Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your

audience feedback?

The Start

• It is important once the creator of any piece of media texts develops their idea to incorporate what their intended audience would want to see in the piece of media rather than what the designer would like to see. Otherwise it is a complete waste of time as nobody will bother with the piece and there will be no reward. This is precisely why audience feedback is vital to the creation of any form of media.

• Once we chose our song, we had analysed music videos from the same genre so that we could gage what conventions are effective in a music video of the folk genre. We also had the task of finding our target audience, and we used social networks to build up a fan profile of (mainly Mumford and Sons) folk music fans. We found that younger people do like folk music but that this genre is not exclusive to just that particular demographic. A questionnaire coupled with a ‘treatment’ PowerPoint was created and shown to members of our target audience so we could find out what they would expect from a folk video.

Early production

• Once we had filmed most of our video and began to edit we were asked to show an (unfinished) rough cut of what we had produced thus far to our peers, again coupled with a questionnaire. This was to find areas we had done well in and to find areas to improve in.

Rough Cut

• The most important question was whether they could understand the narrative of the video. We were told to iron out a few creases with the story owing to the fact that as it was not a full video they couldn’t quite work out the whole story, but they did know that it was about a Suffolk farmer who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting into pub fights. We decided to keep going in the same direction with the video as we were confident that once the whole video was finished the audience would know exactly what the story was.

• The audience told us that using the places that were mentioned as part of the narrative was effective and helped tell the story. Also they found that the locations matched the conventions of the folk genre. The use of rural locations not only related to the lyrics but was a key factor in creating a folk-like feel.

Final product

• Once finished, the video was uploaded to YouTube (Twice) and from here we promoted via social media. As a result of this we got feedback from the band who sang the original song, with The Broadside Boys showing their satisfaction through social media and YouTube comments.

• Without audience feedback, the video would likely have been completely different, for reasons either good or bad. However, our peers liked both our final product and our rough cut giving us clear indication that our product was effective.