Evaluation:

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

I used audience feedback throughout the production process of my products. I used questionnaires as well as programmes such as ‘facebook ‘and ‘wallwisher’ to help me collect people’s opinions of my ideas as well as their opinions of my final products.

To begin with I used a simple questionnaire, using the information to learn more about the audience I would be targeting in particular. The people I asked all were relatively young, aged 25 and under. I therefore set about creating products which would appeal to them, using their comments as guidelines as what would be needed. This form of audience feedback also helped me to decide on which genre of music to use, a huge percentage of the people I asked in this initial questionnaire proved Pop and Rock genres to be the most popular, so I decided to choose a band which has dabbled in both of these genres at some point. My first choice was ‘The Script’. I really like this band as I feel that their music has a lot of depth as the lyrics have meaning, and emotion is put behind each word. After I had decided to go down this route, I conducted another questionnaire, this time to gain knowledge about my target audiences favourite types of CD covers, to help me prepare for designing and ultimately making my digi pak. The results showed that the covers which were the most popular followed certain conventions, the colours and effects resembled the tone of the music and it became apparent that the main image would be a big part of the CD covers overall success. I used this information to help me when making decisions about my own products; what to include and why it should be there.

Another tool I used was the programme ‘wordle’ which helps to make comments a bit more aesthetically pleasing which is helpful when looking at results. I used this tool to comprise some of the comments my target market made about existing products, giving me a clear idea of what sort of things proved popular; ‘Simplistic’, ‘peaceful’ and ‘reflections’ were words which stood out to me and I incorporated these ideas into my ancillary tasks. After these results I took some photographs and once again relied on a questionnaire to help me decide on which one to use. The results were clear and helped me to decide on which three pictures to make some initial designs around. I then used the programme ‘Wallwisher’ to choose between these. However this programme was not particularly successful as only two people commented on my designs. I used their ideas and went on to design my final CD cover around all of my audience feedback. I went through the same process when designing my magazine advert, using information and opinions gained from questionnaires.

Finally, I used ‘facebook’ to upload all of my final products, and collected a few comments from people. Largely, the people who watched my video felt that the lip synching was a bit out of time, and some of the footage of the motorways was obviously on repeat loop. I completely agree with these comments and think that they are fair and justified and if I were to re-film I would try and improve on these points. However, I was really pleased with the comments as a whole as everyone I asked said that they thought that the music went really well with the images shown on screen and felt that the video flowed well. This was what I was hoping to achieve and through the feedback I gained I can see that my video was successful and did follow many conventions seen in existing products. I also asked my friend’s mother to upload it on her facebook, and some of her friends and work colleagues commented on it. I wished to include this as I felt it was important to see how other people from a different audience would view it. I am happy to say that all of these comments were positive and kind although realistically it may have been slightly biased as the film starred the woman’s son! I also used ‘facebook’ to learn about people’s opinions of my ancillary products. Again the comments were generally positive, although most people thought that the title of the album on both my CD cover and advert could have been slightly lighter and bigger so that it showed up against the background better.

Overall I have learnt a lot from audience feedback, it has helped me to gain a better understanding about the conventions of such media products, has helped me to identify my target market as well as ultimately shaping how all of my texts have turned out. The feedback has also shown me how I could improve my products.