BLOG TASK THREE; AUDIENCE. WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY AUDIENCE FEEBACK.

To asses audience feedback we took data from various sources – YouTube, a Focus Group, our peeps and our family. I tried to use open questions and a thorough discussion with all members of the focus group through out and realised this was a small scale trial of our pop video and ancillary products.

Our target audience considered of mainly male 16-25 year olds who may live in London. Most being lower-class youths who’d be seen as CDE in the scale of Jictar. Jictar separates audiences in terms of class. Those being ABC would have a higher education and stereotypically a richer generation. Our pop video however incorporates CDE, those who possibly reflect the gang members…under-educated, not very wealthy and holds poor morals. We suggested that this would our target audience because of the similarities of the gang members and there ability to relate to them, but of course we know that our audience could spread to a much wider population. An example of this would be our Focus Group members who were mainly male 17-18 who lived in a well rounded background. In terms of Jictar they would sit in the BCD area. By their responses they enjoyed it and understood it, so it is a pop video that can relate to many other audience members than just the CDE arena.

With six weeks gone by since we uploaded our video we have successfully achieved 849 hits and a lot of positive feedback. One saying… “Coming from an artistic background i think you should put this forward in the Baftas for best short film, great directing by the way.” And another saying “this is amazing”. All of the comments have been very positive including one giving us a “8.5/10” This was a great opportunity to allow others to give general feedback that was not bias in any way by the school or the students.

Within the Focus Group session we wanted to address and discover whether they enjoyed it, if they understood the message, the narrative, the representation of the characters, the performance elements of both the DJ and the gang members, the genre of film, the technique of filming and any general conventions of stereotypes that we followed or subverted. Finally, we wanted a honest opinion on how any part of the vide could have been improved.

The Focus Group consisted of six students (four male, 3 female). We handed out our ‘questionnaire’ of ten questions individually to every member. We allowed them to watch the video once and gave them enough time to fill it in. We only wanted a general gist of their opinion and what they read from the meaning. Afterwards we had a more in depth discussion of their answers and attempted to dive deeper in to their personal responses. We achieved some supplementary information in addition to the questionnaire, because I think many felt more obliged to give a verbal response. We knew that using both techniques would give us the widest breadth of answers and feedback from audiences that we were actually targeting! One male student aged 17 from London said “it conforms to stereotypes and is a edgy and exciting video.”

We tried to use the theory of Blumer and Katz on “uses and gratifications” to assess our audience response. Blumer and Katz say that audiences respond in four ways. The question was did ours respond to our pop video in this way. Blumer and Katz identify four ways that the media is used or gives gratification.

1) The audience identifying with the characters on screen. We were trying in our pop video to get the viewer to identify with the gang members who behave rebelliously and on the ‘edge’ of out Focus Group, 4 out of six identified with the image.

2) Diversion – a form of escape or emotional release from everyday pressures. The video, especially to those in the CDE Jictar position would see this video as form of escape. Something that they may look forward to doing in their spare time, or something that they could just relate to as a means of release from the pressures at home or school.

3) Surveillance – A supply of information about ‘what’s going on’ in the world. For many of our untraditional audience members this video would most definitely be an in-sight to some teenager’s behaviour. As a complete generalisation of teenagers it could be very misleading, but something that could open up many people’s eyes to the realistic truth.

4) Personal Relationships – Companionship via TV personalities and characters, and sociability through discussion about TV with other people. This may not directly apply to our video, but I believe that the video can be heavily discussed with a large age range of people. Discussion topics could include social behaviour, juveniles, security and curfew’s.

Stuart Hall would suggest that the production institution encodes a message though the media text. This offers a preferred meaning and may be actively decoded to audiences. In the process of activation the meaning can be accepted and called the dominant reading or rejected and called the oppositional reading. On the other hand however, the reading can be ‘negotiated’. So in terms of our pop video the preferred message is that the DJ leads the gang members into ‘war’ and encourages aggression through the fast moving music. The oppositional reading, however which most of the females of the Focus Group seemed to read was that the DJ was simply a second narrative that played the music and the gang members were fighting one another for unknown reasons. However, the males saw the DJ as one that indirectly lead them to their fait and then left them once the confrontation began. As all the male perspectives saw it as the preferred meaning, we concluded that the video is very male dominated and that it is actually targeted to the male gender!

And finally, Aristole's theory suggests that the goal o agumentaive writing I to persuade your audience that your ideas are valid, or more valid than someone else’s. The Greek philosopher Arisole 2,000 years ago divided the means of persuasion, appeals into three categories; Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Obviously, Artisotle did not apply this to pop videos, but I can be applied via his theory.

1) Ethos – This entails the idea of credibility. Audiences must respect the character t be able to understand the narrative. In terms of our pop video, I believe many 1-5 year old males can most definitely relate to the characters. Like I mentioned before, we did aim the video at students in sixth form or older who may be interested in rebellious behaviour and bad habits. I could also apply to the DJ. Thousands of boys grow up in ore of DJ’s and may look up to our characters as someone they’d like to be. They’d show great respect towards them and be able to relate to the video better and in turn understand the narrative clearly.

2) Pathos – This means to appeal to audiences through the reader’s emotions. The high drive and build of energy can ‘pump up’ the audiences and encourage them that they are on this journey of rebellion too. The excitement grows through out the video and helps audiences to feel a part of the narrative.

3) Logos - This describes the idea of using words and vocabulary in persuading by the use of reasoning or speaking. However, with the song including no lyrics this cannot be applied.

I know it seems strange to use the ideas of an ancient philosopher, but I do think that pop videos run on ethos and pathos as the main ways they attract an audience.

Overall, I think the meaning that we tried to give across was successfully accepted and the general gist of the video was popular with our Focus Group and other outsiders. The YouTube comments were positive with great reviews. However, I think that if we were to re-shoot it we may have created the narrative a little clearer to really underline the idea of two gangs who are being lead by the music.