Audience feedback has been a big part of the project, especially for the music video. Below is a video with compiled audience feedback from members of our primary and secondary target audience (females of 15-45 years old and male teenagers) detailing how audience feedback has affected the changes we made to the music video with the final compared to an earlier version:
After the screening, we also asked our facebook friends, the majority of whom are in our primary and secondary target audiences, to complete a questionnaire on survey monkey. We used this to evaluate how effective the video was in appealing to our audiences using both quantitative and qualitative data, finding statistics and personal opinions. Katz and Blumler's Uses and Gratifications theory is a widespread and effective way of assessing audience interaction with media products and below I have analysed the results of the survey in conjunction with their key concepts:
Katz and Blumler's key uses and gratifications of media products
- be informed or educated
- identify with characters of the situation in the media environment
- simple entertainment
- enhance social interaction
- escape from the stresses of daily life
Number 1 is not really relevant to our music video and we have tried to subvert number 2, creating a confusing and mesmerising environment, ideally causing our audiences to question their environment, as the hospital was the most popular aspect of our video, out of dancer, performance and hospital on the survey. As explained below, I believe we effectively entertained the audience, several comments were made on the survey praising the editing, such as 'the editing was really good' and it was the most popular technical aspect of our video with 49% of people listing it as their favourite, out of editing, camerawork, lighting and set, with set as a second favourite. There was positive evidence, as explained below about social interaction from the survey but after the screening, there was buzz around the school about our videos and lots of people liked the video on facebook, as well as tweeting about it:
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| A tweet about our video |
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| Not only are they tweeting but also talking about it in the common room - social interaction definitely enhanced! |
As for an escape, I think the audience was definitely hooked, many of the people were so involved in the action that they visibly shuddered at the injection.
- The average rating for the video was 8.53/10 which suggested, while not perfect, a very positive overall response suggesting the audience were entertained by the video.
- This chart maps the results of the question: how much would you pay to see the band live? Over 75% of people would, after watching our video pay over £10 to see the band live with a over a quarter saying they would pay over £20. We think this is a positive number since popular alternative band 'Alt J' were quoted on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20066145) as considering £10-£15 a reasonable ticket price for a concert of theirs in London shortly after the release of their first album in 2012.
- 40/57 people surveyed said they found the music they listen to from their friends. Considering that concerts are generally social events and the data on ticket prices was very positive, I would conclude that the video gives an impression of a band who would fulfil the social interaction gratification.
- Below is a chart detailing the genre our audience thought our genre was (they were allowed more than one response). I think we have presented our genre well as many the majority of people put indie and pop, and as a genre that is difficult to define, choosing alternative is understandable and has a similar target audience to indie so I doubt we have judged our audience wrong.
- Whilst the feedback was mainly positive, we did receive some comments where the audience expressed a desire to see more of the band performance.
"Perhaps if there could be more band members playing a role in the video"
"More shots of band performance"
"More band, less story"
We perhaps could have improved here since as it is a debut video perhaps we should have established ourselves as a band more. - We also received comments that the dancer was a little confusing but while some people found this to be a flaw, some enjoyed the mystery of questioning what/who he was
Album Cover
Our initial idea for the album cover was Arianna being held back by us with chains, in order to create synergy with the music video, however, some of the audience members felt that we did not feel connected as a band, as this clearly alienates Arianna from us. Whilst we wanted Arianna to be very much at the forefront of the campaign, we did not want to create too fractured a band identity, leading to the inside panel where everyone was edited the same, which audience members found effective and 'professional-looking'. However there was 'too much white space' on the inside of the album cover and so we added mirror images of us in the same pose wet, to continue our slightly kooky band image. We also removed the logo since the rest of the cover was very 'slick' and the round, rough, chunky logo detracted from this.
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| Our initial album cover with only one set of the band inside and original name and band logo |
We also as shown above had a different name originally: "Shut Your Goddamn Mouth and Play Some Music" however, our feedback said that in the above edit, the name was not clear enough. As we did not want it to infringe any more on the image, we changed that album name to 'I' as in me, but also the Roman numeral for 1 - our first album. While people thought this was entertaining, they also said it was 'quite pretentious' so perhaps this change was not thought through enough since it perhaps alienates some of our target audience. To avoid alienating our target audience we had already changed our name from 'B*tch in the Band' since everyone we asked said this seemed like an extreme statement, and as a debut band this was perhaps not so appropriate.
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| A photo we originally wanted to use for the back panel, however our audience feedback informed us that it was very sexual which was not an image we wanted to portray |
Website
With the website, as it was a new medium for us to be working with, we received feedback about both technical and visual/usability issues. From feedback we made the following changes:
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| An early version of the website |
- Back button on gallery needed - this was a simple technical issue which we addressed
- A contact page needed - as we were a new band on a small independent record label, contactability had to be made very clear
- Make sure institutional information is prominent - this is a convention of music websites
- Ensure there is a variety of images and costumes - as a real band would have lots of different pictures in different locations and costumes
- Clear opportunities for purchases and interactivity needed - to address this and alert our audiences to our tour dates, we added a competition to win two free tickets to our concert by spotting all the references in the 'You'll Find a Way' video projection
- Enable Facebook comments on everything - the 'contact cannot be displayed' box was originally a facebook feed however this made the site look too cluttered and was unconventional for music websites so we enabled facebook comments on everything instead and also a 'like' feature on many items
- Change the newsletter box - our feedback told us the subscription box was too chunky and made our site look unprofessional so we removed the white background so it blended in more
- Pre-order/Buy Now on merchandise - another convention of bands who have a new album out
- Dates need to be highlighted - to make our website more slick, we made the buttons highlight when hovering over our tour dates
- The background is boring - whilst the background and theme should reflect the album cover, simply having the front panel image was too boring and also used to promote buying the album throughout the website so we created a tessellation of the letter 'I' instead
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