What I have learnt from audience feedback

sammuller3193
What I have learnt from
audience feedback
What is a focus group?
A focus group is the most basic way of learning about your media business. By gathering a select group of average people together, you can find out how your company is perceived versus your competition. The answers you get can help to guide the development of your brand.
Focus group research
Deciding what you want to find out from the focus group research before you start the focus group is important, like tackling a specific problem or finding out how to expand the demographic reach of your audience for your product.

Finding a good focus group moderator is essential once you have determined what questions you want answered. This is because they are able to draw out the information you want from your focus group participants in a group discussion format. Quality results are usually achieved when an expert moderator is hired.

Lastly, you need to decide what type of focus group participants you want. However, there are problems to overcome with this as to get a broad cross-selection of people providing answers; race, age, income, gender and other variables have to be considered.
Our focus groups
We used focus groups for our music video which we were able to look back at afterwards to review the main ideas since we filmed them. This meant that we were able to have more of a discussion during the focus group sessions so that the participants felt more confident in expressing their thoughts.

For the focus group who saw the rough cut, we wanted to make sure that we were on the right lines of creating a music video with a narrative that could be understood and an artist that could be seen as organic from the shots and the editing. We also wanted them to point out any editing mistakes that we might not have noticed.

For the focus group who saw the final music video, we again wanted to make sure that the overall consensus was that the artist was organic. After the changes made to our music video since the focus group from the rough cut (which were inspired by their ideas), we wanted to see if the video had a clear narrative.
The moderator
Our teacher was present during the focus group sessions to help keep the discussion on the right track by drawing out information from participants to gain more thoughts and ideas and keep the conversation flowing.
The participants
To gather participants for the focus groups we used people in our media class. Although this was convenient, it was also useful as they all have an understanding of the media and music industry and so would be able to provide helpful answers that could lead us to improving our products.
From rough cut
For finished video
What we learnt
From our first set of focus group who saw the rough cut, we found that people thought the editing was cut to the beat well and liked the locations and the casting. However, they thought that the lip-syncing was slightly off and the guitar strumming didn't match the music and so needed to be altered.

The main criticism was regarding the narrative. Most people found confusion between which guy in the rough cut was the boyfriend as there wasn't enough shots of the boyfriend and girlfriend together to establish their relationship, while there were more with the artist. Different people interpreted the story-line differently and although some thought they understood it, they didn't interpret it in the way that we intended. Therefore it became clear that we either had to film more shots of the boyfriend to make their relationship clearer or remove him from the video and change the narrative. After discussing it in our group and consulting our teacher, we decided to remove him from the video completely and change the narrative to make it less confusing and more enjoyable to watch.

From our second focus group who saw the finished music video, we found that they understood the story-line as a guy singing about his past relationship where she put on a fake smile, which is what we intended it to be. This shows that the changes we made due to the critique from the first set of focus groups who saw the rough cut improved our music video and created a clear narrative.

People also said that the artist gave a convincing performance and so the video was better to watch. In addition, this focus group thought that the genre of the artist was clear and was indie-pop. This is what we wanted the audience to infer as it demonstrates that he is an organic artist rather than a synthetic artist.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research gathers non-numerical information such as open-ended questionnaires, unstructured interviews and unstructured observations. Qualitative data is normally descriptive data and so is harder to analyse than quantitative data as it requires an accurate description of participant responses.

Qualitative research is useful for individual studies and to find out, in depth, the ways in which people think or feel.

A good example of a qualitative research method would be unstructured or group interviews which produce qualitative data through the use of open-ended questions. This allows the respondent to talk in depth about what they think using their own words and without being restricted by any boundaries set by the question. This helps the researcher develop a real sense of a person's thoughts on the situation. However, it can take a lot of time to conduct the unstructured interview and analyse the qualitative data.
Quantitative research
Quantitative research gathers data in numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order, or measured in units of measurement. This type of data can be used to make graphs and tables of raw data.

Experiments usually generate quantitative data, as they are concerned with measuring things. However, in other research methods, like observations ad questionnaires, can produce both quantitative and qualitative information.
Our research
For our questionnaire we used both qualitative and quantitative research as it allowed us to gather a mixture of data that could be analysed in depth or easily compared between respondents, while our focus group only used qualitative research.

The open-ended questions in our questionnaire generated qualitative information as they are a descriptive response, and the closed questions generated quantitative data as they produced data that could be put into categories (since they are 'yes' or 'no' answers).
Our Questionnaire
Responses to our questionnaire
We asked participants to answer our questionnaire in relation to our products by giving them the link to answer it online. Some of our respondents were based on convenience where we simply told them the link as they typed it in, whereas the link was sent to some via email by our teacher who sent it to another school for some students to answer. We recieved 40 responses in total.
What we learnt

From the questionnaire, we found that people liked the locations and the editing and thought the lip-syncing was done well. They also thought that the shots looked professional and felt that the music video suits the style of the song and matches the indie genre, which shows Jay to be an organic artist. However, some thought that there could have been another element to the video, but others didn't and we thought it would be too much for the authenticity of the artist. People identified similar artists and music videos with George Ezra, Tom Odell, Ben Howard, Vance Joy and other indie artists, which shows that we were able to match the conventions of an indie organic music video.


A lot of people liked the digipak due to the layout, colour scheme and the photos chosen. On the other hand, some thought that it was a bit simple, but this means that it can relate to the indie genre as it is not too over-complicated like the digipaks of many mainstream synthetic artists. People thought that the guitar shown in the digipak demonstrates that Jay is an organic artist since he plays his own instrument which is what we wanted people to infer, and they also thought his clothes connoted this as well since his casual style creates a way to relate to the audience as it indicates that he is a normal person.


In many people's opinion, the website looked professional, although the fonts were different in a few places and some images were a bit stretched which they found distracting. Most people liked connecting the theme of the website with the digipak and thought that the layout makes it look like the website of an indie artist as it is quite simple, like the digipak. Presenting the album cover many times on the website was seen as a good way of promoting and building awareness of the artist and so relates to him in a way that is beneficial.

; ;

emaze