EVALUATION QUESTION 3WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

MY AUDIENCE AND FOCUS GROUPLINK TO FOCUS GROUP ON BLOGGER

My primary target audience for ‘Beyond the Essex Girl’ consisted of 13-25 year olds with a female majority and a B/C/D demographic group of mainstreamers and aspirers. Therefore, my focus group had a number of teenagers aged around 17, 18 and 19 who fit within my target audience which was useful as I could gain ideas and opinions from people whom the documentary was specifically aimed at. There were also older members of my focus group who were regarded as the secondary target audience, particularly middle-aged women who could be the parents of the teenagers watching the documentary. I used a range of people in my focus group, those who regularly watched television and documentaries and those who didn’t so I could get a wide base of opinions throughout the process of production.

CLASS FEEDBACKLINK TO FEEDBACK ON BLOGGER:

My media class and media teacher were another useful audience I could present my work to and receive valuable feedback from them. Throughout all stages of the task I could consolidate my class mates for opinions and improvements. There were various occasions when I presented my ideas to the whole class such as my 1 minute long treatment in July when I was planning to do a completely different documentary about teenage appearances and my feedback included “Be careful to be sensitive” as I was approaching topics like anorexia. Over the summer this audience feedback allowed me to reflect on my decision because of the extent of sensitivity and the need for believable acting so I decided to plan a whole new idea which led to ‘Beyond the Essex Girl’.

CLASS TREATMENTLINK TO FEEDBACK ON BLOGGER

I presented another treatment to my media class in September when my ideas had come together and I planned on focusing my documentary on Essex girls specifically.

Again, I got some very useful audience feedback as I learnt that everyone liked the documentary title I had thought up ‘Beyond the Essex Girl’ and also someone said "Why not a full documentary if you have enough footage” as I was originally planning on doing a documentary trailer as my main product. However, this comment allowed me to rethink my choice and I realized that a documentary extract would be more suited for what I was trying to achieve. This feedback greatly helped me as it had come from a class of 17-18 year olds who were within my target audience range.

GOOGLE DOCSFor sufficient audience feedback on all three of my products I used Google Docs. Google Docs allowed me to create a series of online questionnaires to put onto my blog and let my focus group and class fill out themselves. I posted questions which would allow me to improve my products and ask for opinions on what I was unsure about.

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENTLINK TO QUESTIONNAIRE

My responses from Google Docs for my newspaper advertisement included: -"Could be a hash tag of the name of the programme as when the programme is on and the audience tweets using the hash tag, people that see the tweets may be inclined to watch the documentary knowing that it is on”

-”A twitter hash tag maybe something #EssexGirl”

These two responses were the only improvements as the other comments were overall positive. But these responses allowed me to add a Twitter hash tag onto my poster to create an active audience regarding the use of social networking.

DOUBLE PAGE SPREADLINK TO QUESTIONNAIRE

My responses from Google Docs were again fairly positive apart from the ‘Any Improvements?’ response which notified me of some spelling and grammar mistakes that I had missed within the article. This shows how useful audience feedback is and how crucial it is to your work as I hadn’t noticed this spelling errors. The audience feedback on Google Docs being positive is good to know because they represent my target audience who the products are aimed at.

DOCUMENTARY EXTRACTLINK TO QUESTIONNAIREAgain I used Google Docs to get feedback on my documentary when it was unfinished. I uploaded an unfinished version of what I had done onto YouTube and then onto my blog for viewers to see.

I received various comments which was very useful feedback when I was at this point in my production. I had hit a stage where I was unsure of what to add with 1 minute a half left to fill. I was advised to add “some statistics about Essex” which I thought was a good idea as I was doing a documentary. Along with the ideas to add voiceovers in the introduction and for Charlotte to talk about her school life. All good ideas that I ended up using in my documentary

FINAL AUDIENCE FEEDBACK When I finished my documentary extract and two ancillary texts I thought it would be helpful to ask for some final audience feedback from my class and focus group to get a range of opinions. Most feedback was based on the documentary extract which would help my documentary finally come together and be very clean cut. Feedback I received included: a concluding voiceover towards the end, more sailing footage for Charlotte’s part and play the “I’m In Essex Girl” line of the song when the car is driving towards the Essex signs at the beginning.

All of these ideas have led to my final product to the best it can be from the help of my target audience.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I have learned that audience feedback is a crucial and key aspect of any media work. Consistently referring back to my focus group and audience who were under the same requirements as my target audience was really helpful when I was searching for improvements and ideas especially when I was having trouble on what to add particularly in my documentary extract. Without audience feedback I would probably have completely different products but their opinion is highly regarded by me and I wanted my products to reflect what my target audience wanted.