Focus Group

The first question we asked was what the group thought would suit the song, Performance, Narrative or a mix of both. The responses we got from the group of 6 all said that a mix of narrative and performance would suit our song best. This means that our audience would prefer a promo that has both narrative and performance in it, so we will go for one that uses both. This helped us decide because we were caught between pure performance and the mix of both. This has helped us make the final decision on a mix of both performance and narrative.

 

Our second question asked about if they liked our idea or not, the idea we put forward was to create a narrative and performance based music video. It will involve two characters, a male and female. The female will be the main part of the performance along with band shots. The narrative shows the female character at war with her inner self (the zombie). The male character shows the conflicting relationship and how relationships can die out. It also shows a cheating relationship.

 

The group all wrote down that the idea was good and that they think it could work well, this tells us that our target audience, which our group where made up of, enjoy the idea and would like to see it done, this gave us confirmation on their likes and dislikes within the music video, all the comments also said that they liked the idea and none where negative and everyone liked it. All of the group said it would be “interesting” and a one said it could “create meanings”, two people also detailed how the lyrics would suit the theme and how people can change in a relationship.

 

The third question we asked was about mise-en-scene and what the group would think to be effect. We got a verity of different responses such as a house, a restraint and a public place. This gave us some interesting ideas of what we could do, especially to fit the lyrics. For example, The first part of the song, which talks about the singer being in regret and confusion, would be good to be shot at a house, this would make a more personal feeling for the audience to relate to the promo. The other ideas of a romantic place or a restaurant could also be used within the promo as a flashback of the couple together, the audience also said this would work so it may be a good idea to use.

 

We also asked about lighting and costume as part of mise-en-scene in this question, All of the focus group said that the costume should be “normal” clothes, such as jeans and t-shirts, this also fits in with our target audience so that is the idea we will use. They also said that the lighting should be darker but not very dark. This would be a very good idea as the lighting could reflect emotional pain and confusion if it is darker; this helps as we did not particularly think of lighting. The group also said that the darker lighting could create an “atmosphere” of darkness and emotion so it would be the appropriate lighting.

 

We then asked about what camera shots they would like to see within the promo. Every reply apart from one said that we should use close ups within the promo to show emotion as well as close ups on the instruments in the performance parts. The one that did not say to use close ups, put we could use over the shoulder shots instead, this could be used to show the relationship of the boy and girl in the narrative before the female found out about the cheating, such as in a restaurant talking. Two of the replies said we should also use mid shots, I agree with this as we can easily show the band members and narrative through them, most of the others said to use long shots so they could see the band, I also like this idea in the performance parts so it would be a very good one to use.

 

The final question we asked was which demographic they think the promo would appeal to. Every one of the 6 replies said that it would appeal to teenagers, 4 of which specified females. This shows that we have chosen a correct idea for our target group as well as song for them, this means we have chosen well. One reply said that we it also relates to broken hearted people, which the song does so we could emphasize this fact.