EVALUATION... QUESTION 4

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Going to watch the music video as a cinematic experience was brilliant. Just before this a quick coffee with last year’s group member Poppy Power, led us a short walk up to the cinema where fellow media students were standing outside waiting in line for this great ‘premier’. The energy was simply curiosity and excitement as everybody in the year wanted to view and share their experiences of the coursework and see their work on the big screen. Of course at that particular moment, physically, it was more about who is going to be the first in line and get good seats for a luxury experience. The cinema wasn’t big, or had a major name like ‘vue’ or ‘odeon’ but it did the job just as well for us independent movie makers. The anticipation of seeing your own work on screen was immense but appreciating other videos was just as eventful. During class, it was common to have witnessed other people’s videos during the process of editing, but so many had left unseen that it was interesting how other people had interpreted the task and seeing just how many different style, genres, and generally different types of people there were in the room all of whom had different ideas of what would make the perfect music video.

As we found seats we heard a short introduction from our media teachers, just before the screening which as always was a warm welcome and a realisation that we had accomplished something that we are willing, and proud enough of our work to share. Later, the structure turned into video, applause, hearing the audience respond to the video is a major part of understanding your success and previous assumptions of target audience, showing you whether you have been accurate in your research and assumptions. After a long wait, as our video only appeared towards the end my camera was at the ready. Here is a visual description of exactly how it went:

The reaction to our video was very pleasing, first, the utter silence during the video made it seem like everybody was paying attention and were interested in what was on screen, and then the applause that followed at the end taught me that the audience did like the video, this assumption was also taken from the cheers that made it all the more exciting and showed us that our target audience enjoyed our video.

FEEDBACK VIDEO 1

FEEDBACK VIDEO 2

FEEDBACK VIDEO 3

FEEDBACK VIDEO 4

I have to apologise for feedback video 1, it seems that the audience were mainly interested in the bird and found it difficult to take turns, which made it come to light that we had used a very interesting prop, and whilst there was a lot of concern with the use of it, it turned out to be a brilliant subject to provoke interest. This has been mentioned in all the other videos, it seems that this is what made our video distinct, although on another note, it shows me that these were the video’s strongest points as many people didn’t comment on the fast cars shot, or most didn’t even mention the dancers except for Eleni. I would have thought, looking at our target audience that the dancers would have been appealing however, it turns out that this wasn’t as memorable to the audience as we thought it would be, as it didn’t make that much of an impression. Whilst all three were talking at the same time in feedback video 1 I did manage to pick out Evies comment ‘I liked it black and white’ which was something that made our video outstand from the rest a bit more, making it slightly ‘unique’ and the ‘wash out effect’ which was actually a simple flicker tempted the audience to the darkness of the video as Stephanie had said in feedback video 2. Feedback video 1 and 3 also share similar taste in liking the effect of ‘erasing’. This was the scene in the video where the singer said ‘erase’ and the words disappeared off the page, the audience found this effective and I’ve learnt that through its repetition. I think this may have something to do with the use of amplification, linking certain sections of the video with lyrics does prove itself useful as the audience finds it easier to remember. Another thing that I have learnt, was whilst it’s good keeping your video to yourself and waiting for the big cinema moment to reveal it to an audience, it is also good when people have seen your draft as Lashmi mentioned in feedback video 3 that she noticed an improvement between the draft and the final, which made me feel that we had accomplished something for the better during the weeks before the final deadline and it felt to good to see people notice those changes. 

Vimeo was another form of getting feedback, the video was uploaded to see whether or not people were going to watch it, if they enjoyed watching it and if they were willing to watch it a second time. Vimeo is a safe website because it has been created for this exact purpose, however the video is not as easy to access as it would be if it was on Youtube. By it being on vimeo, it limits the audience to whoever has a vimeo account. This way it is also safer for us as we won't be hassled by copyright permission. Also, we had uploaded the video to facebook however, because Jess knew the artist we had previously asked her if it was alright to put the video up, and the artist said yes as she herself wanted to see it and left comments saying that she liked it which was pleasing for us. What I have learnt from posting my work up on the internet was that it is more interesting when a lot of people have access to it and can leave comments telling you what they think. Also my friend Olli commented on facebook explaining a little error that he had noticed in the timing and being the computer wizard that he is gave an example of how it can be fixed which was really useful.