Audience feedback is an incredibly important part of making a piece of media, as it indicates to us whether or not we attracted our target audience, whether or not they think the video conforms to the genre, and generally whether they liked/disliked our narrative/shots/effects. This will help us to make a better piece in the future, and it helped us to make a better final edit from the rough edit.

I sent out the rough edit to some students via email, I didn’t want to post it onto facebook just yet as I wasn’t satisfied with it. So I just sent it to a few people who take media studies or understand what makes a good piece of media. Here are the responses:

The feedback for the rough edit was what I expected to hear. I was slightly surprised, at the fact that people seemed to be confused by the general narrative. This is something I addressed and changed some of the scenes that carried too much ambiguity, as some viewers were clearly miss interpreting some of the scenes.

A few weeks later, once we were satisfied with the changes we made. We were finally ready to post a Final Edit. We posted it onto Youtube and then Facebook.

Here is the  Facebook feedback:

The feedback I got on Facebook was generally very good. They seemed to in particular enjoy the cinematography in particular at the beach scenes. They also liked the acting. However, despite people like the general narrative, some still found it confusing.

You can see the analytics below that show the results of our video on youtube of our video, after it was up for 3 days:

Slightly frustrating how our average view duration was online 1:39. Which is just over 1 minute before the music video would have been finished. This could be a suggestion that the video was slightly boring, or maybe the viewers were confused by the narrative and, therefore, exited the video. It is not too bad, however because it is possible that some of the views were people who found the video but realised it wasn’t for them once they clicked on it, and, therefore, closing it immediately. Which would have brought down the average a lot.

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As you can see from the analytics below, our video made it to 7 different countries, such as the the UK, Germany, Russia, US, UAE, Spain and Turkey. I believe this was accomplished by posting our video on Facebook as well as Youtube and having group member living in  different parts of the world.

I also asked my peers to give me feedback whilst I was filming them. I asked them whether it was possible for them to give me feedback scene by scene as it happens, and then at the end a synopsis whether they liked it or not, and why:

I was expecting a lot of the criticism I received, however I was overwhelmed with the positive feedback I received, seeming as for almost all the people giving the feedback bar one, it was the first time they had seen the music video and for them to notice small intricate details I put in the video not expecting many people to notice at first glance. For example, how as the story progressed the vodka bottle Karam was holding had less and less vodka in it. Also,  when Karam gets rid of the drugs and alcohol  in his life and is trying to turn over a new leaf there is a change in the colour of the shots, it became brighter. It was very satisfying that people noticed these details.

It’s still slightly infuriating that some people got confused by the narrative, but understandably as there is a lot going on in a short period of time. Furthermore, I was quite annoyed at myself at how noticeable the odd shaky shots were, despite using shot stabilization, it didn’t always work for some of the shots.

 

 

Here is the link to my prezi where I made a presentation for this point:

https://prezi.com/4a9_cvdaexa-/effectiveness-of-my-main-product-and-ancillary-texts/

You can Also preview it in the slideshow below:

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1. This is the first shot of the main actor (Karam). It is displayed in the opening 10 seconds, it shows him lifting his head up and staring right down the camera. I believe that this is a very important shot as it signals the start of the narrative, because of the way he looks right at the camera and the lack of facial expression, the reason for this shot was to then make all the other shots have the effect that they’re everything that was going on in his mind at the time. With my genre, it isn’t that common for an actor to look directly into the camera.

2. This shot is another key one, it shows him by himself on a cliff near the beach looking far into the horizon. This shot really underlines his loneliness, as there is no sign of any other people in the masses of the beach. Also, this shot has him drinking a bottle of vodka straight, this gives the first impression to the audience that he has a possible drinking problem, and this will already embed a message to the audience that he is lonely and depressed. I have seen this type of shot in many music videos, the ‘Hey Brother’ music video has a similar type shot where the main actor is shown by himself early in the video, to show the audience that he will carry importance in the music video later.

3. This next shot is an important one because it is right after Karam is shown playing poker, another activity which underlines the fact that he has possible problems. Then the problems go to the next level in this shot as it shows him taking cocaine. Now the audience is definitely well aware of his problems. A few enigma codes are embedded in the opening; the audience will start questioning why he is like this? The answer that most of the viewers will come to is because of loneliness and depression. This is a tactic frequently used in music videos, to engage the audience and make them want to watch the rest of the music video to see what happens. I have seen this happen in Linkin Parks, ‘Breaking the habit’ and many other music videos.

4. This is the first time that the two are seen together in one shot. Previously they were seen in the same setting but with different shots, the actress (Iona) was shot looking at Karam in the casino scene. Then she seems to find him and confront him, Karam does not seem completely happy in this scene, as from the shot after this one there is him looking up at the sky in frustration and that with the cocaine shown, the life of a happy person is definitely not what is being shown. This brief shot, however, makes you think that you will see more of the actress possibly together with Karam as it was two scenes consecutively with them being in the same area. With a narrative that is similar to mine, the female is often introduced later, because our whole narrative isn’t based on her, she comes in later because we needed to show the audience the struggle that Karam is going through, so that it emphasise the difference in his mood from before meeting her and after. It is a quite common thing to see in real media products, whether it is music videos or films.

5.This is another pivotal moment in the storyline. Here is where Karam for the first time seems to be happy and it looks like it is completely derived from her as there is no such sign of drugs, it just them to on their own playing computer games. This will make the audience believe that them two being together makes Karam happy,  this will make the audiences  relationship feel good about the girl because she has seemingly completely changed Karam’s mood.

6. This shot is of Karam educating himself, by reading books. This is a signal to the audience that he is trying to change his life, and this shot comes right after them being happy together. So the audience may think that she has been the inspiration in his life to turn it around, and a move that most people make when trying to change their life around from drug and alcohol abuse is to educate themselves more. Which is exactly what Karam is shown doing.

7. Karam visits the casino again, however, this time, he does not gamble, he, in fact, looks at the table whilst people are playing, and somebody calls him over to sit and play, Karam, however, does not acknowledge it and he, in fact, walks away. This shows the change in Karam’s life the girl has made, and how he has progressed. The question looms around the audience, however, How long can he keep it up for?

8. The answer to the question asked above is; not that long. As in this shot,  it shows Karam in the same time period as the casino (because of the same clothing) taking cocaine in the toilet. This makes the audience ask more questions: Why did he move back onto the drugs? he left the casino, Clearly because he realised that it wasn’t for him anymore. But then why would he go back to the drugs?  We put this shot here to make the audience ask questions and be engaged, and the way we tried to keep them engaged is by putting them on an emotional roller coaster. I have seen in quite a lot videos, not just music videos. Videos that go for a more complex narrative usually do this.

 

9. Another plot twist, Here Karam is shown throwing away his vodka. A sign that he is done with that sort of life, as he clearly wasn’t finished with the vodka as it still had a visible amount left in it. The over dramatic throw as well shows that he wasn’t just throwing it away because at the moment in time he didn’t want it, it shows that he doesn’t want it in his life for good. Because he now finds real happiness from the girl, and this seems to solve the two root causes of his problems; depression and loneliness.  This shot is also shown right before he puts the full bag of  cocaine down the sink, which gives the viewer that extra reason to believe that he is done with alcohol and drugs for good. I have seen this happen in many videos not really music videos when the director is trying to show that somebody is finished with something like an addiction for good they would emphasise it by showing numerous things being thrown away. This shot is also in slow motion to emphasise the throwing away of vodka.

10. The last shot in the video is the same as the first shot of Karam, except it is done in reverse and is faded behind the view of some birds. Karam is putting his head down not up this signals the end of his thoughts. It makes the viewer feel that they have just come out of his mind and they get a little reality check. I believe this shot to be very symbolic, it doesn’t just signal the end of the music video but it also shows how so much can go on in somebody’s head at one time and only by seeing it from their perspective do you understand why some people do what they do. Not many music videos finish with the same shot as they started with, I have not personally seen any. So in that respect, my music video does not conform to the stereotypes.