What have you learned from your audience feedback?
As a group we had the opportunity to collect a variety of audience feedback through presentations of our video to classes, and through comments received on our YouTube channel in which we posted our video. We previewed our video to a group of male and female AS media students who are aged between 16-18, all of which fit the criteria of our target audience. We then asked them to fill in a questionnaire that we had created, with a variety of questions to help us establish the strengths and weaknesses and their overall thoughts on our music video.
The overall thought on our video positive. The main strength of our video was that the audience enjoyed watching it, and they liked the effects and said that they worked well and was incredibly unique – in particular the UV paint on the dancers. The audience also responded well to the different location set –ups, for example the UV room, the white room and the laser room. They felt that this added variety visually and wasn’t boring to watch. They enjoyed the technology theme, as they said this was new and inventive. In particular the male audience found the dancers a good element to have included, as it broke up the constant focus on the band, and also was interesting for them to watch. They also agreed with the reasons being why we chose to include dancers, as the genre of music being ‘electro punk/pop’. But some of the female respondents felt that the use of dancers that weren’t dressed limited clothing, offended them slightly. But as we are trying to target both a male and female audience, I feel that the use of dancers can be in both extremely appealing (male), but at the same time unappealing (female) therefore this is an element of the video that is controversial.
The weaknesses of the video were that quite a few of the respondents felt that the narrative of the video was unclear; however this lack of understanding did not disrupt their viewing of the video. But after an explanation from us on how the lead singer was creating the video, taking images and putting them together, the group understood the video and recognised how we showed this, in particular through our use of special effects.
Stuart Hall’s theory on the encoding and decoding focuses and assess the reading that audience members have when watching a media product. It mainly focuses on the meaning that producers intend to project, and the way in which these are read by audiences from a variety of backgrounds. There are 3 variations on readings – preferred (understand the intended values), negotiated (understand some values, but have own opinions) and oppositional (Disagree wit the intended values/messages).
We as a group came to the conclusions that the overall response to our video was more of a negotiated reading, as the audience were able to understand elements of our video, such as the overall theme of technology. However there were mixed opinions on the understanding of the narrative, as quite a few did not completely understand the narrative, but at the same time a few did. Therefore our overall conclusion was that our video had a negotiated reading. The reason why we had negotiated readings can be down to various factors. First of all, whether the music video was created and produced in a clear and understandable way for the audience, but it can also be down to different individual’s social and cultural surroundings and upbringings.
Again there was a mixed response to the star image, as some females found him attractive, whilst other did not. Again I feel this is negotiated as their were mixed responses; however our main intention was to make him attractive to a female audience, and cool and unique for a male audience. I feel that we managed to get a preferred reading from the male audience, as they thought saw our star in a way in which we intended to project to the audience. I think we would have preferred the female audience found the lead singer more attractive, but whether this is down to personal taste, and can be down to how the music video had an the overall ‘masculine’ theme.
Megan Knowles
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