Audience Research

PLANNING:
In order to understand what audiences expect in our music video based on 'Before The Worst' by The Script, we intend to carry out a piece of research to test our ideas to the target audience, and gain any possible information that will assist us with planning so that our production can be as effective as possible.
Methodology:
We are going to carry out a piece of qualatitive research, as opposed to quantatitive, as we believe that this will provide with a variety of audiences expectations in greater detail than a piece of quantatitive research such as a questionnaire. Our research will consist of a semi-structured interview process in a focus group, which we believe is the best way of conducting this research as we can control the circumstances and put questions to the group. We will have a list of questions that we are looking to be answered, but this will be much more informal than in a questionnaire, not every participant will be expected to record their answer to each question on a sheet of paper aslong as the responce is generally agreed.
Purpose:
We intend to find out what audiences expect in the music video to this track. This not only includes whether the video will be an example of illustration, amplification or disjuncture, but even the band image, locations, mood etc. As a group, we are keen to include some aspects of narrative in the video, aswell as performance, as we believe that this suits the song choice very well and is something that we all like and agree is common in videos of this genre. In the focus group we aim to test this idea and find out exactly what kind of narrative is expected with this track, and the kind of mise-en-scene that will reinforce this, such as locations and contrast in lighting to convey mood.
Sample Audience:
As we intend to conduct a focus group and gain qualatitive research, we need to keep the number of participants fairly low, to about five people, as this way we can ensure that a discussion is able to take place whereby all participants are able to put forward their ideas. We are open to participants of any sex, ethnicity and class to partake in our research as we aim to keep it as un-biased as possible. However, we are aware that this may prove to be difficult as we will conduct the focus group during a lunch hour and so the participants are likely to be our friends, and so coming from an all boys, middle class school this will not provide much variety. However, an advantage of this is that we can be sure our participants are fans of the genre and will definately have some interesting ideas to put forward.
Media Stimulus:
To begin with, we will play the track to the group and ask them to write down anything that comes to mind when listening to it; from ideas for the video to clothing, colours, locations, textures etc. We have chosen to do this as we believe it will provide participants with their own piece of material that will get the conversation flowing as they feel confident to put their ideas to the rest of the group. Also, this we will be able to collect these from the participants after the focus group and use their ideas to help us with our production later on. We will also show our moodboards to the focus group, and discuss the ideas that we have for the video to recieve feedback. Having our group Blog on hand may be useful as we may wish to show them a video by The Script or a similar group such as The Kooks, as it is impossible to predict where the discussion will take us.
Questions:
As mentioned in the 'Methodology' section, we will have a list of questions that we are looking to be answered by the group, but this will be much more informal than in a questionnaire, not every participant will be expected to answer each question aslong as the responce is generally agreed. This are:

• What do you think of this track?
• What do you think of The Script?
• Which music videos do you like? Why?
• What have you recently seen in a music video that stood out to you?
• What sort of locations come to mind when listening to the track?
• What kind of moods or emotions are evoked from the track?
• What kind of storyline comes to mind?
• What would you expect to see in the video to this track?

We are aware that when asking the group questions we need to consider the fact that not all of them may be Media Studies students, and therefore they may not necessarily understand terminology used such as narrative or mise-en-scene. However, we believe that using non Media Studies students will provide us with authentic research that is representative of the target audience and non-biased.
We hope that our focus group will provide us with useful information to assist our planning. We have done a great deal of research and come up with a variety of ideas which we hope the group will accept, and not reject. We expect the group will agree that a narrative video with performance shots would suit this track well, and are keen to test this idea.