EVALUATION: Question 3 (Niyat Tesfamariam)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE

As Tyler Noel's song, If You Wanna Leave, is an R&B song, I initially looked at the target audience of this genre. Common audiences are often between the ages of 13 - 25 due to the explicit language and mature subject matter that R&B music sometimes has, such as Boyz II Men's I'll Make Love to You and Beyonce's Rocket.

I then took to Twitter to look directly at Tyler Noel's existing audience by finding out what kind of social groups are present in her list of followers. I found many young, black men and women as well as a few mature, white men. As the latter group of audience members are anomalous, I decided that the target audience for our music video would be 13 - 25 year old black women. This idea was also backed up by the subject matter of the song which promotes the empowerment of women. I also took into consideration similar artists to Tyler Noel such as Mary J Blige as this would give me an idea as to who would be interested in her music.

I also looked at Mary J Blige's Twitter page in order to find out what kind of people are interested in her music as this could strengthen my idea of what Tyler Noel's audience could be. I found that her audience is very similar to that of Noel as I found many young, black women in her list of followers as well as some older women and some girls of other nationalities. However, the audience that I felt would be our target demographic was the most significant social group within this list.

THE BEST WAY TO PROMOTE THE SINGLE

A common way in which R&B musicians promote their music is through the use of the music sharing/streaming website, Soundcloud. Artists such as Usher post short clips of upcoming singles in order to give their target audiences a taste of what is to come and create excitement towards their future releases.

Therefore, I felt that through the use of Tyler Noel's Soundcloud page, we could promote her single by posting a clip of it in order to tease the whole song and what the music video might be like. After posting a clip onto Soundcloud, the link to the song could then be posted onto her Twitter page (@mstylernoel) to alert her followers that new music is on its way. 

On the release date for the full song and the music video, Tyler Noel could then alert her Twitter followers by posting the YouTube link to the video. This is because her followers would be keeping an eye out for any more information about her music on her Twitter page due to the promotion of the Soundcloud teaser through the same social networking site.

HOW DID OUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK EFFECT US?

When we first found the song that we wanted to create a music video for, we asked people who often listen to music if this was a song that could be successful. These people said that they could see it featured on the charts, often linking it to songs such as Irreplaceable by Beyonce and Ex Factor by Lauryn Hill. This made us confident that we had chosen a good song to release to the public and try to promote on a large scale.

I then created a storyboard and animatics to accompany this storyboard in order to get a better idea of what our final music video would look like. After creating this video, I showed it to some potential audience members in order to find out their opinion. They all felt that the storyline linked to the song's lyrics well and that the plot seemed clear and easy to understand.

We then created an initial draft of our music video which we showed to some potential audience members. This first draft contained an ending which showed Tyler Noel and her love interest/antagonist walked away, hand in hand - this was intended as an open ending because the song offers an ultimatum but not a decision. However, our audience did not view it this way. They felt that it was confusing as it "makes me think that she stayed with her boyfriend even though he makes her unhappy". We then changed this by showing quick flashback scenes of both happy and sad memories with performance shots of her singing "I'm way too grown", suggesting that she feels to grown up to be playing silly games with her volatile partner. 

This first draft also included a scene at the end in which the performer dances in front of the mirror to the instrumental as there are no vocals in this section of the song. Members of our target audience felt that this was inappropriate as it "distracts from the seriousness of the song" and the difficult position that Tyler Noel is in.

Once we had finished making these changes amongst others, we posted the final video onto video sharing site, YouTube, and shared the link on social networking site, Twitter, in order to find out people's final opinions.

These are two examples of our audience's feedback of our final product. They both felt that the final video's storyline was clear and followed the story that Tyler Noel is telling in her song. The main issues that these two expressed were the quality of the lighting and the amount of camera shots that were used. As these issues are relatively minor - the video is still visible despite the lighting issues and complex camera angles are not needed - I feel that the music video was successful and we were able to do what we aimed to do: tell a story about a strong yet heartbroken woman who has taken control.

Our digipak was also met with positive comments as audience members felt that the images gave a strong idea of what the album would be about: relationships and heartbreak. The song titles also help establish an idea of what feelings and topics would be explored in Tyler Noel's music. They felt that "the link between the music video and the album's images show that the project was well thought about" and makes the whole project "stronger as a whole." This also made audiences "have an idea of what future music videos would look like. They'd probably have a similar setting and tone to the music video and digipak." A critique that we took on board in the early stages of creating our digipak was that our images had originally included song titles: "the pictures have too much writing on them, it distracts from the pictures and makes them seem to busy." Upon hearing this, I decided to strip back the images and keep them minimal, allowing the images to speak for themselves.

Reactions to our magazine advert were similar to that of the digipak as audience members often praised that the images linked all three of our products. They felt that the advert gives them all the information they would need about the album in order to decide whether or not they would want to buy the whole album. "The magazine reviews make me think that this is gonna be a good album, also because I read those newspapers so I trust them." They also liked that the magazine says "OUT NOW" as they felt that it "creates excitement" and urges them to buy it. The fact that it informs them that If You Wanna Leave is on the album was considered "helpful" as it gave them an idea of the sound and tone of the album which in turn made them want to buy it more. This differs from the reactions to our initial magazine advert to which we took a minimalist approach, only including the artist and album name and the "OUT NOW" alert - they felt that there was not enough information on it and they did not "know enough about the album to want to buy it". This motivated us to add additional information such as the reviews and the inclusion of a 'hit single'.

OVERALL REACTION

I feel that the overall reaction of our three products was positive and that we have appeased our target audience of young women - black or otherwise - as well as some young men. This assures me that, if these products were to be released to the general public, they would be somewhat successful. However, I do feel that with a larger budget, professional equipment (such as cameras and lighting) and professional actors, this project could have looked much more professional and could have decreased the amount of criticisms. In terms of the storyline in relation to the song, it was felt to be clear and had a strong link to the lyrics. The main issues that I found were technical so, with professional software, this could have been avoided. With these factors taken into consideration, I feel that this project was successful and this feeling has been backed up by the reactions of members of our target demographic and others.