Audience Research: Focus Group

What is a focus group and why is it important?
A focus group is a group of people who represent my audiences. This allows for feedback before my final version of my video and gives creators an inside perspective to their audience.  A focus group is used in order to represent an audience as getting and providing ideas to everyone is not possible.

Who have I selected and why?
Name: Lucy
Age: 17
Favourite genre of music: Alternative
Preferred way to listen to music: Spotify
Favourite music video: Studio Killers by Jenny
Ideas about what makes a good music video: "aesthetic visuals that correspond w the lyrics as well as editing that is appropriate, e.g. fast edits for upbeat song and a video w slow paced transitions for slower songs. Harmony between visuals and audio."
Why I have chosen them to be apart of my focus group: Lucy is a perfect example of my target audience, demographically and stance surrounding the subject. She has a large cultural competency and is currently studying textiles, where her coursework has themes which cross over with my media work.

Name: Amica
Age: 17
Favourite genre of music: R&B
Preferred way to listen to music: YouTube
Favourite music video: 50/50 by Toro y Moi
Ideas about what makes a good music video: "it reflects everything about the song, what the song was trying to convey. It supports it well and matches its tempo and tone and move with the musical narrative. Visually it should be stimulating and I think it’s more interesting if it’s somewhat inspiring and maybe ambiguous. Lighting and colour is very important too to match the song!"
Why I have chosen them to be apart of my focus group: Amica has grown up top of her academic classes and is the epitome of the 'middle to upmarket' demographic, whilst being the secondary audience musically. This provides me with the opportunity to broaden the audience of the music video by appealing to people who don't necessarily enjoy the song. She is also multi-instrumentalist and frequent goer of festivals and therefore loves music.

Name: John
Age: 16
Favourite genre of music: Rock
Preferred way to listen to music: Spotify
Favourite music video: Pretender by Foo Fighters
Ideas about what makes a good music video: "Conveys excitement and gets really hype when the chorus kicks in."
Why I have chosen them to be apart of my focus group: John's music tastes are very fluid and likes music from many genres meaning he helps with a different perspective. He is what would count as the secondary audience and can help the video appeal to larger audience.

Name: Leon
Age: 20
Favourite genre of music: Alternative
Preferred way to listen to music: Spotify
Favourite music video: Paranoid Android by Radiohead
Ideas about what makes a good music video: "It has most importantly fit the song. The video type varies dramatically based on this. It also must have good visuals."
Why I have chosen them to be apart of my focus group: Leon is a university student in Bristol, meaning he has different perspective to the other members of my focus group, while being apart of my target demographic.

Audience Research: Feedback on Pitch

In order to get feedback on my pitch, I created a form to go with it, after sending out my pitch and form, I received the results below. These were all positive, which suggests that I am heading in the right direction, but also provides a clearer understanding of my audience in addition to ideas I can incorporate into my video.

Having my target audience respond positively to the music video is very important and I am glad, out of the responses, none were negative. This is important as, especially as it is a protest video, my music video needs to be popular with the target audience, in order to combat hate from oppositional viewpoints surrounding the cause of the video.

Getting ideas from my target audience is a good source of inspiration and also ensures that the ideas will most likely be taken positively. Allowing the audience to active here works to make a more successful end piece. Particularly form this, I like the ideas such as distortion, an idea which I was already intending to use, but now can be used with a greater range of meaning and therefore use.