Evaluation(2)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback? 

The videos above shows some feedback I collected from my target audience. I used a structured interview method as I felt it was good to have planned questions for my audience but I let them speak freely and honestly about their opinions as I thought this would provide good detailed qualitative data. I found this better than a questionnaire type method which usually provides tick-box or one word type answers meaning quantitative data. I spoke to random individuals in order to gain more honest feedback, selecting random individuals also provided unbiased data. All these people have been selected from my College which means they are all aged between 16-19 years of age and a mix of male and female which was the audience I was aiming for. From my online poll I found that the majority of my target audience following my Blog are this age which meant I was speaking to people to the right people, who would most likely be interested in this type of music. Therefore all these individuals will be familiar with the genre and the typical codes and conventions so they can easily recognise which genre this video would be suited to. After speaking to my target audience I found that 100% of them said that the video was well suited to the R&B/ Hip-Hop genre due to the mise-en-scene showing a club style atmosphere meaning my video fits the codes and conventions and mise-en-scene of the genre. The majority of people interviewed commented that they liked the editing of the bright coloured lighting effects in the background as this helped create the right mise-en-scene for my genre and gave a more professional look for the music video. I found that 100% of people interviewed thought that the video would be aimed at teenagers or young adults which is positive as that is the audience I was aiming for. When researching I found the majority of people that listened to R&B/Hip-Hop style of music are of this age group. From this feedback I felt I had successfully included codes and conventions of an R&B style music video as my responsive audience correctly identified the genre and felt it was suited to the correct target audience. I feel that this is something I did well within my video as I tried to stick to all the typical codes and conventions I'd researched which created a video well suited to the genre.

I also decided to put my video on social networking site Facebook. This gave my audience chance to freely watch and give comments if they wanted too. I felt it was good to get feedback and I found again that 4/9 people commented about the video showing good representativeness of R&B style genre. 100% of people who commented said the video was good and professional looking. However I do not think this method is as effective as the people commenting are my 'Facebook friends' therefore the comments are very bias and leaves out constructive criticism for my work so is hard to learn anything from this. I did notice however that the age ranged from 17-21 which again meets my expectations of who I thought would be my target audience.

With my first structured interview I specifically asked for some negative feedback so I could see where I could improve. I think it was good to structure my questions like this as it meant I was able to gain specific feedback which would help me evaluate and learn to improve. I found that out of the four people interviewed two commented on the last few shots been dragged out and could have done with some shorter clips edited in between. I agree with this, towards the end of the video I struggled to find new footage that hadn't already been used at the start. I think this was due to my song being almost 5 minutes long (4minutes and 40 seconds) which even though I had a lot of footage it ended up being very repetitive and towards the end I felt I didn't have enough variety between my shots, therefore some of the footage towards the end was quite dragged out. I thought at the start the cuts between different images and footage from the different locations made it more successful and creative. I think if I had more shots like these first few taken at Pozition Night-Club my video could have been improved as throughout I would have been able to jump to different shots and have more of a variety between each shots as some of them have been repeated quite regularly.  I think for myself the video did not turn out as I hoped as I thought the first location would have been more successful and after that failed I found creating the video more difficult as I had to create the club mise-en-scene without actually being in one. I edited in the flashing lights and atmosphere from my first footage in hope to achieve this. Some of my responsive audience commented that this worked really well and created the nightclub mise-en-scene. However it was mentioned by one of my responsive audience that the lights had quite a random appearance and didn't have any fades in and out. Looking back at my video I noticed this too and found that the lights did seem quite random. When I was creating the video I wanted the quick on/off flash effect however my video could have been improved if I had faded the lights in and out or made them show up less randomly. I feel this made my video look unprofessional, If I could do this again I would ensure to change that and edit it the effects more smoothly.

For my ancillary texts I found that I could also improve here. My audience gave me some positive feedback saying that the Magazine Advert had some strong similarities with the Nicki Minaj media construct I had been inspired by. However my audience also stated that it wasn't clearly shown as a Magazine  Advert as it had some qualities of a Magazine Front cover, such as the artist title being behind the image of the artist. The reason I originally decided to do this was because I thought of my artist as an already established mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop artist, therefore the image of her should sell its self. From this feedback I have learnt the artists name is just as important as the image and should be more dominant within the text. That is how I could have improved the first ancillary text, 100% of people asked said that the 2nd draft of my Magazine advert was a big improvement on the first as it looked a lot more professional.
For my DigiPak my audience commented that they liked the front cover and that I showed good continuity by using the same font as the previous ancillary text. However they also commented that although the images looked very similar of the artist, the colour scheme was quite random and could have stuck to one colour such as pink rather than a variety. I think this is something I could have improved on throughout, as i was completing the work I was trying to show how my character could fit into different genre's, however if I were to do this process again I would stick to a more definite colour scheme. However my audience did comment the DigiPak suited the conventions of an R&B/Hip-Hop genre and I'd manage to keep this element of mise-en-scene throughout, so that was quite positive.

I created an online poll by the side of my blog to discover the audience who had been viewing my profile. From this I found that 63% of my audience are aged 17-25 and 18% are aged 25-35 which met my expectations of the audience interested in this genre and my media production were correct. I found that 70% of my audience were female and only 30%  were male.  I actually expected the result of males and females to be quite mixed but this showed me that the majority were female. I then tried to investigate whether Nicki Minaj had a high rating of female fans to males. However it was difficult to find this information due to her fan base being so developed. But judging from the majority of her Twitter 'followers' and also the information I found from online poll fan pages such as: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/nicki-minaj/picks I found that this showed a higher rating of female, although she does have a large portion of male fans too as she is such a mainstream artist.

The feedback from my project has been really helpful in order for me to see what I had done well and if I had managed to meet my aims and targets as well as being well suited to the codes and conventions of my genre. It was good to see if I had appealed to the right target audience and if they enjoyed my work. It was also useful to be able to see how I could improve in different areas and how I would change my project if I was going to go through this process again.


How do you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used lots of different media technologies throughout this process. The main one being Blogger. I used Blogger to post and update all the development for my work. I found Blogger very useful and effective when it came to planning and researching as I had a place to store and publish all my findings. Blogger has been easy to use, access and update. This was because I could also download the Blogger App on my iPhone 4, as well as the YouTube App. This was really useful because during the filming process I could give updates straight away as I went along for example, the pictures from location 1 at Pozition Night Club had been taken and uploaded during filming which was a fast and easy way to conduct the process. This shows how I have used new media technologies throughout my construction. I also used my iPhone when gaining audience feedback by taking the video's on my phone and uploading them straight to YouTube and Blogger, other images and post throughout have been posted from my iPhone which has been a really useful part of the process as it is very portable and connects the different apps together such as Facebook, YouTube and Blogger all in one place as well as my videos and images. I was therefore able to upload my video to all three straight from my phone and therefore gain audience feedback from this. The images above have been screen-shot from my iPhone and straight away uploaded to my Blog. This was a very fast and efficient way of publishing my work. My phone is very portable and therefore I had it with me at all times and could constantly update my blog. My entire portfolio has been put onto my Blog, right from the selected brief to the final pieces of work.  I Published 68 posts altogether. 

I did all my filming on a Sony Handycam. I did this because for my first location at Pozition Night Club, I needed to do a lot of moving round and filming from lots of different angles. This meant I needed a portable camera therefore a better quality camera would have been too big to do so. I used a handheld camera and did a lot of steady cam filming in order to achieve the fast night-club look I was aiming for. However for the 2nd footage in the theatre, I kept the camera static in a tripod for the majority of the filming, as this was quite steady and set on the artist showing their performance based skills. I did occasionally take a few more shots handheld in order to show the artist from different angels, such as high and low angle shots, as well as close-up shots of the artists face. I found although this camera may not have been as high quality, I was happy with the look and quality of the filming over all and it was much more efficient when travelling around therefore was the right camera for my filming. I then edited this footage on the editing suite using the software Adobe Premier Pro. I created my first draft on here with just the original footage from location one and then my second draft with location two footage. I then took concepts of them both and edited it all together to make a more professional looking final video which I felt was an improvement on both. I found this software very high in quality and made the video have the right effect such as being able to use lighting and fade techniques to give the nightclub image, and edit in the nightclub scene to the background of the second footage to take qualities from the both. The different edits made the video have the fast-paced, dance and performance based look I was going for. I enjoyed this part of the process as I enjoyed discovering the different effects I could use. I have not had any experience with this software before therefore my video could have had improvements within the editing stage and possibly could have looked more professional, but I did not find it too difficult to get used to, especially after having several different attempts with my different drafts of filming.

When creating my ancillary texts I also used new media technologies. For my first draft of my magazine advert I used my iPhone 4 to take the images and then edited these images on social networking site 'Instagram.' I then uploaded all these images straight to my Blog. However when I got feedback on these images from my audience I found because I had taken them on my mobile phone the quality was poor and looked unclear and unprofessional. I used one of these images to create the 1st draft of my Magazine advert however I did find this piece of work to be very low quality. I'm glad I produced this though as it gave me practise with using media technology Photo-Shop as well as developing my ideas on how to improve and create a more successful piece. Therefore after this I took one of the professional HD cameras from my college and took some clearer more professional looking images. I then edited this on Photo-Shop and created the look I wanted to on here. I then took screen shots of my music video and uploaded these to my online Blog as well as downloading them to Photo-Shop to create my second ancillary. Like my first ancillary text I edited the images on Photo-Shop and created different to develop and finish the product. Photo-Shop was a good system to use as it gave the images a professional look and could do everything right from editing the images to creating the finished text. I did however find Photo-Shop quite difficult to use and it took me a while to get familiar with all the different tools, as they're such a wide variety of them.

Overall the different media technologies have been a big accessory when completing this process. I found it very helpful and efficient to use. Over the course of this work I have found some great difficulty, I find editing and computer technology quite hard to get used to especially when I am unfamiliar with it. Eventually I did get more used to it and managed to create my finished video, however if I could re-do this work I would of chose a shorter song which was less repetitive, with shorter, slower verses as my actors found the rap verses very difficult to learn which reflected in some of the mime parts of the video. In the end I actually found my chosen song and artist very difficult as Nicki Minaj is such a unique individual and can be involved in many different genres. I would possibly have chosen a slower more intimate song with a mix of performance and narrative within it. I feel this would give me more ideas for filming as with this type of video I mainly used footage of dance, mime and performance, I tried to add more creative and different shots in also, but like I found for my audience feedback some shots did seem to be dragged out towards the end as I struggled to find new footage. I think a story-based narrative video with some aspects of performance would make a more entertaining and creative video and I'd be able to think of more of a variety of shots.  However I'm glad I kept with all my original planning and research ideas, right from creating my animatic to the finished project. I enjoyed seeing everything come together. I am also glad I began filming early in order to make several drafts and make improvements. From my audience feedback I feel I met some of my aims such as being suited to the R&B/Hip-Hop/Dance genre and creating a Night-Club setting although I do acknowledge that throughout my work there is room for improvement.

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