For our audience feedback we sat down with a few people who watched our video to establish what they thought the pros and cons were, what we did right and what we did wrong and what they would have done if it were up to them. We felt this was the most effective way of retrieving audience feedback because it gave us the chance to talk to them face to face and explain why we did what we did. It also was easier than making a questionnaire around there views and by asking open ended questions it aloud a conversation to form which would give us feedback in great detail.
One point which repeatedly came up was that the narrative was slightly to complicated and jumpy to follow over such a short period of time. This was a point we were aware of however didn’t see that it would be that much of a drawback. One of our focus group participants said “I really like how you’ve merged the narrative into the performance shots, it works really well. However the narrative plot is too long to be told over a space of 3 minutes or so.” This was excellent feedback, we replied with the following comment… “We appreciate that the plot is slightly to complex for a music video but perhaps if you watched it a few times, like you would with any other music video, do you think the plot would become clear and you would uncover things that you may have missed the first time?” This was a brilliant opportunity to watch the music video again to see what the focus group said. After watching it a second time they agreed that they found it easier to watch the second time round. Another participant said “the likely hood of watching a music video more than once if extremely high, especially due to the internet and websites such as Facebook and YouTube. So maybe producers can afford to make more complex videos now that they can be watched at almost any moment in anyone’s life.”
The second point which was brought up was about the lip syncing was out in some parts of the music video. This wasn’t due to poor editing but down to the actor we used not being familiar with the song or its lyrics. The focus group said that it would have been a big improvement to the video as it would make it look more professional and sharp. I explained that we did our best during the editing process to rectify any synchronising issues however it was too time consuming to either slow down or speed up sections of footage which may only last for 1-2 seconds. The focus group replied with “Why didn’t you re-film the broken sections of footage?” our reply was “We did think about it and were very close to doing so but with the deadline approaching and final adjustments to be made, to our regret we had to call off re-filming and make good with the footage we had”
Finally we asked our focus group “assuming the adjustments you have suggested were made to this text, how would you rate this video and would you buy the video from iTunes instead of just the song?” to our surprise we were told by a number of the participants that they would spend the extra money on getting the video. They agreed that, with the issues mentioned resolved, it would be a video they would expect to see on TV and online. They also agreed that the costumes, mes-ensense and settings were accurate to that of a genuine video of this genre.
