Focus Group- Video Feedback

Throughout the evaluation process we gathered some individuals that fit into our target audience group and we asked them various questions to do with our music video. This feedback that we receive from this audience is extremely important as this is our primary audience and we hope to attract and please these the most.
FEEDBACK:

What did you like about the music video?

balloons were cool, liked how it was countrified, lots of fun showed the personalities of the band members. This is good feedback because as a group we wanted to come across as fun and loving girls and we also felt that country was a good theme to go with.

Did you see a theme within the music video? 

saw a country theme, and also a theme with the balloons. This is also good feedback as we wanted to ensure that there was a clear them throughout the video, this is why we made sure that all of our locations linked in with the countryside, and we also wanted to make sure that we had the theme of pastel colours so we used the balloons as this shows synergy through all of our products.

What genre do you think the video was?

Country/ Pop. This shows that as a group we portrayed the genre of the video well as country/pop is what the genre of our video was therefore it shows that the video matched this.

Do you feel that the artists suit the video?

Yes as the lip syncing was really good looked like the girls were actually singing the song. This again is good feedback as it shows that as a group we were good at acting our roles in the band, it also shows that we were good at the lip syncing and made the video come to life.

What could be improved about the music video?

better editing, more animals. This feedback helps us to know what to do in the future, more animals would have maybe helped to portray the countryside theme even more and also better editing could have improved the style of the video. 

Group Reflection

Who was in your group? How well did you work together as a group?
Within my group there was four of us; Renae, Pip, Ale and I. As we have been friends previous to this task benefitting us as we understood each others strengths. We all worked efficiently together as well as independently and gave each other targets to ensure all of our work was achieved to our best standards. 

How did your video get planned, did you do research?
Our video ideas stemmed from when we all sat down and pitched suggestions to each other. We wanted to be different from other groups, therefore we wanted to choose a different genre; country. We undertook a lot of research to help us along the way for the creation of all of our products. For example, we analysed music video and their visuals/formats, we also compared digipaks between country and pop as we wanted an aspect of both in our final product. We also researched all kinds of artists and was inspired by a variety of their work they have produced within the industry. We had to undertake tasks to help us understand what needed to be within our products, such as a cross-media branding task which initially helped us to recognise that all products have the same themes and icons throughout, ensuring synergy is used throughout to represent a unique band image. 

What technology platforms did you use throughout your process?
A variety of platforms were used throughout this project. The basic technology was blogger, which helped us to document all of our work daily and to present all products in a structured organisation. The next platform was what we used to edit footage- premiere pro and edit our images- photoshop. Presentation technology was also used as a way of showing our products as well as analyse them. Emaze, Prezi and Photobucket was all used to show a collection of our work which was then embedded on our blog; blogger. Youtube was used throughout for a series of work tasks such as our storyboard, stealomatic and to upload our final music video onto. Screencastify was another platform we used in a task to analyse a website we felt had good synergy with all their products. As well as this, our teacher used this to help us with our feedback on our website and this involved the user of a voiceover and spoke through advantages and disadvantages of our products. 

What did you have to consider whilst filming the music video?
Filming our music video was a challenging task as there were many aspects that we had to consider such as health and safety risks of the location and our costumes as well as ensuring we got all angles and shots that we needed to make our music video to the best product we could get it.  We had to run risk assessments on all locations, such as when we filmed at the farm there was a bridge we filmed on which we needed to be wary of with how we shot the camera and got all the angles we needed. In addition, we needed to ensure the weather cooperated, so we had to check all forecasts whenever we decided to film as we didn't want the video to look dull or bland. 

What are your strengths as a group member?
As a group member I believe to have excelled in leadership skills as well as developing within independent work and taking tasks into my own hands; taking responsibility when needed. As an individual I strive to achieve all of my aims and am up for helping other members, and vice versa, when we need to finish all of our tasks before deadlines. 

Video Inspirations for each scene

Scene 1

Within Taylor Swifts video we came up with the idea for the girls to perform individually infront of a plain wall to begin with to welcome the audience into the video, forming a connection with each girl within the band.

Scene 2

These scenes are within the farm which involve hay, the corn field, barrels of wood and within the stables. This location we wanted to be purely within a farm/nature filled area to pursue the full country theme. We was inspired by the video from The Henningsens- Why I Farm. 

Scene 3

The balloons are used all throughout Vanilla's video and they play a very significant role in piecing the music video together, however they are very prominent to finish off the video as this is what it concludes on and fades out of the girls. This aspect was too show the fun, bubbly side that all the girls have and we wanted to incorporate our colour theme and ensure synergy was used throughout. 

Photoshoots

Website feedback

What went well:
- use of the colour pink helps represent theme and create synergy.
- Easy to use website, good navigation bar
- really like the home page and the buttons fit well with the theme
- like how you can enlarge the pictures in the gallery
- love the colour scheme
- website easy to navigate
- gallery photos are great.
- website identifies band image clearly.
- clear synergy across medias
- all the tabs work
- like added details such as countdown
- good use of the pink theme across the website
-



Improvements:
- Facebook Icons does not work
- maybe not include the 'Vanilla' and 'use of cookies' button to scroll down with user.
- images on the 'contact' page do not relate to artist.
- some of the photos could be colour corrected due to it being cloudy
- facebook button doesn't work

Digipak Feedback

This is our first draft for our digipak and we have decided too take a faded out approach too give it a more of a country feel. As well as this, we have had a variety of inspirations from other digipaks however they have not been the theme we would like too take so we have taken a few different ideas, such as the loud pop CD cover to the muted down images across the digipak such as the one on the special thanks page. 

Positive Feedback:

• It links in well with all of our other medias such as the website and tour poster. 
• The colour scheme works well - its bright and colourful so will attract our target audience (12-30). 
• The pictures are cute and fit specifically with their target audience. 
• The use of balloons throughout all the products enhances the use of synergy .

Improvement Feedback: 

• The images seem squashed and distorted, they don't all look like equal squares.
• The CD isn't a circle shape which it should be - again it has been squished.
• We are missing the writing of the production company on the back and a list of the songs.
• The "Vanilla by Vanilla" should be all across the band - it would look more interesting.

Editing Inspirations

Whilst editing our music video we realised that other music videos of a similar genre have very creative editing techniques that we seemed to be lacking. Therefore, I research into what makes a music video interesting and what kept the audience intrigued and came across these editing techniques that really engaged me to the music video and I thought they would fit perfectly with the shots that we had put together.

Firstly.. 

In our music video we realised that we hadn't included the name of our band and also the name of the song. we wanted to make it easily accessible and noticeable that it was our music video therefore took inspiration from Miley Cyrus' video of 'Malibu'. It has the same fun loving vibe that we want to include in our video and also related to the balloon theme that we have included in our video. 

Secondly...

We included shots in our video of all three of us yet realised that at the start of the video we had a very small amount of shots where we were all on screen at the same time. Little Mix are a band that are very similar to us and in their videos they had included a split screen where each of them can be seen. This would improve our video as all three of us would be introduced as united and it shows how together when we are singing we harmonise and make the song amazing.