Thursday, 24 November 2011

Evaluation Part 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?


Evaluation Part 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I collected my audience feedback by sending the links that allowed the target audience to see my video and ancillary texts, via email. They then sent me their feedback via email, which I then copied and pasted from the email into a word document. I then copied and pasted the feedback into the website, www.wordle.net. This then turned my feedback into a Wordle.


















I split my audience feedback into two sections; the video and the ancillary texts. The first section that I collected feedback for was the video. I found that in general my target audience really liked the video and said that they would consume it if it was in the real media industry. There were two things that my target audience picked out from my video that they really liked. The first attribute that they really liked was the amount of shots and the vast variety of shots. I would agree with my audience that this is a strong point of my video. I chose to create my video with the variety of shots that it has because although it had to have some repeatability to it I wanted to keep it interesting and I wanted to keep the target audience thriving to see more of the video. This links to Richard Dyer’s ideas about stardom.
“The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to ‘complete’ or to ‘make sense’ of the image”.- Richard Dyer
 My choice of many interesting shots ensured that the audience only got short quick glimpses of the artist in each shot. This meant that her image wasn’t automatically clear to the audience and consequently they would strive to understand her star image furthermore giving them the need to continue watching the video.
The second attribute that my target audience picked out from my video as a good point was the lighting, colour and the general mise-en-scene of the video. I would again agree with my target audience as I do think that the mise-en-scene of the video is another strong point. When I created the first draft of my music video there wasn’t enough effect in the mise-en-scene to really make the narrative obvious. Taking this on board I then went and made more of an effect out of the mise-en-scene by decorating the backgrounds in both settings with magazine extracts and award ceremony logos so as to really make the narrative obvious that she was angry with the media. I also changed the artist’s costume at the beginning of the video to have a red top to emphasise her anger as it is the red colours that generally have connotations of anger. Once I did this I believed that it gave my video a more interesting and exciting boost. I chose to do this because a lot of the videos in the media industry today have a very controlled mise-en-scene which in some cases can become almost surreal because it is so perfect. They do this to boldly reinforce their narrative, therefore when I chose to do the same it made my video authentic.
“Mise-en-scene for many videos is the concert hall or rehearsal room to emphasise the realness of the performance”.- Steve Archer.
 From the audience feedback I found that there was one bad point that most of my target audience seemed to pick up on and that was the performance of my artist within the video. The biggest issue was that my artist, on the day of filming didn’t put enough effort into the acting for it to be authentic. This could be because she’s a naturally shy person and no matter how much I tried as director to give her inspiration, her natural personality overruled and thus she struggled to perform. I think, however, that she still did well and I am pleased with the outcome.
“Pop music is a romantic art, all about truth, talent, and magic, so we need to believe in the authenticity of the performance first and foremost”.-Steve Archer
Wordle: A2 Media Feedback

The next set of feedback which I collected was for the ancillary texts. Again the audience generally liked the ancillary texts, however there were a couple of good points and bad points that seemed to be picked out.
There was one clear bad point that my target audience did not like in my advert. This was the fact that there were so many different fonts on the page that the audience found it somewhat confusing. I chose to use the different fonts because I thought that I wanted to challenge the convention, that I found when researching the magazine adverts of only having one or two fonts for the text as I thought that it might make the advert more aesthetically pleasing. However, it is clear in my audience feedback that this did not come across well. If I was to improve I would have kept my variety of fonts to a minimum.

A clear good point that was given from the audience in the feedback was the central image on the advert. Generally, the audience thought that it linked clearly with the album, video and website. They also said that if they saw the image they would automatically associate it with the artist and album. I am very pleased with these comments because it is clear that my intentions of using my subsidiary texts to create the artist’s star image has been conveyed to the audience. I chose to do this because I found that when I researched my websites and magazine adverts that there was a clear link between the artist, their image and their subsidiary texts.
“A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])”.- Richard Dyer
The clear bad point about my website which was clearly shown throughout my audience feedback was that they didn’t like the amount of empty spacing which they could see in my website. This was also a clear fault in my own opinion but I struggled to change it when making the product due to lack of ability in using the software. I minimised the amount of spacing as much as I could and to the best of my ability, however my knowledge of the software does not extend far enough to have completely changed it. I feel that to improve I could have looked up how to completely close the gaps in the website and if I had more time I would have put more features on the website to make the website seem busier.
Finally there was one good point that was picked out by many of my target audience and that was the clear layout of the website. Even though they had said that they didn’t like the amount of space in which they could see they said that due to that it meant that the layout was very clear, making it easy for them to view the website. I didn’t intend to have so much spacing in the website but I did choose to make my website with a clear layout. I am pleased with this outcome but I only chose to use the clear layout for the simple reason that it then makes it easier for the target audience to view the website furthermore, encouraging them to research more into the artist and thus promoting her further. 

Wordle: A2 Media Feedback

Evaluation Part 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Part 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?