Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From our Target Audience interviews we learned a lot about what to include and not to include, by asking specific questions about their likes and dislikes regarding Indie music videos. We discovered that we should not include any extravagant hair or make-up, and rather keep it natural so that the characters in the video are relatable, which is a convention of the indie genre. They also

said they favour a mixed narrative and don’t like diegetic sound within the music video as it can take away from the story and be annoying or distracting. In turn we used natural make – up and costumes within our mise – en – scene and adopted a fragmented storyline in order to adhere to our target audience. On top of that we

decided against our original idea of including diegetic sound in the intro/outro of our music video.

Feedback from pitching our idea helped us to develop and storyline by thinking about the meaning of the song a little more, and also made us consider any issues (such as lighting due to filming at night) in the early planning stages so that we could think of ways to overcome them. It was suggested that low key lighting may be difficult to work with, and that some scenes could end up being difficult to see. We took this on board and discovered that a convention of indie music videos is to interpret the lighting in the world of the music video though things like fire – which is the main concept of our video anyway. A lot of feedback also suggested removing the indoor scenes we planned on including, as such a drastic change in location could throw the audience and ruin the effect of the video. Therefore we decided to film the whole video outside which not only created the atmosphere for video, but also met conventions of the indie genre. Similarly, upon receiving feedback for our music video concept, many people were positive about the fact it was a unique and

creative idea that fits the genre well, however they noted that we should look into the storyline a little more as it wasn’t clear.

The rough and final storyboards gave a first indication as to what our music video might actually look like, giving our peers visuals on which to give us feedback. The suggested that we focus more on the scene where the flames are reflected into a characters eye, which we tried to do during the filming of our product but it appeared trickier than we had first anticipated. They also questioned the safety of putting and young child in front of a fire - which we later addressed in our risk assessment. The birthday scene originally on our storyboard was scrapped because those who gave us feedback didn’t like it and didn’t think it was necessary for the narrative. They did like the use of fire related props and thought that was a good concept however they asked us to focus more on the protagonist so that the audience can develop a relationship with them.

During the construction of our music video, the class got to see a “formative” version of it while we were still in the early stages of editing it. They loved the cinematography, and said the slow motion was very effective, but they suggested we work on the pacing and the storyline, and noticed that some shots were too long. We took this on

board throughout the rest of our editing process, making sure shots weren’t held longer then they needed to be and paced the editing to fit the beat of the song better. This included going out and capturing some additional footage in order to be able to develop the story line, more specifically involving the young child.

Our early digipak drafts were liked by the class, specifically the idea of the fire reflected in the eye as a still image similar to the one included in the music video. They also liked the image of the older character stood in front of a fire, creating a

silhouette. We later decided to develop on the later, using it for both our digipak front cover and our magazine advert – creating a

brand identity between all three products (as the same scene features in the music video). Feedback for the second lot of drafts was generally positive due to the sketch design, the fonts and the image of the younger actress we captured during a separate photo shoot, however they suggested that the colour of the digipak (black and white) matched with the sketch effect could be considered ‘festive’ which is not the look we were going for as the genre is quite the opposite – dark and mysterious. This triggered us to include a coloured panel for the back of our digipak; a striking image of the fire, with contrasting orange and black colours. We decided to keep the image of the younger actress and use it for the panel behind the CD. Regarding our final digipak, we were told it looked very professional and that it certainly established the genre well, however the positioning of the barcode was a little odd (originally near the top right hand corner) – we chose to do this because it was a convention of the genre and when compared to real products many indie artists had opted for this. Never the less we moved the barcode to a more traditional position so that it did not obscure the image on the back.

There was a class viewing of our completely music video, after which we were given feedback on the final product. Everyone said it looked like a real music video and commented on how well it had developed since the previous showing. They liked the cinematography and mise – en – scene and how enigmatic the video felt. They mentioned that it established the genre spectacularly and that all the elements and aspects of it were clearly well thought out and very unique – someone particularly liked how the piano in the music went with the dripping of fire droplets in one of the shots. Some people did notice the difference in camera quality, which could not have been avoided unfortunately as we were forced to use two different cameras throughout the filming process, and there were also some continuity issued regarding the fire which may have been resolved if ALL footage was filmed on the same day (with the same fire).

Overall, our audience feedback was crucial in process of making our music video and ancillary products as it gave us indication as to what the target audience are looking for, and also what we could improve upon in order to make the products appealing. Feedback also identified issues with the products so that we could rectify them – without this our products may have harboured many errors and features consumers would have disliked.