Task 13: Evaluation Production Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

PRE-PRODUCTION

Before starting or even deciding on a song to base my music video around, I researched online popular music videos; ones that have a narrative similar to the audio and some that are completely different. For example, Chandlier by Sia, to most people, may appear to have no correlation to it's music video and this may be a reason that it is so popular and has so many views. On the other hand, there are popular music videos such as Blank Space by Taylor Swift that have a direct link to the meaning of the lyrics in the song, and so people watch them as they enjoy the video or sometimes because they enjoy seeing how the artist envisions the song.

I decided to make my music video so that it had a direct link to the lyrics of the song and I wanted to make sure that the narrative of the video was very clear and understandable.One of the ways that I decided how I wanted my music video to be was through my pitch that I made to my peers, who were also creating music videos. During my pitch I gave out questionnaires which I asked my peers to fill out.

During the pitch, I also gave out copies of the song's lyrics for people to just 'doodle' on whatever they felt would fit in with the lyrics of the song. People drew and annotated things such as phones to symbolise the part of the phone when the artist mentions a phone call and of a person just sitting there emotionless. In the pitch I explained what I thought the music video would look like and how I wanted to 'show the lyrics' through the video. I then asked them if they had any questions about the music video; one being: 'How are you going to show the emotion of loss and love in the same video without it being disrespectful or cheesy?' One way in which I was planning to do this, which I told them, was by showing all sides to a relationship, not just the good, (which a lot of media does)but also arguments and times when just being together doing little was appreciated.

Through this audience feedback I learned that audiences are very concerned with how the message of the video is shown and how I planned on making it approachable and not cringey. I also learnt that when it comes to promoting other products that are not the artists in their video (product placement), people think that most of the time it can be 'too in your face' and if it is done in a subtle way they don't mind if it's there or not. Most people also like longer music videos that contain a narrative and are entertaining- according to information collected by my audience questionnaire.


DURING PRODUCTION
Whilst filming and editing, I asked my actors what they thought of the footage and if they thought the message could be conveyed another way. We shot the same scenes multiple times but from different angles or with different element to see how it looked and to also have more options when editing. I also asked other peers who were filming music videos what they thought of the editing I had done and what could be done to make it better. One person said that it may have not made sense to people that hadn't been shown the pitch or knew the narrative of the story. To try and make it more understandable I included shots that emphasised the message I wanted: that the male in the relationship had died and the female was now alone and missed him.



POST-PRODUCTION
After I finished filming and completed the editing process, I showed my music video to some of my peers and asked them for their notes. Some said that 'The editing seems a bit repetitive'. I explained to them that a lot of my shots, especially at the beginning, overlap each other as I wanted a gentle transition in-between shots as then it would mirror the tone of the song. I made my editing more abrupt and sharp towards the bridge of the song as the singer got more aggressive and emotional.

PRINT PRODUCTS
Before creating both my print products I wanted to get some feedback on what my target audience and any audience like and dislike about album art covers. To do this I handed out questionnaires (insert) to 10 people: 5 from my target audience and five that preferred other music genres. From the information given back to me I found out that most people often like it when an album has a image of the artist somewhere on the front cover as opposed to having something more abstract. I also learned that having album covers in colour are most popular with audiences.