Audience Feedback I’ve Collective

By Bob Mackenzie

#1 – Target Audience Survey

I sent this questionnaire out during the research and planning process, asking some members from the target audience what they thought about a professional music video. I wanted to ask them about what they liked and disliked about the music video, this way I would have better idea about what works and what doesn't work. I used 'Survey Monkey' to create the questionnaire. This way I could embed the questions into my blog and easily send the survey to members of my target audience. 

#1 – Target Audience Survey

This questionnaire developed my research dramatically and gave me some new ideas for our music video. The biggest thing that I noticed from the responses was how much the viewers enjoyed the crowd. At this stage, we were still very unsure about whether to use a crowd or not - this is because we were concerned it wouldn't be a very indie aspect. However, everybody in the feedback loved the crowd. This influenced the final decision to include the crowd which became a massive part of the narrative and the music video. In this professional music video there was elements filmed outside of the stage area, and at these points the music became quieter. The target audience made it very clear that they didn't like this, so we made the decision that we wouldn't alter the audio throughout the video. The Georgian Theatre location was inspired by these responses as the responses said that they liked the club like venue - this was something we therefore wanted in our video. The final important element that was discussed after seeing these responses was the use of narrative. We had mixed responses about the narrative, with some people saying that they liked it and others saying that it was unnecessary. In the end, we decided to not include a narrative to begin with and then decide once we had the rough cut. We then made the decision to add the narrative once we collected more feedback later on in the process. Although this feedback didn't lead to any technical improvements, it was still an essential element of our research.

#2 – Pitch Feedback

Before we pitched our ideas to the members of our target audience, we handed each of them a post-it note to write down any thoughts they had about our plans. This wasn't a questionnaire as such, but it was still an opportunity to collect opinions from our target audience. At this stage of the process we only had ideas, meaning our feedback wouldn't alter anything technically, however it was still a very important element of our ideas development. The first thing we learnt from the pitch feedback is that our song would be successful - this is because a lot of people from our target audience said that they really like the feel of the song and that it's genre apparent. Just like the target audience survey we did previously, the people watching our pitch really liked the idea of having a crowd. At this point, we confirmed it was something we had to do despite the complication of organisation and practicality. Throughout the entire process we have had to constantly do test shots and practice our editing techniques. Without the pitch feedback I don't think we would have done as much, in fact I'm not sure if we would have done that many at all. This is because the pitch feedback inspired these practice shoots - many of the comments warned us about the complexity involved in some of our shoots. So, we got to work on test shots to confirm that our plans were possible and achievable. For our pitch we put together a rough digipak/website to try and show (roughly) what we were trying to achieve. Many of the target audience members said that they really liked the consistency between the two elements of our product. We therefore knew that this is something we would have to achieve for our final product.

#3 – Rough Cut Feedback

Collecting our rough cut feedback was the last time we collected audience feedback. Arguably, your rough cut feedback is the more important as it's the one that will make the technical changes to your product before the final release. Due to this, we had to make sure our responses were technical, detailed and critical. Therefore we split the questionnaire in to 3 parts: one about the digipak, one about the music video and another about the website. This way we would have more detailed information on how to improve each element of the product.  

#3 - Rough Cut Feedback (Music Video)

At this point in the production stage the music video was the most complete out of the 3 of our products. The video included all of our performance footage, which was all successfully edited. In fact, the only thing we had missing was the narrative. Therefore we were almost expecting people to say that it needed narrative, as we thought this ourselves. To our pleasant surprise, the feedback was actually surprising good. Although the video is repetitive with constant performance, our target audience really enjoyed the video. Most of the comments mentioned that they enjoyed the lighting, editing and performance locations - these 3 elements create a good pace to the video. However, over 50% (4 out of 7) of the responses did say that the video lacked narrative - this meant that we needed to dramatically alter our video before the the final product deadline. We proceeded by filming the narrative and then editing it in, meaning the feedback effected our final product both technically and stylistically. As the narrative was placed on top of the performance, there wasn't a lot else that we had to do with the music video. This meant that the final product was complete. 

#3 - Rough Cut Feedback (Website)

When the rough cut deadline came around we honestly were not happy with the website at all, in fact we found it extremely underwhelming. To our surprise the feedback that we got for the website was actually quite good. Most of the target audience said that they quite like the minimalistic design, however other than that there wasn't much else to talk about. That in itself was enough of an indication that our website was far too bland. This feedback inspired us to design a new website, one in which the target audience would have plenty to talk about. We wanted to create something that was exciting, interactive and visually interesting, and we wouldn't have been inspired to do this if it wasn't for our rough cut feedback.                    

#3 - Rough Cut Feedback (Digipak)

Similarly to the website, we weren't overly pleased with the standard of our digipak going into the rough cut. However, we knew that putting forward for opinions would develop our ideas and help us to create a solid product in time for the deadline. The feedback actually taught us that the digipak wasn't as bad as we thought, with most of the target audience saying that they enjoyed the bottom 3 panels. Furthermore, many comments said that they liked the colour scheme of the digipak and how the black and white contrasted with the colours. At this point in the process we had just made the decision to make large changes to our website, and it wouldn't be a band identity if the two elements (the digipak and website) didn't work towards this brand. Taking all of this into consideration, instead of improving the design we currently had, the feedback once again encouraged us to start again but in a much more exciting manner. So that's exactly what we did, making a digipak that is a variation to the overall marketing campaign but still works with in our band identity.