A2 MEDIA STUDIES

-EVALUATION
What have you learned from your audience
feedback?

In the development of our media product, we aimed to gain constructive feedback

on any creative concepts in an attempt to create an authentic final product. Due to
Gary Jules style he has a wide appeal over multiple genres from rock to alternative
and as a result his fan base is large and this means they may not all have the same
conventional ideas throughout the fan base. This meant we had to accurately target
an audience that listened to both his rock and alternative material. We believe we
effectively targeted a large audience in fan base based on their musical tastes
between rock and alternative, which are not too dis-similar, thanks to the use of
focus groups. The feedback we received showed us that we had to follow different
conventions from different genres. We had to follow the close up of the main artist
convention from the rock genre whilst also following the minimalistic/nonmaterialistic convention from the soft rock/alternative genre

Focus groups were used as our main means of

improving our final media product with
feedback as well as creating discussion
amongst an audience with mutual appreciation
of Gary Jules genre and music. Our audience
were selected based on musical preference,
and we presented them with several different
story ideas for the music video. The focus group
members would continue to describe what they
liked about different narratives as well as what
could be improved, and because we also filmed
our focus groups we could record all feedback
to be watched and discussed amongst the
group as well as referring to it at a later date
when needed.

We performed these focus groups twice in order to refine the creative stream of ideas
using different participating group members each time. From these groups, we learnt
which ideas were stronger and accepted by specific audiences such as these and which
ideas were not considered worthy for our music video. An example of this is the
background story for our protagonist. The idea was either a comedian or a clown that
was either a success or failure. Many members considered a failed clown to be too clich
and told us to go for a successful comedian who is depressed instead. Our post
production idea of a ghost idea was heavily praised as the focus group felt it gave a
uniqueness to our video. We filmed and uploaded a video of the focus group as a way of
referring back to the feedback we got whilst also using it on the website and on YouTube
so anyone could watch it and express their own individual opinion on whether they
agreed or disagreed with what the focus groups said.

We also got audience feedback for our rough cut. The comments we
received were mainly that the editing pace was too slow and we aimed to
increase it as much as we could. It was quite hard to do so as our song has
a really slow pace. They also recommended re-recording the performance
scenes as we did not deliver the ghost effect that we promised we would.
We thought that the ghost effect was a USP in our music video and
therefore we took this advice and re-recorded the performance. We also
got a wider variety of shots as recommended by the audience to speed up
the editing pace.Wereceivedpositivefeedbackabout our protagonist.
They felt the actor was convincing in displaying the emotions whilst never
breakingcharacter or being unconvincing to give an immersive experience
for the audience.

We also researched audience feedback in relation to our ancillary texts, with many
participants reacting positively to our concept of lightly portraying the themes of our
music video on the album cover that wouldn't turn off someone from purchasing or
listening to it. Our audience was impressed with our simple but effective cover as they
said it easily gets the message across that the protagonist feels isolated. Our cover
contains a picture of our protagonist sitting down with his head in his hands on the far
right. This leaves a lot of room to represent the isolation he is feeling, as suggested by
our audience. They recommended changing the font to something a bit more sinister
which is what we did.

During the planning stages of our music video we had

to find the audience that was fit for our music video.
We analysed the audience for Gary Jules who is a nonmaterialistic, minimalist and truthful musician. His
audience can be described as successor and reformer
groups who do not find pleasure in purchasing
branded expensive clothing but rather his fans follow
their own counter cultural ideas of style, not following
any certain idols or just purchasing a product because
of a brand. This shows that the people who follow Gary
Jules are independent in what they believe in, they are
not simply passive followers of consumer culture, but
instead as a specific subculture they share ideological
values such as heightened spiritual, social awareness
as well as a rejection of unsatisfying materialism.

To receive audience feedback on our video we made a poll on YouTube. This poll gained
quantitative data to view two different clips that we weren't sure on which to implement into
our video. Depending on the number of views that the clips received, that would be the clip
that we would add to the video. The Focus Group greatly improved the quality of our film as
we were given qualitative data on specific improvements that could have been made. We
showed the Focus Group of 7 people the Rough Cut of our film as well as the Final product,
we then handed out the Focus Group Questions. From here they wrote down a response
under the question. Collecting all the information, we looked to see what was mentioned the
most, we took these points and added them to our website. We changed scenes that were
used. Initially we wanted to include a scene that showed the protagonist on his birthday, with
a lack of birthday cards, to follow the lyrics of the song. However the audience felt that the
narrative became too clustered and was hard to follow. Some members of the audience
feedback group said that when this scene was included it meant the editing pace was too
quick to match the song. Therefore based on this feedback, we removed the scene.

We also showed the focus group the old and new CD covers we
made. Their response to the newer CD covers was very positive,
they stated how they related to the theme of the genre as well as
the video, the dark but artistic cover being favoured by many,
however we were told to scrap the old CD Covers because of the
small dimensions and lack of relation to the video, they stated that
they had no meaning behind it. We considered this information and
got rid of the old CD covers keeping the new ones and using each
one in the final album.

From the audience feedback that we received from our classmates as well as the
poll made online we have been recommended a lot of idea's that should be
implemented into the film. Prior to the rough cut of the music video we showed
the class, Gary Jules album covers is what we planned to work on first. They all
saw a link in the album covers in terms of text and style to the conventions of the
genre but we also found out that a lot of the album covers had a unique/personal
difference dependent on the artist. We discovered that Gary Jules was a
minimalist, plain person in terms of style. We've acted upon these various styles
between Gary Jules and other artists in the soft rock genre; and made a some of
our own trying to differentiate each one keeping a gap between similarities.
Soon after we also presented other music videos in the genre so they could get a
feel for the kind of effects used in the videos, this would give the audience an
understanding of soft rock/alternative music and help with the feedback.

During the production of the draft that we have hosted on our page,
we took cuts of effects that we weren't completely sure on using as
there were various transitions to choose from. Once we rendered
these samples we put them onto our Website for feedback and got a
very positive response on the effect we weren't sure on using, this
made an impact on our film as we adapted to fit the audiences'
preference. Again we had to use audience feedback on the transitions
as we had to either cut to the pace of the music or use smooth
transitions. The feedback helped in allowing us decide on a final
decision as it would always be in the preference of the audience. We
used Facebook and Twitter as well as YouTube to branch these
samples to a wider audience.
The audience liked us using different transitions, which were also
slow, because they said it kept their attention during the song. They
said that if the editing was to get slower they would have found the
music video boring. This was proven because when we showed them
a version of our video with a slower editing pace, a lot of them
stopped watching and were instead focusing on something else.