Focus group

1. Do you prefer the message of a music video to be clear or more ambiguous ?
2. Do you think that the use of black and white will add to or take away from the meaning of the song?
3.  Is it important to you that the lyrics within the song relate to the narrative of the video?
4. Would you prefer a romantic music video to be centred around the relationship or the loss of that relationship (a breakup)?
5. Do you prefer fast or slow paced videos?
6. which clip is more visually appealing to you? A or B 
7. What props do you think would best represent a breakup within a music video?
8. Would you prefer a music video to be from the perspective of one person or multiple? 
9. When you think of romance what is the first thing that comes to mind
10. What songs do you know of that are about romance? now what are the music videos like for these songs 
11. Do you find music videos about romance to be a realistic representation of real life? 
12. Can you provide an example of something you saw in a music video that particularly stood out to you?
13. What features in a music video do you consider to render it 'good'?

For our primary research we are going to be making a focus group with 6-8 people from the target audience that we would like our final music video to appeal to. In our focus group we will ask a questions on a variety of topics regarding audience and the style of music video that they would like to see.

However we did face some difficulties as  our focus group was slightly larger than expected and only a select few members of those involved actually participated in the discussion, therefore we did not receive the broadest range of answers since as expected some participants were more actively involved in the answering of questions than others.

Upon viewing the resultant footage of our focus group video we are able to find that our audience would prefer if our final music video was to be ambiguous and have an open ended narrative as those who we interviewed said that they would like to explore their own different interpretations of the video as they would feel like they could engage with the video and its narrative more as it feels more personal if they can apply their own perspective to it.

Those who we interviewed in our focus group also agreed that the use of black and white will add ambience to the video as they feel that it would make the video clearer as they will be able to distinguish which scenes are set in the past or present depending on whether they are in black and white or colour. This then relates to Barthes semantic code as the audience would have associated black and white with the past as music videos, when they first started to become popular would have been in black and white.

The audience also felt that it would be important for the lyrics of the song to relate to the narrative of the music video as they feel the lyrics relating to the narrative would add to the meaning of the song and is more likely to have a lasting impact on the audience as they will have both the visual and aural meanings from the video that are cohesive. The focus group also stated that they would prefer a romance music video to be slow paced as it would reflect the relationship blossoming and the connection between the two people growing, which they would prefer the music video to focus on over the breakup of the relationship.

Those who participated in our focus group listed some examples of props that they felt would symbolise romance these included

• Love Letters
• Photos of the couple together
• Roses
• Teddy Bears
• Places the couple have been together
• Text messages between the couple

This then relates to Barthes semantic code as the audience associate these items with romance and therefore we will include these props within our final music video so that it will conform to what the target audience considers to be genre conventions of a romantic music video.

Most of our audience expect to see lots of emotion within a romantic music video. Others mentioned the lyrics of the song being linked to emotion. Also, a storyline and happy ending was mentioned. Stereotypically, a romantic video would include two people falling in love and have a 'happily ever after'. However, in my groups video, we will include a storyline which shows a mixture of ups and downs within a relations and the emotions the characters are feeling shown, However we do would wish to subvert the stereotype of  a happy ending as the central theme of the song we have chosen for our music video is heartbreak.

Finally, the members of our focus group felt that the features of a music video that would render it to be good are a focus on emotion and the relationship growing between two people and if it was to be about a breakup to be about the happy times the couple had instead of it being about heartbreak. We also found that our audience are mainly female. This is very stereotypical as females tend to prefer romantic genres. In our music video, we will include young female characters within our video, which will help to sell our music video easier to the target audience.