EVALUATION: Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We based most of our design moves on our audience feedback. At the beginning of the creation of our products, we did an initial focus group just to see where our audience stood within the spectrum of colour, doodles and concepts. My partner asked them many questions and listened closely to their responses and considered those we began to plan what we wanted to do and where we were headed. Through making big decision my partner and I always turned to our audience to ask the what we could do and what they found was more effective and satisfying to watch because ultimately, they are the consumers and if the consumers are unhappy the product wonts sell. Their opinion mattered massively to us. 

We received many positive, encouraging comments throughout the process of creating all of the final productions. From teachers giving us feedback to peers walking it the editing studio and seeing buts of the video we received tons of positive commentary. However, along with the good came the bad, which to me was much more helpful as it meant I could improve something about our production. As I was not part of the editing process, or the creation of either the final digipack or the final advert, I asked my partner for the kind of positive commentary she received while editing or even after editing in the focus group. She mentioned always being told that the doodles were, “very cool and super trendy” and even being told “oh, I love the dancing in this video, it’s like nothing I’ve seen before”. Comments such as these highlighted to me that the audience quite enjoyed certain aspects of the video and because of that it meant that we could either enhance these aspects or add more of them to maybe further satisfy the audience. These encouraging comments allowed her to know that she was moving towards the correct direction in terms of edit and the production of a successful music video. During the process of creating the digipack and the advert we did not actually host a focus group to receive any feedback as we found we had enough as we were. We did create the advert together and through this we received many comments such as maybe you should make this bigger so that they see it first”, and, “oh, make that a different colour and maybe move that down to draw the eye elsewhere”. We didn’t always take the advice that we were given but we definitely considered it and only disregarded it if it was getting in the way of our production and our own ideas, which were also very important.

We also did a lot of self-criticising which, I believe, is the best kind of criticism. We spent hours and hours staring at screens filled with footage trying to digest it all and make sense of it all and always trusted each other’s opinions to relieve us of the misery of self-analysis. 

Starting to create our music video concept, ideas and objectives was quite hard to do while still considering an audiences opinion, that is why I believe it was a mistake to host a focus group before we had even clarified any of our ideas. I was not actually present for the focus group and didn’t have much of a say towards the questions that were being asked in it so after finding out my partner took the initiative to host a focus group I found it quite hard to brainstorm without any barriers and with a free mind. I believe we should have given our audience choices that we were comfortable with taking towards an idea that was already solidified, simply for reassurance. Hosting focus groups means that we are now comfortable with the progress that we have made, and we just need help in choosing the best path to go down. That’s where the audience come in. I don’t believe our audience should be guiding us, but we should be guiding our audience to help us determine what they want. 

Our final focus group was quite interesting to read, (I was, too, not part of this focus group). During the analysis of the focus group I got the idea that most, if not all, of our audience members quite liked the video, the digipack and the advert. They also had a couple negative things to say which is always welcomed as it presents honesty and improvements we as the producers and directors may not have seen. I got the idea that they quite enjoyed the video but maybe didn’t understand the song. My interpretation of the song is one of a broken man that is struggling with trust due to his sudden surge n fame and being constantly surrounded by fake love. Most of the audience members described the song as quite happy and upbeat. I do agree that the song does have quite a high tempo and quite a dance like mood, but the lyrics of the song suggest otherwise, and I believe the music video does too. This was one misunderstanding I noticed throughout the music video. If I was present I would have asked the audience how they felt about the song and maybe after asked them what they thought it was about and then what they thought the video was about. It would have been interesting getting the answer to these questions as I feel the entire music video was misunderstood and completely misconstrued.