Task 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?




What forms did your audience research take?

We created a questionnaire which had a variety of different ways to answer the questions. We had a Lickert scale which is like a rating scale. This is a closed question and is good to get peoples general idea in an easy way. We also used a fixed alternative question, again this is closed. The respondent has to choose from five options from strongly agree to strongly disagree. We included four open ended questions which helps us to get the true opinion of the respondent. Before we gave the questionnaire out we had a open discussion with the focus group about the video, about what bits they thought worked best and the bits that didn’t. Personally I preferred it when each respondent did a questionnaire because then they feel they can tell the honest opinion. We also collected feedback from YouTube, Facebook and Blogger. The feedback collected from these three sources wasn’t as successful as the open conversation and the questionnaire. When the video was put on facebook, it was only seen by friends therefore we didn’t get any critical feedback, this is relevant to YouTube and blogger as well.


How did the feedback from the research reflect your views of the strengths of your product?

One of the questions on the questionnaire was about the animation we included in our video. We asked would they consider using animation in their music video next year, the favourite part of the video for me is the animation and I would consider it to be one of our top strengths , and the answers we got back were positive. People responses mainly said that they would want to try animation in their music video next year.

We knew are target audience would mainly attract girls instead of boys, and we were right. The girls said they would watch it again and they would watch the band at a concert and the males said that it wasn’t really their thing but we wanted to reach out to girls and that is what the video did.


How did the feedback from the research reflect your views of the weaknesses of your product?

The main weakness in our video is the guitar playing of the main singer and we had some lighting issues when Mimi, our female singer was sitting in the corner of the pink heart set. When having an open discussion which the group that we were questioning they picked up on the dodgy guitar playing. They also spoke about the bad lighting when Mimi is singing in the corner. They picked up that it was too dark and was hard to see her face at times.

Our band was very self-conscious, and kept looking into the camera. This was picked up on by the focus group, and goes against the idea that pop music performers are confident.


Explain the significance of the encoding-decoding model of audience


A media institution encodes a preferred meaning in media text the audience then de-codes it in one of three possible ways, there are a preferred reading. This is when a audience agrees with the intended meaning, the second meaning is a negotiated reading, this is when a audience partially agrees with the preferred meaning, the third and final reading is a oppositional reading this is when an audience opposes what is being communicated to them and opposes he preferred meaning. Stuart Hall is the author of this model and he gathered this based on theoretical research rather then audience research.


How does your feedback to demonstrate preferred readings of your product?

The feedback that we received was that a lot of people understood the narrative we were conveying. Mostly the females understood that the main singer had met a girl and had a one night stand and fallen in love with her and this is the narrative that we wanted to get across.


How does your feedback to demonstrate negotiated readings of your product?

The narrative was understood but some feedback we gathered said that they understood he had fallen in love with her, but it was slightly creepy about how much loved her after a one night stand.


How does your feedback to demonstrate oppositional readings of your product?

Due to the song lyrics being about a one night stand and then falling in love, the way we portrayed the narrative it very over the top love. Some of the feedback we gathered explained that they thought it was slightly odd, and could be conveyed as looking quite like a stalker, obsessed with her and he is keeping her in his room. This is understand able as we have a narrative which shows he is completely in love with her, and lyrics explain that it was only a one night stand.


What conclusions can you draw from your audience research?

After carrying out our research it was concluded that our video definitely is more appealing to females rather then males. All the females’ bar one would want to see this band in concert and all of them said they would watch the video again. The males were more interested in the animation, and said that it wasn’t really their kind of music and they wouldn’t consider seeing the band at a concert, but we weren’t surprised by this outcome.