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How did you use media technologies in the construction of research, planning and evaluation stages?

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What have you learnt from audience feedback?

As a way of gathering feedback I had to come up with a range of ways to gather some comments about my music video and take note of the thoughts and reactions of the audience, as well as whether my music video was successful in general in terms of the genre it was associated with. I was hoping to put my music video on Facebook so that it could be accessed and commented on by large numbers of people. However, after a long thought on this idea, I concluded that it would not be a wise idea. I believe that if it was on Facebook, some people may not comment in a mature manner which I could then use in my evaluation.  As a result, I decided to gather a focus group. The focus group consisted of ten people being my family and friends. Their ages were between 17-50 so the general feedback from the individuals was not very one sided in terms of age, but rather varied. In terms of gender, the focus group concisted of mainly young women. However, I did include my father, two uncles and my cousin.The questions I included were aimed to produce both qualitative and quantitative data. I believe that this would product a good variation of feedback which I can then organise and compare.

1. What genre would you classify my music video as? Please tick more than one box if needed.

This was a highly important question in the questionnaire as it is vital for the audience to recognise what genre my music video is, and it would also highlight whether the conventions of the R&B genre that I have included has shone through, therefore making it successful. Here are the results shown below:

As shown in the graph above, 14 out of 15 people would associate my music video with the R&B genre and only one ticked the genre of Pop. This indicates that the conventions that I have used in my music video reflect the genre of R&B to the audience which I was extremely happy about.

2. What aspects of my music video would influence you to think it is associated with this particular genre?

This was also an important question in the questionnaire as it was vital for me to know what conventions caught their attention the most. A large number of  participants stated some of the conventions which I had included. For example, one person stated “A female protagonist presented as vulnerable is something that we would usually see in R&B genre music videos. I remember watching Rihanna’s Unfaithful which is really similar to this”. Another participant said “the flashback with black and white effect birthday cake scene really reminds me of Mariah Carey’s music video ‘Love Story’. On the other hand, one of the participants stated that the song was an indicator to the genre. This may suggest that the conventions were not as highly recognisable as they should have been, or may merely of been because they were not aware of the conventions of the R&B genre.

3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of my music video?

This question enabled me to reflect on my work as a whole and what others think about it. This question allows the focus group to write about any negative aspects of my music video which they believe I could of improved on, but also comment on any aspects which they believe I had done really well. There was a large amount of feedback to this question, but some in particular said that “I really like the breaking glass bit. I love how its in time with the music and I believe it really puts emphasis on how the girl is torn apart and literally broken into pieces.” Another participant stated that “There is so much emotion in the music video. The beginning section really works well to show how far the protagonist has come in comparison to the flashback”. One person commented on the lip-syncing and said “it was really in time with the song”. Some comments on the negative aspects of my music video were on how I could of cut shots to the beat a little more often.

4. What genre of music do you listen to? Please tick more than one box if needed.

The aim of this question was to discover what genre of music people in the focus group liked to listen to. This would portray what percentage of the focus group were familiar with the R&B genre, and would allow me to see whether that influenced any of their comments in the questionnaire. Some people ticked more than one box; here are the results below:

I was happy with the results as a large number of the group had ticked R&B which made me conclude that there would not be a large amount of misunderstanding of what conventions the R&B genre commonly consists of.

5. What music channels do you watch?

This question also followed on from the previous question and was included for the same reasons as before. The majority of the focus group noted channels such as Chart Show, Flava and MTV. However, there were a few which wrote down ‘Kerrang’ and ‘MTV Dance‘. As a large number of the participants wrote down channels such as Chart Show and Flava, I felt happy that the majority should be aware of the R&B conventions through watching those music channels which are very R&B orientated.

6. What music channel do you think my music video is more likely to be shown on? 

Every questionnaire stated that they were more likely to see my music video on channels such as MTV, Chart Show and Flava. I was very happy with the results as these programmes consist of mainly R&B music, and I believe would fit my music video extremely well.

7.  Overall, what would you rate my music video out of 10? (1 being the lowest, 10 being the highest). 

Digipak and Advert

Another way in which I gathered data was through gathering my members of class and asking them to annotate around my digipak and advert. The feedback consisted of mainly what they thought worked really well, what they thought did not work well, conventions that they noticed that I had used etc. Here is an image of the brainstorm:

For my advert, a number of people commented on the boldness of the artists name and the fact that it is very eye-catching. Others picked up on the artist being presented as "dangerous" and referred to the artist as "femme fatale". Overall, I was happy with the feedback as I believe people have picked up very well on the conventions that I have tried to incorporate into my advert. On the feedback regarding my digipak, many people commented on the font, the overall image that the artist is presenting. However, a criticism that was provided was on the advert, where someone noted that the bottom phrase "Including the hit song Leaving" could have stood out more and as a result, I definitely understand where the weaknesses are in my texts. 

To conclude, it is clear where the strengths and weaknesses stand. As a result of this task, I have understood the importance of audience feedback. The audience feedback really is the time where your work is judged and seen whether you have completed what the task was. I am very happy that many people highlighted the different conventions which I have included in my texts. I am glad that overall the texts that I have made are quite suited towards the genre of R&B.