1. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
By Edgar Kyenkungu

2. The focus group questionnaire
To form some type of audience feedback, I conducted a focus group questionnaire with my target audience to get accurate information that would be used to evaluate my products on the whole.
The questionnaire involved questions that asked for the social demographics of my audience as well as the respective information of my media production with given suggestions for improvements to find out what elements appealed to my audience and what elements didn’t.
I conducted the questionnaire on a total of 10 people as I thought this was the sufficient amount that would allow me to generate efficient data. I also thought that this data would produce relevant improvements for my products so that they could appeal more to my audience in which they could consume them for a specific need such as personal identity or to escape.

3. The results

4. The results

5. Audience social demographics
The first two questions of my questionnaire asked the age and gender of my target audience. From this I gathered that the average age of a member of my audience is 19 and that they’re most likely to be male. The reason for this is that the lyrics are more geared toward a male audience as the artist is an older teenager who’s talking about topics/issues that the male members of his age group can closely relate since they may have already such events that the rapper discusses. Through this I have learned that my product should really be aimed at older male teenagers with the use of conventions that appeal most to this age group like an urbanized mise en scene.

6. Audience preferences & views
From the third and fourth question results, I can see that the structure of the video was generally appropriate for its genre along with its target audience. This shows that the secondary research I found on hip hop videos allowed me to engage my audience through techniques such as continuous cutaways and creating pace. These results also showed me that my selection of setting was correct in how they all relate back to the hip hop genre, thus conforming to the typical conventions of the genre whilst creating an abstract atmosphere where the verisimilitude was quite realistic . Through this I have learned that locations such as estate areas and music studios appeal well with my audience, meaning that they are settings that they can easily relate to.

7. Audience preferences & views
All of my target audience said that my magazine advert was appealing to the eye which means that the codes and conventions I applied were useful in how the text layout and combination of purple and green appeared to be attractive to each one. Most said that the digipak helps represent the song and hip genre but 3/10 said that they didn’t. This suggests that the colours I used were too bright, mainly being light blue which didn’t represent the hip hop genre enough by looking too pleasant and vibrant which is seen as a convention of pop albums. Therefore an improve I could make is changing the colour codes of the magazine advert to be more dark and ambient which will then make good use of the hip hop conventions instead of challenging them.

8. Audience music video review
Looking at these results, I can tell that the video effects used in the video such as blur and glow were adequate enough to captivate the audience and blend in well with the song. Through this I learned that the video effects I watched from other real music videos were effective in creating a professional feel to a video. For the improvements on the music video I was told to include more shots of different places by half of the focus group. Looking back on the footage now, I guess I could have taken more shots of hip hop related settings such as car park roofs, skate parks and clubs. Through this I have learned that I should have used more angles as well as shots since there was a lack of variety which the audience didn’t like.

9. Audience advert and digipak review
The review of the ancillary texts was relatively good except for some aspects which were given suggested improvements. An improvement for the magazine advert was to have more patterns in the background. I can agree with this because I did leave a lot of empty space on the green background that could have been used for extra content but I felt that it would work better if I kept it minimalistic like the Jay-z album advert. A suggested improvement for the digipak was to have a darker background. I also agree with this because if I had a darker background it would allow the main image (which was white) to stand out more and catch the attention of the consumer promptly. Through this I have learned that I should stick with the typical conventions when producing advertisements in terms of not being too minimalistic by having the background be more eye-catching with patterns and other elements that appeal to my audience e.g. music instruments, image of the artist and a specific theme.

10. The conclusion
As a conclusion I learned a lot from the audience feedback concerning the genre, narrative and representative aspects of my three media texts. With that being said the media products were given a generally good review with just a few area of improvements. However the information I have gathered has allowed to think more about the codes and conventions in my media products as well as others in why they use the specific features to create a particular response that will engage the customer. I also learned that my target audience really like old hip hop conventions rather than new ones, but also that they’re not afraid to view new out of the box conventions/techniques that are more specifically targeted toward their age group or gender group.

11. The conclusion
The improvements for the music video would be to have more of a strong content structure as the songs message wasn’t clearly represented by the inconsistent structure. This improvement would make the presentation of the video more appealing in how the denotations would be easily taken in by the audience and the connotations of the symbols/items used would be linked in with the mise en scene and lyrics. Audience feedback also said that there should have been more variation in the type of shots and angles used to make the presentation more effective in attempts of engaging the viewer, for example someone said that a lot of low angle shots as that’s what they commonly see in most hip hop videos today. I agree with this as a low angle shot is often used to make the artist appear more intimidating which was also another area for improvement since the artist didn’t really look to confident within the video.
The improvements for the magazine advert would be to stick to the typical hip hop conventions by having a specific theme that’s consistent and relative to the style of the album. The colours used should also connote meanings that link in the genre such as how purple would connote wealth which the artist speaks about. Also there should be more elements of surprise in the background that can engage the readers where as the plain green background I used didn’t really tell the reader anything.
As for the improvements for the album digipak, they would be to have a greater use of colours so that there would be a strong sense of style that the audience could familiarize themselves with as it would have a more meaningful representation of the albums style/message overall.