TASK 3 - Audience Feedback

Catherine Dixon

Task 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Questionnaire

We first handed out a questionnaire that we had made which consisted of a mixture of open and closed questions, which we gave to a mixed gender class ranging from the ages 16-18. When looking at their answers it is clear that all viewers were uncertain about what the video was about, however when they were told it became very obvious. Yet when asking a much older viewer he understood straight away that it was about the creation of a music video, as he spotted the lead singer choosing the clips he wanted. The special effects were ultimately what the audience liked most about the video, while only one person liked the band shots the most.
What surprised us most was the fact that only one female member thought Felix was attractive, when we specifically chose him on the basis that he was good looking. Within our audience there was mixed music tastes, ranging from indie to rock to R&B/hip hop, showing that this had no effect to how they viewed the video, proving the uses and gratifications model incorrect. . The main aspect of the video that they did not like about the video was that the narrative wasn’t clear enough. One girl said that she thought there were too many band shots, showing sometimes a poor performance from the band members. When looking at this information and the video again, I agree that there is too many band shots, and that all the poorest shots are of the band in the dark room. UV was the favourite dance element which was closely followed by the lasers, and nude getting no votes. I think personally that we should have completely cut out the nude dancing shots. 50% of our viewers said that they would look into more of the bands work after viewing this video, which I think is positive. 7/10 people liked what the band members were wearing, which surprised me, as I did not like what they wore and thought leaving our male members of the group to dress them was a risk.


Focus Group

After the class viewed our video we had a group discussion, where we saw the male members speak more positively than female members. It was obvious everyone did not understand but said it was “cool”. An interesting point that stood out was the people who used final cut pro themselves connected to it better and enjoyed it more. This is good as it relates to us wanting to connect to an audience of geeky men who are into technology. One guy said that the performance element “got a bit boring” and that the UV shots were underused as it was the most interesting and eye grabbing.

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall’s theory on the encoding and decoding focuses and assess the reading that audience members have when watching a media product. It mainly focuses on the meaning that producers intend to project, and the way in which these are read by audiences from a variety of backgrounds. There are 3 variations on readings – preferred (understand the intended values), negotiated (understand some values, but have own opinions) and oppositional (Disagree wit the intended values/messages).