Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the project, the audience, who is the consumer, was always at the forefront of our mind. If at any point we failed to appease or appeal to the audience, then the project as a whole would have failed. Within this post I shall detail how we ensured that this failure did not occur.

Primary Audience
Our primary audience are those who are fans of the Electronic/Alternative genre. This genre in particular is booming within the UK and specifically, London, music industry so we thought it would be easy to gain a lot of traction within this community.

Secondary Audience
Our secondary audience are late teen to young adults (roughly 16-24) as they are the most active music consumers for both all music and for this genre in particular. Therefore, targeting this age bracket will likely result in a guaranteed level of consumption to some extent.

Tertiary Audience

Our tertiary audience range within the mid 30s to mid 40s age bracket. This is due to our song's mellow tone and could fit well with older listeners who have been used to less boisterous music for a while now. In addition, the themes present within the song could incite a nostalgic reaction, which would only be beneficial.

Theory

We integrated Blumler and Katz' "Uses and Gratifications Theory" into our construction of the three texts. Blumler and Katz argue that in order for the product to be a success it must enable at least one of four outcomes when consumed by the audience. Below is a grid explaining the four factors and how we attempted to achieve them:

At each stage of the project we gathered audience feedback in order to ensure that the products we were creating would stay in line with the audiences' desires.

Research and Planning

Music Video
As a means of documenting and presenting our ideas on narrative and performance, we made both an animatic and a steal-o-matic. These would act as a visual guide for when it came to actually constructing the video. On top of this, we would be able be to receive feedback on our ideas that are depicted b#via the animatic and steal-o-matic, providing us with a clear direction of what needs to be done from very early on in the project.

We setup small informal screenings of both the animatic and steal-o-matic for our target audiences. To our relief, the audience was very impressed with the idea of a VHS and HD split and thought that it would be clear enough as to what was going on. This was great news as this split was our primary unique selling point. On the whole, they felt that the animatic needed to depict the archive footage in a way other than simply a black screen as it interrupted with their suspension of disbelief. And so, we created an updated version of the animatic:

The screening group thought that the overall narrative structure worked well, but in order to ensure that it flowed well, we would need to toy with cuts, music and visuals more in order to avoid becoming boring. We utilised this advice heavily when it came to the editing process.

Website
Our first draft of the website was focused around the album cover's focal image as this was the convention for the Electronic/Alternative genre. Below is a screenshot of our website draft in Wix:

More importantly than the fact that it's a convention, the audience were really supportive of the idea of having the website's focal image being the same as the album cover. So, we kept it and would work towards developing it rather than coming up with another idea.


Album Cover
We showed some members of the target audience the panoramic plan for our album cover and recorded their feedback:

Panoramic concept

 Below is the feedback from a member of our primary target audience:

When asking member of our secondary target audience, they agreed with what our primary audience said - that the artist image wouldn't be strong enough with the current panoramic idea. We then agreed that we needed to have a bold focal image of our artist's face for the front cover in order to really anchor their identity within the album. So, we then set out to make some concept sketches of a focal image graphic which merged the artist face in a unique manner and showed that to our audience to receive feedback:

The circle design was much preferred to the square design, but as an entire idea, the concept went down very well with the audience.

Construction

Music Video
Below is a video showing the feedback we received from members of our primary and secondary target audiences who had been informed of the developments since the animatic:

From the screening shown above, along with unrecorded comments, we gathered numerous points of direction and criticism:

Everyone seemed to agree that the VHS and HD footage combination works really well and that it genuinely gives off an alternative feel within the video, in keeping with our actual genre of Alternative/Electronic.

The editing style of the studio was widely praised as it kept the audience's attention with the rapid and unexpected cuts, which have been clearly inspired by Carol Vernallis. However, in regards to the VHS footage, the editing isn't as strong due to the lack of syncing with music. This shows the awkward reality of how the video was attempting to dominate the music, when it should be the other way around. This needed to change.

On a lesser note, some members of the audience thought that there should be less narrative relative to performance footage. This is especially true in regards to the end of the video when there is barely any screen time for the artists in the studio. This needed to be fixed as the artist should take precedence over the video's narrative.

We were critiqued quite frequently on the narrative progression surrounding the couples relationship, saying that it was quite weak and didn't have a clear ending. To change this, we rearranged some VHS sequences to create a clear beginning middle and end. We also filmed an extra scene to conclude the video

A fairly concerning piece of feedback was that the narrative progression didn't excel at showing the couples relationship develop and fall. This in turn resulted in a weak and disappointing end to the narrative. In order to combat this, we completely re-shot the final scene of the narrative.

Using this feedback, we revised and updated the edit and then showed the new version to our audience again, in order to see if the changes were successful:

This feedback gave us confidence that the narrative and performance combination was very successful. The audience were able to suspend their disbelief and build a connection with the characters of the story even though the video itself was 3 minutes long. Many commented on the unique and engaging style which was another major success. Overall, I am very pleased with the positive manner in which the audience viewed the music video.


Album Cover




Website

By distributing links via email and holding reviewing sessions, we were able to receive feedback for our website during the construction phase. The website was taken with positive feedback on the whole, particular praise was given to the about pages.

However, a piece of reoccurring criticism was that the tour page and contact page were too bare, with little connection to the artist. In direct response to this, we added a live twitter feed of NTLS and promotion for their BBC Radio 1 appearances, which also displayed symbiosis with companies that our target audience was equally recognise and appreciate.

Evaluation

Music Video

The majority of the people we asked thought the video was clear and engaging

It was extremely reassuring to see that 100% of those asked felt it fell under the alternative, electronic or the indie genre. Thisgave us confidence that we producing a video that truly reflected our genre

Album Cover
We got together a focus group of people from our primary, secondary and tertiary audience in order to gather feedback about our album cover. Below is a response from each audience category:



The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with the audiences saying we had created a powerful and clear album cover that was noticeably synergistic with our other two texts.The only slight room for improvement was the possibility of having lyrics to songs somewhere on or within the album cover.

Website
We then went on to do the same for feedback on our website:



Again, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. In particular, the "About" page was very popular as it acted as a personal and honest into the artist's character, keeping in tune with the very individualistic nature of the Alternative/Electronic genre. The audience stated that the synergy with the other texts was very clear and that the interactivity of the website kept them engaged. A possible improvement that was suggested was having a few more varied pieces of merchandise, such as a top with the merged face graphic printed on it.