Draft Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Since starting my research and planning I have had feedback from several people. Primarily, the majority of feedback came when doing my ancillary texts and music video. Most of my feedback was verbal from my friends, which are all of similar age and listen to the same genre of music. This was ideal as they were my target audience. They all pitched ideas for the music video, giving me a wide variety to choose from. Quotes like ‘well in the (……..) video, they did this,’ ‘why don’t we copy the (……..) video,’ were used a fair amount. Most of the feedback was positive and helped me to make the video I did, however some were probably better if said earlier. My friends helped me to decide what pictures to use on my digipack, what to call the band and what songs went on the album. So their feedback helped me a vast amount, as they were the target audience and I wanted it to be as realistic as possible.

I also created a twitter account for the band, for people to tweet me feedback, however not much feedback was gained this way. For a start I didn’t gain many followers, as well as having to change the band name which meant creating a new twitter, that wasn’t generating feedback, would be a nonstarter. This meant I could better use my time to stick to the schedule.

The teachers gave me a huge amount of feedback for everything I did. I received comments on blog posts, face to face, feedback on post it notes, on paper and annotations on my work. The teachers told me what to change and what needed adding to my ancillary texts to make them both 10/10, both by writing on post it notes, annotating my printouts and various conversations. Other feedback I received was on my video, feedback face to face and on paper helped me to both improve my video and remember what I had to improve for the second lot of filming. The teachers helped me to follow the mark scheme and gain a higher mark by doing as many of the things on the list as possible.

When talking to my parents about making my video they suggested that I add some fun shots to the video. The reason we discussed this was to add continuity between my ancillary tasks and video. The front panel of my digipack and the main image on my magazine advert are both fun images and we discussed continuing with the theme and trying to incorporate it into my video. When I researched music videos, I didn’t come across many that used this style, so I decided to stick with conventions and go against the fun theme in the video and keep it uniform with serious shots of the band.

I also had peers on my class comment on my blog posts. The peers on my class were part of my target audience as they are of similar age and the people who commented also like the genre. They commented and gave me feedback on my 25 word pitch, which was ultimately my initial idea for the video. Feedback included thinking carefully about the location I will choose to use for my video as it has to look right for the genre. As well as this I had to think about the lighting, which again made me thing about the location, as I wanted to use spot lighting, the venue needed to have the facilities. After collaborating with the band, who are also my target audience we decided that we could do it after college on the stage in the hall as there was lighting and a black backdrop. I then had to change location, as the lighting was too advanced and needed a professional and the hall was unavailable on days that I needed. This brought me to drama the final location, with spotlights in the ceiling and a black backdrop this was ideal. I asked the peers in my class weather this was a good idea and they said the location was great as long as I framed it right.

After receiving a huge amount of feedback from several groups of people, I took all the opinions into account when making my video. I made sure that even the people who weren’t part of my target audience got their feedback across and told me what they thought I should do and should improve. All in all the feedback helped massively to gain ideas and improve.