Tuesday 4 April 2017

Evaluation Question 3A - Audience Engagement

How do your products engage with the audience?

For this question we decided to do 4 different things, a Q and A session on Facebook, two digipak unwrappings that Kristian and I created. Kristian playing the bass guitarist of BMTH and I playing a fan who just bought the digipak in a store,  radio interview where we discuss Web 2.0 and how our audience actively became the producers of our product through the audience feedback we got on our music video, our digipack and our website.

Audience Feedback has had an incredible large impact on our music video. When looking at my links lists it is even clear HOW MUCH audience feedback we have actually gained throughout the year. With every rough cut that I made major changes too, we got some audience feedback. Most of the feedback we got was from our Y1o students at St.Georges because it allowed them to use the media terms more and also see what A-Level students were working on. However, we also got some feedback from some individual year 12 and 13 students, who were always willing to help out. Most of them didn't know what to comment on so we told them before we started the interview. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get any audience feedback for the final cut. However we had gotten feedback for rought cut 15 and since there wasn't much of a difference between Rough Cut 15 and the final cut and therefore we think the feedback would pretty much have stayed the same.

Below you can find the links to all of our audience feedback that we got for Throne.

Audience Feedback 2: Throne Rough Cut 3 - http://sophvid.blogspot.lu/2017/01/audience-feedback-2-throne-rough-cut-1.html




Audience Feedback 5: YouTube: Throne Rough Cut 4: http://sophvid.blogspot.lu/2017/02/ko-audience-feedback-youtube-rough-cut.html







As 3 or more of BMTH music videos were given an age range of 15 from BBFC, our target audience is above 15. We found that our target audience was around 16-25, which is also why we have adapted certain things such as the language and the merchandise on our website towards a teenage audience.

For example, at the beginning of the year, we looked at several examples from different types of websites, including websites that were within the metal core genre, such as Bullet For My Valentine, which is where we got out main inspiration from.  They have the same target audience as BMTH  and have also made use of the links list called "Merch" instead of "Merchandise" or "Store". This reference is informal language and can also be referred to as slang, which is done on purpose to engage with our audience.
Also our home button, BMTH, was inspired by another artist who has a young teenage target audience, Charlie Puth. We thought that it was a new was of creating it and as 18,19 and 20 year olds really liked it rather than the link saying "Home".


Q/A Session 


In the video below, Kristian and I are doing a Q and A session in, which we are answering several questions that Kristian designed and our fellow students posted the questions on our Facebook account so that it would look like a real Q and A session. I first posted a post that said 
"Hey guys! Matt and BMTH's manager Leila are doing a Q and A on their latest products tonight! Comment below an maybe they will answe your question!".  
We asked people to comment with questions that also really interested them, and were not just Kristian's designed questions. The example of Riona Drangsfeldt question at the bottom was an example of a question that Kristian didn't ask them to do, which we liked to answer anyway so it would seem like a "real" Q and A.



Questions and Answers Script KO: 

NOTE THAT THE ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS WERE ALTERED BECAUSE PEOPLE ENDED UP COMMENTING IN THEIR OWN STYLE AND WE SPOKE MORE FREELY RATHER THAN READING OUT THE ANSWERS

Q: On what platforms will I be able to listen to your new album?
Well you can buy the album on our website as both a physical and downloadable copy. The album will also be available on Spotify and if you want to watch the music video then you can check that out on YouTube.

Q: Where can I buy your newest merchandise?
If you go on our website then you can check out all our merch, and if you subscribe to our website you will get a notification when new merchandise arrives.  

Q: Do you have any other social media other than Facebook?
Ye of course, you can follow us on twitter as well as Instagram, like I said you can also subscribe on our website to get updates.

Q: Do you have somewhere where people can post fan art?
We don’t have a specific place but if you want to post fan art then just post it on twitter with the #BMTHFanArt

Q: Where will your next concert be?
We have 4 more concerts coming up, our next one will be in San Francisco, you can find out where the other concerts are on our website. You will also be able to buy the ticks there.

Q: Do you think you will work with the same director again?
I hope so, working with PlasticKid was great, but we will see what happens but when we find out you guys will be the first to know.

Q: Ive been a long time collector of your albums, will this album have a special edition of some kind?
I’m happy to hear you’re a long-time fan and yes, for this album you can buy a digipak as well as a vinyl if you want that.

Digipak Unwrapping

This is the video that I filmed of Kristian, where he pretended to be the band member Matt, who is the bass guitarist from BMTH. 


This is the video that Kristian filmed of me, where I am playing a fan who just bought the digipak at the HMV store. 



Radio Interview


We wanted to bring Web 2.0 into our evaluation question since it is talking about that there has been a shift from a passive up to down model to a dynamic convergence between audience and producer. We specifically wanted to focus on the term " former audience" by Dan Gillmor who suggested that the passive audience is now gone and that the audience now has "the tools to change traditional media and create media for themselves". Through several hours spent with our audience, we gained a large variety of audience feedback for all of our parts of the promo package, digipack, website and music video and our audience ended up as playing the "producer" of our products. Below the video you can find the script that I created for the radio interview. 


Script SR: 

Interviewer: Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Radio 420. Today in the studio we have  the leadsinger of BMTH, Oliver Sykes, who is going to talk to us about his latest music video "Throne" and how big an effect audience feedback has had on the products they created for their new album. Welcome and thank your for coming!  

Sykes: Thank youfor having me. 

Interviewer: So tell us about your newest music video! 

Sykes: Well the video is about a love relationship between two people that break up. The male protagonist, played by myself, is feeling lost without the girl and is drowning in his own sorrows, which is portrayed to me being under water and running around lost in the forest. And then ofcourse we have our band's performance integrated in the video as well. 

Interviewer: And how does it end? 

Sykes: Well, you are going to have to go watch it on our website or YouTube Channel. 

Interviewer: Heard that folks, fo check it out now on bmthehorizon50.com! So Oli could you tell us about how your audience helped in creating your newest products? 

SykesWell I believe in our products our audience were somehow the producers as well. Dan Gillmor who is a Web 2.0 theorist talks about the former audience and says that the audience has the tools to create media themselves. I believe this is a good explanation, cause throughout our entire post-production we have had a lot of audience feedback and the music video especially wouldn't have looked the same without our audience.

Interviewer: Can you give me some examples of particular audience feedback that helped you produce your music video?

Sykes: Oh yeah loads! Some things they argued included bad lip-syncing from the lead singer having the lip-syncing not achieving versimilitude. This is not something you want to happen as in the music video world lip-syncing is the bread and butter of a music video. It is THE common conventions of a music video and is therefore really important. 

Interviewer: I agree, that is always what I notice first as well, when I watch a music video! Anything else? 

SykesYeah, our audience brought up was that there should be a clearer narrative. At the beginning we had a fragmented narrative, which our audience argued was confusing, so it didn't bring the preferred reading (Stuart Hall) accross. They suggested we should have a linear narrative containing more footage. After having done that, we got the preferred reading from our audience that we wanted.

Interviewer: Oh wow! So your audience was what led you to do a re-shoot of your narrative?

Sykes: Yeah, and I mean that's what often happens you know? The band members write the song and are helping to argue what they want in their music video and since I was co-director with Plastic Kid on our music video for Throne, the narrative made sense to me. And since I had also written the song together with the other guys, I knew what I wanted and what the lyrics meant to me. However, when someone else than watches it who doesn't really know the true meaning yet, it can be difficult for them to understand it. That's why audience feedback i so important! 

Interviewer: Well it sounds like it really plays an important role in what the music video ends up looking like. Are there any other points they point out in the audience feedback besides the things that are unclear? 

Sykes: Ehmm, they also give us feedback in terms of what looks good and what there should be more and less of. Our audience argued that we should have more color powder in our music video. At the beginning we only had 3 takes with color powder and our audience said there should be more of it because it had a very nice effect since everything else was so dark and in black and white. 
Also, our audience were actually the ones who argued that there should be less of the running sequence in our music video. We had quite a lot of it in our first few cuts and they said it was just too much and it took the focus off of everything else that was actually important such as the performance and the narrative. 

Interviewer: It is impressive to hear how your audience really shaped your music video to the way it looks now. 

Sykes: Yes, I was very impressed by all the feedback they gave. 

Interviewer: Was it just with your music video or was it also with other things. 

Sykes: Well it was mainly with the music video but also with our digipack and our website. For our digipack thay all said that they really liked the front cover because the hand seemed quite special and original. They also argued that it was a really nice effect with the splash effect over the hand. And the back cover they also liked but mainly they commented on the front cover, since it was so special and the back cover was inspired by the smoke in our music video and was quite basic yet fitted well with the front cover. 

Interviewer: Yeah, I have a copy of your digipack, that you brought me so thank you very much for that, I must say it really is quite something for the design of your front cover. 

Sykes: Thanks

Interviewer: And what did your audience say about your website? 

Sykes: Well the main points included that the website colors and simple design fit well with the genre of our band, so our audience clearly noticed that we had chosen black and white on purpose. They also liked our merch, especially the T-Shirts with the printed heart on it and the T-Shirt with the Wolf-Design which was designed particularly for this music video.

Interviewer: Well it seems to me that you have gotten good feedback for everything and that your products will be a success. I am afraid our time has run-up but thank you so much for coming and talking about how your music video and how big an effect audience feedback has had on your products. 

Sykes: Your welcome. 

Interviewer: Next up is You Me At Six's song from their new album "Night People".



Following the band for 1 Day

This video shows how the band is engaging with the audience and how our different products such as the website, digipack and music video are engaging with the audience. Since, the video isn't very detailed, we did the Q/A, where we get more specific questions that fans send us. These focused on our products. We therefore also had the radio interview focusing on Web 2.0, explaining how our audience has been the producer throughout this entire year. 

1 comment:

  1. You need to better illustrate the EXTENSIVE array of aud feedback too: copy/paste the links list (it should go in with links intact - if not just screenshot it!), do a short compilation vid to highlight the number of times you got feedback, picking out a few sample points

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