Task 3 - What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

Once we had finished the video and had successfully exhibited it to the world using Web 2.0's biggest video tool 'Youtube' we began the process of collating all of the audience feedback. We wanted to learn about what people thought of the making, content, overall look and style. We went about this through a series of different methods; we hoped to gain this feedback through comments and ratings left on the video through various blogging, social network sites and video upload websites such as Facebook, Youtube and on our course evaluation Blogger site. We had a selective screening session which we arranged and finally we had a focus group to come in and give us feedback and answer a few questions we had prepared to put to them.

I was intrigued to see if our target audience was going to share our opinions of the strengths and weaknesses. So to find out we asked them to tell us what they found and thought were the strengths via comments on youtube and a questionnaire given to the viewers of our focus group. The majority of them agreed with what we felt that the black and white effect on the video was good as it added authenticity and made it look more original; It set it apart from everyone else’s in colour and made it stand out from the rest. Lots of people liked the way we had such a strong performance element focusing mainly on the band playing the music especially as this is what the band sells itself on through their star image of being a true organic band. The editing was also something mentioned as a strength as the editing speed and style was changing throughout therefore keeping people entertained until the last chord is strummed. The blending modes also were mentioned to be making the video feel of a higher quality and of a more professional look.

Not many weaknesses were brought up on the youtube video apart from the one or two comments mentioning the fact that it didn’t feel raw enough for what it was aiming to be with not enough hand held or moving shots. Also someone mentioned that they felt that the cutting wasn’t fast enough and therefore some people may get distracted and not find it entertaining enough to watch it more than once.

Learning about the different ways of collecting audience feedback we looked at Stuart Halls method of not treating the audience as a mass and instead treating them as a collection of smaller groups defined by social and ideological elements. This is known as the Encoding and Decoding model therefore looking at the relationship between product and audience.

The way that it works is both consciously and unconsciously our media forms are encoded with the values of their producers (usually white middle class men). However this is where there becomes a problem as not all of the audience will be made up of such people and these different groups are likely to read the text in different ways resulting in slightly different or completely opposing readings being taken from it. There are 3 main types of decoding readings, preferred is where the audience decodes the product as it was meant by the producers, Negotiated is when the audience accept the meaning however slightly question it and finally oppositional is when the audience come up with a completely contrasting reading to what was initially meant by the producers.

From our selective screening and focus group we gathered together a set of preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings for our video. Examples of some of the preferred readings are the class and status issues that arose from the contrast in wealth and status shown through the 2 differing narratives. The retro feel to the video created through the artistic instable shots such as focus pulls, experimental angles and the documentary style zooms. Also shown through the overall black and white melancholy look, the sets and props used all contributed to achieving this. The use of shots especially having so many shots of the band shows that they are a real band together that are all good friends which reinforces our star image a very good example of this is how it starts with them setting up and plugging o shows that they are very organic and wanting to practice as it look s like we are observing one of their practice sessions. Also the shots where the lead singer comes closer to the camera increases the audience character proximity making the audience feel more emotionally attached with the band. In particular when the lead singer walks off right at the end it shows that he is very emotionally involved.

Some examples of the negotiated readings brought up which we hadn’t really meant however mean pretty much the same thing are that the snow in the house was a connotation for his relationship falling apart as it seemed like the house was falling apart as the snow was coming through the roof. The blending effects were dreams and flashbacks of the good old days when they were together and link them together more. The shots of the wallpaper with flowers on cross cut with the shots of the council estate with the bare twigs acts as a contrast of the different lifestyles. Also a comment about costume as he is wearing all black which has connotations of disaster and depression and as she progresses she takes of her black and end s up only wearing white which has its own connotations of angels, goodness and happiness. The tracking shots showing the girl entering into the area of community she walks past a house with a pram outside signifying that she is entering into an area where there are families.

Ideally we would want our product to be so clear that we got no decoding oppositional readings however we got two. These were people thinking that as she walked away taking off her clothes she was get ready for sexual activities. Lastly as she was walking she was in fact walking away from the light of him and into the tunnel of the darkness.

In summary I feel that the majority of our audience feedback has been positive or preferred and negotiated readings which is a sign of a product which has been successfully received by its audience. I feel that our audience feedback has reflected our own views of our product and this shows we have succeeded.