Q3: - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Whilst undertaking the research stage of my advanced portfolio, I had to carry out audience research which allowed me to gain more knowledge and understanding of what was expected of a rock genre. To gather my information, I created a survey on google plus which allowed me to send it on to other friends by email. From the results, the most obvious answers I found was that music videos are not actually as important to the 4 out of 5 people I asked.  Also, that the way they listen to their music is mostly through new media technologies, with Youtube, Itunes and Other being the top choices, chosen by all 6 people. We also discovered that people prefer videos containing more performance shots focusing on the band itself rather than narrative or both.
Here are the top keywords that were noted down by each person when asked a word that comes to mind when thinking of the rock genre:-

- The highlited words are the ones in which we included within our music video.

After having a confident understanding of my rock genre, becoming familiar with it's conventions and supporting this with audience feedback to know what others expect, it helped me to plan appropriate ideas that were suited to the expectations of a rock genre and I was able to reflect upon this information through out my work.

After our music video was finally completed, I was curious to discover the feedback from the audiences. Ever since the viewing of my video, I have received many compliments towards it, and decided to record some of the audiences reflecting on my work and discussing their positive thoughts and criticism towards the video.


From this audience feedback, I have learned that out our music video was not only successful in my oppinion but also to the audiences. The positive feedback that we mostly received was how the video was edited, mentioning how the shots were fast pace, cut really well and fitted to the music. The lighting, shot types and the use of flashbacks were also mentioned as a good aspect of our video. The only criticism we received was the mise en scene in the bedroom shots, with the fact that the protagonists clothes were not exactly fitted to the genre and a bit out of place, I could of improved this by properly planning out his outfit to fit our genre.

Here is the audience feedback I received when uploading my video onto facebook:

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

It would not of been possible to achieve the work we have done without using a variety of media technologies, whether it was preparing for our video or actually creating our video, different technologies helped piece our work together. Firstly, I will discuss the use of media technologies in our research.

• Blogger obviously played a big role in contributing towards my work as it is where I focused on the theoratrical side of the course, including real music video analysises, audience research and information on different theories. It gives me a space to express all my different ideas and interpretations and convey my thoughts in an easily accessable, sharable and sophisticated way of which is safe and secures all my work.
• When analysing real music videos on my blog, it made sense to add the video onto the blog post therefore, you are able to watch the video aswell as reading my thoughts upon it. In order to include a video, I had to simply search it on Youtube, which is one of the largest video search engines in the world therefore any music video I wanted was easy to find. Once discovering the music video, I would then copy and paste the URL into the 'edit HTML' section of editing a post, this was made for the use of pasting codes into my work and by doing this I would successfully include a good quality music video which added to the visually appealing aspect of my work.
• To improve the appearance of my blog even further, I included screen grabs into my posts. By doing this I could reflect apon one specific shot, making it more clearer to the viewer as it shows them exactly what I'm talking about in my writing. In order to do this I would simply play the video on full screen, pause it on the screen grab I desired, and then printscreen. This would then copy everything on my screen so I could then paste it onto 'Paint' to save as a JPEG, I also created a collage of images on this programme when I wanted to evaluate the shots I thought were composed the best, or to sum up the overall look of the video. As blogger includes the option of uploading a picture, I was able to easily put this onto my blog post.

For the planning stage of my work, I started developing ideas and discovering a pathway in which I wanted to take our music video. From carrying out research on music videos themselves and becoming familiar with the conventions of my genre, I was able to gradually plan our own music video in a confident manner. I continued using the same media technologies as said previously as well as discovering new ways to portray my ideas.

• Rather than writing out my ideas, I wanted to capture the progress of how these ideas were formed and show the actual discussion that took place when these ideas were being constructed, showing the viewer raw material which would improve our marks. To do this, we set up a camera infront of our group and recorded ourselves while we were talking into the camera and springing ideas off of one another. We then imported it onto final cut, which is an editing programme we are all familiar with, to then tweek it a little, export into a quicktime video to then upload to Youtube, which allowed us to do as I said previously, and upload it onto our blog.
• As part of our planning, we had to create a story board depicting what type of shots we wanted, how we wanted to compose them, and organize them to fit in with the timing of the song. Last year in our foundation portfolio, we showed this on our blog with just pictures of our sheets of storyboards, however this year we have developed this technology by taking pictures of each drawing and then uploading each shot onto final cut to then put all together in time with the music. The effect of this is that it creates the flow of a music video and a better understanding of what we want our video to look like as well showing the pace of our shots. This also added to the visual appeal of my blog, making it more interesting to look at.
• After planning our music video, we had to then plan our ancillary task. To do this we had to use two technologies, firstly a camera for our practise photoshoot of which we captured a variety of shots to comfortably work with, and then another camera to record this happening so we could then put this on our blogs to support the evidence of us taking these photos. After capturing our photographs, we then uploaded it onto the macs which allowed us to use the software 'Photoshop', which is the leading digital image editing application. We then spent some time with our chosen image, adapting it to fit our genre and look as if it a draft of an album cover, which we managed to achieve successfully. After this was completed we then uploaded it onto blogger.

In the construction of our music video and ancillary task, we used alot of different media technologies to help us achieve the best possible outcome. Our music video invlovled using a variety of filming equipment and our ancillary task consisted of a lot of time and effort into specific media technologies.

• Whilst filming our music video, in order to achieve a still, correctly composed frame, we had to use a tripod -esepecially on shots that we were using the surreal editing technique and if we were cutting the subject inbetween objects in which the setting had to be motionless with no movement in the camera because we wanted the subject to look like she was flashing in and out of different locations within the shot, discarding the fact that we had to seperatly film each shot with the subject in different positions.
• We used a fig rig for our dynamic shots, so that we could hold the camera with smoother motion whilst at the same time having good support and not being over shaky when moving the camera around when we wanted to create a hand held, jolted look.
• When editing our digipack, it was important to select the right font. I find that with certain fonts, I recognize to belong to a band, I feel that the font defies the band in a way therefore we had to make the right decision as to what font we would use for our album to fit in with our genre and represent our band. Here are some fonts that I find very distinctive to it's band:

                         

The website we used to do this was 'www.dafont.com', which gives you the option to download hundreds of fonts with a wide choice covering different categories and endless pages.