Focus Group Analysis

I used Gemma and Kirsten as my focus group because they listen to indie and pop music and therefore would be able to answer my questions. I asked them about music videos and their opinions on them. They both agreed that they watch two or three music videos per week. This is a good amount for them to be able to answer my questions and give a rounded response to the video I showed them. When I asked them why they watched music videos, Gemma said that she wanted to see whether they match the song. This is something I can take and use when I plan my own music video. I will need to look at the lyrics and the tone of the song to create a video that matches. I went on to ask why it was important for the video to match the song and they replied that the video won’t make sense otherwise. This would make it less enjoyable and therefore wouldn't be very popular so wouldn't fit its purpose of promoting the song and the artist. This is why it is really important that my own music video matches the song. I decided I wanted my music video to be narrative based because I think that will make it more interesting so I needed to find out whether people preferred to see the artist/band members or actors in the video. Both Gemma and Kirsten preferred seeing the artist or band members in the video because they thought that it made more sense to have them featuring rather than random other people. For my own video, I now have to decide whether I want the artist to feature in the video as part of the narrative or just separately singing.

As part of my questioning I showed them the music video for Overjoyed by Bastille. They liked it because “it was mysterious and interesting.” This implies that there were a lot of enigma codes throughout the video. This is something that I can include in my own video because it will make the video more engaging and therefore increase the interest in the song. Although they said they liked the video at the start they said that the narrative wasn't very clear which meant they didn't quite understand the video and therefore didn't enjoy it as much as they could have. They said this was due to the narrative only really focusing on one character which made it a bit boring. For my own video I will need to think about making the narrative well structured and clear and maybe include more characters so that it keeps the audience interested. Gemma gave the example of Katy Perry’s music video for Last Friday Night saying it was really good because there were lots of people involved. I don’t think we will be able to replicate that in our own video but it is an interesting point that can help when thinking about how many actors and actresses we will need.

I wanted to know if there were any specific things that they liked to see in music videos and they concluded that they liked it when aesthetically pleasing boys are featured in the video. They said this made it more enjoyable for them. I don’t think this is a necessity for our own video because I think it is possible to make an attention grabbing video through other factors like enigma codes, the setting and the narrative.

It is essential that the music video promoted the band so it was interesting that Kirsten and Gemma thought that this music video didn’t help to promote Bastille at all. They said that because their name didn’t appear and because we didn’t see any of the band members in it, it wasn’t promoting them very well. The only sign that this was one of their music videos was their trademark triangle logo which briefly appeared at the start. For my own video I need to make it clear who the artist is and preferable have them appear in the video so it is clear to the audience who the artist is so they can relate the song to them.