Evaluation Question 3

Question 3

Our promo’s target audience was outlined as being fans of the indie music genre, who prefer upbeat and fast paced music. We initially pitched our ideas to the audience and gathered feedback.

Our initial pitch.

The pitch ideas were generally well received and the use of the supermarket and space helmet locations and props were the audience’s favourite. We decided to pursue this line of thought and the finished promo and ancillary tasks are heavily influenced by those initial pitch responses and ideas. The merging of a serious performance and the quirky narrative, with an energetic atmosphere running throughout has been transferred from paper to video, and the feedback at the very beginning of the project has reflected this.

During the creation of the promo video, our initial performance footage was shot very differently. The original footage was filmed in a band room and the audience’s reaction to this footage was not positive. We were not happy with the footage ourselves, and we refilmed this section of the video to better fit the genre. This new footage was well received and vastly increased the overall quality of the video.

During the process of creating our texts, we conducted interviews with people from our target audience. These interviews contained questions which were tailored to give us specific feedback on the music promo and we asked what people would typically expect from our promo, along with what they expected from the track we have chosen.

Audience research videos
1 2 and 3

From what we collected results wise, the audience was swayed by our supermarket spacesuit narrative, which was our strongest pitch idea. Because they listed the conventional areas (narrative split, quirky themes, indie costumes and a typical performance) when they answered what they expected from the genre, we knew that that is what people expected, so we chose not to go completely against that so a part of it is what the audience expects, giving them a familiar element, to then launch themselves into our quirky narrative. Our style of interviewing (one on one interviews) helped us to get results from the questions we asked in a different, more interesting format to just a standard questionnaire, and because we were interviewing the audience members individually they could express their full opinion instead of having to fill out tick boxes or multiple choice questions, typical of a questionnaire. However, out choice of research method does have some limitations. Because the answers from the interviewees were longer and more sophisticated, it is hard to show the results in graphs, as they are more expressed opinions then statistics. However this qualitative data is a great way of getting specific opinions and ideas back from audience members.

This meant that there is no easy way to record the answers we have collected and display them, so the opinions expressed had to be analysed individually. In order to do this in great detail, lots of time would be consumed, so in order to improve this area, perhaps a mixture of video interviews and questionnaires could be used, to allow for results that could be applied to the texts and promo in a
way that could be measured, by referring back to charts etc.

Summary:
From our research we have learned that people expect certain things from an Indie style music video. These include the inclusion of indie style costumes, a narrative and something offbeat. The addition of the Space helmets was an idea that was well received and because of this we decided to implement it throughout our texts. The original footage was not so well received by peers and members of the audience. This directly affected our production in several ways. We reshot the whole performance and increased the pace of the editing to match the song. Our feedback videos show that the audience has responded positively to the reshooting of the video, see below.

Feedback videos

Feedback on Finished Promo:

As shown by the feedback videos response to our music promo was very positive. Lots of people thought that the indie theme and the comical and light hearted narrative in combination with the fast paced editing of the performance was a successful combination. They also thought that the quirky space helmets were humorous and that the video fitted the song, which is ultimately what we aimed to create: a promotional video for the music. Below are examples of how we shared the song using new media. The promo for Space Elevator has been uploaded to Youtube and shared on our individual Facebook accounts along with the band’s Facebook page. The feedback on their side was very positive too, with the camera angles being praised. There was some negative feedback regarding our video however. Some people complained that the car was not clean enough in the promo, and that it was distracting from the band performing. Others said that the video was a little bit too performance heavy and they wanted to see more of the space man narrative. This was only minor complaints and over all, the feedback was very positive, with some people not giving any improvements. These methods of gaining feedback were effective as the audience could give an honest and in depth opinion on our final promo. Sharing the video on new media, such as Facebook allows lots of different people to view the video and give their opinions. We shared the promo with the band and they were very impressed with the final product, and because of new media, we could get this feedback.

We also gathered feedback for our ancillary tasks. We have specifically created our other two texts to be both unique and fitting to with the promo, as well as being heavily influenced by other iconic, indie work. We used a questionnaire to ask questions to the audience regarding our ancillaries.

The answers to the questionnaire were positive. The use of the Morris Minor and the space helmets throughout the elements was well received, as they felt it connected to the promo and made a band image. They also believed that it was typical of the indie genre, and the simplistic outlines add a very Foals like feel to the digipak, something we were initially aiming for. The ranges of images on the digipak were well received and the composition of the magazine advert gained positive feedback. These elements did not gather any real negative feedback, which shows that we have created our ancillaries specifically with the target audience in mind.