Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Target audience (17-19 years old)

In order to collate some audience feedback, I used a several different sources in order to reach a varied audience. I was in contact with some people from other schools who also study media, therefore they had a good idea of the task that we had had to complete. They gave me some brief comments about their initial thoughts of the video, and I was particularly with the fact that one of the people said that they liked 'how the camera cuts are synchronised with the music'. This had been a long and tedious part of post-production editing, so for someone to actually notice what we had spent such a long time doing which very relieving.

They also gave us some constructive criticism, such as we could have made it ‘fade out for a bit longer’, which is perhaps something we could have experimented with to see whether it looked better fading out slower or not.

Older male demographic (20-22 years old)

I also had a couple of friends that makes video that they distribute on YouTube -Dan who is a vlogger and Rupert who is a filmmaker and has his own production company. I was interested to ask them, particularly Rupert, as they use quite high budget equipment, to see what they thought of our music video having only used two DSLR’s. There was a common theme between their two replies, and that was that the video ‘could have done with some stabilisation’. We unfortunately didn’t have access to anything along those lines, but it was very interesting to hear what we could have done had we access to it. Both I and my partner agreed that we would have liked to have stabilisation, as a couple of the shots, such as the shot of the couple sat by the river. We could have used a tripod, by we felt doing so would lose the intimacy that is achieved by keeping the camera mobile. This comment gave us a taste of the kind of equipment that would be used on a professional music video shoot, which was very interesting to find out.

Younger female demographic (13-15 years old)

I also spoke to some teenage females and asked them for their opinions on the music video:

Strengths

‘You couldn’t tell that she was lip syncing’, ‘Like how it is the actual band’, ‘Shot composition is strong throughout’, ‘Pace is good’, ‘Nice use of colours’, ‘Great depth to the shots’, ‘Like the close up on eyes’

Weaknesses

‘Unsteady camera’, When the camera pans up the forest, it is shaky’, ‘Overused some shots, so the narrative didn’t move on’, ‘Cuts didn’t fit the pace of the song’, ‘Walking up staircase shot was out of focus’

We were very pleased to hear that our audience liked the colour of the music video. Due to the fact we had filmed in a forest, there was a lot of green in our shots, and we had decided to further emphasize this in post-production, so it was relief to hear that our audience had noticed it.

Also, the audience said that they ‘couldn’t tell she was lip syncing’. The syncing of the sound to visuals was the most time consuming part of the editing process, and although we thought it was synced, we weren’t sure because we had watched the same clips so many times. So, to hear that the audience thought she was singing live proves that we had manged to sync it well.

On the other hand, the younger demographic agreed with the older male demographic in that the though the camera was unsteady. As discussed earlier, we would have loved to have had a stabiliser, but because we had a limited budget we were unable to access one.

They also said that we overused some shots, so ‘the narrative didn’t move on’. They seemed to say that we particularly overused the shots of the couple, so perhaps we should have filmed more when we did our second shoot of the couple so we had more to work with in post-production, and therefore there would be variety in the music video.

Female demographic (16-17 years old)

Strengths

‘Performance was really good’, ‘Looked a bit professional’, ‘Images fitted with the song’, ‘Lively’, ‘Good linking of words to the shots used , ‘your eyes’, with the shot of eyes’, ‘Really cute’,’ Song fitted with the scenery’, ‘Different girl?’

Negatives

‘Visual pace a lot faster than the music’, ‘Bit repetitive when the girl and boy are shown’

This demographic consisted of some AS Media students, so they have clearly watched a lot of professional content themselves. So, for them to say that our music video looked professional was amazing to hear. Also, within this demographic, we had someone notice the links between the lyrics and what was being shown on the screen – for example, the shots of eyes being shown when Annie says ‘puffy eyed’. This was a very small detail that we chose to add, but for someone to have noticed it shows that it was effective. We also had someone comment on the fact that it was a different girl in the narrative as opposed to Annie (the lead singer of Littlewing). Although we only wanted there to be a slight difference between the two girls, this shows it was still clear to the audience without it being completely obvious.

On the other hand, this demographic also agreed that is was a ‘bit repetitive when the girl and boy are shown’, so this is clearly something we would want to improve, had we the chance to.

Overall, I was generally very pleased with the comments we received, but if we were given the chance to, I would love to film some more footage of the couple, and maybe make a slightly stronger narrative as opposed to just shots of the couple. Also, I like to re-shoot a couple of shots that were a little shaky, either with a stabiliser or a tripod; whichever we had access to.