Screen Test : Audience Feedback

This blog post details how we presented a rough draft of our music video, album cover, and social media page to members of our target audience in order to receive constructive feedback. While my teacher provided the template for this blog post, the content and analysis have been written by me (Beatrice).

The purpose of this screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google Forms to create a survey to share with our audience because we find it convenient and easy to use. We divided the Google Forms into two. The first form is for our music video, while the second form is for our social media and digipak.

Here is the link to the Google Form incase of any technical difficulties → Music Video , Social Media & Digipak

Here are our questions that we made as a team : 

Music Video 

Social Media

Digipak

For the music video, we chose these questions because we want to make sure that our music video effectively resonates with our target audience (teenagers and young adults), and accurately represents the theme of graduating from high school. We also want to assess how well the artist’s persona come across in the music video. For the social media, we want to determine the level of engagement that our target audience prefer, such as whether "fans" want direct interactions or a more curated presence of the star. As for the digipak, we want to make sure that the album cover appeals visually to our target audience and aligns with their aesthetic preferences. Hence, we included images of the digipak's sketch. Overall, we want to make sure that our social media strategy and digipak design align with our target audience’s preferences.

We included members of our target demographic in the screen test to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was a little difficult because we were told to ask for feedbacks from people who are not taking media studies, which made it quite difficult to find some people who were willingly to respond and able to provide meaningful feedback, as we wanted to ensure that the responses were collected in an appropriate and constructive manner.

Here are the drafts that we showed audiences for the screen test:

MV Draft Link (Music Video Draft)

(Digipak Sketch)

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

Music Video

Social Media 

Digipak 

From the feedback we learned that while most aspects were well-received, there are still areas that need improvement, particularly in the music video. According to Steve Neale's Genre theory, a media text must conform to the conventions enough to be recognizable, yet subvert enough to be different and interesting. However, after reviewing the feedback, we realized that our music video largely adheres to conventions without challenging them, which made it feel monotonous or less engaging for our target audience. Despite this, the responses suggest that we were successful in representing the star’s persona, as the three words used to describe them aligned with our intended portrayal. Furthermore, we gained insights into how to refine the social media and digipak to better appeal to our target audience, and what elements we need to include in it.

While we can't really incorporate certain suggested elements from the responses (such as graduation caps, gowns, or younger actresses resembling our stars) due to accessibility constraints, the audience feedback remains invaluable in refining our music video. Specifically, we can still use the feedback to improve some areas, such as enhancing the authenticity of performance, ensuring that the lip-syncing and acting feel more natural, and adding more emotional scenes to strengthen the narrative reinforcing the idea that "the stars are graduating and truly leaving this time." This adjustment not only enhances audience relatability but also prevents the video from feeling visually repetitive and monotone, as it adds emotional depth. The screen test has been an important part of our production process, because it allows us to identify areas for improvement and gain insight into what resonates with our target demographic. By implementing these suggestions, we can create a more engaging and compelling final product. 

Reflection : This screen test has helped us a lot, as it provides us with valuable insights that we hadn’t fully considered at the start of the project. Certain elements that we initially overlooked turned out to be significant to our target audience, which shows the importance of being more critical and observant in how we construct meaning within our media product. This experience has reinforced the necessity of considering audience reception and how our work is interpreted from different perspectives. I'm really glad that we conducted this audience feedback, as it has allowed us to refine our music video and product based on real audience responses before finalizing the project, ensuring that it resonates more effectively with our target audience.