Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In order to get audience feedback from our video presentation, we created a questionnaire for people to answer when they finished watching our second draft of the music video. A very interesting thing I learned from the questionnaire is how people interpreted the ending. I made this the final question purely under interest rather than a need to know basis. The best answer to that is that people found it open to interpretation, that is how my partner an I wanted to show off the ending, with non linear story-line laid out for people rather a mix of emotions and feeling between people believing he jumped and people believing that he stayed. Through  this i learnt that we played the ending very well as people had different ideas as to how it ended.

These are the examples of the two most helpful questionnaires from the pile. The one on the left giving us a solid 9, listing factors that they enjoyed and felt that we did well, and on the final question answered that its open to interpretation, which is what we were going for, but under justification, explained an answer.  The second with a lower score of 4, which we believe is because they wanted to give feed back on what we could have done better. The audience member stated that it would need a final bench scene, as we have this place that they would come together. We showed this as now only one is alive (or not, you don't know that) while the love they shared is dead. That was the purpose of the black and white, to display that. But not only is it significant to me. Every company in the music/film and other media industries use audience feedback to alter their projects. As they need to hear feedback, without it they would go in blindly not have a second opinion on anything. A second opinion is crucial to the media industry, to send out a video that hasn't been viewed by the common people would not be wise. The audience can pin point where they need to change certain aspects of the video. Using a focus group to show what was good about the video and what needs to be altered. They would probably do this a few times with different drafts to get the most liked one out.
     Of my data, I was very surprised that the first bench scene was shown as a good aspect, I personally believed that it was too long, and a bit too one shot. Yet people seemed to see that as a good aspect, under not to many transitions, you were able to focus all your attention on the two main characters over anything else.
     The main element that people believed that we needed to change was the final panning shot of the city. They thought that the black & white element was a good touch as it reflected the mood of the final scene. Where as people believed that it should be the bench rather than the city, as it would be a great final cut, to go back where it all began, but with a different ambiance. not a happy one but a sad one. I managed to get a lot out of my audience feedback. I especially enjoyed the answers to the last question as it showed that it was an effective ending which made people think 'Did he, didn't he?'. The idea of Audience theory is also applicable. Why do the watch what they are watching? How do the consume it? Does it effect them? The show of effect was shown by the first person we interviewed, 'Max Pickup' who stated that the video he watched was depressing, You can tell mainly from the facial expression that he kind of looked saddened by this which goes under the 'Effect Theory'. The other three Displayed the opposite with the 'Uses and gratification' concept where they they were open to rejecting or using the piece of media. They all made an ending in their head and gave reasonable suggestions as to why this occurred. This is an example of Reception theory, where the users play the text around to their interpretation from the original idea.

This is an example of one of the talking heads I used for my evaluation. He stated good parts and negative parts from my video. He said what he feels is his version of the ambiguous scenes and that he likes the Time lapse. This video was really helpful, as i gave me ideas under what ti improve on and what i would do again if I did it again.
My talking heads session also supported Barthes "Death of an Author" theory. He hypothesized that the audience create their own meanings to texts so that they are "Unstable and open to question or user interpretation" He declared that "text is a tissue of quotations" which is not drawn from persons experience. The meaning of work is drawn from the impressions of the consumer, rather that the ''Passion'' or ''Tastes'' of the writer. My talking heads really supported this theory as they all gave their own interpretation of the text which varied from my partner and I.
There are three types of spectator-ships. Passive spectator; who takes up the intended meaning/doesn't question the text, Negotiating spectator/Active spectator; who both gives and takes/retains own view but also interpolates themselves within the film and Libertarian spectators; who reject the intended purpose/believes that there are many different readings. From my talking heads session, I discovered that my audience are a mix between negotiating spectators and libertarian spectators, while no one I interviewed were passive towards the text. The talking heads were either believed that there were many different readings towards the media text or that they had their own views but accepted some from the video. From this i have learned that i have been successful in creating an open to interpretation video.