Focus Group - What we found out

Having held our focus group, we found out various identical ideas from our target audience, as well as various other and improved ideas that would be interesting to create within a music video of this genre, and it was interesting to hear their understanding of media terminology as five of them were not Media Studies students.

Having played the target audience of six members our track and gave them a few moments to gather their ideas, We asked them a series of questions, similar to those in our focus group planning blog entry, and our planning folder. After asking five questions and heard their initial thoughts and reactions to the track, we showed them our mood chart and storyboard and then listened to their extensive feedback on both items, as well as any improvements to their own initital ideas and any new thoughts that came to mind.

Although some of the audience did not enjoy the song, which is common in any genre of music, their ideas were similar to that of our initial planning ideas. They agreed and gave strong ideas about the performance part of our video, and agreed that it would not be a video of this genre if it did not have a performance in it. A few thought that the entire video should be performance, until the idea of a part-performance, part-concept video arose, when they changed their mind and suggested that the video should hold the chorus for the performances and the verses for the concept part of the narrative structure, and bring one into the other as the video came to a close. They also liked the idea of a black and white video, some suggested colour, some a mixture as this pattern varies throughout the genre.

The idealist narrative of the track would be a relationship problem between the singer or another male protagonist and a female co-star. the main theme or narrative would be that the female is never there and leading another life behind the Male's back and he is striking out at her, claiming she's never there, displaying his emotion and anger. One member of the audience suggested a car chase as they all agreed that the video needed to be fast paced through action, not necessarily quick-cut editing, although trying to stage a car chase and stay within safety limits may be hard to do! Another member of the audience was persistent that we change our track to a song by the band, Paramore who feature in our storyboard, who's shot from the video, 'Decode', we will manipulate in our own video yet unfortionatey we could not meet his demand!

The contrast of ideas amongst the audience was interesting but overall, the ideas were similar to that of our initial planning so hopefully, we're on the right track!