The Final Blog

“Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't”
-Robert Wyatt

This is a statement which I can fully understand. Before making the pop promo video I thought pop music and its videos were all very simplistic. Using simplistic music and visually attractive videos to target a younger audience. However, after planning and creating our own pop video I realized just how challenging this task was and how complicated pop music in fact was.

During the research and development stage of the pop video we as a group encountered many problems and difficulties. We had three main problems, the treatment, location and the song. The first problem we had was the song, we had chosen one song but then we got an opportunity to work with The Toy Hearts. This meant we had to think about whether or not we wanted to film the previous song (Up in the Clouds- Darwin Deez) or The Toy Hearts. Once we had decided on the song we then found difficulty thinking of a treatment for the song as we thought a performance video would suit them best but needed a way to make it original and interesting. This is how we came up with the orbiting camera. The third and final problem was in the location. We initially had planned to shoot at a very grand location in Winchester, which would make the environment for the performance very spectacular. Unfortunately this location fell through due influences out of our control. This meant we had to come up with a new location, in the end we used the TV Studio as we felt we could make the visual interesting through the spinning camera.

If we were to re-do I think we all decided that we probably wouldn’t use the same orbiting camera technique as we just felt it added a slightly comedic tone to our pop video. This is not the style of video we were aiming for so this was an oppositional reading.

Although we probably wouldn’t use this orbiting camera technique if we were to create the video again it was received very positively in the focus group. When we asked the focus group if they liked it they all but one thought it added something very interesting and different to the pop video which hadn’t been showcased in any other pop promo videos they had seen.

Director's Commentary - Audio Recording

The director's commentary we did for our pop promo video is above. The directors commentary was simply a voice recording of me and Storm commenting on certain aspects of the pop video whilst the visual was shown. The purpose of the directors commentary was to try and get the audience to understand better why we did certain things. It was also a way of getting the audience to engage better with the pop promo video as they understood it better.

Task 3: What I learnt from my audience feedback

We gathered a range of feedback of our pop promo video and our ancillary texts, the Digipak and the magazine advert. We collected the feedback from the target audience and from other audience demographics according to the JICTAR model. We also got the data from a focus group, YouTube a questionnaire and other sources. Once we had collected this feedback we looked to answer this question:

“What I learnt from my audience feedback”

When constructing our pop promo video we had to think very closely about what audience we were going to target in order to sell our band as a brand. We had to think according to JICTAR who we were aiming for. We decided that for our pop video we were aiming for A,B and C’s. This is the higher spectrum in the socioeconomic climate, they have more interest in high culture and would be more interested in folk music. . This accounts for 50% of the population in the UK. We were also targeting a mixture of males and females, however some may believe we were targeting males more due to the two attractive female members of the band. Our main target age group is 16-25 and then 25-60, this audience would be fairly well educated as the video is fairly abstract. We also had to think about our audience’s aspirations, we decided that these were to make money and to retire at a young age and live comfortably. We didn’t really have a particular area for our target audience to live in, however on a real movie or pop video they would have specific areas and locations where the audience would live.

Unfortunately, we were unable to put the video up on www.youtube.com. This made it difficult to gauge quite how popular the video was, as we couldn’t count views or see comments. The only way of having a similar experience take place was to show it to family, friends and peers. We tried to do this as much as possible as we needed to try and get an all round view of how the video was received.

To try and get some audience feedback we held a focus group. This consisted of 11 16-18 year olds, this was one of our target audiences so was very helpful. There were 5 males in the room and 6 females. We had a very lively discussion about their thoughts and opinions on our pop promo video. We wanted to ask this group a few questions about out pop promo video. This was so that we knew what to do better in future; it would also show what we should avoid. We wanted to ask this focus group several questions about the video. For example: Did they enjoy it? Did they understand the message? How might it be improved? We decided to hold a focus group as opposed to a questionnaire or any other means of data collection for many reasons. The main reason was that we could follow up any answers that we found interesting or helpful to our data collection. This method is also instant, which means less time is wasted handing out questionnaires or asking people to fill them out. It is also very easy to see whether people are being truthful, this is essential for us as younger people may be more inclined to fill out a questionnaire slightly sarcastically. We also wanted to ensure all data collected was as accurate as possible. We had to write a set of questions to ask our focus group; we had to think very carefully about exactly what we were trying to find out. We wrote our questions and kept them very open to ensure the focus group had to think about the answer rather than just a yes or no answer. The questions we asked are listed below, the answers are listed below the questions:

1) What did you think of the video overall?

“We couldn’t understand the lyrics” “It was very amusing”

2) What message do you think was being portrayed?

“All about having a good time” “Having a fun, carefree time”

3) Do you agree with this message?

“Yes, they looked like they were having a lot of fun whilst shooting the video” “This is what pop music is about, having fun”

4) What narrative do you believe was being shown?

“I don’t believe there was any narrative being portrayed” “If there was a narrative, it was unclear”

5) How is each member of the band represented?

“They all have a natural chemistry” “They look quirky, slightly odd” “The blonde girl looks slightly in your face” “They all look very natural” “They all bring a different aspect to the image of the band, all individual”

6) Do you think they had the potential to be stars? (This was to see if they had what Richard Dyer defined as “stardom”)

“Not in England, no” “Possibly in Europe” “They look too random to be stars”

7) Is the video entertaining?

“It was at the beginning but began to feel slightly repetitive” “It was very different to any other pop video, so yes” “It was broken up nicely by the different backgrounds”

8) Do you identify with any of the band member? (This was to see if the audience were provided with “personal identification” in terms of Blumler and Katz theory)

“No, they are too old for us to identify with” “They are in too much of a niche market to identify with”

9))What do you think could be improved?

“More time focused on their faces” “Slower spinning” “Stop the spinning every now and then to allow a rest”

10) Did you find the spinning distracting?

“Yes, slightly” “Only towards the end of the video”

11) What would you give the video out of 10?

“7” “5” “8” “9”

We found the answers to these questions all fairly positive and what we had hoped for. We were very pleased of how highly they rated out pop video on a scale of 1 to 10, especially given that the video is targeted at more of an older audience.

As well as the focus group we also showed the pop promo video to a lot of our friends, family and peers. This was to try and get another form of audience feedback, as we weren’t able to put the video on YouTube. When we showed the video a lot of people commented on how much they liked the spinning aspect of the video. They really liked the originality of it, the fact it had never been done in a famous pop video before was something they loved. They did also think that the video could’ve done with a bit more of a narrative to the video as they felt it was slightly repetitive after a while. They really liked the stage setting towards the end of the video as they felt it was showing this band in their natural atmosphere.

Blumler and Katz are 2 sociologists. Their theory states that a media product should provide the audience with 4 aspects, these are: Diversion, Surveillance, Personal identification and Personal relationships. We looked to apply this theory to our pop promo video:

1) DIVERSION
During our focus group we asked them whether they were entertained by the pop promo video. This is very essential as Khuleshov states that a media text has to entertain the viewer for 70% of the time to provide the audience with a sense of diversion. 7 of the 11 focus group said that they were entertained for 100% of the pop promo video so were subsequently diverted. The other 3 members of the group were not entertained were only entertained for 50% of the time so were not provided with diversion.

2) SURVEILLANCE
Surveillance means providing an audience with a feed of information from the outside world. This is very difficult to portray through pop promo videos, however some acts, such as Live8 and U2 have been able to do it. These are called Electronic Shaman’s in Carlsson’s terms.

3) PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION
In our pop promo video we had the two attractive and young girls then the older men. We were aiming for the girls in our focus group to identify with the younger girls in the group. However none of them said they identified with them. The boys in the group also said they were unable to identify with the male members of the group, as they were all quite a lot older than them.

4) PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

When asking the focus group if they felt any relationships were formed we had very mixed responses. Most of the group, 9 of the eleven said they didn’t feel as though any relationship was formed. This may have been due to the fact that the band were all quite a lot older than most of the focus group.

Stuart Hall’s is another theorist that can apply to the pop video and its audience. His theory states that a media producer communicated a preferred meaning through a media text. The audience then has one of three reading, preferred reading, oppositional reading or a negotiated reading. This can be applied to our pop video, we as producers communicated a preferred meaning through our media text (the pop promo video). Our target audience then had one of three of the readings, meaning they accept the message, negotiated meaning they partially accept the message and oppositional, meaning they oppose the meaning and reject it. We saw this same theory apply to our pop video during our focus group. Around 8 out of the 11 members said they accepted the message that they were having fun and enjoying themselves. However, different age groups may see this is different ways. Some older may think they are having sexualised fun. Whereas younger people would think more obviously, just fun.

Another theorist that can be applied is Aristotle. Although his theory is not specifically designed with television in mind he can still be applied. His theory has 3 different categories: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos (credibility) means convincing by the character of the author. These “characters” can be anything from pop stars to presidents. The second category of Aristotle’s categories is Pathos (emotional), this means persuading by appealing to the watcher’s emotions. Our media product didn’t include this; this was to subvert conventions of other pop videos. The third and final of Aristotle’s categories is Logos, this means persuading by the use of reasoning or writing.

If we were to re-make our pop promo video we probably would’ve included more of a narrative. This is because we found that the focus group believed more of a narrative would’ve helped the story vary. We also may have considered the orbiting camera shot a little more to see how different audiences responded to it. This was because the audience said that the spinning became slightly tiresome after a while and made the video slightly confusing. The spinning camera also meant that audiences weren’t able to engage with the band members, as there was no close up shots.