3. What have you learnt from your Audience Feedback?

The audience feedback we have received regarding our video, website and album cover has been extremely helpful to us when evaluating the positives and negatives of our media project. It has given us a valuable insight into our work from the point of view of the target market.

Our artist Lexi Grace is aimed at two primary demographics:

1. Older teenage girls between 16-19 years old. These girls would see Lexi as an aspirational figure, similar in age to themselves. At the planning stage, we created an ideal persona for a member of this demographic:

• Very British.
• Interests: Clubbing, Shopping, Festivals, Concerts, Going out with friends.
• Music Tastes: Pixie Lott, Lily Allen, Little Boots.
• Member of the 'iPod generation'.
• Gregarious and lively.

2. Mid-teenage boys around 14-19 years old. These boys would be the right age to have an aspirational crush on the older Lexi Grace, but also to realistically want to be with her when they get a bit older.

• Traits: Loud & 'Laddish'
• Music Tastes: Indie & Pop.
• Interests: Football, Girls, Fast Food.

We were very lucky in this project as we attend a secondary school full of both target demographics and everyone of the 40 people who attended our video screening was between the ages 15-18. Therefore we were able to really focus on our target market and gets lots of valuable feedback.

We hired out one of the media screening rooms in order to stage the premiere of our video and organised a Facebook campaign in order to advertise it.

I designed a questionnaire in preparation for the screening so our audience could give feedback on the video and we could in turn learn more about our target audience's likes and dislikes.

We handed out 30 of these questionnaires to audience members and then collated our results afterwards. The feedback was generally encouraging, with a few helpful suggestions as to what we could improve.

Here is an example of a typical answer sheet.

Audience Questionnaire

Feedback:

• Everybody rated the video between 7-10/10, which is a high average.
• Every audience member identified the artist as 'Lexi Grace', so her brand identity is strong.
• 9 out of 10 audience members believed the video looked professional and could be found on music channels such as MTV.
• 9 out of 10 audience members found the video appealing, which is encouraging as it means our video successfully appeals to its target audience.
• 38 of 40 audience members would buy the single, which is encouraging as it means our track choice suits the market well.

Common Positives:

• Many audience members liked the reversed actions shots, such as the apple jumping up out of the basket and Lexi leaping up onto the postbox.

• People also like the walking shots, where Lexi moves forwards while the crowd moves back.

• Editing techniques such as speed-changing were also popular with the audience, most prominently in the lamppost shots.

• A lot of people enjoyed the coloured walls in the lip-syncing shots and the cuts between them.

• People enjoyed our use of varied and iconic London settings too, such as Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden.

Interestingly, a few audience members also picked up on our inspiration for the video. When asked "What other music videos does this remind you of?", several responded with 'The Pharcyde - Drop', the 90s hip-hop video which originally inspired us to make a reversed video. This was encouraging, as it means our music video is stylistically clear in its influences and intertextual references.

Another reversed video audience members were reminded of was 'Coldplay - The Scientist', another reversed video which also features the artist walking with the camera.



Common Negatives:

• Although people liked the coloured wall shots, they commented on the discrepancy between Lexi's skin tones and the lighting in different shots. We were aware of this at the time of shooting, yet hadn't brought any pag-lights with us to make the lighting consistent. I would definitely do this in future, as shooting outdoors inevitably brings lighting issues.

• We attempted to colour-correct these shots and make them consistent at the editing stage and made some improvement, however there was still a massive difference between shots like the ones above.

• The other main issue the audience picked up on was Liv's performance in the video. Many audience members felt she looked nervous and self-conscious in her performance. This was also something we picked up on during the project, and before the main shoot we had a coaching session with Liv to try and get her more relaxed and improve her performance. However, I feel we should have paid more attention to sorting out this problem before the main shoot, as it has had a negative effect on our video.

Feedback on Ancillary Products:

We posted our website on Facebook in order to receive some feedback, and here is what we got:

The feedback was all very positive, with people amazed at how 'realistic' and professional it looked. I would say that the website impressed our audience more than the video, as some people said our website "wasn't like a student website at all" which is a comment that has not been made about our video.

The album cover was similarly well-received, with people liking the swallow motif, the colour scheme and the way Lexi looks bemusedly at the track listing on the back cover. They also liked the contrast between bright outside covers and dark inside covers.

Main things I learned from audience feedback:

• Video generally appealed to its target audience.
• Always be prepared with lighting, especially on outdoor shoots.
• Always take the time to make sure your artist is comfortable to ensure the best possible performance.

Despite the constructive criticism, I believe our main and ancillary products were very successful on the whole and impressed our audience greatly.