Final Evaluation: Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The way in which we conducted our audience research was via the utilisation of hard-copy questionnaires. We gathered a mixed gender class of existing AS media students (of ages 16-17) and sat them down to view our music video on a large screen projector as if they were to be watching it on a music television channel to give an authentic experience. It was a small class of around eight students, and in order to save time we split the class into two groups; four of whom viewed our video, and another four who viewed another student’s A2 video in another room, so consequently gained four relatively detailed sets of data at the end of the viewing. We let the group view our video once for leisurely viewing, and then played it to them for a second time having given them a paper questionnaire regarding different aspects of our production. The first half of questionnaire worked on a scoring basis of 1-5 (5 being highest) regarding the rating the viewer would give our production when asked questions about their enjoyment of the video, quality of camera work and editing, and quantity of conceptual features etc. It then goes on to ask about any improvements that could be made, or any aspects that were found offensive. An example of one of the completed questionnaires we gathered is shown below. We then gave the four AS students the completed copies of our print productions to look through. With our music video fresh in their minds, we presented them with another set of questionnaires regarding our print productions in a very similar format to our music video ones, asking questions about the coherence and effectiveness of our digipaks and magazine adverts.

The first question posed to the participants of the questionnaire was ‘How much did you enjoy the music video?’ From the responses we received the average score we gained for this was 4.25 out of 5. I was happy to receive such as positive score as one of the main aims we had gone out to achieve when producing the video was to make it fun and interesting to watch in order to keep the audience interested and conform to the fun nature of the ska genre. This result indicates that we were relatively successful in creating a fun and interesting video. The next question asked about the video’s success in holding the viewers’ attentions, giving an average score of 4.5. From looking at other questions, I have come to the conclusion that our video’s ability to hold the viewers’ attentions can be attributed to it’s inclusion of familiar local area and bright colours, as these were two of the most prominent responses from participants when asked about their favourite part of the production. Because we filmed the majority of the video in areas of the city centre where our audience are likely to have visited on numerous occasions in their day to day life, this stands out to them as they can relate to mise-en-scene. This can be linked to the findings of media researchers Bulmer and Katz, who had expanded on Lasswell’s Uses and Gratifications Theory (1948) and suggested that one reason for audiences viewing a particular production can be attributed to their need for personal relationships; using media for emotional and other interaction. In the case of our video, because the viewers had recognised the locations in our mise-en-scene they felt the need to continue viewing as they could relate to the video, possibly as they have had personal experiences or emotional interactions with the locations in our video (e.g. the place where they spent many days of their last summer), hence holding the audience’s attention. The fact that we also increased the saturation of a number of shots made them visually more appealing. Before this manipulation of the footage at the editing stage, the shots of the acting band in front of the graffiti background was disappointingly dull and was not in-keeping with the lively tone of the song or extravagant nature of the genre. This idea that the increased saturation of some shots causing an increased appeal to the audience could also explain the relatively high average score of 4.0 received for the quality of editing and 4.25 for quality of mise-en-scene, as the audience have clearly found our colourful settings to be appealing. This is further backed up by the fact that one participant added the comment that their favourite aspect of the video was the colourful mise-en-scene, stating that “it’s fun”. I was particularly pleased to have received this comment as our aim from the beginning was to make the video fun and quirky via the use of conventionally ska extravagance and bold colour – this comment has directly proved that we were a success in this area. I have established that there were no negative issues regarding the representation of race, age, culture or gender etc as every response to the question was a “no”; same with the question as to whether the plot was difficult to understand, which I feel is duly to the fact our film was a concept-based montage rather than having a narrative structure. It was also unanimously agreed that if given the opportunity, participants would watch the video again, the video successfully represented the style of music, and successfully promoted our band, The Skanx.

Use of colourful urban background.

Near identical questionnaires were given to the same participants after viewing my print productions. I have established that I was fully successful in both creating a high standard of graphics within the productions, and establishing the Britishness of the package, as these both gained average scores of 5 (following the same scoring scheme of 1-5 out of 5 from the video questionnaire). I feel that this was achieved through my extensive use of the Adobe Photoshop computer editing programme. Having taken the initial raw images used within my digipak, I then spent many hours manipulating and tweaking the images to make them more visually appealing; in particular my fourth (back) panel, where I had taken a plain image of a news board and added multiple effects to make the image more interesting and graphically interesting, which when looking at the responses given from the questionnaire, was effective in doing so. The Britishness of the package was achieved primarily through the use of costume. Throughout the construction of both the video and digipak we have strongly referenced British bands such as Madness the film ‘This is England’ to name just a couple, through the application of our costume. The use of braces, boots and trilbies etc has been highly successful in referencing these existing bands and media texts throughout all of the panels in my print productions as well as in the magazine advert. The package overall gained again a rating of 5 which indicates it’s success in appealing to my youthful target audience, and all participants stated that the magazine advert would encourage them towards purchasing the digipak were it to be available. There was one small difference between two of the questionnaires, as one participant is quoted as having said that the strongest feature of the print productions is “the establishment of the genre of the music” which would indicate that I was successful in promoting the fact that our band are of the ska genre, however another only gave a slightly disappointing score of 3 for the question ‘does the magazine advert successfully represent the genre of music?’ This differing opinion can be linked to the Reception Theory and Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience. For example in my own production, although one of the main themes throughout the digipak has been the use of bold extravagant colours to connote the fun nature of the ska genre, for the second panel of the digipak I have used a black on white effect to represent the two-tone roots of the soundtrack and band, very different from the bold colour used overall. As the producer the use of this black on white effect is an example of how I have encoded the text to connote the two-tone aspects of the soundtrack, however this particular participant of my questionnaire has shown an example of aberrant reading, where there is a disagreement between the intentions of the text and the interpretation by the audience due to the way this black on white effect has been decoded by the reader, showing two different readings of the same code.

The example of aberrant reading previously mentioned has come about because of two different types of decoding by a male and female reader. The male participant of the questionnaire had decided that the way in which I had established the genre within my digipak was the strongest feature about my production, whereas the female participant disagreed and by the mediocre scoring of a 3 indicated that it was one of the weaker aspects. This is the only example of differing opinions of male and female responses and highlights that gender can influence the way in which a text is decoded when initially being given the same production to look at, and therefore the same code. Despite this difference in opinion over the matter of genre representation, all of the male and female ‘further comments’ indicated that my print productions were of a high standard, having been quoted as being “really good!” so I am overall pleased with the audience reaction to my productions.

We uploaded our final video onto Youtube where it has so far received a total number of 141 views. We later received a comment on the video from one of the members of the band whose soundtrack we had used, The Skanx, praising our efforts on the video and invited us to come to London to film them live to produce more videos – “On behalf of The Skanx - nice video! Come see us soon... Maybe you can do a full length take with some live footage.” This comment is a further indication of the successful appeal of our video and was an important contribution towards our motivation to complete the rest of the project to as high a standard as possible in order to comply to their levels of requirement, and is an offer that we as a group are currently contemplating as would be a fantastic opportunity to produce further videos with the genuine band members, which could potentially be used as their official music video.