Evaluation Question: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the progression of my production, audience feedback has been both beneficial and enlightening. I continued to use audience feedback through out the creation of my music video and other ancillary tasks through the use of different methods of data collection and reviews. This enabled me to adapt my work to suit my target audience, thus ensuring that they would be satisfied with my final product once completed.

 My target audience is mainly aimed at the age group of 16-30 year olds. I selected this age group because my video was created to form a moral and have a story base on some issues teenagers and young adults face in today’s world. I thought the age range of 16-30 year olds would be broad enough to cover these age types, and that my video would have the highest amount of influence on people within this age range.

 Due to the fact that my age range was aimed at relatively young people, I had to consider what methods of gathering feedback would be most suitable. For example if my age range was higher, a less technological method of collecting their feedback, such as physically filling out a questionnaire, may have been a  better method of collecting feedback due to older people possibly not being able to use websites or technology to answer a questionnaire. I considered many options of collecting feedback; however one which I found very useful was the use of the internet. The website Survey Monkey enabled me to create an online survey’s which could be accessed via any one with access to the internet and the survey link. This opened up the possibility for a wide range of responses, which was beneficial as the more responses I received, the better range of feedback I could look over and use to help improve my products. The questions in the survey were both quantitative (such as ‘out of 1-5 how much would you rate each aspect of my video?) and qualitative (such as ‘did you like and understand the narrative of my music video?). The use of both types of data ensured me that I would be able to see the feedback clearly when using quantitative feedback, whilst also being able to gain some more defined opinions with the use of qualitative feedback. This feedback would then be reviewed by myself and used to change any parts of my products that were required to be altered to ensure that they would be suitable for my target audience.

 The use of the social networking site Facebook also helped with the collection of feedback. Many of my friends whose ages vary use Facebook, so I saw this as the perfect opportunity to publish my survey onto the website using a link and ask them to watch or look at my products and then complete the survey. Within minutes of posting the link to the survey, the amount of people completing the survey increased. Without the use of Facebook, it would have been a lot harder to try and get people to complete my survey, and I may not have had as much feedback without it. This also allowed me to gain audience feedback from people of the age of my target audience. This is due to the fact that most people who use Facebook are of my target audience age range, and therefore I could see how they responded to the story/narrative of my video, as well as other aspects.

 Verbal communication has been one of the best forms of feedback during production. I can ask questions at any given time to anyone who wishes to answer them, and then use their feedback to alter my products. By using verbal communication, this allowed me to ask a various amount of questions. Some being specific to certain aspects of my video, such as ‘Do you prefer a higher or lower contrast within this scene?’, to questions that are more broad such as, ‘What is your opinion on the choice of song?’. Verbal communication allows people to respond quickly and more reliably than perhaps say the use of Survey Monkey to collect feedback. One reason being is a human error of hitting the wrong number during a quantitative feedback question could affect the product if I was to take the wrong figure into consideration.  The audience could also give me feedback without me asking for it via the use of verbal communication. An example of this would be when working in the classroom. My classmates on some occasions would see my product and say that they have seen something that could be changed or altered to make the product better. Seeing as my classmates are between the ages of 17-18, they are also within the age range of my target audience, and therefore their feedback was of importance to me as they are of the age I am targeting my video towards.

 I found that there were some negatives with my methods of gaining feedback. With the use of Survey Monkey, one error I found was that some people did not take it seriously and posted immature comments. However this was one person out of the many who took the survey, and I simply discounted their feedback as it was inappropriate. I was also limited to the amount of questions I could ask on Survey Monkey, although I think that the amount of questions I asked was enough to gain the right amount of feedback needed to adjust my products. A downside of verbal communication was being able to store it so that it could be physically viewed and referred to at any time. Without recording it or writing it down, there was no way of showing that feedback was given other than explaining it. This was not a huge problem as most of my verbal feedback was logged so that I could remember what had to be changed. 

I learnt many things from collecting audience feedback. One of the most obvious and crucial things being whether or not my target audience as well as age groups outside my target audience actually liked my products. If they were not interested in my music video then the message within the narrative would be pointless or even not one which is an issue within the age group targeted at all. Therefore by collecting feedback, I could insure that my video would be of interest to the target audience. I ensured this would be so, as whenever I received feedback, I would review it and then consider altering the part of my music video that the audience suggested I changed. This would obviously depend on my own opinion as well as that of the audience, as if I did not feel the feedback would improve my video, I tend to only alter the video to a certain degree that favours the video. An example being that I received feedback numerous times about the timing of the first scene of the video being a bit slow. So I decided to cut out some of the footage or speed it up so that the audience was not bored being on the same scene for a long period of time, yet I did not change the scene completely.