Once I had completed my project I set about gaining qualitative audience feedback. Since quantitative feedback such as handing out questionnaires would be too time consuming, and likely to yield similarly useful results, I set three simple yet thought provoking questions on our Facebook feedback group for audience members to answer. In this group a wide range of people within the target audience were invited, including local band members from the genre, average college students and media students who would be able to analyse my texts in greater depths. To the right, is a rolling print screen of some comments left in feedback to the work, most in response to the questions I left. Seeing as most people who commented were media students their responses were well informed and picked up on many key aspects, I also ensured I gained the opinions of people who do not do media in order to have varied feedback from different levels of audience understanding. one example can be seen at the bottom, taken from an e-mail extract. In this response there were no technical terms or in depth analysis, although the general consensus was that the video was a success in their eyes. From the media students I received much deeper analysis with more advanced, specialist terms, for these answers I did not need to encourage them to give me more developed replies.
The sorts of questions I asked were;
- You saw this video 2 weeks ago now, could you remember the rough story plot, mentioning anything you found significant such as locations, people, atmospheres, sequences?
- Do you think this is a successful video?
- Out of ten, what is your rating and why?
- Would you say this video suits the song genre and would work well with the print work created?
- How much originality is there is this video and what bits specifically shone out to you? What might you improve?
- Are there any other official videos which bare resemblance to this piece? is it memorable?
These I feel were useful and easy questions for my audience to answer, and surprisingly yielded similar results throughout. All my responses complimented me on the quality of my work, especially the print work quality and head rotation cuts. My audience also unanimously said that although they would be able to identify the video is in correlation with the print work, the colour variations could make it difficult, as the video uses toned down saturated colours, whereas the print work focuses around vibrant colours to resemble the punk rock pop attitude. Despite this slight criticism, my entire audience feedback seemed to have relatively high levels of cultural capital to understand the intentions of the video, for example; "How well did the video fit with the song?" "I think they both worked really well together, the emotion of the song came through especially well near the end where she was throwing stuff around the room. I especially liked all the quick clips, gave it an angry high energy feel". Here the audience member I asked clearly had a decent idea between the correlation of audio and visual stimuli. As my other feedback results have also proven a good level of understanding, it is clear my visual interpretation of the song is suitable for both the audience and song.Under the effects theory, my audience seems to see the text as 'cool' and appealing in the aspects of the rock band image through stealing the guitars and playing on an authentic looking stage, although have not been directly affected and as a result stolen any guitars, or run anyone over in the street. To prevent any chances of serious effect theory chance, I downplayed the element of drinking in the first scene, did not show the man being hit by the car, and added a comical element to the music shop scene. This allows me to keep the elements with a rock and roll theme, although removes any overly negative aspects too.
Concerning reception theory, my audience feedback has predominantly shown a preferred reading position, receiving positive comments concerning aspects of the video in both aesthetics and moral content. Key ideals which were raised as being significant to the viewer were sequences such as the silent introduction. This introduction scene contained the most material the audience could relate to, in passions for instruments, the likelihood of having little or no money yet aspiring for expensive items, the dream of being a 'rebellious rock star' and stealing objects, drinking beer and chilling with friends. While this gained great praise from target audience members due to its 'cool appearance' through their social contexts and experiences, it is likely to be a point of downfall and target for oppositional readers. The oppositional reading position will state that the situations and morals raised here are inappropriate and should not be encouraged; 'People their age should not be encourage or even think about attempting to steal things like that', whereas the negotiated reader will understand these sequences are shown in a stereotypical manner playing to the social class' mindset, while remaining safe. Beyond this introduction scene though, there should be less for the audiences to disagree with as there are fewer controversial scenes. Although there is a supposedly car crash victim acted in the video, I ensured the car crash or any graphic content was not shown in the video to avoid converting my current preferred readers to a more oppositional or negotiated standpoint.
David Morely, the person who coined the three audience reading positions, later introduced a fourth; 'Aberrant reading'. This additional reading represented the audience demographic who do not understand the given text. This viewing will again be taken by either the older or younger age groups in my occasion as they do not have the cultural capital to relate to the video, its ideals or the associated target audience. Pierre Bourdieu argued for cultural capital, claiming that different social groups will develop varying types of 'cultural capital', dependant upon their class, experience, education and other such factors. This translates to the informal knowledge we have, such as 'street smarts', depending on our social context. By not understanding the key elements to the song/video such as the storyline, rebellious reasons behind stealing the equipment or even the continuity editing I involved, the audience will adopt an aberrant reading. According to Pierre Bourdieu's arguments, certain audiences praise certain aspects of cultural capital over others, and so will result in a prejudice view or complete lack of knowledge, this leading to aberrant, oppositional and preferred reading positions.
Although no-one I spoke to raised any oppositional or aberrant readings with my video, there are bound to be demographics of oppositional, negotiated and aberrant readers to my text. These people are likely to be from older age classes, as they will be against such social ideals and fail to see the humorous or stereotypically rebellious side. Despite this, and in accordance with my feedback, I feel I have achieved a video that maintains a preferred reading majority through its target audience members.
These I feel were useful and easy questions for my audience to answer, and surprisingly yielded similar results throughout. All my responses complimented me on the quality of my work, especially the print work quality and head rotation cuts. My audience also unanimously said that although they would be able to identify the video is in correlation with the print work, the colour variations could make it difficult, as the video uses toned down saturated colours, whereas the print work focuses around vibrant colours to resemble the punk rock pop attitude. Despite this slight criticism, my entire audience feedback seemed to have relatively high levels of cultural capital to understand the intentions of the video, for example; "How well did the video fit with the song?" "I think they both worked really well together, the emotion of the song came through especially well near the end where she was throwing stuff around the room. I especially liked all the quick clips, gave it an angry high energy feel". Here the audience member I asked clearly had a decent idea between the correlation of audio and visual stimuli. As my other feedback results have also proven a good level of understanding, it is clear my visual interpretation of the song is suitable for both the audience and song.