Audience Questionnaire Results

I think I have given the questionnaires long enough time to be completed by anyone who wants to complete them now, so I've shut down the questionnaire online. In total, we had 34 responses, which I am really pleased with, as I didn't really think we would get that many at all, and said to myself that I would be happy with 20. Below, I have shown the results from each individual question, using graphs and tables to help distinguish our audiences. Now obviously, we were always going to get some silly responses, so I have left some of the stupid written responses out!

Question 1 - What gender are you?

Male - 16
Female - 15
Skipped Question - 3

Not really a difficult question, so why 3 people skipped it is beyond me, but never mind!

 This is sort of what we expected to see, a good mix of both male and female people who responded to the questionnaire.

Question 2 - How old are you?

This again, is what we expected top see from the results. If you watched our Target Audience video, you will remember that teenagers were the main age group that we wanted to target, so the fact that 69% of the people who filled out the questionnaire were between the ages of 16 and 25 was something that we always expected.

Question 3 - Do you like it when the lyrics match with what is happening in the video?

An overwhelming majority of the people who filled out the questionnaire said that they preferred it when the lyrics match with what is happening in the video. So from this, we know that we definitely want the lyrics to relate to the visuals, much like David Gauntlett's theory, of which I studied in the previous blog post.

Question 4 - What aspects of a music video make it more interesting for you to watch?

I couldn't produce a graph on this question as the user had to actually write in the answer themselves, as appose to it being multiple choice. Some of the answers on this question were either not filled in, or the answers were just so ridiculous that there's no point in me putting them in. Below are all of the (sensible) answers that we received. 

DIFFERENT CAMERA ANGLES

VARIETY OF SCENES/ACTION

DANCING AND BRIGHT COLOURS

SURREALISM

SPECIAL EFFECTS

A CLEAR STORY

COMPLETE STORYLINE

CINEMATOGRAPHY

UNIQUE

WHERE IT IS FILMED

DIFFERENT

Quite a mix of different answers here, but the general feeling is that our audience what to see a clear storyline, with bright colours and dancing. We know that we can easily achieve this, so we now have quite a few building blocks to start with in our music video. 

Question 5 - Do you prefer to see a music video which is funny or serious?

Pretty even on this one, so I think that we should either go with a funny video, a serious one, or maybe even do a music video which has a bit of both in it.

Question 6 - Do you like to see dance routines?

It's clear that the audience want to see some sort of dance routine ion our video, so we will be sure to include one. Whether it be just me, both me and jack or a whole group of people.there will definitely be a dance routine of some sort in our music video.

Question 7 - Do you like Olly Murs?

A vast majority of the respondees either said that they liked Olly Murs, or said that they didn't mnd him, so I would be happy to still do the Dance With Me Tonight video, but I think we still may need to rethink or song, as we are both going off the idea of an Olly Murs video.

Question 8 - What is your favourite music video and why?

Some of the responses we got for this question are shown below:

MICHAEL JACKSON - THRILLER

SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA - DON'T YOU WORRY CHILD

GANGNAM STYLE

LITTLE MIX - WINGS

TAKE THAT - UP ALL NIGHT

BRUNO MARS - LOCKED OUT OF HEAVEN

There were quite a few more but I won't list them all. Overall I think that this was a really really useful exercise and I'm really glad that we did it as we have got some really great ideas from it.

C x

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the way in which texts refer to other media texts that producers assume audiences will recognise. One of pleasures that audiences experience is the joy of recognition. One form of this pleasure comes in recognising the reference in one media text to other media texts. This process of referencing is called intertextuality.

A good example of intertextuality is parodies, and one which I discovered when searching through music videos was the two below. The first one is Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, which was made first. Then, take a look at Fat Les' Vindaloo and see if you can spot any similarities!

Fat Les pretty much takes the mick out of the Verve for the whole of this music video, and it's pretty funny to watch, especially if you're familiar with the original music video from The Verve. This parody probably attracted a lot of media attention and is probably why it was such a big hit with the footballing world, as it was obviously made for the England football team for the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

Another example of intertextuality is s song by 30 Seconds To Mars called bury me. Have a watch and see if you can pick up the clues!

This obviously is very similar to the fantastic film 'The Shining', and it hasn't been done as a parody by 30 Seconds To Mars, but more of a pastiche. Pastiche is the imitation of a text's features by another text.  It could be in the same style of feature similar motifs or even be a copy of the original. This video relates a lot back to The Shining, and again if you are familiar with the film you would have picked this up immediately.

In terms of our music video, we haven't made plans to use blindingly obvious intertextuality, but it may be that we decide to use some sublte bits of intertextuality within the video, which might be harder to spot.

Andrew Goodwin & Laura Mulvey Theories

I am going to look at two different Media Studies practitioners, and look at both of their different economic theories. I will look at David Gauntlett and Laura Mulvey.

DAVID GAUNTLETT

Goodwin identified six key aspects the audience should look for when analysing a music video. They are:

1) A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals; illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.

2) A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals; illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.

3) Genre related style and iconography present. 

4) Multiple close up shots of the main image or artist.

5) Voyeurism plays a big part, especially in the relation to females. 

6) Intertextual references to other media texts present.

LAURA MULVEY

Mulvey looked at how audiences look at people within the text, particularly women. She described it as the 'male gaze', meaning that film audiences have to 'view' characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. It can be looked at in 3 different ways:

1) How men look at women

2) How women look at themselves 

3) How women look at other women. 

Features of the males gaze are the fact that the camera lingers on every curve of the female body and events which occur to women, are presented largely in the context of a mans reaction to these events. 

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I am going to apply these to a music video to see if I can relate any of the points he makes to a music video itself. The video I am going to analyse is Kanye West ft Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger. It isn't necessarily a music video I am directly interested in but I like that it has a very simplistic look and can easily be related to Gauntlett's theory. Watch the video below. 

David Gauntlett 

I noticed quite a few times that the lyrics matched with the picture in the video, so I took a screen grab to illustrate this. 

Lyrics: 'From what I heard she got a Baby By Busta'

Watching this video made me realise that it is a very illustrative music video, meaning that the lyrics are often shown through a picture, or even by the lyrics being shown on the screen. It is a simplistic but effective music video which illustrates the lyrics, I think by doing this it connects with the audience as they can join in with the song and learn the lyrics quicker which makes both the song and video successful as it is catchy and easy to remember. 

In Gold digger the main focus of the video is the sleekness of Kanye West surrounded by these ‘Gold diggers,’ to portray this most of the shot used for Kanye and Jamie Foxx are close up shots of their faces. I would say by using such close up shots it is meant to create a connection between the audience and the artist but in this case it seems as though Kanye is ignoring the audience as he never gives eye contact, as he is either wearing glasses or has his back to the camera as though he doesn’t care. This emphasises Gauntlett's point of 'multiple close up shots of main artist'.

Laura Mulvey 

Voyeurism pays a big part in this video, which also relates back to Gauntlett's theory. Take a look at the definition of 'voyeurism' below. 

The woman in the video is used to portray a sexy woman, as she suggestively moves around in the shots that she is in, trying to seduce the audience. Gold digger contains sexual voyeurism throughout the video. Imagery of beautiful half naked women acting provocatively are present through the video which creates a sex appeal toward the them which is stereotypical of the R&B genre. The camera positioning is objectifying the females as sex objects, this is done by the camera giving the point of view shot from both Kanye and Jamie’s point of view.

I think my going through this music video and comparing the two theories I now understand them much more than I did before, and think that this has been a really useful exercise. 

C x

3 Genres of Music Videos

The next part of the syllabus asks us to look at 3 different genres of music video, and analyse them, and see how they are all different from each other.

The first song I have chose is a love song, and the classic by 'Hero' by Enrique Iglasias. Watch the video below!

If you were to watch this video on mute, it wouldn't take a genius to work out that it was a love song, just by the way that the camera zooms in on the woman suggestively, and we see Enrique looking very sad and depressed, playing a piano, singing his heart out for the girl. The basic plot of the video is that  Enrique Iglesias and Jennifer Love Hewitt stole a bunch of money from mobsters, and instead of escaping from where they stole the money from Mexico like you're supposed to if you just robbed somebody, they pull over like every 50 feet to make out a lot and they get caught.All of this making out confirms for us that this video is about a couple who are madly in love, and want to spend the rest of their lvies together. They do end up getting caught, and Enrique ends up getting shot by police, and dies in the arms of Jennifer as the rain pours around them, and police lights glow in the background.

This, in conclusion is a very cliched love story, maybe similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet?. I don't think the lyrics of this song really tell the story of whats goping on in the video, and to be hoenst, it's all a bit confusing for me. Anyway, the next video I'm going to analyse is a modern pop video, a recently released simgle called Candy, sung by the fantasic Robbie Williams.

This video was only released a couple of months ago, and the first thing I realised when I watched the video was how many ridiculous special effects Robbie Williams had used in this music video, and it really doesn't make much sense at all. But what from what I can gather, the woman who he is following round in the video thinks she's made of 'Candy' and thinks she's untouchable. But in this video Robbie is run over several times, and is thrown through glass windows and goes through windscreens of cars, which to be honest is all a little bit unnecessary! However, Robbie Williams is quite an excentric person, and I think the only reason he used all these special effects was because, quite simply, he could!

So a video far different from the Enrique Iglasias one, much more modern, and taking advantage of the special effects that are available to the music industry today. The final video I am going to analyse is a Rock song, and Bon Jovi - Living On A Prayer. Watch below.

This music video si again very different from all of the other two music videos that we have seen. It is a very typical 'rockstar' music video and just shows archive footage of a rehearsal video by Bon Jovi, which is in black and white, and then in the second half of the vidoe, the video is then in colour, and they are performing in front of a live crowd. No special effects have been used in this video at all, and I think it juist goes to show that less is more, and sometiems you don't need special effects and fancy technology to make a great music video.

Watching and analysing these three music videos has made me realise that there is so much that can be done with a music video, and the sky really is the limit. This task has just made me want to crack on with our own video even more, and I am really excited to get filimg.

C x

Lip Synchronisation Task

The syllabus tells us that for one of our preliminary tasks we have to lip sync to the first thirty seconds to a song of our choice. Jack and I decided to choose a popualr song by The Script called The Man Who Can't Be Moved'

This is a song that I am very familiar with, and I know all of the words to, so I imagined that it would be reasonably easy to do. We decided to do a narrative music video, meaning that a story was being told in the music video, and that the lyrics of the song matched what was happening on screen. So the song is about a man who is heartbroken, and wants the girl that he first saw in the street to wait for her just incase she was to ever come back. So we simply found a corner of the school playground, and decided that this would be where we would film. We then played the song through my phone and I 'mimed' along to it, but this turned out to be a lot more difficult that I first thought it would be, as I quickly learnt that you have to open your mouth much wider than necessary when miming otherwise it just looks like you're mumbling when you watch it back on the video camera. We then decided that the video would be made to look better if I was to sit down with cardboard on me to make me look 'homeless'. The photo below shows us in the filming process.

I had an idea that I thought would work really well for the final line of our clip, the lyrics sang "Got some words on cardboard, got your picture in my hand, saying if you see this girl can you tell her where I am". So I thought it would be a good idea to write "If you see this girl can you tell her where I am" on a piece of cardboard as I sang along to the lyrics. In hindsight, this probably wasn't a very good idea as it was really hard to sync the song with me miming each individual word. In terms of editing, it was extremely fiddly and time consuming, and this was only for a thirty second clip of a song, so editing the final product was going to take a very very long time. The video was put onto out  Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MitchellCooperProductions) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/MCProductions02) pages. The final product is shown below.

Overall, I was quite disappointed with this task and felt that we could have done a lot better than we did, so if we get the time, I would like us to try again with the lip sync task. The lip sync was appalling compared to some of the better ones that we have seen.

C x

Focus Group Interviews

The next stage for us was to conduct Focus Group Interviews with our peers in the school. We firstly asked people who were free during our Media lesson if they wanted to answer a few questions. However, we find this quite difficult as they didn't tale it as seriously as we would have liked them to, and when it came to editing the video we realised that the footage was useless as we got no decent information or ideas out of the people we asked. So next lesson, asked Frankie, Jenny and Emily to help us, who are all from the year below, two of which do Media Studies also. Instead of doing it in the busy common room where we had done it before, we did it in the Media Studies classroom where it was much quieter and the girls were unlikely to mess around. 

We didn't actually have set questions, we just sort of decided that we were going to improvise, and ask questions that we felt were relevant to ask. I think that this worked to our advantage as we weren't being very formal. and asking set questions, so I think this immediately made the girls feel at ease. So we just hit the record button, and started talking, and managed to talk for over fifteen minutes, which I was really pleased with as we knew we could get a good five minutes of footage out of after we had cut and edited it all. We got some really valuable feedback from the three of them as we pitched our ideas to them and asked them what they thought of them ideas and then asked them what they thought would work better. The editing process took longer than I had first imagined but we got there eventually, and uploaded the footage onto our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/MitchellCooperProductions).

The feedback I got from the three girls made me think that I might need to reconsider our song choice. This wasn't because 'Dance With Me Tonight' was unpopular with them, it was just that it wasn't as well taken as I would have liked it to be. I decided that the best thing to do was conduct another focus group interview. This time with the Year 11's who just so happened to be on a Sixth Form taster day, so we had around ten people in the interview this time, compared to the three we had before. This interview went really really well and it was great to get some more opinions out of the group I am still in the process of editing this interview as it was much longer than the other one but as soon as I have finished editing this second focus group interview it will be put straight up onto out Facebook, Twiter & YouTube pages. 

C x

Audience Questionnaires

The next stage of our planning is asking us to create an audience questionnaire for people to fill in so that we can determine whether 'Dance With Me Tonight' is the right song for us to go ahead with, and if our target audience would like to see a song like that produced by Jack and I. The aim for us both this year is to incorporate as much of David Gauntlet's Web 2.0 as we possibly can. I think this is the right thing to as we are now in the 21st century and technology is advancing faster than ever before, and Jack and I can massively take advantage of this.

With this in mind, we decided not to go with the traditional questionnaire method of printing them out, and then asking people to write their opinions on paper. Instead, we decided to incorporate Web 2.0 into this, and created a questionnaire online for people to fill out themselves. and then the answers they submitted would all be grouped together for us, and in the click of a button, the majority vote would be there for Jack and I to see. The website was really user friendly and it took us no time at all to create the questionnaire. If you are reading this, and have not yet completed the questionnaire, please follow the link below and fill it out, it'll take you two minutes, if that!

http://www.supersimplesurvey.com/dashboard/Survey.aspx?ID=1262

When the user follows the link they are taken to a welcome page, which shows a small message from Jack and I, thanking them for taking the time to fill out the questionnaire. The screenshot below shows what the user would see when they follow the link above. 

We will put the link onto our Twitter (https://twitter.com/MCPRODUCTIONS02), our Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MitchellCooperProductions) and on both of our personal Twitter and Facebook accounts, to ensure that we get as many people as possible to fill out the questionnaire. 

I will give the questionnaire a day or two to be completed by our fan base, and then blog the results, and what we learnt from them.

C x 

Introduction & Target Audience

Hi everyone, long time no see, I'm back again on Blogger to track our progress of our A2 Advanced Production, which this year tells us to make a music video, using a song of our choice. This year, I have teamed up with Jack, as Euan felt that he would work better if he went on his own. This is because of the fact that we are both into very different styles of music, and it would be difficult for us to work effectively together, so I feel that this is the right decision to make as it allows us to reach our maximum potential without doing something we don't want to do. Take a look below at some of the snapshots.

We were absolutely delighted with the amount of likes that we are getting on our Facebook page, and even as I type this I am still getting notifications on my phone telling me that someone else has liked the page, which is brilliant. Unfortunately, the YouTube and Twitter accounts haven't been quite as successful, but we are still trying to get people to follow/subscribe to us.

Enhancing the use of Web 2.0 and digital technologies ever Jack and I decided to investigate the use of green screens in our video. By researching online, we discovered that using just green paper would be efficient enough for us to get the desired effect. So we went into an unused room in the school, and covered one whole wall of the room with green paper. Once we had done this we decided to put it to the test, and use the green screen in our first video, Target Audience, which you can watch below.

We said in that video that the song we wee going to use was Olly Murs and Dance With Me Tonight, but this could still possibly change, as we still need to conduct our focus group interviews, which we will be doing in the next day or two. There's still a very long way to go in this project, but I am really pleased with our progress so far and cant wait to stuck in the filming.

More posts to come very soon!

C x