Holly Taylor

Focus Group Summary of Final Product

As part of my market research, I created a focus group where I published a rough draft of our music video onto a closed Facebook group for people to comment accordingly with the questions I had set for the focus group to answer. In the focus group, I presented a set of five questions for the participants to answer, which are listed here:

1. What do you think are the best points of my music video?2. How would you improve my music video?

3. Do you think the blue tint to the music video is effective in creating a dream like

atmosphere as intended?

4. Has the Indie genre been conveyed through costume, editing etc.

5. Do you feel like the narrative was successfully conveyed and was understandable through the editing.

The first question was a question aimed at gathering the focus group’s opinions on their favourite parts of the music video. People commented on the narrative as a very strong point of our music video, with one of the people saying that “ I really enjoyed the overall narrative because it was different from a typical ‘pop’ or ‘chart’ music video” which is a positive comment as we intended the narrative of the music video to be unconventional and different from what is typically seen in music videos currently. People also commented on the reverse sequence that we included in the music video midway through the narrative, as they thought that the reverse sequence effectively conveyed the conflicting emotions that the male protagonist was feeling in regards to his female love interest. Others also commented on the cinematography featured in our music video, with people commenting on the “shaky” hand held camera that was used at the beginning of the music video. They commented on this use of cinematography as they thought that it helped to “foreshadow the reveal showing he’s insane” which was what we intended the effect of the hand held shaky camera to portray.

The next question asked how the viewers of my music video would improve it. One response from a participant said that “I would maybe try tracking instead of an artificial zoom to give a smoother effect” this is something we were aware of when we were filming the shot, however, when we used a tracking shot as an alternative with a tripod, the shot didn’t show the complete image of the flowers as we intended and also was shaky because of when we had to lift the tripod to track the camera towards the flowers and so we could not effectively fix this suggestion for improvement. Another participant said that the lip syncing towards the end of the video looked odd, this was because when we were filming this particular scene, the male actor in the video couldn’t sing the words in time with the lyrics and so instead during the editing process, we had to slow the speed of the clip down to sync the lip-syncing with the actual song.

The next question asked whether the blue tint colour overlay was effective in creating a dream like atmosphere as was intended during the editing process. Everyone who commented said that the blue colour overlay effect was very effective in creating the dream like atmosphere. Participants said “ Definitely, it gave a very nostalgic feel and made it appear as if it’s a

Holly Taylor

believable fantasy. The soft focus used also helps convey this effect.” and another said “yes, the blue tint adds a dream like quality to the video, made the video seem foggy which added to the creepy atmosphere” which is two positive responses on the blue tint as we have effectively applied the blue colour overlay in order to create a dreamlike atmosphere as intended.

The next question I asked was whether the Indie genre had been conveyed through costume and editing. Overall people commented saying that this was conveyed successfully, which is positive as this is an aspect we intended. Someone said “clothing seems indie as it seems like something Morrissey would wear, a hipster idol that indie is associated with, text at beginning that fades out is typical of The Smiths videos like This Charming Man so that is a convention associated with Indie” which is positive as this is what we intended when we chose the type of costume such as the green parka coat the female character was wearing. Another participant commented on the music video saying “Yes, the overall style of the video fits the conventions of an indie genre music video. The costumes looked laid back and casual, the narrative fits the song well and the strangeness of the narrative also fits in with typical indie/alternative conventions”. Which again, is positive as our overall intention was to convey the indie genre successfully.

The final question asked whether the narrative was conveyed and easily understandable, in particular through the use of editing. The participants of the focus group commented that the narrative was easily understandable, but still interesting, as one participant commented “ Yes, the start of the video appeared to be a very straight forward romance narrative however as it unveiled it was clear that his girlfriend wasn’t real. I way it was edited made it easy to understand while still successfully getting the message across.” Another said “The beginning of the narrative was typical of a relationship shown in a music video, whilst as the narrative continued, it became clearer that his girlfriend was in his imagination. The editing made the narrative easy to understand as the reflexivity suggests that the male character is recalling past experiences with his girlfriend and this allowed a nostalgic feel to the narrative.” And so, the video successfully conveyed the narrative but was still engaging with the rewind feature that occurred midway through the narrative. Overall, the response received on the music video was very positive and the participants commented on the positive aspects of the video, such as the blue colour overlay and the cinematography and editing which allowed for the video to convey the narrative we used in our music video. We tried to improve the first draft of the music video based on the focus group response we received, for the final draft we edited the music video in the particular scene where the male and female are sat on the bench towards the narrative of the music video, to appear more smoother and overall more aesthetically appealing.