"What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The picture above is a screen shot of our video which we put on YouTube. We put the link up on Facebook and a few friends posted it on their 'walls' too, meaning that quite a big group of people were able to view it and give us feedback. The thing we were most surprised about is the amount of views it received in such a short time! We put it online on the Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday evening we had over 100 views which shows how good web 2.0 is at distributing work to large and diverse audiences.
We were quite pleased with the feedback we received, as a lot of people found the video easy and humorous to watch, which is what we had intended our video to be like. A lot of people commented on the storyline of the video, thinking it was about a homosexual relationship. Although we had tried to make our video about friendship which goes against conventions we had found in most pop music videos, we weren't too disappointed because same sex relationships are rarely seen in the pop genre which means that whatever way you look at our video, it's likely to show a very modern representation of people that challenges current conventions. Another thing that was mentioned quite a lot was the light-hearted feel to the video. People who watched it said it would suit our target audience very well as it wasn't as serious as a lot of pop music videos around. Another good aspect of our video that people commented on was our choice of costume as it was quite casual but without looking boring or out of place. A few people said that the clothes we had used made the two characters in the video appear as good role models, which is a very important aspect as we aimed our video at quite young girls/teenagers.
We did also receive some criticisms, for example on the variety of shots used and the quality of filming in some shots. Because we started filming relatively late, it meant that we didn't have a lot of time with the camera which limited how many different shot types we could take in each location. Although the majority of people did think we'd used enough shot types, quite a few people disagreed. I think this goes to show how important time is with filming, if we were to do this task again then I think it'd be a good idea to start earlier to ensure we had plenty of time to film and include many different shot types. On average, our performance scenes rated higher than our narrative scenes. Many of the videos we looked at combined narrative scenes with performance but we wanted to use more of a split. I think that if we had used more narrative scenes then our video might've looked better and maybe would've provided more of an understanding of our storyline.
In our performance scenes where Emma is seen singing on the stage, the quality of the footage is quite fuzzy and blurry. It was very difficult to create a setting similar to performance scenes we've seen in other videos as we were restricted to where we could film. When we used bright lighting, Emma looked far too bright, but when we turned the lighting down, it was very hard to see her! However, we decided to film in this setting anyway, as it was the most appropriate setting for a performance scene which meant that in our final video the stage scenes weren't as strong as the other scenes. Our media teacher also pointed out that a lot of of shots were quite stiff, we were able to add movement by using the Ken Burns tool, but I think if we were to film again, it would be useful to use some panning shots.
Overall, I think we done quite well considering between us we only had very, very little knowledge of filming and editing! I also think that this task has made us realise how important time-management is and that using a timeline that we would stick to would probably have impacted greatly on us!
