The document summarizes feedback received from focus groups on a music video concept. Originally, the concept portrayed a romantic relationship but focus groups identified alternative interpretations of lyrics that suggested relationship issues. This led to a more interesting narrative where the relationship faces problems. Further focus groups provided useful feedback, such as preferences for some symbolic elements but not others. Audience research also informed decisions around promoting the artist through digital downloads and social media rather than physical copies.

1. Question 3: what have you learned
from your audience feedback?
I have learned…

2. Originally my desired reading for the song
was…
• The singer, Julian was portraying
Ben Austin. He was a young man
who was in love with Abby,
played by Sophie.
• The love was equally reciprocated
by both.
• The music video narrative would
be concept based. That concept
would be love. Therefore, I had
idea to show both Ben and
Abby’s romantic gestures
towards each other throughout
the music video.

3. However…
•I organized a target audience research,
focus group to test whether the group of
16 to 18 year olds had the same readings
of the song that I did.

4. The TA focus group
My partner and I sat at the head of the table
and played small sections of the song to the
focus group. For example, we played the line of
the chorus ‘And maybe I’m just in love when
you wake me up’. The focus group had an
oppositional reading of this line compared to
what we believed the desired reading to be.
They suggested that this could mean that the
singer had idealized the relationship and as the
relationship continued to progress, issues began
to show, and the relationship became very one
sided.

5. How did this help us?
This oppositional reading was extremely useful.
I had not thought of this idea previous to the
Ta focus group and it resulted in our narrative
being much more interesting. For example we
could now apply Todorov’s theory of
equilibrium. E.g. the relationship was seemingly
happy and then a problem arises (Abby
becoming gradually more disinterested in Ben)
and then the characters find a new equilibrium.

6. …
• I was making the music video for a young target audience, therefore I wanted
to ask them whether they preferred to be a passive viewer or become an
active audience because I was uncertain as to what the majority of the
younger people wanted from a music video.
• They seemed to react positively to the idea of occasional signs and signifiers
(e.g. Barthes) and therefore we decided to include these in the music video.
Most significantly, superimposing a CCTV camera above the head of Abby
while she looked at it disapprovingly to symbolize her resentment of Ben for
being too possessive of her.

7. Upon reflection…
• The use of superimposition to symbolize ‘being watched’ by a possessive
boyfriend may be considered a confusing concept for a young target
audience. I was concerned that they may not understand the connotations, or
make any effort to understand.
• Therefore, it would have been useful to create another focus group. In order
to show them this part of the music video and ask them what they thought
the desired reading is.

8. I would have liked to use more focus groups
during my research and also construction.
• Because I think it would have been useful to ask them if
they liked very specific features of my music video or my
ideas for the music video.
• It would have been useful to ask the same focus group if
my music video was what they imagined when they heard
the song.

9. We also created paper questionnaires for our
target audience to complete.
The majority of my target audience
stated that they prefer that about half
of the music video features the main
star. This was useful information as I
was unsure whether to feature my star
in more, or less than half of the video.
This research highlighted to me that I
needed to equally balance the narrative
with the singing into camera.

10. Question 4 …
The majority of our target audience said
that they did not buy physical copies of
a CD and if they did it was the CD’s of
well established artists that they were
fans of. Taking this into account, I
decided to use sell lines like ‘pre – order
now from iTunes’ on my digipak advert
because the majority of the young
generation download and stream their
music.

11. …

12. Question 5…
The majority of the target
audience also suggested that the
use of social media was useful
in launching a new artist
therefore we created a twitter
page for our star and made sure
to include links to follow him
on twitter on our digipak
advert.

13. Ben Austin’s Twitter page!
Hopefully this use of social
media would appeal to a
younger target audience and
Ben Austin will begin to
develop a fan base.
He can also promote the
digipak and music video
from Twitter.

14. Question 6…
From this question we
learned that the majority
of our target audience
thought that a digipak
advert/poster should
have duller colours and
tones.

15. We included duller tones on our digipak advert
to comply with the wishes of our TA.
We used black font as well as choosing
to dress the model, Julian in a black
hoody. The background is also very
monotone. The use of darker, winter
type colours is a common convention
of the Pop Acoustic genre.