Evaluation for advanced production Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before the filming of our music video I had to gain an understanding of who I was marketing the video for. To do this I had made a questionnaire and handed it out to 20 to people in total, 10 of those being male and the other 10 being female. I created a closed questionnaire which consisted of 12 questions such as, what is your favourite genre? , How often do you buy your music in a month? And, which websites do you use on a regular basis? Once I had the results I uploaded the results into Microsoft Excel and created two separate graphs for each question, this way I could compare the results of the males and females. I evaluated each graph on my blog and this allowed me to create an understanding of my audience demographic. Here is an example of my findings for the question:

Where do you buy your music?
(Blue= female. Green= male)
For this question I could understand that males tend to shop in a variety of places for their music where as females tend to only shop on itunes, supermarkets and HMV. Therefore it is noticeable that our fan base is likely to be male due to 40% answering that they shop at independent retailers for their music. Therefore when our artist is first released it may not make it straight to high street retailers but instead independent shops such as Norwich's Soundclash which sells artists on smaller labels such as Smaller Than You. These smaller labels are also likely to be found on internet sites such itunes, thus with 40% of each gender choosing itunes it shows how there will be a small minority of female fans but it will be mainly male dominant.
Another question which helped me to understand my audience demographic was:

Where do you hear about new music/bands?

It is clear that males prefer to research for new music/bands with 60% of males finding new music/bands on the internet whereas 80% of females will find their new music through music channels on the television or the 60% who will simply listen to what’s on the radio. Therefore when promoting Smaller Than You it is more likely that we will have a mainly male dominant fan base at first as our music video will only be able to be promoted on You Tube or the bands Myspace. Once the band are signed and have a big enough budget to promote the video on music channels such as MTV the female fan base will begin to increase.
These two questions allowed me to understand that the audience demographic for our music video would be male due their gender being more interested in researching new music and buying from independent retailers.

This questionnaire was given to a young audience aged 16-25. I chose this age bracket as my own knowledge gained from going to watch Smaller Than You live, their audience mainly consisted of young people between these ages.
Therefore my audience research for Smaller Than You gave me the audience demographic of males aged between 16-25. With this information I could begin planning my music video as I had knowledge of who my target audience consisted of.

Once my music video was completed I gained audience feedback on my completed production. This consisted once again on a questionnaire which evaluated aspects of my music video such as, mise-en-scene, camera work and editing, how much is was enjoyed etc. Overall my results from my male demographic gave me a rating of 4.5 for my overall production, as they said the video was the correct length and they would listen to the single ‘Who Knew’ again. However I was criticised for the way the instruments where synced with the music as some noticed it was out of time. Another point raised was that my skateboarders weren’t doing enough tricks and that this would have improved the appeal, but overall the males reflected that the video suited the ska genre well and it successfully promoted Smaller Than You.
My female audience gave me an average of 4 out of 5 for my production, 1being the lowest and 5 being the highest. They rated me highly one my mise-en-scene, camera work and editing and length with an average again of 4 out of 5. However my female audience found it harder to understand the narrative showing that they paid closer attention to the finer details of the music video but still said the narrative held their attention and it highlighted the fast pace of the music video. Overall my female audience thought the video was slightly too long but would listen to the track again and found it promoted Smaller Than You successfully.

Another aspect of the brief for my advanced production was to create a digi-pak which successfully promoted the release of the album for Smaller Than You, this would include the single ‘Who Knew’ which was used in the music video. I was able to use my blog for this aspect of my production as I could post the images I was going to use and gain audience feedback on whether or not they suited the genre of my music video. Once this was determined I used Photoshop Elements to enhance my images and posted the ideas I wanted to include within my digi-pak. The audience feedback gained from the comments on my blog allowed me to understand that my front cover appeared juvenile as I had added a layer onto the lamppost within the image to make it appear as though it was drawn on. My idea was to make it reflect the image of the ‘skateboarder’ used within my music video by making it appear ‘graffitied’ on. This however wasn’t what my audience saw in the image and I was told my image would be stronger if it was removed. Therefore instead I used the ‘poster’ filter to make it still appear animated.

Another part of my digi-pak I was able to change due to my comments on my blog was the back cover. I had originally wanted to use the same male on the front but instead have him as a close up image smoking. This was to be intertextually referencing the album ‘Whatever People Say I Am Is What I’m Not’, by The Arctic Monkeys. However I was told this was didn’t promote the genre or the band and had no audience appeal. Therefore I was able to change it completely by using an image similar to the front but only including the skateboard and the lamppost and used the same font for the front of the image for my track names. This therefore developed the continuity of the digi-pak and reflected the ‘skateboarder’ brand style of Smaller Than You.

The inside panels I was told where strong therefore didn’t need much changing, however for the inside right panel I was told the image was too dull as it just showed a skateboarder doing a trick whilst holding drumsticks. Therefore to strengthen the promotion of Smaller Than You I included the band members names around the image and made it look like they had been written on the road the skateboarder was on.

For my magazine advert I used a similar image to the front of the digi-pak but instead took the image at a different angle. This therefore didn’t show a repetition in the images used but also allowed audience recognition with the digi-pak and the magazine advert. I posted the advert on my blog and was told through comments it was ‘splendidly generic and represents the essence of the single very well.’

Like my music video, I gained audience feedback on my completed digi-pak and magazine advert.
I chose to ask males as this is my audience demographic. Overall I got an average of 4 out of 5 for my print productions. I was rated highly on whether or not it successfully reflected the genre with an average of 4 out of 5 as well as a high rating for my standard of graphics and aspect of brutishness with again an average of 4 out of 5. However I was told to improve the font on the front of the digi-pak which advertised the name of the album ‘Who Knew’ as it was dull and didn’t fit well with the other panels of my digi-pak. The males liked the location used for the digi-pak and thought it reflected the brutishness of the band well and the graphics used on the images enhanced the appeal. The magazine advert however didn’t have enough audience appeal to make my audience demographic buy the digi-pak this would need to be improved if I had more time.