http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK87opYGDZ8&feature=player_embedded

How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product[1]

‘In What ways do your media products use Develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products’?

Task 3 ‘What have you leant from audience feedback’.

In order to research into audience feedback our group decided to hold a focus group with a number of media students in the As course. In this we played the video to them and asked for there reaction through a number of questions such as ‘What do you think of the editing; and ‘How does our video relate to the genre of music’ Through this we were able to gain a good knowledge of  how the audience viewed our product and we were able to take the feedback and learn from it.

When gaining a greater understanding of how the audience viewed our product we looked at the Effects model which is a theory popular when media was first introduced, this implies that audiences are passive recipients of the meanings and values of a text. Also known as the hypodermic model. Media effects are long term and can influenced peoples views and attitudes. This means everyone is effected in the same why by a particular text. However when conducting our research we found that this view was contradicted as many of the class had different views and interpreted the video in different ways such as when we suggested that our cast members Holly and Abbi were meant to resemble each others opposites only half the class raised there hands when we suggested this view which shows us how there was a divide in class views. There were also other views which split the class such as the appeal Holly gave off and what our Band were meant to represent.

 

A better view of understanding how our audience viewed our product would be Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding which came from his work at the BCCCS. This view is based on how the audience do not act as a ‘mass’, but rather as a collection of smaller groups defined by social and ideological elements. This applies that media texts are encoded both consciously and unconsciously with the values of their producers. This suggest that the producers do put a set of values into the media but however the audience decoded it and interpret in different ways based on social factors. This appeared in our research task as when we asked if the audience would want to see the band live only the two boys put there hand up suggesting they are a band which appeals to a mainly male audience. However these differences are not just based on gender they were many other points which our audience had different views on when asked if the animals in the video gave a good wild feel to it only some agreed with this other suggested that they were confused by this and didn’t go with the narrative within our video. This was another way which split our audience and produced different views. The differences still occurred even though we had a very similar audience all the same age and from middle class backgrounds this cut out the social factors other than gender however there were still issues which provided different views.

The audience research also highlighted a number of other points which they felt were good or not so good. A major concern for us was that a number of the audience felt that the lip synching was out and therefore attracted attention away from our video and therefore add an unprofessional feel to our video which if we had more time on the product we would go back and change to make it more sharp and realistic. However they did praise the editing stating how it was quick and interesting with a different number of jump cuts which made it a more unique experiance for the audience to watch which was something we wanted to create in the making of our video. However Another constructive point which was raised was the that a number of the group did not believe there was a real narrative to it and therefore had no story to it which made us think of ideas in which we could of gave it an extra element to it to cut out the confusing element to it. This would help us improve the video and perhaps we could of added an extra scene which would help the audience develop a better understanding of the product. What I was really pleased in finding from the research was the fact that we capsulated the image of the band due to the costume and the way we styled them so this was really pleasing and also the themes we wanted to create such as a star image and a young wild rebellious feel to the band were highlighted from the task. Also the audience felt that the image we portrayed on our digipak did relate to the band stating how they thought that the sign on the front was a strong simple and could be used as a strong symbol for the band.

Another useful theory which we could relate to our feedback to gain a greater understanding into how each of our audience members perceived our media product was the uses and gratification model this theory comes from research done in the 1950s and states how unlike the effects model audience are far from passive in their observation of media the prefer to choose and consume the media to satisfy particular needs and gratifications which they exhibit. At the forefront of this research where theorist Lazarfeld, Blumler abd Katz. Their was particularly evident when we asked the class what they thought of the video and they all shared the same believe that it was a vibrant and young video which was a sign of rebellion in this may seemed to be trending throughout the teenage audience as they would use it as a form of diversion to escape from the dominant values of society and release themselves of,Also as they where able to connect with the personal identity as the cast where young the target audience were able to relate to certain elements to the casts performance and they may have similar fashion senses and many of our audience were able to understand the rave culture which is a dominant theme in our video. Some of the audience may be able to relate to the music side of the video looking at the instruments how there played and the live experiance which is given in our video, However by adding different layers such as narrative like the young girl who is on a bad trip this adds extra texture to our music video and the audience gain a boarder experiance which facliltates to a larger element of our target audience.So I felt from the feedback we received there was defiantly elements which conformed to this theory.

task 4

79897941-Mikey-Pearce-Task-4[1]