read it. Therefore, in order to try and make the audience read the
text in similar ways, I have had to use recognised forms and convention so that the target
audience read the text in the ways that I aim for them to. This is known as ‘preferred reading’,
one of Stuart Hall’s theories.
I showed my video to a number of younger classes; year 8,9,10,11. I wanted to see how they
read the video and whether they respond in the way in which I planned. From this, I found that I
had been successful, as everyone's preferred readings of the text were fairly similar, even
though they were all of different ages, gender, background and culture. They all stated how
they felt really sorry for Jonny, something I initially wanted the video to make people react like.
Also, people said how it encourages them to get in a relationship due to all the good times we
see the couple have together in the video.
By showing the final video to a varied
range of ages; year 8,9,10,11 and 13, it
allowed me to see what the different age
groups of people thought about it. I
found from this that younger boys aged around
13/14 didn’t enjoy the video as it was
based on a topic that didn’t interest
them (love and romance). However, boys
aged 17/18 reacted differently, they were able
to relate to the relationship in the video,
they felt sorry for Jonny and were
encouraged to reflect on their personal
experiences of different relationships
that they may have been in.
9. Cover Changes Changes…
PLANS INITIAL IDEAS FINAL COVER
Here are the stages of creating my digipak front cover. Gaining audience feedback was extremely useful, it helped me to
decide on the choice of my album cover image. I created four initial image ideas for the cover, as you can see above. I got
feedback on the positives and negatives about each of the images. The feedback I got was very useful and it helped me to
decide on features that I liked and features that I didn’t. I then came up with a whole new idea on the right. From this, I feel that
my chosen image is a lot more appealing for it’s attended audience. I tried experimenting the image in many different ways,
again gaining feedback about which edit people preferred. It is important that I used a strong, well shot image and from gaining
lots of feedback, I have been able to develop my ideas well. I think my image is now more successful and suitable for the
genre, something that gaining audience feedback has helped me to achieve.
10. Digipak Changes…
BEFORE
PLAN
Above are the stages of my digipak. I have clearly circled the
features that I changed. I showed my first draft to my peers as well
as my friends, they are all aged between 17-18 and therefore fall
within our target audience. From this, I was able to learn about
what others thought about it and whether they believed it was
successful or not. Someone noticed that the guitar had a label on
the back of it, therefore it is promoting the guitar too and showed
that it was a distraction. I also changed the font of the artists note.
People felt that it was fairly hard to read and some of the letters
could easily be read incorrectly. I changed it to a more clear, easy
to read font in order to make it more appealing for the audience to
read. Finally, I added a barcode, this is a common feature of
digipaks that I had missed out.
AFTER
11. Album Poster Changes…
PLAN BEFORE AFTER
Here are the plan, and before and after copies of my album poster. Again, I have clearly circled the feature that I changed after
gaining feedback from my peers. From talking to my target audience, I learnt that it is quite common to have star rating on
magazine posters. I felt that this would benefit my poster and therefore as you can see, I have added a NME rating below the
artists name. Another change I made was the size of ‘Like We Used To’, I made it slightly smaller so that it is the same size on
each of my products. I learnt from this about the importance of consistency and importance of clearly linking products.
12. Tour Poster Changes…
PLAN BEFORE AFTER
Above are the plan, and before and after copies of my tour poster, with the changes that I made circled in red. I showed my poster
to peers in order to see whether they feel it would be successful or not. The first change I made was making the album cover
slightly bigger, this makes it stand out more and also makes it link more to the album poster. It is important that there is a sense of
cohesion between my products, so this is one way to achieve this. Also, I decided to add Jono’s website address, I learnt about the
importance of cross media promotion and how including the website address in each of my products could potentially help to
increase Jono’s fan base. Finally, someone found part of the text hard to read due to the dark background. I decided to lighten the
background slightly to make it clearer to read. This is important as if people can’t actually read the poster, then it will become
unsuccessful and won’t be helping to achieve its purpose well.