3) What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

In order to gain audience feedback, we used SurveyMonkey to conduct an online, anonymous survey, along with interviewing our audience. We also asked peers to watch and give feedback on our texts during construction.

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Our audience are primarily indie fans of all genders, and our secondary audience are those between 16 and 25 years old, although we feel our video appeals to all ages. When planning our music video, we took into consideration what would appeal to our target audience:

Our initial description of our target audience.

APPEALING TO OUR AUDIENCE

However, we also decided to make some parts of our texts appeal more to certain ages or genders; firstly, I feel that our video appeals mostly to our secondary audience, who are more contemporary, as the references made are to texts that are popular within that generation, such as F.R.I.E.N.D.S and Grease.

However, our video also appeals to women as we cast a conventional 'attractive male' as the lead singer, which is common in indie bands, such as lead singers Danny Jones and Tom Fletcher from McFly. This especially appeals to 13-16 year olds, who can imagine themselves in a relationship with the lead singer.

On the other hand, our band, and video still appeals to both genders, as the band is made up of two men and women, therefore any gender and sexuality can imagine themselves dating any member, for example. We thought it was important to have an equal number of genders within the band, as it avoids skewing to one gender, and it also means both genders are represented equally.

In our music video, it would also be expected to appeal more to women, as it features the stereotypical 'meet and fall in love' cliché narrative, which typically appeals mainly to women. However, through the interviews and survey we conducted, it became apparent that this narrative also appealed to men, and it didn't cause them to enjoy the video any less.

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
We referenced Blumler and Katz's Uses And Gratifications Theory when making our video, as we wanted to ensure we appealed to our audience as much as possible, and therefore encouraged them to both purchase the album, and become a fan of the band.

DIVERSION
I feel that our music video is entertaining - the dance sequences are a particular example of this, as we used bright colours, energetic dancing and interesting editing techniques, such as having three eras on the screen at once:

We drew inspiration from Meghan Trainor's video, in which there is a dance sequence where it cuts quickly between each dancer. As a group, we liked this technique as it was eye-catching and interesting, and we felt that it would fit with the pace of the song.

RELATIONSHIPS
Our music video provides the audience with an interesting view of relationships - whilst it is clichéd, it is also giving a sincere message that love can transcend time. I think this would gratify our audience's needs on relationships in terms of implying that there is the possibility of them being able to have a relationship like the ones depicted in the music video.

This is similar to videos like Already Home by A Great Big World - the video depicts a couple who are far away from each other, but get to be together in the end. This is giving a similar message to our video, that love can transcend distance and time - by visually portraying this, this type of relationship is presented to the audience as a valid lifestyle choice that they can conceivably achieve.

I also think that the music video can gratify the audience's needs in terms of social relationships - the audience can talk to their friends about their favourite part of the video, or learn the dance sequences and do them with their friends, like the dance sequence in All About That Bass for example. The audience can also discuss their favourite era, or costume, or band member with their friends.

IDENTITY
I explored the way we gratified the need for personal identity in the Prezi below:

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
CONSTRUCTION
This was really useful for us, as it helped us to improve the products in a way that appealed to the audience.
For example, we showed multiple drafts of our album art to target audience members, and asked for their feedback and opinions:

For example, when shown this draft, audience members said that they disliked the back cover, as it was too 'busy' and didn't fit with the rest of the album art. 

To contrast, the feedback from this album art draft suggested that our initial design was too 'bland' and 'boring', as the back cover had no images on it.

By taking this feedback into account, we were able to create an album art that we felt reflected the band's identity, without being too over-the-top or too boring, and that it was more to the audience's preference.

We also got feedback on our music video - by asking the audience what they disliked about the video, we were able to find any problems and rectify them. For example, there was an out of sync shot that we had not noticed, but an audience member pointed out to us. We were also told that some of the shots we had used in the band scenes were too jarring, which we also rectified by using different shots.










FINAL PRODUCTS
We both interviewed members of our audience, and conducted a survey using SurveyMonkey. This was extremely useful, as we learnt both the positive and negatives of all three of our texts.

MUSIC VIDEO

From the interviews, it is clear that the dance sequence is most people's favourite part of the music video. This could be due to it gratifying the entertainment needs of the audience, as it is visually stimulating and 'fun'. The survey we conducted also implied that the dance sequences are the favoured part of the music video:

8 out of 12 said that the dancing was their favourite part in the survey, and all four of the people interviewed also said that it was their favourite part.

However, it was also interesting that the modern scene was a favourite part due to it being relatable to the audience - we hoped to achieve this when planning the video, as we wanted the modern narrative to be realistic and actually referencing real life scenarios and culture.

It is also clear that we were successful in conveying the genre of the band, as all four interviewees, and every person who filled in the survey were able to identify the genre as indie and/or indie-pop.

Every person said that the video was indie, and almost every person said that the video was pop.

We were also successful in conveying the band identity through the music video, as the audience described them as "upbeat", "fun" and "quirky" - however, we were less successful at conveying the more 'cool' side to the band, which we had originally planned.

The survey answer

Our original plan for our artist.

It also became apparent through our audience feedback that our narrative could have been clearer - we found that whilst our audience understood that the narrative was about love and was set in different eras, some didn't understand that it was different couples in each era, whilst some didn't understand the narrative at all:

In hindsight, I would try to make the narrative clearer, or less complicated, in order to ensure that the audience are able to understand the narrative.

We also asked what our audience would improve about the video - it was interesting to see that some would make no improvements. We received some interesting criticism as well, such as:

One person felt that the ending was jarring due to the editing, and that it could have been smoother. It was also said that someone "would try and have some definitive end" to the video, as they felt that the couple walking off wasn't a clear or concrete enough ending. As a group we struggled to come up with a clear enough ending, and had planned to have the couple walking away from camera holding hands - however, on the day of the shoot we decided to incorporate the couple's exit into the dance, and found that them walking off frame was the smoothest action, as they would have walked into the set behind them if we had gone with our original plan. However, I do agree with this criticism, as I feel we could have planned out the ending better.

Again, this was an issue we had already discussed as a group; whilst we had planned to have a minimalist set style, some were more so than others. For example, the 80s narrative set consisted of just a bench - we knew that this may have looked empty, but we were unable to find a solution that wasn't to difficult for us to source in the amount of time we had to plan and shoot.

ALBUM ART

From the interviews, we learnt a number of things:

• The 19 year old felt that the album cover would just blend in as it was too dark. She also suggested that white would have been a more eye-catching colour to have used, and would have made the rainbow outline more vivd and effective. It was also said that the dark colour didn't reflect the genre of the band - it was more serious than the music that the band were producing, and therefore didn't fit. I think this is valid criticism, as our band is more indie-pop than just indie, so are less serious. However, as a group we made a decision to make the cover black as we felt it was eye-catching, and also as the rainbow effect was only possible to achieve with that colour background. Whilst some thought it was too dark and unfitting, others thought that is was "dramatic" and "fun".
• However, everyone liked the image on the inside, and felt that it better reflected the genre of the band because it was bright and quirky. This was what we were hoping to achieve with that image, so this feedback was encouraging. It was also encouraging that some audience members understood the "quirky with serious undertone" image that we were trying to put across with our album art; however, I feel we could have either made this more explicit, or made it less complicated by choosing one characteristic of the band identity to put across.
• There was also the criticism that the album art looked too generic; we possibly could have avoided this with an image on the front, but as a group we decided to only have the band logo on the front, and images elsewhere. It was also said that it provided what was expected of an album art (such as the track names), suggesting that we successfully used the conventions of an album cover.
• It was interesting to note that every person interviewed would not buy an album without knowing the music or the band - this highlights the importance of having good synergy between texts. We found that some would pick out album up, and buy it if they researched the band and liked the songs, whilst others said that it wasn't eye-catching enough to even pick up.

WEBSITE

From the interviews, we found that:

• All those interviewed said that is was upbeat, colourful and eye-catching, and definitely reflected the more pop, light-hearted side of the band genre and image, as it connoted the upbeat nature of indie-pop with fonts, style and colour. However, some said it didn't necessarily highlight the more serious side of the genre or band image, despite the dark background. Whilst we chose to have this colour background to ensure synergy with the album art, we could have possibly chosen white, for much the same reasons as the album art.
• It was also said to be believably a professional website, which suggests that we were successful in maintaining conventions of band websites.
• There were still mixed opinions on clarity; some said it was clear and easy to use, such as the links at the top, whereas others said that it was slightly "busy", such as the scrolling advert at the top. It was said that the advert would possibly distract from the actual content on the page. We could have avoided this by either not having the advert at all, or using less bright images.