Audience Response to Rough Cut

I received a mixed response towards the rough cut of the music video from the audience of 17 and 18 year olds that I showed it to, two of which were boys and three of which were girls. 

I asked the audience to reflect on the strengths and weakness that they thought the video contained. The strengths that they pointed out were that there was a fantastic use of set and props and that these helped to sell certain aspects of mis-en-scene and the video as whole. They also said that it became clearer as the video went on, that Leah (Ivy) was an empowering figurehead over the other extras in the video, which is what we were going for when first encoding the storyboards and timeline. 

Nevertheless, there were also parts of the video that they pointed out could have been improved. All the points I received I agree with. For example, one of the girls said that the lighting state in some of the shots was too dark and when the video is put in black and white it may be even more difficult to see what is going on. Another point was that on the day of the shoot, more shots could have been taken of the feather in order to portray the message clearer. 

From the overall responses that I received the audience that watched the rough cut of the video decoded it in the same way that James, Jess and I encoded the video. Everyone that it was showed to produced the same response to what they saw despite the fact the could have reacted to it different because of their individual backgrounds, following Stuart Hall's encoding-decoding model. 

Suggestions from the audience aided me in understand what I could personally do better in the future when making more videos either at university or for my hobbies. They suggested taking more shots of certain aspects of the video, such as the feather, in order to sell the message in a stronger way. Also, changing around shooting locations in order to give the video a greater feel of mis-en-scene might help if trying to sell other aspects of location etc.