Task 3 - What I have learnt from audience feedback

General music video research

From this information in which we gathered, it became apparent that a vast majority of the people that we interviewed would prefer to see a music video that had a story-line and involved the story-line matching the lyrics, and the lyrics matching the visuals. Therefore, we felt it appropriate to create a music video which had a narrative and matched the lyrics and visuals. We also noted that due to most of our interviewees criticizing music videos for involving women who are being sexualised and provocative, we would have our music video include men instead, in order to avoid this. Additionally, we would avoid having our music video in black and white as a critic in our research has stated that they would like music videos to involve as much colour as possible.

Pre-production research

After deciding what genre of music we would like to do, we created a poll on Facebook where we asked our Facebook friends whether they like listening to alternative rock music or not. We asked 150 people between the ages of 13-80 and out of the 150, 81 replied and 62 said they did, 19 said they did not, and the rest did not answer the question. We analysed the results and found that the younger they were, the more they enjoyed it. Most people between the ages 16-25 liked it, 26+ did not like it, very few under 16 year old's who answered the question liked it. When we asked the people who said they did not like rock music and they informed us that rock music is not for their time and that they have more traditional tastes in music. Therefore, it came to our awareness that we should aim for a target audience of 15-25 year old's.

Interviews about our idea with focus group

This group stated that they would like to see how we incorporate the band travelling on public transport into the video as it really shows off London and their urban nature and they think it is quite exciting how the band will be included in the hustle and bustle of London.

We noted that this group of girls commented on how they thought it was inspiring how although each of the band members are scattered all over London and do not live near each other, but music is the one thing that brings them together.

These girls said that they think the idea is really creative and they would definitely watch it as it is something that they have never seen before and is therefore really original, thus making the band organic.

This boy stated that he thinks its a very creative idea of having four people from across London meeting together to be in a band and that he would be very interested in watching it.

Overall, after listening to this feedback and researching into which age groups and types of people would watch our indie-rock music video, we concluded that our idea for our music video would appeal to a target audience of people between the ages of 15-25.

First draft feedback

From our first draft feedback, we overall noted that we needed to edit some parts of the video where the lip syncing was out of time and that we should have added in parts where the band performs together. However, we could not do this as the footage that we had was not good enough and we therefore had to make do with what we had. We also learnt that the audience liked the shots that we used, especially the low angle ones as they thought it made the music video as a whole look very professional, and that they thought the locations were relevant to the song lyrics, therefore our lyrics matched the visuals. 

Second draft feedback

After attempting to fix the parts of the video where the lip syncing was out of time, we showed our video to another group of people and they also gave us feedback. We learnt from them that they liked how the video matched the lyrics and they thought that it worked well with the music. They also appealed to the montages/time-lapses that we created at the beginning and that the video as a whole was very uplifting. However, at this point, we had not put the filter on the video yet and so we had to do this.

Final draft feedback 

From our final draft audience feedback, we learnt that they liked how the lead singer portrayed his emotions with passion to the camera. They also liked the camera angles used, especially the low angles and the locations used were exciting. However, we were criticized on using the low angle shots against the buildings too much. They complimented our choice of narrative and noted how it worked really well with the video, as well as saying that the lip syncing looked a lot better. The audience all found that the narrative was clear and that they understood the story-line of the band members meeting up. They thought that our band was very similar to other indie-rock bands such as the Arcitc Monkeys and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and that our band was original and organic. 

Digipak first draft feedback 

From this feedback, we learnt that we had to change the font of our digipak as it was too plain and basic, and this took away the effectiveness from the background picture.

Second draft feedback

However, from our second draft feedback, we learnt that it was clear to them that the genre was a form of rock from the denim jeans that they were wearing and the way in which their hair was styled. Therefore, we were successful in getting this across. Additionally, they said that they would call the band organic due to the way in which they style their hair as long hair on a male is something that is very original and unconventional. However, they did mention that a way in which we could improve was by having the full name on the spine of the digipak, instead of just having the abbreviation of their name as they are a new band and people may not know what "TYP" is or stands for. 

Post-production research

All together, the feedback from our survey was extremely positive. We mainly got comments on our editing techniques, the use of the time-lapses, the variety of shots that we used and overall how the video as a whole looked very professional. We received quite high ratings on website, and were told that it was really clear, easy to use and matched the theme of the digipak and music video. We were informed that our lead singer was very attractive, thus representing the band well and helping the star image of the band to be shown positively. Moreover, it became apparent that our package matched the expectations of an indie-rock band as it included the aspects of one and portrayed our band to be very organic and original. The only criticisms we received were about not including a performance scene and not having the drummer in the music video. However, as we had stated beforehand, we could not add in the performance scenes as the footage that we had taken were not of a high standard and after researching into other music videos, we discovered that some bands do not involve their drummers in their music videos as he is always in the back and does not sing at all. Overall, we have learnt from audience feedback that we produced a successful and effective cohesive package through our professional-like editing techniques, camera shots and computer skills.

In analyzing the data taken from our music video on YouTube and seeing who has watched it, we discovered that a majority of people who viewed the video were males from the UK and USA. Although we aimed our video at a target audience of both males and females in the UK, we expected a majority of the audiences to be males as rock is a more male-dominated genre of music. Although we were successful in achieving this aim, we did not expect to have viewers from USA, Brazil, Russia and Turkey as well. However, we were pleasantly surprised that our video had been spread across the world as it meant that we were overall successful in advertising the video.