Alex and I used various new media technologies to receive audience feed back from our music video. Firstly, the promo was uploaded onto YouTube so audiences all over the world could easily access our product and write comments on the same page. Example of feedback Intergalactic received is, “Well performed - narrative slightly unclear. Great setting and after effects :) GOOD JOB. !” The downside, however to using this application was that because you had to enter the specific hurtwoodhousemedia and then find out music video, many users of YouTube may not have come across it. Another way of released our product to an audience was posting it on our online blogs on the Blogger site. But, also like Youtube, Blogger had certain limitations like no everyone can view it easily; you would have to have a log in to view the video. In search of a better, more efficient way of reaching my target audience of 15-21 year olds I posted the Youtube link onto my own facebook profile where I received a wider range of feedback from many different people. Most being positive and an example of this is “Great after effects, good job!” The last area of audience feedback we examined was the standard questionnaire after getting twenty people to watch the music video. We designed the questionnaire to ask detailed questions of their likes and dislikes and what we could have done to make our video appeal more personally to them. I found this area of research to be more useful as we gained a greater understanding of what we could have improved on and whether our video appealed as well as we thought it would to our target audience. However, some of the questioned people did not give us a detailed enough understanding and their answers were relatively broad as there were time constraints. So, overall I think the questionnaire gave the best results but using Youtube allowed more people to watch the media product.
An overall 70% of our focus group answering the questionnaire said they enjoyed the song choice and thought that the video had a good balance between narrative and performance. Only 45% of the focus group already had heard of the Beastie Boys and knew the song Intergalactic, which was beneficial in a way for us as producers as the majority of the audience had to point of reference so thy could not compare ours to the already existing video. All of the audience ticked the enjoyed box on our questionnaire and so I feel the promo was successful to an extent as it entertained our audience, which was our main objective. After conversing with one of the interviewees after the questionnaire was completed, they stated that they felt the editing really fit in with the song choice and quirky set and they felt that kept a upbeat and jolly vibe throughout the video. I think that the close ups of the band members pulling comical faces and engaging in activities not usually carried out on a space ship makes the video fun to watch. A few audience members vaguely mentioned in the other comments section that the scene where the space ship crashes and the rappers are being tossed from side to side could have been filmed better as it was not framed up very well, which I also feel could have been improved on. Alternatively, others commented that it made the promo more visually stimulating and helped them understand what the rappers were actually doing on the ship. The band’s image does not fit into the classical rapper stereotype, as there is only a few other white rapper groups I feel this gives Cobalt Rapture a unique selling point and thus inspire more people to listen to their music.
There were equally apparent weaknesses to our music video that were brought to our attention through the questionnaire and Youtube comments. The main criticisms were a slightly unclear narrative. The audience felt that the story was not built up enough and did not understand the aliens rise ad fall to fame and even why this was included in out music video. Comments on YouTube and from the focus group reflected this particular weakness. Furthermore, there were also comments in our questionnaire saying that the set and lightly were very well done and pulled the whole video together in terms of professionalism and genre. The encoding-decoding model derives from the work of Stuart Hall. It is a theoretical model, which is based upon the notion that the audience do not act as a ‘mass’, but rather as a collection of smaller groups defined by social and ideological elements. Media texts are ‘encoded’ (both consciously and unconsciously) with the values of their producers, who are generally white, middle-class, men. However, the audience is not made up exclusively of these groups and different groups are likely to ‘read’ the text indifferent ways. This ‘decoding’ process has 3 possible outcomes which are a preferred reading, a negotiated reading and an oppositional reading.
A preferred reading is referred to when the audience understand the intended values and the concept behind a given media text. The preferred reading of my music video was a group of lowly skilled workers rapping as a part of having fun, the alien narratives preferred reading is mostly to poke fun at the ease of 21st centaury fame but also to show how quickly the rise and fall happens to most people. This questionnaire proved that majority of the audience was able to understand and accept our preferred reading.
Negotiated readings are when people understand some values and they accept a selected few elements of a media text whilst developing their own opinions. We received a negotiated reading that the rappers were not actually in control of the ship but hijacked it instead and decided to dress as space men. An alternative negotiated reading about the alien was that he was a lonely pop star, supported by the walking down dark roads scenes and we used the video to convey similarities between humans and other life forms.
To conclude what we learnt from audience feedback is that out largest criticism if narrative being slightly unclear at times, especially at the start. We could have improved on this by building up and giving more examples of the alien being not famous. One the other hand, a large extent our narrative was successfully translated to the audience due to the shots, lighting and narrative strands.
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