TASK THREE: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

We got roughly 12 people who are members of our target audience to watch our music video and handed out some questionaires to them. This is the feed back we got:

 

-Does it fit the brief? (Does it look like a real pop promo) Why?

Most of our audience believed that the use of special effects while inputting a Sin City cityscape and having a narrative and performance element made the video fit the brief.

-What type of genre does this fit into to? Does it fit the genre?

The outcome of the answer fit our expectations where they thought that the video fit into the genre of rock/indie/alternative rock.

-Digipak and Poster. Does it fit into the video? How?

They thought that the dark and red colors fit into the theme of the video which they stated was danger and sex.

-Would you buy it? Why?

All of our viewers stated that they would have bought the song 'Demon Cleaner' after have had seen our music video.

-Who is the target audience meant to be from what you have seen?

We were aiming to a unisex audience and this was the answer we recieved from our viewers who said that our video is meant for both female and male audiences because of the sensual narrative element and the subverse performance element.

-What did you most like about it? Why?

Our viewers mostly liked the idea of the universalization of women seeing that we have female members of the band and a female murderer.

-What did you least like about it? Why?

Most of our viewers thought that the blood was too excess and graphic for a music video and made it look like a James Bond opening sequence.

-Do you think that the idea of having a female rock band was necessary? Why?

All of our viewers thought that the idea of a female rock band was sub verse from that of having a typical boy band and thought that it brought sex appeal to the video.

In order to generate audience feedback about the pop promo we used various digital technologies to reach viewers. The promo was uploaded onto YouTube this allowed the promo to be broadcasted to a wide audience all over the world. This allowed viewers to make comments, giving us audience feedback about the promo; however the disadvantage of using YouTube was that users may not have been browsing for anything specifically related to our promo and therefore may not have come across it. The video was also uploaded onto our blogs through the website Blogger. I then posted this link onto my Facebook page, this meant that our specific target audience could view the promo as my ‘Facebook friends’ are of my own age group who are our target audience (16-25 year olds). The feedback I received from my friends was that the video was of an impressive standard and appeared very professional as well as this they liked the use of a mixed gender band and the ‘sin city’ style narrative. However, only my friends could view the promo meaning that I could not reach a wider public audience through Facebook.


We also used a traditional form of research, our group got about 10 people aged 16-18 to watch our video and give feedback by answering pre prepared questions shown below. The advantage of this was that we could gain specific feedback of our choice. We asked our audience whether our promo looked professional. Most of our audience believed that the use of special effects where we used a Sin City cityscape and having a narrative and performance element meant that the promo conformed to the conventions of existing pop promos. We also asked whether the video fit the genre of indie/rock/alternative, we found out that most of our audience believed that our video fit the conventions of this genre. We also asked if the digipak and poster tied in well with the promo, the audience thought that the dark and red colours fit into the theme of the video which they believed represented danger and sex. We also asked if our viewers would buy the song, all of our viewers stated that they would have bought the song 'Demon Cleaner' after have had seen our music video. We were aiming to a unisex audience and this was the answer we received from our viewers who said that our video was meant for both female and male audiences because of the sensual narrative element and also because we had a mixed gender band. We also gained the information that our viewers mostly liked that we used women in our band as it presented gender equality as well as bringing sex appeal to the video and subverting stereotypes of typical of the genre four piece all male bands. However, most of our viewers thought that the blood was too graphic for a music video and made it look like a James Bond opening sequence.

The encoding-decoding model derives from the work of Stuart Hall. It is a theoretical model, which is based upon the notion that the audience do not act as a ‘mass’, but rather as a collection of smaller groups defined by social and ideological elements. Media texts are ‘encoded’ (both consciously and unconsciously) with the values of their producers, who are generally white, middle-class, men. However, the audience is not made up exclusively of these groups and different groups are likely to ‘read’ the text indifferent ways. This ‘decoding’ process has 3 possible outcomes which are a preferred reading, a negotiated reading and an oppositional reading. A preferred reading is when the audience understand the intended values and the concept behind the media text. From most the feedback we received it was clear that all of our audience gave the preferred reading about the narrative. Ultimately our promo was successful as all our aims and intentions translated effectively to our target audience. Predominantly our viewers understood that the woman represented a dominant female promoting male equality with women and subverting to gender stereotypes, however the power of her sexuality over the male is an existing stereotype of females. Having both genders within the band help to attract a mixed audience as there was sex appeal for both genders as well as subverting to stereotypes providing the band with an individual element.