Focus Group Feedback

I held a focus group with my media class in order to receive feedback on the technical aspects of the first edit of my production from a media studies perspective (including editing, style, representation and audience etc.), and to gather opinions from my target audience about the overall effectiveness of my documentary. This was an appropriate focus group as it contained 8 people, which is appropriate for creating an equal discussion but is not broad enough to rely on entirely - therefore I will continue to research wider target audience feedback. For this audience feedback I also focused on the young adult demographic of my target audience due to their ages of 17-19, as well the educated students, and feminists and non-feminists sub-categories of my target audience; however I also included one adult from my older demographic.

The first edit of my documentary which I presented to my focus group:

Documentary First Draft from Courtney O'Donnell on Vimeo.

Footage of focus group feedback:

Focus Group Feedback from Courtney O'Donnell on Vimeo.

Evaluation of what I found from this focus group, and the improvements I will make following their feedback:

• My issue solving by combining to unusable takes to make them usable did not affect their audio quality or flow of the narration, but I will need to cover them with footage as the cut can be detected.
• My fast paced and broad range of shots during the introduction, and range of angles overall work really well and are conventional of documentaries.
• The topic I'm exploring is informative, interesting and valid. This would therefore entertain my audience, attract them due to my interest topic, and create purpose and relevancy for my documentary.
• I could use jump cuts to speed up the overly long duration of location shots. I definitely agree with this improvement and will apply it to my production.
• I should add subtitles to my 'Literally I Can't' archive footage in order to draw focus to its sexist lyrics and familarise people who are unfamiliar with this song; particularly my older demographic.
• It meets the 'entertaining and informative' convention of the documentary genre to an extent, as it's informative but the seriousness of the issue makes it less entertaining.
• Suggestions of my target audience included older women and young adults (who are represented by my cast, hashtag social media marketing, and youthful cut/ transitions style). This meets my intended target audience of 17-35 year olds, therefore I think that I have resolved my previous issue about older people being isolated from my production due to my young presenter, as although my younger demographic is represented most strongly and are perhaps my primary demographic (as picked up on by my focus group), the complex topic and narration, conventionality to the documentary genre and my ancillary product main consumers also represent my older demographic.
• My male interviewee being unavailable for my production effected my gender representation negatively, therefore I will shoot an additional short extract of an interview to use within my introduction to further preview and extend my enigma for the rest of my documentary. This will either be a positive representation of males in relation to sexism, or a controversial opinion in order to fuel my entertaining debate and shock my audience.
• My presenter was very effective through her deliverance and appropriate acting.