Media Studies

Question 3 of 4

Nerissa Edwards

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After finishing our project, as well as evaluating our production personally from a professional point of view, in order to evaluate its success fully, we needed to attain feedback from viewers. This involved showing our final production to both our target audience, in addition to other social demographic sectors who may be exposed to our video if it were a real industry piece. Elikem and I devised a questionnaire for viewers to complete after seeing the video, allowing expression of their own opinion on the video, whilst also answering any technical questions that we had. We thought that it would be beneficial to ask a range of viewers what they thought as this would give us a broader spectrum of opinions, and hopefully from this we would gain more of an understanding into how we could improve our work if we were to do the project again. Furthermore, it would be insightful to see how different marketing strategies and ideas affected the appeal of the star to specific groups of people. Mostly, feedback was very positive, and excluding the smaller details, most people felt that the final production was very professional. The

best response came from our creativity in terms of originality in props, makeup and costuming ideas, especially from our aimed audience. A memorable feature for the majority of viewers when

asked to state their favourite sequence seemed to be the box idea, as it was ‘amazing and fitted to the genre’. Although this boosted my confidence in the originality of our work, I am still aware of the factors that contributed to the lack of professionalism in the production. As one person pointed out, the syncing was ‘a bit slow at times’, which spoilt the flow and rhythmical quality of our work. Our target demographic being teenagers and young adults, especially females, our most valuable feedback came from what their opinions were. Whilst most felt that our work was a clear representation of the pop genre, and felt that the artist portrayed a realistic yet relatable star persona, some felt that there were quite a few stars with similar images already in the public eye, therefore making her somewhat of a déjà vu personality. This was understandable as our inspiration came from

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Media Studies

Question 3 of 4

Nerissa Edwards

extremely well established names such as Lady Gaga, Cheryl Cole and Kylie Minogue, meaning some of our promotional techniques may have been seen before, however I feel that we adapted and developed industry ideas to make them our own. Despite this, I realise that if our artist, Kiki, were to be amongst others in the pop genre, her image would struggle to stand out to target audiences and sell. In terms of the male market, the main consensus was that such an artist would not typically attract them. Despite this, one person felt that the star persona was very believable, and the promotional ideas reflected that of mainstream audiences. Generally, notes were made on how the visuals echoed the lyrics in that the use of editing was ‘very effective’, and thoughts that our use of special effects, especially the colour modification and split screening, was ‘well thought out’ and the ‘amount of effort in the execution’ could be seen. On the technical side of production, including camera angles and lighting, our work was described as ‘inventive’, especially concerning shot types, on the other hand, criticism was given in terms of lighting. Whilst some of the sequences included ‘good’ lighting, others were ‘a little too dark’, preventing viewers from getting the full impact of the footage, as they were unable to see the artist in her entirety. Lighting is a major area that I would want to improve if we were to do this project again, as I feel this hindered the viewing experience, and took away from the overall presentation of the production. Older demographics, from 25+, concentrated less on the appearance of the star, although some did comment that the artist may be too abstract to be able to connect with, although the locations and simplistic set designs balance it out, bringing the relatability of her star persona back, especially with younger audiences. In addition, praise was given to the ‘confidence and personality in performance’, in terms of casting, and comments were also made about the fact that the dancers and their choreography added to the realism and professional aspect of our production as it ‘successfully reflects the genre’. In contrast, younger viewers seemed to focus more on the physical portrayal of the star, and one commentator stated that they like our use of extreme close-up both starting and ending the video as it ‘told a story’ of the artist, and also emphasised the bold makeup. Overall, Elikem and I are happy with the response we received on our final production, and whilst I knew that specific areas needed definite improvement, some features were brought to my attention that I thought would appeal to audiences, but in fact were not as successful as I had hoped. The audience feedback was very useful on the whole as we could clearly see which parts of our work audiences enjoyed, whilst at the same time gaining constructive criticism on how to make our product even better.