Audience Feedback/Results

From my previous posts, you can see that I conducted three different types of audience research. Two of these are quantitative data and one of these is qualitative data, I thought this was important to use both in my research as it gives it variety and makes it more credible and reliable.

First was a poll that I put on my blog and emailed to all Media Studies students, asking them to fill it out. Over 30 people did it, which was a good number for my study to be successful. This and my questionnaire was collected as quantitative data which provides information which is easy to analyse statistically and fairly reliable.

The second type of audience research I did was in the form of a questionnaire. I created this using similar questions as the blog poll, but this time I handed it out to people who weren't Media studies student, as I feel Media students emboss some bias towards music videos as they have been studying it, whereas the people who don't only watch music videos for enjoyment. I managed to get 15 people who weren't Media students to fill in this questionnaire.

The final piece of audience research I did was in the form of a filmed focus group. I got three people I knew from Media Studies to answer some questions for me while being filmed. These questions were completely different to the ones used for my poll and questionnaire, as they required more of the people's opinions and their answers were the deciding factor for some important decisions I needed to make for my music video. There will be a separate post on the answers that the focus group gave in more detailed analysis. Unlike the other parts of my audience research, this one is in qualitative data which which is concerned with describing meaning, rather than with drawing statistical inferences. They provide a more in depth and rich description.

The questions were:

1. What do you think is the most important element of a music video and why?

2. Do you prefer a narrative music video without lip-sync or an abstract video with lip-sync? Why?

3. Give an example of how a music video has grabbed your attention and influenced you to buy the album. How did it do this?

4. Do you prefer music videos shot inside, outside, or a combination of both? Why do you prefer this?

5. How many different settings/filming locations should a video have in your opinion? Why?

6. Do you prefer a more cinematic and smooth style of cinematography or a more unsteady and documentary feel? Why?

7. What conventions would you associate with the country genre of music? Mise-en scene, cinematography, editing etc.

Results:

For the main results for my audience research, I put together the results of both the poll and the questionnaire. I have presented them below in pie charts so the information and quantitative data is much easier to interpret and analyse. There is a pie chart for each question asked.

What is the most important convention in a music video?

What type of music video do you prefer?

Where do you go to watch music videos?

Conclusion:

Overall, these results will help me clarify my target audience in full. The results tell me that my primary audience is female, they are aged between 16 and 19, they like indie, country and pop music, they watch music videos on YouTube, they prefer abstract and narrative music videos and they think mise-en-scene is the most important element of a music videos.

These results possess some characteristics of a middle class audience, due to the fact that this audience have access to YouTube etc.

These results also seem very similar to the classical country music audience, which makes my target audience conventional and appropriate.

My target audience will be clarified in a follow up blog post.