Audience Feedback

This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our music video, album cover, and social media page to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. This blogpost is written by all of us together (Chelsea, Kalista, Rara, and Audrey).

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google Forms to create a survey to share with our audience because of the platform’s availability to collaborate online and allow sharing to others which made it easy for production and distribution. This online platform utilisation is also quick so audiences are more encouraged to engage with our survey.

We divided our questions into sections in relation to different components of our product. 

Here are our questions: 

Section ‘Music Video’:

(Several short snippets from our music video are shown) 

1. Do you relate to some of the elements in our product? 

2. What message do you think we are trying to convey from our concept?

3. What is the most memorable scene from our music video to you? 

Section ‘Digipak’:

(Images of our digipak cover and inspiration pictures are shown) 

1. Which digipak are you attracted to the most? (1/2/3)

2. What is the most appealing feature from our digipak?

3. How likely would you purchase our digipak from its cover design? (On a scale from 1-5) 

4. What do you want us to include in our digipak? (Lyric book/Artist personal story/Posters/Stickers/Other)

Section ‘Social Media’:

(An image of our star’s Instagram profile is shown) 

1. Choose 3 words to describe our star “CINTA”

2. Do you prefer our social media to be professional or intimate? (All intimate/Mostly intimate/Mix of both/Mostly professional/All professional)

3. How would you like to communicate with the artist on social media? (Instagram live/Interactive Instagram stories & posts/Online meet & greet/Responsive towards comments/Responsive towards DMs/Reposting mentions/Other)

We chose these questions because these servers will lead us to knowing our target audiences better and if our concepts align with what they are expecting and engaging with. We included members of our target demographic in the screen test to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was easy because we had lots of connections and people who were already anticipating and enthusiastic on our project. We specifically chose our audience to be non-media students in order for us to grasp more feedback from a wider perspective of consumers rather than other producers. We want to understand how our music video appeals to the actual target audience hence we tested it out to other seniors. We had incorporated feedback from previous media students (alumni) on our screen test who had experiences with Media Studies hence they are able to decode elements and our intended meaning to further analyse it.

Here are the drafts that we showed audiences for the screen test: 

Music video (compilation of rough snippets): https://youtu.be/yXV2x3ienro 

Digipak cover sketches:    

                       

Digipak cover inspiration pictures:

 

Instagram profile:

 

Google form link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd8Tp1WgTbEH85P17N8IB-LtqTwXZa2-ZnA5NbuWkUMwPpMRg/viewform?usp=header

Here are the RESULTS from the audience feedback:

VIEW LINK HERE

From the feedback we learned that our genre conventions fit the target audiences that we are aiming for as most of the audiences are able to decode the message that we are implying through our music videos. With teenagers being our main target, audiences now know what they find appealing and interesting in our MV. Moreover, through asking opinions from our audiences regarding the design on digipak, what are the audiences expecting about the content of the digipak, as well as how they want to interact with the star, this helps us in creating a product that is aligned with our target audience's demand. 

We initially wanted to conform to the pop genre conventions of digipaks as their music albums usually consist of a close up shot of the artist with a plain, colored backdrop. However, after compiling feedback from the participants, we found that they preferred a shot subverting to the conventions. Many of the respondents chose digipak design number 2 which included the artist facing a mirror instead of looking directly at the camera. We understand that our audience wants elements that aren’t conventional as they want something that is new and interesting to them.

This screen test was a useful part of our process because it allowed us to reach our target audience on a personal level. By engaging directly with viewers, we gained invaluable insights into their preferences and expectations. This feedback was key in shaping our creative decisions, ensuring that our final product resonates deeply with our intended target audience. Additionally, the screen test assisted us in confirming our project's vision was relevant and valid by making sure our message and visuals were aligned with and relatable to our target demographic. As our project is still in progress and not fully completed, it is crucial to receive constructive feedback at this stage to prevent incurring extra costs for reshoots and edits after the project is published. This way, we can tackle any issues in advance. 

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━•❃°•°  Self reflection °•°❃ •━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

In order to make sure that our message is understood and effectively reaches our target demographic (mainly teenagers), it is very helpful to conduct audience feedback, especially when our project is still ongoing and not yet finished. This allows us to collect comments and feedback on their preferences and expectations. My responsibilities include putting together of the Google form and taking part in discussions regarding the questions to ask. I had a great time designing the layouts for the questions. It can be difficult to come up with useful questions that will encourage the audience to respond to each one elaborated and efficiently since we need to think of questions that are related to and helpful for our project, but also not demanding a lot of typing or multiple-choice questions. It was easier for us to think of follow-up questions because our teacher gave us some excellent question ideas. My teammates then assisted in distributing the Google form, to which they also contributed. We used this knowledge to maintain consistency in our branding, knowing that audiences already understand the message we are trying to convey and the way our star will be portrayed. After making adjustments based on their feedback, it appears that our social media account stand out the most because of the incredibly high audience engagement rate they receive. Even though it was outside of our aim, I was surprised by the large number of likes and the fact that viewers other than our mutuals would follow and interact with our account (in terms of likes and views). For instance, making interactive Instagram stories with scripted questions is one of the most highly requested audience engagement according to our audience feedback. However, others outside of our team also responded to our question box. This indicates that audience comments had a significant impact on our project's results and audience engagement. 

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━ ━━━━━━━━━━━• ❃°•°❀°•°❃ •━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━┛