What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After I had finished my music video and the ancillary texts (the digipak and the magazine advertisement), I decided to get some feedback from people that would fit into the "target audience" of the music video.


I attained a range of feedback, by constructing questionnaires and directly asking people to watch my music video and point out the strengths and weaknesses of all of the products. The purpose of getting audience feedback is very helpful, as it allows me to directly talk to the people who are interested in the folk genre and find out what they like and dislike about the music video.


The audience that I have received feedback from consist of people from the ages between 16 and 29, both male and female.


Here are the strengths and weaknesses that were commented on for my music video.


Strengths:

• "The colours composed in the video are very complimentary. I have seen oranges and yellows used often in folk music videos. I think it's because they are very warm and welcoming - just like folk music tends to be." - It is good to hear that point because I had specifically chosen the backdrop for the warm and rich colours.
• "I like the tinsel and the journey she follows through with it. It's very festive and different. Almost like she is following the tinsel into another season because it looks like it's autumn in  the video." - This means that the audience are understanding the symbolism behind the music video. There is the idea of seasons represented in a lot of folk music videos.
• "The lip-syncing the singer displays in the music video is full of emotion." - I am glad the lip-syncing has been effective. It is important for the artist to convey the emotions of the song in order to really connect with the audience. Folk artists usually write their own music, so I felt that it was important to show the artist has a good feel for the music.
• "I like how the performance part of the video and the "narrative journey" join together at some point because they have the same or similar location."  - This must mean the narrative and performance are well intermingled with one another, which gives the music video a decent structure that makes sense.

Weaknesses:

• "Some of the performance clips are quite long." - I think it is important that this has been pointed out, because in the future, I can remember to cut certain clips shorter to fit the music and make the video flow better.
• "The end is a little unclear towards the end.... the change from day to night for the fireworks does not fit in clearly." - If I was to re-edit this video, I would make the ending slightly more clearer in order for the audience to understand.

For my ancillary texts, I cut out printed pictures of my digipak and magazine advert and placed it on a large piece of sugar paper. Then, I asked people to comment on aspects of both texts and see what they thought of it. These are people who have also seen my music video.

I received a lot of positive feedback on my magazine advert and digipak.

"Professional-looking back panel." - digipak

"Eye-catching text" - advert

"Typography connected between all products"- both

However, one comment I received was that the tree on the CD should have been used more throughout the magazine advert and the digipak because it looks very symbolic.

In regards of which channel my music video would be on, I was told the following:

I agreed and felt these were appropriate too because all of these channels feature artists such as Mumford & Sons, Regina Spektor, Sara Bareilles, Damien Rice and Ben Howard - who all fall under the acoustic/folk genre.