Question 3 - Evaluation - Lucy Clark

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We made an audience profile in which we suggested the type of person that would watch our music video and the characteristics that they would have (http://gliscoproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/audience-profile.html). We looked at the genre is more detail and then looked at the audience demographics for channels such as MTV Rocks, Kerrang and Scuzz TV which would most likely show our video and the viewing figures showed that on average MTV Rocks was the highest viewed channel on average in comparison to the other ones we looked at. MTV Rocks showed average daily viewing figures as being around 94,000 and 497,000 per week (http://www.barb.co.uk/).

After doing this we proceeded to create the typical stereotype that would watch these channels and more importantly, our video. We came up with a stereotype of a typical viewer of our video. The viewer is 17 years old and he attends college on a daily basis. In his spare time he enjoys listening to music from the rock/punk genre and going to gigs with his friends. He reads music magazines from the punk/rock genre such as NME and Kerrang and watches music channels such as Scuzz, MTV Rocks and Q. He also watches music programs on regular TV channels such as BBC for example ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’ and ‘Top of the Pops’.

As well as this, our stereotypical viewer would shop in high-street shops such as Topman and Urban Outfitters as well as some vintage shops such as Rokit.

We showed to the class what we have done so far, overall we got really good feedback. Our peers especially liked the fast paced editing of our video as they thought it matched the song really well. To add to this, our classmates said that they liked the shot of the various road signs at the end of the video. They thought it was funny, lighthearted and cheerful. The negative feedback we got was on the shot of the cars and taxis, our class thought it was too long and needed to be made shorter. We have taken this feedback on board and are now changing our video to make it better.

When we were first coming up with ideas for our music video, we looked into other videos which are set in one particular city or place and looked at how well it worked, We looked at videos such as The Smiths ‘Panic’ and Blur ‘For Tomorrow’ which are set in cities, the Blur video being in just one city and The Smith’s video in several places. The Blur video like ours shows landmarks in London such as the River Thames, Trafalgar Square and London buses and is shot entirely in black and white, giving a more traditional feel to the city. We thought that it would be a good idea to use some black and white footage in our video however, upon re-evaluating our idea, we decided against doing this as we thought it would look odd in comparison to the color footage that we would use throughout the rest of the video. These songs are also of a similar genre to our one and therefore the viewers are likely to want to watch this video because of the similarities.

By getting audience feedback throughout the process of putting together our video, we managed to alter things that our audience thought we could improve on or change. For example, one of our classmates said that the shot of the traffic that we used on the lyric “engines stop running” was too long; therefore we cut down the length of this shot as we too agreed that it was too long. Another example of how audience feedback has affected our video is the way that we used close up shots on the performance parts. Originally we filmed the footage so that the entire band was in the shot all of the time. However, we used the zoom tool on final cut to alter this after getting this feedback. By doing this we have picked out different band members to feature at different times, for example the close up of Ed Milliband playing the bass guitar. This works well because it takes away the focus from the lead singer David Cameron.

As a group we realized that upon deciding the theme of our video, which focuses on the relationships between politicians that our target audience may be expanded. It now is not only appealing to teenagers who will like the genre of music, but also to adults who have an interest in politics. The comedy side of the video too will interest people on a wider scale.  

We used the most well-known politicians of the moment to feature in our video because obviously our audience will be more likely to recognise and have some understanding of them, which again widens our audience. We also felt that because all three party leaders were featured in the video that everybody would be able relate to at least one of them as most people support one of these parties, again widening our target audience.

We portrayed the relationship between Clegg and Cameron as being that of a romantic one to add humor to our video. As well as this, we thought that because of the current coalition, it would make sense to have the two characters as being in each other’s company all of the time and despite them being from opposing parties, that they could be portrayed as having a good friendship/romantic relationship even though we know that this isn’t entirely true.

As well as this, we wanted our audience members to perhaps warm to the other politicians, which perhaps they don’t support or agree with, although it may only be for the duration of the video. It also brings a humorous side to politics, which is usually a very serious topic, which we felt was a very important message to give out. As we know, politicians tend to stand for different social classes, for example more working class people mainly support Labour whereas the wealthier, more aristocratic people generally support the Conservatives and this may be evident through our audience feedback, enabling them to relate more to the politicians.

We asked our classmates to watch our video through and write down a sentence or two summarizing what they thought of our video. At this point we are not yet completely finished our video and this will most likely reflect in our feedback.We will take this feedback on board and look at perhaps changing or adding things to our video, which have been suggested by our peers.

• Really nice shots, use color corrector to get a 'house theme'
• Captured the essence of London well
• Use the 'guardian' paper, not the Mirror.
• Close ups on performance
• Love the sequence of road signs
• Loved the fast editing, very effective
• Concept makes the video, for album cover maybe try to Photoshop a picture of Cameron
• I liked the fast cuts before the telephone boxes in the middle
• Liked the bits in bed at the beginning and the end great location use

Our video includes narrative, performance and concept, which is uncommon for a music video. Normally videos only include 2 of these and therefore this is why we chose to use all three. Originally we weren’t going to include any performance in our video however after discussing it with our teacher, he suggested that we should include a performance part of our video in order to break up the footage on London. We carefully thought out how and where we would film this part but ended up filming it outside on a last minute impulse. This was effective because the floodlight, which was attached to the brick wall, shun perfectly onto the band and instruments. However, once we had put the footage onto the editing computer, we realized that there was a regular flicker on the footage, which we could not remove. We decided to still use the footage as it was too late to re-film this part but we do feel that it isn’t entirely noticeable throughout. 

Lastly, we were lucky enough to receive some audience feedback from one of the members from The Clash itself. After posting the video on youtube and then posting the youtube link to Facebook, one of my mums friends commented saying that she was friends with Terry Chimes, the ex drummer from The Clash who infact worked on this song. She then contacted him and showed him the video. Personally, I feel that this is the best feedback we could have. It comes first hand from the person who was in the original video, and for him to say that we too did a ‘nice job on the video’ is very important. 


also view my evaluation on: http://www.wix.com/lucyclark1994/glisco-production#!question-3