Screentest: Audience Feedback

This blogpost contains our audience feedback for our Music Video project.

The purpose of this screen test is to help us evaluate how engaging our draft was to our audience, as well as to identify any areas to improve or enhance.

A screen test is important because it allows us to gain direct feedback from our target audience and understand how they see our work (progress so far). as well as to collect responses efficiently and directly as the questions we provide were straight forward therefore audiences were able to think of an answer instantly but still give us a fixed response.

Here are the questions we asked:

1. What did you think the music video's message about?

2. What emotions did you feel when watching this music video?

3. What do you think made the music video boring?

4. Would you watch this again or share this to a friend? (Why/Why not?)

5. What would you recommend we add to this music video?

We specifically chose these questions to ensure that the key elements of our music video, such as narratives and emotion, were clearly projected/communicated to the audience. The questions also allow respondents to freely express their opinions, which would help us gain raw and real comments to help us understand both strengths of our music video or even parts that need improvement.

To add, these questions also help us measure how engaging and memorable our music video is, which is important as one of our main goals is to emotionally connect with our target audience and encourage them to rewatch or share the video. We did this by showing our music video to members of our target audience to ensure the feedback we receive will be relevant to us.

Audience Feedback Summary:

Here are the summaries of the responses we received.

From Aimee 10B

Aimee understood the music video's message as to her, it was about a couple in a somewhat toxic relationship that eventually causes problems . Emotionally she felt the video  was mostly "Cute" as first but later became sad due to certain scenes, showing that the emotion shift was effective. She did not find the video boring and described it as enjoyable to watch. Though she would consider watching or sharing the video in the future, she felt it currently looks incomplete as it is still a draft anyway. She recommended adding more flashbacks to show more of the couple's backstory and to clarify what the ending would be.

From Marley 11B

Marley also interpreted the music video as portraying a toxic relationship that the couple cannot fix, which lead to the breakup. He felt both happy and sad while watching, as the video showed a contrast between positive and negative moments in the relationship. He didn't find the video boring and found the storyline engaging, praising the actors' reactions/visuals in emotion. However, he mentioned that he would not yet rewatch or share the video due to it's short length, although he believes the final product will be strong. He suggested that we should include more scenes showing the BAD side of the relationship and wanted to see more from the girl's perspective too.

From Charlene 12B

Charlene understood the message the most as she recognized the transformation of a relationship from a honeymoon phase into something tense and destructive. She described her emotions as happy, sad, but also bittersweet, especially due to the use of flashbacks contrasting the beginning of the relationship with later conflicts. She suggested that one running scene felt slightly too aggressive and could be toned down. Charlene said she would watch and share the video, as she felt it had strong music video conventions and that the visuals "amplified" the song effectively. Overall she felt the draft was already very good and only needed polishing rather than major changes.

Overall Audience Feedback

Overall, the audience feedback was very positive and showed that the intended message of the music video was clearly understood. All three respondents interpreted the narrative as being about a romantic relationship that became toxic, often referencing the contrast between the couple's happy beginnings and their later conflicts. This suggests that our narrative and character dynamics were successfully communicated to the audience. In terms of emotional response, the audience reported feeling a mix of emotions such as happiness, sadness, and "bittersweet nostalgia". This emotion range indicates that the video was effective in engaging viewers emotionally and creating empathy for the characters. Importantly, none of the respondents found the music video boring, with most of the comments being "engaging, enjoyable, and visually effective"

Additionally most respondents expressed willingness to watch or share the final version of the music video, although the did say that the current draft feels incomplete or too short. This reinforces the idea that while the concept is strong, the video would benefit from further development.

Reflection:

One of the struggles would be combining the clips together to ensure the audiences get the idea and the context we are trying to portray. Some may see it in the wrong context or get the wrong idea by lacking one scene or misplacing them making the part look aggressive when it was supposed to be lively. After collecting and reading our friends' responses, they were quite interesting and it was great to know that they understood our concept by just watching the draft, we will continue to learn and make it better for them to see the final product.