Audience Research - Results

Our audience research was carried out during a lunch hour where we gathered 6 students aged between 17-18 in order to gain helpful ideas and feedback for our music video. Our focus group involved four boys and two girls all who have a love for indie/rock music. To start the research we showed our group two videos, 'Olympic Airways' by the Foals and 'Atlantis to Interzone' by the Klaxons. We did this to present to the group what to expect within an indie music video, and to introduce the 'Klaxons' and what they are like. We constructed a small questionnaire with several questions and played them our chosen track 'Two Receivers' by the 'Klaxons'. We asked the focus group to record any ideas they had including location, colour, narrative, imagery and assocciations.

After playing our track twice and allowing time to write, we presented the mood boards we created to how we interpretated the song. We then had a discussion about possible ideas while Will and I made notes. We collected qualatitive data which will help us when developing ideas and storyboarding.

Results:

• Musical instruments such as drums and the bass guitar make the song sound very dark and dingy, suggesting night time, alleys, and street lamp lighting. The track was associated with Winter / Autumn to create the dark feel of the song. This could work really well for us, although it may be hard to record under lighting outside at nightime.
• The colours that were imagined whilst listening were silver, grey, black and gold. These were selected to connote the sharpness of the drumbeat and the cold tone of the singer's voice. He sings in a high key but the piano being played in a minor keys reduces his voice making it sound very grey and boring.
• The word 'Space' commonly stuck out for our audience, an idea was to flip the dark feel of the song by making an amateur video following a spaceman through different locations. Making it quite humerous but still following the dark feel of the song, making it a focused viewing music video.
• Someone noticed that there is a sample of a siren used for the introduction, an idea was raised about the long stretch of road at the front of Brighton Seafront, commonly known for fast driving and racing. A car chase was thought of by two people involving the sirens from the police and ambulance ending with a crash. As much as this was a good idea, it seems impossible to create without access to a police car etc.
• The locations thought about were, dunorlan park, London and Brighton. London was mentioned as the streets are busy with a wide variety of people and it has many iconic landmarks, which would be an excellent backdrop and focus point for our music video.
• Rush, acceleration, adrenaline, mysterious, excitement, and distant thoughts were all words used to describe the feel of our chosen track.

Conclusion

From carrying out our focused group and also playing and letting the group tell us what they think about our chosen track, we have both been able to take in other people's ideas that where both different to our own, which will enable us to bring in different aspects to our music video what we maybe wouldn't have even thought about if we hadn't done this audience research. The focus group did however suggest the possible locations we were thinking of before the audience research, being London and Brighton, however these locations were suggested for other reasons, for example using Brighton for a high speed chase due to the sound of a siren, which we both hadn't thought of. The focus group were able to see the link from the video 'Olympic Airways' by the 'Foals' and 'Atlantis to Interzone' by the 'Klaxons'. The focus group likened to the idea of the quick shots used in the Foals video, which we thought would be a good technique to use in our video.

Overall we both feel that the audience research has been a success due to being able to hear other people's feelings towards our chosen track. From this research we will be able to develop our ideas further and incorporate other factors and ideas that we hadn't thought of.