I've included a short video just demonstrating some of the work I did on FCPx and the websites that were involved for the process of my work.
Monday, 31 March 2014
Friday, 28 March 2014
Evaluation #3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
When gathering feedback for my rough cut and final cut it was important that what I was producing matched with what my audience wanted to see and listen to. Not only was the music video itself a crucial thing to market correctly but the digipak and magazine advert had to be on point too, as these are the advertising techniques the audience will see in order to establish brand identity and to recognize the artist. My target audience was mixed genders, aged between the ages of 18 - 25. I chose this age as I wanted to be able to market digitally and in order for this to be successful and to reach my target audience they had to be digital natives or digital immigrants who were accustomed to the latest technologies. When producing my ideas to my target audience I also had to take into account that I was getting feedback from the appropriate audience as this would alter the results. Stuart Hall, another media theorist, had a theory on reception and how audience would respond to certain media texts. Those who would either be
Dominant Reading: where the audience will fully accept and match the producers intentions of them reacting; this makes the feedback more organic and natural. This is also known as a preferred reading
Then there is the Opposition Reading: This is where the audience will disagree with the producers intentions, rejecting and not accepting the media. This could be down to their social position.
Finally there is the Negotiated Reading: This is where the audience is middle grounded on the coding. They either agree or disagree with the producers intentions or they modify it in a way that reflects them more appropriately
With that in mind I went into looking into social positions and used Michael Maffesoli's theory on Urban Tribes.
(link to my post on urban tribes HERE)
Each tribe has a group and their own subgroups. I had to decide which group my music genre of Pop/Electro-pop would fit into and would recieve the best response. The groups are Aspirant Mainstream, Mainstream, Urban, Alternative or Leading Edge.
With this research I decided the target market I was going for would be within the tribe Aspirant in a sub-culture of either Trendies, Rah's or New Casual. I decided this because the Trendies are always searching for the next big thing, New casuals like underground beats and understated fashion while Rah's are well off 'rich kids' who are likely to listen to most pop music and most likely to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram.My style in video would appeal to these social groups as it shows a mature, contemporary aesthetic and holds a professional feel about it. The Aspirant tribes are also very digital native and find themselves spending a lot of time browsing online stores such as Urban Outfitters, scrolling through Twitter and Facebook and wasting time watching endless amounts of YouTube videos. This works well for me as my target market are within the ages of 18-25 and my ideal style of marketing is through social networks and digital platforms. They are also more likely to have disposable incomes due to parents, being students or working jobs. This would mean they have the income to purchase my digipak. Using websites such as Facebook and YouTube to advertise would be the appropriate use of marketing and magazines such as 'Company', 'Elle', 'Cosmopolitan' and 'John Lewis' would appeal to my audience.
I'm aware these are statistics for America but I believe the statistics are like this for many first world countries. As you can see watching television and going online on the computer, not for work, are the highest statistic at 3.9 hours a day average and reading online is around 1.4 to 0.9 hours a day. It's clear from these statistics that society is consuming media daily for a long period of time. This would mean my marketing strategy for my target audience would definitely be either watching TV adverts, music channels etc, watching music videos and browsing social media sites online or reading magazines online or via app on their smart phones.
Written Feedback:
When looking at my feedback for my final product and my rough products I can discover what my audience wants. I made sure to get feedback for my music video throughout different parts of my editing to make sure that what I was producing matched what my target audience wanted to see and that it was relevant to my chosen genre.
The first lot of feed back is below:
I had my peers watch my video and comment on different aspects of the video such as use of the camera, construction of mise-en-scene, editing, use of sound and my individual contribution to the product. The audience were asked to mark it out of 4 (4 being the highest mark and 1 being the lowest.) From my self assessment I marked myself as around a 3 for the most part as I felt there was room for improvement and my peers seemed to agree with me. This was very helpful when editing my rough cut as it shown me that I was on the same page as my audience and that what I was doing was good I could just do more of it. I feel this method of feedback was the most beneficial as it wasn't just positive criticism but also constructive. As I was alone in this project it was easy for me to just think "yep, I like this so I'll do it" without having to discuss with someone else what they thought so having this feedback shows me that my ideas, although they were my own and I didn't discuss them with others, I was doing the right thing and appealing to my target audience.
I wanted to continue this method of feedback as it was beneficial for my progress. I continued to ask for people to watch and comment the more I progressed with my video and the feedback only got more positive which I was so proud and happy about. In the image above I had audiences mark my work out of 40 on the same criteria as above and to comment what they liked, disliked, how to improve and a total mark. As you can see it was a great response and I was hitting high marks. The constructive comments I really appreciated as it was unnoticed by me that some of my lip-syncing was off so I quickly corrected this! Without this feedback my work would of definitely not been up to par and I would of been clueless as to what looked and worked well for my target audience. It was extremely important to me that the colour scheme worked (monochrome with pops of gold) and from the feedback it was clear people enjoyed this aspect and it worked with my final product.
Online Feedback:
One of my most crucial techniques for promoting my digipak and music video and how to get in touch with my target audience was to connect digitally. I used Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to link with my audience. Below are the statistics and comments from each platform. This was also very helpful as it show me who was watching, how many were watching, the likes, the criticisms and much more. This all went towards perfective my final product and really made me understand my audiences wants and what they expect of the connotations with the genre.
I made sure that I not only posted my music video but also font choices and a sneak peak of my behind the scenes to keep people interested. I really like the feedback given for my rough cut it made me realise that not everyone will understand or appreciate the juxtaposition of the black and white with the colour so that shows me that perhaps he isn't from the target audience I was aiming for however others understood and appreciated it and that tells me they are the correct audience and have the preferred reading of my production and not the oppositional reading.
The most popular choices were fonts 4, 5 and 6. This helped me in my decision for my digipak and music video a lot. From this I understood that these fonts attracted my audience the most, they found these to be fitting for my music video and genre and for their tastes and this was extremely important to me that I got this right. I took this information and decided to choose font 6. Although this wasn't the most popular it spoke to me more, I liked this font, others did and it fit with my album nicely. 5 was more arty and took away from my simplistic feel but I appreciated that my audience liked that and liked difference and more abstract fonts. This also reflect my feel for the music video, but challenging the popular choice by using a less popular one it worked with me and gave more emphasis on the abstract nature of the music video.
The feedback for my digipak again was very positive. I got a lot of likes from my peers. I found that people liked the black and white theme and that it flowed well between the platforms of music video, digipak and magazine. Overall I learned that getting feedback is extremely important and influential when trying to attracted a particular audience. I found that I had successfully filmed, edited, created a professional and convincing final product that was easily recognisable by my target market. Although there was a couple exceptions it made me realise how important Stuart Hall's theory is when reading audiences reactions. The right audience will give the right reading.
Thursday, 6 March 2014
Evaluation #2: How effective is the combination between your final product and ancillary texts?
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