What have you learnt fromaudience feedback?

Alex Chenery-HowesOCR Advanced Portfolio in Media Studies

Student No: 297675

Here are screenshots of where I uploaded and promoted my YouTube video in order to gain audience feedback, I uploaded it onto Tumblr in order to reach my target audience of slightly older teenagers with an appreciation for art, fashion and movies. In this presentation I will show some feedback I’ve received and what I have learnt from it, and whether or not it shows the intended effect I bore in mind when constructing my music video.

I am very glad I received this comment, I believe that the main purpose of a music video was to fully represent the track and to co-ordinate well with the style and tempo of the track.

Chris Cunningham acted as one of my main sources of inspirations, videos such as Rubber Johnny, Come To Daddy and Windowlicker were cited as influential and I defintely incorporated his experimentation with speed and his dark/surreal style into my music video.

My music video has been criticised for promoting visuals over narrative, and for “not making any sense”. However, I was heavily influenced by my A2 Media Studies module of Postmodernism, aspects of which include a rejection of conventional linear narrative and the concept of “style over substance”. When making my music video, I asked the question “Does it even have to make sense?” Is a music video something to be analysed and understood?

These are a selection of YouTube comments from my fellow Media A2 students, they are experienced in media jargon and analysing the content of music videos. I found this extremely helpful as it meant they could provide me with balanced and constructive feedback that I could learn from and incorporate into any future projects.

I aimed to create a brand identity that was representative of the artist, I knew that I wanted loose cohesion that could make the main and ancillary products identifiable as a solid package but not make the style too repetitive, I introduced consistent similarities between the products, such as typography and photography but overall made the individual colours and styles different to keep it refreshing and distinctive.

What I found most helpful from this question were answers that were specifically aimed at certain aspects of my video, and used exact timecodes from my music video as examples to give their feedback evidentiary weight.

It is interesting to see how my creative project adapted and evolved from initial ideas to final creation, and how I changed it in order to correlate well with the style of music and my concept of what constituted a successful brand identity. Initially I aimed my music video to be a hardcore/punk/heavy rock style, but when I ended up working with an experimental, techno/electronica song I changed my ideas accordingly. The feedback regarding this question is about whether I have created a visually interesting, unique and distinctive brand identity. I think that there is an unfair stereotype regarding drum and bass music, that is all sounds the same and doesn’t require as much creativity, depth and talent as other genres, I wanted my music video to disprove this and represent my artist in a creative, unconventional light.

When I was creating my music video, I knew that the visuals could be interpreted as disturbing, and in the situation that this was a professional music video, the distribution amongst conventional mainstream music video channels would have been limited, however, I thought that it would suit well in more independent channels and online networks, being sought out directly by my target audience.

This idea was a source of conflict for me, on one hand I wanted to create a unique and distinctive music video with interesting and engaging visuals, but on the other I knew that the aim of a music video was to use visuals to promote and enhance the track. I believe that I had selected a track that correlated well with the music (a vital Goodwin principle) that was memorable in its own right, not everyone would agree with me but I knew that there would be a minority of respondents that disliked the music video, and this is to be expected in the music industry.

The main thing that I have learnt from A2 Media Studies is that there is always room for improvement, it is easy to

make a “vanity project” that you may like, but in the music industry there are many people to consider, the record

company, who want to generate commercial interest in the band they have invested in. The artist themselves, who

want the music to promote their track and to represent them in a light that would generate interest and activate

fanbases, and the consumers of the music video, who may or may not buy the track based on its promotion via a

music video. I have also learnt that a vital part of evaluating my work is heeding constructive, detailed and

balanced feedback into account from your target audience.