Media studies: Evaluation.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My feedback from the pitch:

What I learned from this feedback: At the time, during the research and planning stages of my production, I learned that a lot of the plans for my music production based on media conventions and uses were wrongly developed. The feedback from my peers was mostly negative and critical. The issues most frequently brought up as can be observed are those regarding target audience, the genre and narrative of the video. Most people but 1 exception stated that they were not into the soft rock genre I was into. All of these forms of feedback and more can be evidenced in the pitch feedback post typed up back in September. Since so much negativity was put into this feedback, the current production plans of mine for use were an obvious problem, so I conducted further market research into discovering whether or not my new target audience idea was that of a more acceptable one

This is the marketing research I conducted post-pitch stage. The feedback demonstrated that my new target audience demographic of young adult males was more appropriate ultimately. These questionnaires generally demonstrate that people of the age range I gave the questionnaires to were into the soft rock genre, as well as more common genres among adults. It also shows narrative planning as I subtly yet effectively related the characters of the adults to the narrative content of my intended video at the time. This helped me understand how to make the narration within my music video relate to that of the target audience, thereby gaining their interest. (Of course, the level to which I ultimately achieved this is very highly debatable, as my draft video which I based this research off received a level 1 U grade in the end.) This outcome of research effectively enough conforms to the stereotype that older people classical genres and the slow pace of soft rock as compared to those younger who prefer loud, fast paced heavy music. Feedback from draft Digipak and poster: If we fast forward to a later date, at the point in which my draft Digipak and poster were submitted, I received some annotated feedback from the same peers based on the qualitative production of my Digipak and poster products pre-finalisation.

An example of feedback I received would be that of which is stored on a post called Digipak peer feedback on my Blog from November 4th. This post features both teacher and fellow student review on the quality of production on my draft version of the Digipak and poster products I created. The feedback was once again, dominantly negative, with few comments based on positive aspects. Overall, I discovered during my feedback at this stage that my product needed to use or challenge more media conventions, rather than just randomly feature different content and properties without any use of colour scheme, layout, structure or typography. My product was also criticised for not following the rule of thirds convention that makes products seem neater. As a result of this feedback, I hanged the Digipak and poster products to ones which followed the Calvin Harris, 18 months style. This means a use of consistent typography, a rule of thirds and better use of images.

These were the final version of the Digipak and poster. I used the feedback from the drafts, as you can observe, to make the necessary improvements. For instance, the following of the Calvin Harris album inspiration now allows me to use a rule of thirds for the front cover and other panels. The poster also features a much better use of typography and content structure using the rule of thirds convention. The main image also resembles the Calvin Harris cover as a whole, with the brick wall, etc Though the brick wall in my front cover resembles something different in relation to the narration of the video that the man in it is a trapped and tortured being in a metaphorical prison. The inside panels of the brick wall images are also more consistent, meaningful and attractive than the seemingly random 2 houses appearing in the draft version of the video. The few positive aspects of the draft remained, such as the layout of the back cover, though were still altered slightly to meet the standards of the new Calvin Harris based style of the products. Overall, the feedback I received from these products helped me realise how to use cross media production of media conventions usefully. The cross media production, as explained in previous posts, carried on towards my final music video. (The brick wall being a metaphorical emotional prison becomes part of the narrative in the video as the man is trapped in both movement and expression while the female acts out the scene visually.)