Target audience results - Miss Miller

1. Are you male or female?
2. How old are you?
3. Do you prefer your music videos to be..                                                                                        a) Narrative b) Concept c) Performance
4. What is your favourite music video and why?
5. What setting do you prefer in a music video and why?
6. What gender do you prefer in a music video..                                                                                a) Female b) Male c) Both
7. Whats your favourite music video and why?
8. Who's your favourite music artist and why?
9. In your own opinion, what makes a good music video?
10. Do you like the artist to be featured in the music video and why?

When planning our music video we had to carry out a questionnaire in order to collect information based on our genre and artist, we gave it out to 40 individuals all from different ages and genders. We used a large sample to guarantee that our results would be representative and to gain the perception and opinions of all different audiences. With these results we can chose certain aspects of how we will create our music video for example the setting, characters, theme and inspirations fit to our specific target audience.

From our results we found out that 75% of the people we asked like to see the artist within the music video, when asked why they revealed that they chose that answer they said that it was because they like to be able to recognise who is singing and can connect to them on a better level when they are featured within the music video. Therefore we will have our artist featuring in our music video throughout, so that the audience can connect with her and become familiar with who she is.

When we asked who is your favourite music video, the majority of the results showed that Ed Sheeran was their choice, then in close second Sam Smith. We believe this can be to our advantage, because the genre of these two artists is also soul, therefore we know that a large section of our audience enjoy listening to soul songs and in result we can use the opinions of the people we asked as they fit our target audience. One direction and Katy Perry came in with the lowest percentages and this would be because they fit into the pop genre, from this we will be careful not to include any conventions that could be misinterpreted as pop. 

The majority of the people we questioned were from the ages 16-20 and this was because they were the people who were most available to ask, however we also asked a reasonable amount of people from the other, older age categories, therefore our results should be representative of ages from 16-50.  

We asked both male and females when giving our our questionnaire as we wanted to receive information that could be representative of both genders, we happened to question a few more female people however we are sure that this did not effect our results. However using more females was more beneficial as they were more willing to expand on their answers and give us a more descriptive opinion.

53% of the people we questioned also said that they prefer the narrative theme the most, therefore we would use a story to convey the deeper meanings of the lyrics, however 35% of people also preferred the performance theme, therefore our music video will feature the artist singing. Our audience enjoy these two concepts because they believe the narration gives them a better understanding of what the artist was trying to portray when writing the lyrics and they like the performance concept so they can give recognition to the artists talents. 

When asked which setting was preferred in a music video, the answer with the highest percentage was none with 35%, No background meant that there would be a backdrop, or a plain background that meant the artist/characters would be more in focus of the shot. I believe people chose this option because it would grab there attention the most as it allows them to connect to whoever in on the screen. A close second was Public Location at 28% and then Home at 23%, this helped us decide that when shooting our music video we could go to any location and still fulfil our audiences wants, as they enjoy a variety and surprise when choosing the location of the music video. The home setting also collected a high percentage because it is typically a conventional setting for the soul genre, as it is very personal. 

The results from the question 'Who do you prefer in a music video?' showed that the majority (50%) prefer there to be both male and female characters in the music video, at 33% was the female choice and 18% was the male choice. We believe we received these results in connection to the fact that most people prefer the narrative and storyline theme, therefore the female and male in the video would represent the narration, which would stereotypically be a love story within the soul genre.  

When asked what is your favourite music video, Sam Smith - Not The Only One won with 37% of the results, this shows that the audience enjoy watching soul videos with a love story narrative, this means we can incorporate ideas from previously made soul music videos. Ed Sheeran - Sing came in at second with 28% which also shows how enthusiastic people are about the soul genre as the other two options that did not receive as many votes are both pop. 

From my research we have discovered what engages and entertains individuals from our target audience and can incorporate this into my music video. From our research we discovered that the preferred genre was dance at 43%, which was most probably because the majority of the people we asked were younger. However we decided to do our music video on soul, which was a close second at 30% as we believed we would be more capable and creative filming a music video from the soul genre, which was a close second. This probably was because they believe they can connect to the artist on a deeper level and relate to them, therefore from this we would try to include a lot closeups to present all of the strong emotions through facial expressions.

We also received other information that contributed to our decision of choosing to have a narrative for our music, which was that 35% of the people we asked found that in their opinion a storyline made a good music video, we also found that 22% thought dance routines make a music video and 14% found that the costumes used make a good music video.

If we were to carry out research again we would be most likely to change the questions so that we would receive a more detailed response from our questionies. As you can see in the bottom pie chart, one of the popular preferred setting from our sample was none, which means they enjoy watching music videos on a back drop so that they are not distracted from the artist of narrative. However having the setting of a public location was equally as preferred, this would include places such as the park, streets, shopping centres, train stations etc.

A subculture is a branch off from mainstream culture embracing it's own unique style. Often times, as more and more people do it, pieces of various subcultures become mainstream. Hebdige came to the conclusion that although some people think subcultures only appear to be different, deep down they are the same, he says if you look deeper, there is enough richness to warrant renaming ‘subcultures’ as ‘little cultures’. We believe that our artist Paloma Faith belongs to many of her own little subcultures, such as Burlesque, Vintage and Indie. Paloma shows style from all of these cultures from the way she dresses to the way she sings, her outfits are normally very flamboyant and raunchy which applies to the burlesque culture, however she can dress very diverse such as indie, as well as glamourous and demode from the vintage style. From this we can apply her very assorted style into our music video by having a variety of outfits and settings to portray how diverse she is. If we contribute small parts of each style into the video we can also reach out to a wider audience,