Audience Research Results/Analysis

Focus Group-Results

After gathering our focus group of ten males aged 17 to 35 together, we played our track choice to them and asked them to think about what feelings the track, Sneaker Pimps-‘Spin Spin Sugar Armand’s Dark Garage Mix’, gave them. The general feeling was that the track generated a feeling of strangeness with most of the focus group feeling that the song gave a suggestion of drug and alcohol abuse. One member of the focus group said that the song “had a feeling of a diabetic having a sugar rush,” this seemed a good idea for a part of our proposed narrative because it would create a link between the lyrics and the visuals. After asking the focus group to tell us how they would make a music video for the song, a development of the previous idea was made by a fellow media studies student. He suggested that the lyric “spin spin sugar” could be used as a suggestion of taking cocaine in order to build a link between the lyrics and the visuals. This member of the focus group had the idea for a music video as “the main character getting high and then seeing the effects of it with shots of the character spinning to make the people watching feel how he is.”

We then asked the focus group to think of a word or phrase that would describe the track and their thoughts about the music video they visualise for the track. Their responses were:
“Someone in a club”
“Club scene, pills”
“Disorientated”
“Shaky camera”
“Strobe light”
“Colours changing”
“Drunk”
“Dark”

We then described our idea for the music video to the focus group and asked how we could develop our idea. The focus group thought that a narrative music video was the best way to present it, they agreed with the idea of a male main character but one member of the group thought that it would be better with a young woman following him; “a man being tormented by a woman”. Another member of the focus group suggested: “making a storyline similar to how it is in ‘Skins’ with a shaky camera,” another person then suggested slowing any possible shot of characters to fit the speed of the song.

We then asked what the focus group would use as camera shots in our idea for a music video to the track. One member of the group responded that; “there should be shots of the character spinning around out of control when the main lyric comes on.” After hearing our idea of using shots of the main character in mirrors and reflections one member of the group suggested a shot “with the camera behind the person showing their reflection in the mirror”.

Conclusion

Overall, we came to the conclusion that the focus group was a success because the people in it agreed with our idea for a music video to the track. It was most useful in that the group gave us a number of different ideas and suggestions for shots which have widen our possibilities of parts of the narrative and kind of video we are aiming for. We have been wanting to make our music video postmodern and noiresc and certain ideas from the focus group which we haven’t thought of will allow this to happen. The idea of having a female following the male character and “tormenting” him will make the video postmodern because it would portray the woman as having power over the man, challenging the ideological discourse of hegemonic masculinity. This idea was even more useful by the fact that it means we can possibly incorporate a female character into the music video which will fit the track more because the track is sung by a female artist. Another idea that made the focus group successful was the idea of a camera shot over the character’s shoulder focusing on their reflection, when discussing the focus group we developed this to an idea about a shot of the character being extremely pale and then cutting back to them being normal.

Overall, our audience research is useful because it shows us what our niche audience look for and expect in a music video for an alternative, dark garage song.