Evaluation Question - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We decided to conduct both a questionnaire survey and a focus group to gain the widest scope on our audience's feedback as possible. Both formats allow for very different light to be shed on the video and ancillary texts. For example, the survey which we created on Surveymonkey and distributed via social media generated a wide range of results from people on a global scale, in and outside of our given demographic. It also allowed us to formulate our results into graphs to be able to visually see the reception of our video by our audience. In addition, the focus group allowed us to interview a selection of the assumed demographic and see their visual reactions and receive personal feedback to the video and ancillary texts. In gaining feedback from both areas, we were able to gain a vast amount of qualitative and quantitative data.

(Responses from the focus group can be seen on a separate blog post).

Survey Monkey Questionnaire - Music Video Feedback

1) What is your gender?


The first question we asked our audience on the Surveymonkey questionnaire was concerning their gender. We feel that this information is valuable in determining the response of different areas of the demographic, and how perhaps different genders may be stereotypically more empathetic with the narrative than the other, for example, females. It felt necessary for us to collect this information and be able to see if this idea was conformed to or subverted. In addition, studies have been undertaken into reception theory and have shown many differences between the reactions of men and women to a text, for example, Herzogg's 1944 'Uses and Gratification' study into why women watch soap operas.

From this question we gained a little more scope as to the predominant demographic who had participated in our survey, which turned out to be 80% females. As this was a globally amplified survey which was accessible to the public, this figure stands to represent a totally random and unplanned majority.


2) What is your age?

Age was also important in our study in order to determine the demographic who were responding to our survey. It came as a surprise to us that there was actually a wider audience for our video than we had first thought, again confirming our estimation that the genre of acoustic/folk itself didn't necessarily attract only a certain gender or age range. Although our study received responses from 66% 18-24 year olds, we also gained feedback from 22% 35 to 44 year olds, as well as 11% who were 75 or older.

3) How much did you enjoy the music video?


Despite seeming like a vaguely 'umbrella' question, producing a matter of a fact opinion from the audience, we decided to conduct it in a way that would determine a scale of enjoyment. Using 1 as the worst, and 5 as the best, we asked our audience to categorise their opinion on the number scale, so we could see where our music video fell. Although being an opinionated response, this question produces a fairly qualitative response in that we can see the percentage of our audience who enjoyed the video as a whole, regardless of the identification with the narrative or any other complexities which were investigated later.

Our survey told us that 77% of the demographic enjoyed the video at to the maximum, rating it a 5. A further 11% rated it a 4, and another 11% rated it a 3. We were extremely happy with these responses as the majority enjoyed our video to a very high level, and went on to leave promising and positive feedback.


4) Do you feel there was a balance between the narrative and performance element?


This was a point of particular interest to us because we wanted to find out if our audience thought there was enough balance between our piano shots and our narrative. With a straightforward 'yes' or 'no' response, this question also produced some very evident qualitative data, showing us that 89% of our audience felt the balance was just right. This secured our knowledge that the integrated piano shots of our actor (posing as Andrew Belle) were enough to include his presence in the music video without it being too overpowering.

A balance between the two was key, and we were eager to find out what our audience thought. Having a clear inclusion of a performance element in between the narrative was, as we researched, an evident convention of the acoustic/folk genre. It is usually provided by the artist in order to demonstrate and show off a particular musical talent, for example, Ed Sheeran's guitar skills. In this sense, we were happy that the audience reacted so positively to our piano shots, as it ensured that they were effective in meeting conventions of real media texts.

5) How effective would you rate the mise-en-scene?

We felt it necessary to ask our audience for their opinions on the costume, setting, and props to establish if they felt it effective for the genre of music video and for the narrative. In terms of what mise-en-scene we chose to use, we decided to reflect everyday life in order for our audience to be able to identify more with the characters and narrative. This is further emphasized in Rolande Barthes's narrative theory whereby he outlines how an audience can relate to a text more highly if they can apply it to their own experiences, and we feel that choosing simplistic costume and everyday mise-en-scene would enable to do this.

Overall, 77% of our audience rated the mise-en-scene a 5 for the most effective, however 11% also ranged across 4 and 3.  This is very valuable feedback in terms of how our audience have perceived the miss-en-scene, with the majority agreeing that it was effective and therefore aiding their belief of the narrative.

6) Did you feel you could relate to and understand the narrative? 

The audience's relation to the narrative was probably one of the most pivotal things for us to discover. Belle's song 'Make it Without You' is already highly emotive, evoking sympathy and many other emotions for the narrative content within the lyrics. These values were what we hoped to create within our music video, in order for the audience to have a particularly emotional response to the characters. This idea is reinstated in Dennis McQuail's 'In Mass Communication Theory and Introduction' of 1972, whereby he outlines how media is used for 'personal identity' of viewers, whereby it reinforces their personal values, gives them insight into themselves, as well as providing 'integration and social interaction' which leads to insight into the circumstances of others. Our video provides a further sense of realism to the narrative expressed in the lyrics of Belle's song, and we hoped that above all, the audience would be able to sensitise and identify with it.

We were entirely thrilled to see that 100% of our audience responded that 'yes' they could relate to and understand the narrative. This was a brilliant finding of our audience feedback, as it proved that although there was a complex subplot and linking of the two narratives, our video was easy to understand and evoked the correct response from our demographic.

7) What was the most emotive shot?

This collection of qualitative data showed exactly what our audience thought, in personal terms, was the shot that they reacted most emotively to. It was important for us to see this type of response in order to understand what created the strongest reaction from our audience, and we were eager to find out. For us, the most emotive shot had always been the first shot of Anne on her own, looking out of the window and reflecting on her memories, however, the responses seemed to vary very surprisingly.

 There were a wide range of responses from our audience feedback that showed that the shot of 'the old lady on her own' was not the only emotive shot. Notably, our audience also reacted to Stan's presence in the video, and his absence was felt as a character, evoking emotion. In addition, we were very happy to see that one person had left feedback that 'the black and white from colour made the scene very moving', this indicated that the audience had accepted and understood our reasons for subverting the Hollywood stereotype of a black and white flashback, and reinforced its effect on the emotions connoted from the video as a whole. In terms of audience and reception theory, these responses inferred to us that our video didn't have a 'Two Step Flow Theory' effect on our audience, whereby there was a consensus of opinions based on solely one trusted person's in a social group. The feedback highlights that our video creates a completely individual response to the narrative.

8) Does the music video reflect the style of the song/ or the genre?

After all of our research into the conventions of the real media texts, we were eager to see if our audience felt we had utilised the correct ones to convey a sense of a link between our video and the genre in the music industry. As a brief overview, we felt that we replicated the genre well by using a pastoral and rural setting, ordinary mise-en-scene, and a narrative that fitted well with the lyrical value. 

We were extremely happy and relieved to see that our audience agreed 100% that the music video reflected the genre, thus indicating to us that our uses of conventions of the real media we had seen were effective. It also means that our music video is at a believable and professional standard in the eyes of our audience. 

9) On a scale of 1-5, how would you rank the music video?

To conclude, we asked our audience how they would rank the video overall, and a predominance of 88% said they would give it the maximum mark of 5/5. This pleased us to no end as it again indicates that overall, our video was enjoyable, relatable, believable, and effective, a combination of all of the qualities we sought to create.


Molly Masters