Evaluation Question 3 Part 4

What Have I Learned From My Audience Feedback?

Audience feedback has played a crucial role in helping me construct an intended star image for my band as well as producing an effective campaign to promote the band.  My target audience has informed what went well, for example the unique idea for the music video as well as the Electro swing style of music and the simplistic theme of gold embellishment & 1920s across all 3 elements of the campaign. The areas of development has also been informed by our target audience, such as the initial feedback from Luke which has transformed our idea completely.  If I was to make any future changes to the campaign I would've made sure that we acquired more shots of the mad scientist both lip-syncing and mixing chemicals in the lab as the footage we had just wasn't enough to construct a proper narrative and understandable storyline that the audience can accurately follow.

Taking note of the audience feedback I understand how the audience inform me the success of  the campaign is and indeed allowed me time to make adjustments to the campaign before it went to distribution.  Audience feedback is important market testing in post-production to see if I created the right star image and marketed this purposefully. As Henry Jenkins informs us that we live in a ‘participatory culture’,  where fans and audiences are important in circulating meaning and the strength of media messages.

I also recognise that my audience has engaged with the meanings in my music video in different ways, bringing their own contexts to the reading of the star image – what Hall argues is reception theory.  I can understand how my audience can either reinforce or challenge intended meanings in the text. "The idea of a love-story narrative is too cliche for a music video and should not be used"was the feedback from Luke for our first initial idea which was a oppositional reading which enabled us to come up with a new idea completely for our music video. "I really like the idea of the mad scientist as it is very unique and funky" was a feedback from our classmate; which was a preferred reading; after we pitched the idea to them. After we pitched our new idea to Luke the second time, he volunteered to help us develop the idea and suggested that we should include a clear transition between the 1920s element and the futuristic element; a negotiated reading.