Evaluation: What have you learned from audience feedback?

Upon completing my music video, in order to make it available to my audience, it was evident that I needed to present it to them through an online streaming website. I felt the most appropriate would be YouTube as it's the most popular and after asking members of my target audience the vast majority tended to use it over similar websites such as Vimeo. Also, I already had an account on YouTube and knew how everything worked after uploading videos in the past so that also played a part in the decision. Despite it being a global website with billions of people using it every day, this didn't mean the views on my video would shoot up. Therefore, in order to get feedback off my peers, I shared it to my friends on Facebook. As I'd previously sent out a questionnaire to a selection of my friends on Facebook regarding music videos I sent out a message to them to ask them to watch my video and perhaps give me some feedback. I was fairly pleased with the feedback I received from the video with four people liking the post and one person commenting.

Although I got a good reception after posting my video on Facebook I decided to post it on Twitter too. As I had over 1000 followers it would've been stupid not to. After sharing it to my Twitter followers, I only managed to receive one comment which wasn't particularly constructive but it helped increase the hits without a doubt. By posting on Twitter it aloud me to tag the artist's personal account too but unfortunately I failed to receive any feedback from him. 

Several people gave me feedback on my actual YouTube video too after sharing. I received over 100 views all together which was great as well as one like too. Being an avid user of YouTube I knew it is essential for a user that their videos get much more likes than dislikes to try and keep the bar as green as possible. By doing this there is more chance people will click on the video to view it in the first place as they know previous viewers have rated it well and dubbed it 'worth watching' in a sense. As you can see I am yet to receive a dislike leaving the bar 100% green which was very important for me. I also managed to get a number of comments on my YouTube video too. 

The comments I received off my peers and target audience online overall was fantastic and I couldn't have asked for any better. One person who commented on my video felt that the video would have been better with 'some shots of the artist singing'. Although I was open to feedback I decided not to take this on board as the majority of my results from the questionnaire said otherwise and I wanted to focus the video solely on the narrative. If I did make the decision to include shots of the artist singing or miming in the future however, I'd like to do something similar to The Verve's hit song and music video 'Bittersweet Symphony' as I feel although it's ever so simply, it's very effective. 

I didn't just get feedback through social networking websites online but from in person through relatives and my teacher. Before showing it to my teacher, I showed the original video to my brother and asked him what he thought of it and whether there were anyway's it could be improved. As he'd studied A-Level media studies before I took his opinion into consideration. He suggested that I should include an extra few shots to indicate the busker in the video had gained money off a number of different people as before it looked like just one had all at once. I went out to film several more final shots and re-edited them together. Taking these remarks into my attention turned out to very successful in my opinion and I think that the video looks much better now than it did before. 

The response I got off my teacher after he watched the video was positive but again similarly to the comment on my YouTube channel, he felt some shots of the artist singing would have improved it so again I decided not to to take his opinion forward. Not only would this have gone against my original idea and the opinions of my target audience but I would have had to remove quite a large amount of footage from the video which consequently could have significantly backfired. 

From all the feedback I acquired I learnt that overall I created quite a good and effective music video which I'm very proud of. Despite not taking on board several comments from my peers I believe I have still achieved the task I was set and hope to attain a good mark for my work.