For our final audience feedback, we decided to gather some of our media class consisting of 17-18 year olds who are our main target audience for a video reaction for all of our finished products, the music video, the CD cover, digipak and magazine adverts.
The first question for our music video was 'What were your initial thoughts of the music video?'. The responses were all positive and they thought our story was interesting and well thought out. The narrative was one of our key ways to being postmodern because we were essentially combining film techniques with a music video. As a result, we were relieved that the audience were positive about our decision.
The second question was 'Do you think the music video fits the genre of the music?'. The responses were mixed because on one hand people thought that since the song was more modern, our use of technology in the video was very appropriate and was a nice reflection. However some people felt that we should have stuck to the conventions of the hip-hop genre in our music video which I would tend to agree but if we wanted to be postmodern, we needed to subvert certain conventions for it to be noticeable.
The third question was 'Does the cinematography fit with the music video?'. We got criticism over the lighting in the bar scene with Cameron because it was clear that some shots were filmed at different times, hence the difference in lighting. Although I agree that those shots look out of place, we didn't know that the lighting was so different until we were editing it and by that point, re-shooting would have taken up too much time. But overall, they said that our cinematography was solid.
The fourth question was about postmordernism and 'How were the masks, as a motif, add to the postmodern experience?'. The audience liked the masks and added a layer of hyper reality and they liked that the masks were also intertextual references. They also said that the masks were a representation of 'anonimity in the internet' and how people can put on certain character because they are anonymous.
The fifth question was 'How does the editing convey the narrative of the video?'. The responses were that they thought the linear continuity editing was very well done. People also liked how the editing matched the beat of the music, complying with Andrew Goodwin's theory that the visuals should match the music. Our motif of the black bar wipe at the start of the video makes the video more postmodern because it's almost parodying typical straight cuts. It can also be a parody of how Star Wars uses wipe transitions.
The sixth question was 'Do you believe that there's a relationship between the music, lyrics and visuals?'. This relates to Andrew Goodwin's theory and people weren't sure whether there was a correlation between the three factors. Furthermore, they said that the lyrics objectifies and has a voyeuristic treatment of women, another of Goodwin's themes. However we deliberately contradicted the lyrics of the song by having a female lead searching for men rather than vice-versa because we wanted to stay postmodern therefore we added some tongue-in-cheek humour in there whilst still staying true to the hip-hop genre.
The seventh question was 'Is the video repetitive in terms of themes and actions?'. The audience mentioned the 'rule of three' where three examples is enough for the audience to understand the concept which we did try to stick to. The audience did have positive responses to this and also added that the repetitiveness of the masks and dates made our diegesis more fantasy-like, complying with Carol Vernalis' theory.
The eighth question was 'Is there anything that could be improves on?'. The responses were mainly unanimous, the lighting could be better, more postmodern elements, better location, very small little improvements that could be have been solved if we had more time, money and people. The fact that this coursework took place during A-levels meant that we were limited before even starting. I feel that we did the best we could with the resources and time that we had. We were bound to encounter problems at that point in time because people are busy doing their subjects.
