Evaluation Task 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the year we have had various opportunities to present our products to teachers and students alike, in order to get some feedback from a fresh pair of eyes. This process has been really helpful for us in developing our music video and creating a homepage and digipak for our artist.

The first stage of the audience feedback process was back in September when we had just got back to school and had a few of our own music video ideas to present to the class.

Presenting initial ideas to the class

Me presenting my ideas to the class!

In order to present my ideas I made use of photos I had found on Tumblr and Pinterest that best expressed the look I was going for with each of my ideas as I thought this would be the most effective, visual way of getting my ideas across to the class. For example for the Hold Ya video idea, I showed them lots of photographs that were taken in pink light by the photographers who had inspired my idea.
I filmed all the feedback and uploaded it to YouTube :

The dominant opinion in the class was that the Hold Ya idea was the best one. Therefore when we got into groups, that was the idea that we put forward as one of the four best options. We worked as a group to pick one idea to develop further, and that idea turned out to be my one for the song Hold Ya. Therefore we now had a rough idea and song to go forward with.

Pitching to Luke

The next stage of receiving feedback was pitching to Luke, Hurtwood's creative director. We used Prezi to make a treatment to pitch our idea to him :



Luke gave us some useful advice and highlighted the problems with our idea. We took notes and also a voice recording so that we had a full set of data of everything he said. This made it much easier to later reflect on it and make changes accordingly.

He advised us that certain aspects of our idea - such as filling the room with pink balloons - made our idea seem more juvenile and overtly pop-py. We didn't want to create a straightforward pop video or a pop artist - we thought the song was more alternative than that and wanted to portray a slightly more unique artist. Therefore we decided to take out the pink balloons element so that our idea more accurately represents our artist the way we want to portray her. Luke also said that although we had lots of ideas, not all of the strands are fluid enough and we needed to develop more clear narratives that all link together so that the video is kept interesting for the whole 3 minutes. This taught us that its important to have enough strands to keep the video visually interesting and exciting for the audience, and it encouraged us to come up with at least 3 separate, detailed strands.

Meeting with Luke and Matt

In early October, our group was feeling slightly stuck with our idea. We felt as if we really needed someone with a fresh perspective to review our ideas and give us some advice. Therefore we went back to have another chat with Luke and also with Matt, another artistic director. This process was hugely beneficial because Luke and Matt gave us a lot more to think about, and were very helpful in pointing out any logistical flaws in our idea and answering questions we had.
Our various questions, and their solutions, were as follows...

• Q : Are we able to recreate the pink lighting that we want even if we are in a boarding house room? - We showed them photos of the lighting we meant - taken from the works of photographers Petra Collins and Mayan Toledano (examples are included below.)

         A : Yes, we are still able to, but they felt that what would look better is a soft white light on the actual characters rather than the pink light being directly on them...we could still have a soft pink light in the actual room but not concentrated on the girls - this will achieve the soft, more sensual feel we want to create - whereas the brighter pink light is too reminiscent of pop videos. 

• Q : How would we film the couple in a car if they are driving etc?

         A : They didn't really love the car idea, felt it didn't fit with the look and feel of our other strands, also said that finding the right car would be too tricky...therefore we decided we would not use that strand anymore.

• Q : If you don't think the car idea is feasible, do you think the location of Brighton fits with the overall feel and look of the music video/artist? If so we will probably use shots of the couple in Brighton as our third strand, instead of the car strand.

       A : They liked the idea of Brighton, said that a location gave us lots of options for filming, and it would be possible for us to go up there with some filming equipment on our own one weekend to get the footage.  

The result of this chat was that we finally decided that we definitely wanted the third strand of our music video to be set in Brighton. We also realised that using a car in our music video wasn't the best idea. Furthermore, we found out what the best type of lighting to use was in order to create a unique, alternative star image for our artist, rather than portraying them as a conventional pop artist such as Katy Perry (which is what bright pink light would achieve.) We also definitively chose what set we wanted to create and the props we wanted to have - wooden floors and a wooden stool for a natural, stripped back look, similar to the Petra Collins photos shown above. We were able to confirm these because Luke and Matt agreed that this set would compliment our idea well.

Making a test video and screening it to the class

A few weeks later, we created a test video of our music video. The purpose of this was to have a 'prototype' that gave us a chance to see if our ideas - which thus far we had only seen written down on paper - would translate well to moving image. After filming and editing the test, we then showed it to our classmates to get their valuable opinions on it. We took notes on their feedback and also recorded it on our phones. I compiled this table to show their feedback and how we planned to respond to it.

Creating a test and showing it to our class was extremely helpful and I'm glad we did it, as it allowed us to solve the final problems with our idea and gave us ideas of how we could improve it. For example, we added more lip syncing elements in because this made the two extra girls look less random, they have more of a purpose in the video. Also, we realised that we would have to put a bit more thought into how we styled Josh so that his aesthetic goes with Vickey's (the main lip syncer in our video). For example, dress him in pastel colours rather than black tshirt and jeans. 

Focus Group

The final stage of audience feedback for our project was in December. By this time we had not only finished editing our music video, we had also created a homepage and digipak for our artist. However these products were still at a rough cut stage so changes could be made if needed. Therefore we held a focus group, where we got an impartial member of our class to show our products to some AS students and get their opinions. We used AS students because, as 16/17 year old teenagers, they are the target audience for our music video and obviously it is ideal to get opinions from the type of person that is most likely to buy our artist's music/be a fan.
The first thing we did to prepare for this exercise was create some specific questions that we wanted the appointed 3rd party to ask the group. The questions were as follows :

Digipak

• What do you think about the digipak?
• Based on the digipak, what three words would you use to describe the image of our artist?
• What style of music would you expect on this album based on the digipak?

Homepage

• What do you think of the homepage?
• Has your image of the artist changed since seeing the homepage, after the digipak? If you so, why?
• What do you think of the layout of the website?

Video

• What do you think of the video?
• What do you think about the Brighton aspect? Is it relevant?
• Are there any differences between the three products? If so, examples?

The 3rd party that was facilitating the focus group for us gave everyone in the group the link to our website so that they could actually use it rather than just looking at it. They were therefore able to fully explore the website and its different sections. This was important because there are essential aspects of our website that can only be discovered if you actively navigate through the site.

We used an iPhone to record the feedback :

They made some really useful points that allowed us to refine and improve our three products.

For example, they said that the photos for our digipak and website didn’t go together - the digipak looked too much like that of a dance artist, whereas the website had the look of an alternative pop artist. This meant that synergy was not maintained across our three products. Since we conducted this research before finishing our digipak and website, we were able to effectively use the results to improve these two products. We went and took new photos of our artist, this time with neutral lighting because the main problem with the digipak was that the brightly coloured lighting conveyed the wrong star image for our artist. We were much happier with our new photos and felt that they created the perfect star image - an alternative pop artist with a soft, feminine aesthetic.

THE DIGIPAK BEFORE THE FOCUS GROUP

THE DIGIPAK AFTER THE FOCUS GROUP

 

THE WEBSITE BEFORE THE FOCUS GROUP

THE WEBSITE AFTER THE FOCUS GROUP 

In conclusion, every stage of the audience feedback helped us to refine and improve our products to ensure we created the best promotional campaign for our artist. This process was invaluable, and it was especially interesting to get opinions from people who had never seen our video before because they had a fresh perspective on it.