1. Our initial audience results displayed many interesting findings. We surveyed 20 people;
comprising of 10 males and 10 females, all from various age groups (although predominantly 17-
20 year olds), who completed a Music Video Audience Research Survey via. the Internet. Our
results showed us that near enough all participants surveyed (17/20) listened to music everyday
and there was a split between Indie Rock and Pop as being the most popular genre of music.
Instantly, this confirmed to us that music is a big part of the teenage lifestyle, and that popular
forms of music were influential in their lives. Our audience results also made clear that the
people surveyed like to watch music videos and stated that music videos were an important part
of their music experience (12/20).
Unsuprisingly, the internet was reported as the main source for watching these videos, which
links to teenagers as being the 'technology and internet generation'.
The utilisation of digital effects in music videos was also popular, as 14 out of 20 people
indicated that they would like these to be featured in our own. This finding pleased us, as we
intend to include various digital effects in our video, in order to make it more visually stylish and
imbue it with an interesting/original flavour. They felt that digital effects had previously worked
well in music videos, and could make the video visually stylistic, giving it an edgier look;
distinguishing it from others. Analysis also showed us that 16/20 people reportedly bought a song
after watching the music video for it. This highlighted the importance of the music video to the
overall song, and suggests that the video can make or break the song; it has a big impact for the
audience, and can therefore achieve its aim of promoting the song and making it successful.
Participants indicated that they preferred to watch a narrative and perfomance based music
video, in comparison to narrative or perfomance alone. This therefore highlights that we too
should adopt this dual-themed approach, as it will appeal to a wider audience. Participants
also felt these videos were more effective and visually interesting.
2. Clothing and lighting were reported as being the two biggest factors that usually catch people's
eye when watching a music video, and so this suggests that when producing our own, we too will
focus on these vital visual aspects, as they will aim to engage the audience. They also indicated
that they wanted to see dancing and close up's of the artist in the music video, as this would
follow conventions that had previously worked very well. However, we also had some surprises
when it came to analysing our results, as only 11/20 people reported that their taste in music
influenced their dress sense. Initially, we thought this figure would be higher, as music and
fashion typically go hand in hand and are often related to one another.
We were also surprised to see that only 2 people expected/wanted to teenagers to be presented
in a music video. Initially we believed that most people surveyed would want to see teenagers
depicted, however, our results suggested that this was not the case. Therefore, we plan to avoid
using many teenagers in our video, and will perhaps focus on only the one individual. Overall,
our initial audience research was very helpful in both highlighting teenagers preferences for
music videos, and also in guiding the direction for our production.
