Before we created our video, each member of our group analysed at least three real music videos that exist on the market today. The feedback I received from them is as follows:
This feedback I received from Mr. Smith told me to look at "elements you could incorporate into your own music video" and to look at the "simple techniques" some videos use. These comments obviously adapted my approach to making a music video and I learnt that the conventions of music videos are not as easy to use in your own music video as you might think - such as lip syncing.
After analysing these videos, I went on to creating an audience profile where I looked at the sort of person who would either buy or use our media products. Here is the feedback Mr. Smith gave me regarding this:
In order to make my target audience clearer, I created a moodboard that showed the types of bands they would listen to and the dress-sense they may have. Mr. Smith said:
From this, we each, in turn, created a band logo and Mr. Smith, along with Meg said:
Therefore i deemed them sufficient and thought they required no more developments and so moved on to taking test shots for the bands real photoshoot for the front covers etc. The feedback was as follows:
This feedback was a valid point, women in the indie genre generally dress less like a woman and in more manly clothes. So this feedback influenced the way we dressed Georgia in order for her to fit the form of the genre.
We then each edited the photos from the Photoshoot so that they suited the indie genre more, I did this by adding levels on photoshop and creating a retro effect. However, Mr. Smith said:
This comment came as a shock to us, but we soon realised that what he was saying is true and so starting creating posts together and working together to achieve tasks more easily. So, we then each took a band member and outlined the clothes they will be wearing and where we drew our inspiration from for these members:
From this comment, we appointed ourselves roles in the video. Harry was the cameraman/director, Jess was the director, Meg was the sound technician and I was the lighting technician and panning cameraman. But before we jumped into our video, we experimented first with stop motion and here is the feedback I received.
We then looked into using some stop motion in our actual video and then used it in the bicycle scene and also where the band members change position on the lyrics "one night in october". After deciding on what to include in our music video, we thought that all signed artists belong to a record label and so as a group we came up with names and then decided collectively on "ZED Recordings" and then I went on to designing some logos for the whole group to use on their digipacs and posters. Here is them deciding which logo they liked the most:
After these comments, we proceeded to making the draft video.
This is a moodboard of all the feedback we received from our draft music video:
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As you can see from all of the feedback we received on our draft video, it was a great success with our target market. With Harry, Jess and myself all embedding the video from YouTube onto facebook and Meg cyber stalking people in order to watch it too, we received nearly 400 views in a matter of a few days and also received many likes. We did receive a few negative comments telling us that the lead singer needed to open his mouth more when he was singing, but we knew this was an issue when editing the video. We also received lots of constructive criticisms from our teachers and fellow prosumers in our class. We respected the prosumers advice more than consumers as the prosumers realise the elements and conventions needed in order to create a successful product, whereas consumers do not analyse in such a detailed manner.
After Mr. Smith had told us exactly what he believed worked and what did not, I created a post on what we had and what we had not changed from the draft to the final video. Here is the post:
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On one of the pointers, Mr. Smith said "not sure party strobe scene is clear enough (could it begin with an extablishing shot of exterior showing the caravan in darkness really brightly light and ready for a party?)"
However, this is one of the few comments for improvements we decided to ignore and for a very valid reason - Jess cyber stalked Little Comets on Twitter and they gave us feedback regarding our video, as you can see on the collage of feedback I have made. They said "Bit with iPhone lighting is class!" and as they are prosumers, their feedback is very valid. They also target the same target audience that we are aiming for and so know what works for that particular genre.
These constructive criticisms helped us as a group to develop our music video, but maybe restricted us in some ways from doing exactly what we wanted as the scenes we would like to have used would not have used any conventions or forms of the indie genre. Here is the feedback we received on our final video before it was removed due to copyrights from YouTube, which we had to later solve by putting it on another file sharing site.
Obviously, this is disappointing in comparison with the draft, but this cannot be helped due to technical difficulties. However, this feedback still shows that our target audience is pleased with the video we have created.
My digipac went through many stages of development before I got my end product. Firstly, I experimented with fonts to see which best suited it and received feedback on facebook that is no longer available which told me that they preferred a bold font but when I looked back over it I was not certain. However, Mr. Smith commented on my font experimenting:
This gave me an incentive to draw inspiration from many different genres and artists for my digipac and so I developed it further and showed different versions of the digipac. Mr. Smith said:
After using most of these ideas and retaining feedback from other prosumers in the class, I came to my final decision with my digipac and then posted it to facebook. Here is the feedback I received:
People say they like the "retro" feel and others talk of the "depth of field" and one consumer says it belongs in the "indie" genre - which is what I was looking for. From my audience feedback I have received I have learned that the majority like the simplicity and respect the artwork I have created.
In terms of my poster, the feedback was quite positive but similar to my digipac as it uses practically the same elements. But after developing the poster endlessly, the comment I received from Mr. Smith is::
So by this satisfied comment from Mr. Smith, I decided to post the poster to facebook and here is the feedback I received:
This time I received compliments about the "simplicity" and the "retro indie feel", which was perfect as that was exactly what I was aiming for, but I did learn from one consumer that the poster could benefit from an aspect of the poster "being bolder" or making the image a bit "sharper" - however, I made the image purposefully unsharp to achieve the retro indie feel some of the other consumers have pointed out.
In conclusion to these feedbacks I have gained a lot of knowledge from audience feedback and I think it has helped me to develop my digipac, poster and video in order to make them more professional. I have learnt that sometimes what I think may look amazing some people may not appreciate and when you are creating artwork you need imagery and iconography that appeals to a wider audience than just yourself.
