1. What sorts of audience research have you carried out?
We as a group created a questionnaire full of questions that we wanted to be answered about our music video to reach a understanding of our target audience. We played our music video to a group of AS students and asked them if they would please complete the questionnaire for our audience research. We used a combination of structured interview and postal questionnaire. We started with the interview and in general it appeared to be useful, however if we had the chance to redo it we would do the postal questionnaire first and afterwards the interview as it appeared to be a problem that some people might be influenced by other’s opinions. In our questionnaire we asked questions such as their gender, if they likes the music video, what in there opinion could have been improved upon, what they thought the meaning of the video was, what sort of music they listened to etc. The audience feedback we got had some similarities to our view of our product. This audience was in the age 15-18 and therefore our target audience. The video we posted up on You Tube to our school account and invited people to make comments and give us some relevant audience feed back.
2. How did the research reflect your views of the strength of the product?
In our questionnaire we received lots of positive feed back. All of the people who took part in answering the questionnaire said that they liked the video, regardless of if they listened to the genre of music or if they thought we could make some changes to make it stronger. All of the candidates also answered that they liked the stop motion element of the video writing comments such as “makes the video and the story interesting” and “cute“ in general, which was one of the effects we had hoped to achieve. We also got positive feed back from the comments left on You Tube about the set up of the studio with the hearts and the pink lighting as it suits the narrative of the video. The body language that we read from our focus group was very positive smiling and looking interested and focused throughout watching the video.
3. How did the research reflect your views of the weaknesses of the product?
However we also got some critics as most of the audience agreed that the band was not playing the instruments. These comments highlighted the weaknesses we had due to the actors not learning the song properly, which clearly showed that we should have be more asure about if the actors could actually play their instruments. One of the weaknesses that were also pointed out in our survey was the lighting in one scene (Mimi sitting on the floor, in the corner) could have been a bit lighter so she didn’t look as trapped. Some of the focus group also mentioned the drummer’s and base guitarist’s problem with playing the song correctly.
4. Explain the encoding-decoding model
The encoding-decoding model derives from the work of Stuart Hall and this 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 like gender, race, class and age. The media texts are ‘encoding’ with the values of their producers, however, the audience is not made up exclusively of these groups and different groups are likely to ‘read’ the next indifferent ways. This mainly means that in the encoding process the values go into the text when it’s created. The decoding process has three possible outcomes which are texts we are reading or watching. A preferred reading are the values which are understand and agreed with an identified text, while a negotiated reading some values are understood but one doesn’t relate to ideas and the characters. The oppositional reading is no acceptance of the encoded values and there is not pleasure or identification.
1. Examples of preferred readings you received
We were as a group happy with our audience feed back during the focus group because when we asked what they thought the narrative of the video showed a boy in love after one night of “love” making breakfast for his one-night-stand, as to the lyrics, which was our intentional interpretation. This was very pleasing for us to know that although members of the group thought that we could have made this interpretation more clearer and put more stop motion in to give the whole video even a more ‘cuteness’ effect, the majority still understood which we believe to be a success. Also all of the people who filled out our questionnaire put that the stop motion element of the video was the best part, which suggests that love element even more.
2. Examples of negotiated readings you received
Some of the students taking part in our questionnaire and focus group voiced the opinion that though they understood the idea of the one-night-stand, they see the breakfast as symbol for a long term relationship as the protagonist is pulling up all the love hearts and sweetness.
3. Examples of oppositional readings you received
When reading the question air there was one person who didn’t seem to understand the concept of our video completely and had the thought that the video was him, the protagonist, could be a serial sex offender who is keeping her as a prisoner locked in a cellar as when she started singing she seemed trapped in the corner, as it was filmed from a higher angle and gave the viewer a feeling of superiority. This suggestion was a helpful one to us because it alerted us to the way in which some of people may view our video. All of the oppositional readings were very helpful to us when discovering the strengths and weakness to our video
4. Conclusion
It was very encouraging that so many of the people we questioned understood the video quickly and extremely well, which showed us that we actually made a good job. For those who were confused about it, if given the chance again we may consider using more stop motion as it is considered to be the best bit of our video. We also would make sure that the band knew the music well enough to show a clear understanding of the music and the instruments to alert the opinion that the video showed a serial sex offender or similar ideas. Overall we were happy with the feedback we received and our happy with our end product.
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