Evaluation: Question 3

Question 3:

"What have you learned from your audience feedback?"

I used my record labels facebook page it gain my audience feedback, in an earlier blog post. This was a brilliant means to gaining quick feedback from my target audience, I learnt that social networking sites are vital for sharing a music video. 

The positives that I learnt about my music viewer were my audience thought that my lip syncing was very accurate. I am pleased this with as I had to speed up and slow down various bits of footage in order to make it 100% perfect. They also discussed the church location used, and how it was well suited to the storyline. As it was an unusual location it appealed to the viewers, and also worked well as it conflicted with the stereotypical idea of a happy church wedding. One reviewer mention how the costume was stereotypical of Indie genre. This is a good as it helps to reinforce the idea of genre within my video. I styled my artist to look Indie, however indie costume is commonly more scruffy but had the restrict of having to dress smarter for the church environment. It interested me that viewers look for typical genre conventions within a music video that they are watching. Lots of people mentioned the colour wash, and how is was not something that they had seen used before. They liked the hints of colours, as a fresh change from typical black and white colouring of indie music videos. The focus pulling shoot at the beginning of the video was also mentioned as being a success, and that it captured a viewers interest as it was some clever camera work. As my camera and lens allowed me to use manual focus this was a shoot that I had planned to include. It was difficult to get it perfect, and took me a few attempts so I am glad that it was noticed. The lyrics on screen was also mentioned by a lot of people. They stated that this was an interesting idea, which not many had seen before. One stated how they liked the way the words appeared in time with the lyrics. This took me a while to achieve using fades on the text effects. It interested me that the audience noted and commented on a fresh idea within the genre, and compared it too other videos which they had seen. One person stated that like felt that the age range of the artist helped them to relate with him, due to being of a similar age group. This is something that I took into consideration when casting my lead actor and planning who my target audience would be. It was stated the the storyline theme to the video footage and lyrics helped to hold the viewers attention and made the video more interesting. While planning my shoots I had a lyrics sheet, and I tried to relate the footage to the video as much as possible. This was aimed by enigmas, mainly created using the mise-en-scene. For example, the gold ring used in one scene. This was coupled with a zoom effect applied in post production. I added the zoom effect to help draw in the viewers attention even more, and it was noticed by one person on my facebook comments. 

I also learnt a few dislikes of the target audience. The main one was that in place the guitar chords and strumming was not also perfect. This was noticed by two people who play guitar. As I am not a guitarist it was hard for me to match the chords with the music. Upon reflection I should have asked someone more knowledgeable to check the footage with my before I exported and uploaded it. For example, I could have asked my school music teacher. There were also some comments stating that although the half and half effect was interesting and a fresh approach, black and white is still preferred. It found it interesting that when an audience see's all the videos of one genre filmed or edited in a certain way, they can reject a different one. I thought that a fresh approach would draw in the audience more, however I can see that the black and white would reinforce Indie genre ideals and suit the moody lyrics more. It was also stated that more locations could have be featured in order to make the video more interesting. In reflection I could have filmed some performance shoots in a different location, instead of in the church. I could have used a studio or stage to recreate a live performance look instead of just performing alone in the church. However, I do like the isolated feel of the church style performance.