After completing the production of our pop video and ancillary texts, we collected audience feedback from a variety of sources, including a focus group and data from YouTube, which are the two types of audience feedback I will concentrate when trying to answer this question. Our target audience was 16-25 year old males and females from JICTAR groups C, D and E. Stereotypically, groups C, D and E are less educated and from a poorer socio-economic background, but these social categories are big spenders on pop music and related merchandise. C are people who are skilled but not academically educated, such as plumbers and electricians. D are families and people who labour and E are the unemployed.After completion, our pop video was uploaded onto the popular video-sharing website YouTube. YouTube is often used by members of our target audience, either for casual browsing or when actively searching for something to watch. Using YouTube Insight (a piece of demographic software on the website), we were able to find out what kind of people were watching our video, and where they were viewing it from. From these results, we were clearly able to see that our video was attracting the type of target audience that it was pitched at – almost all of the people that viewed it were under the age 30. However, due to a copyright issue the soundtrack of our pop video was removed by the record company whose music we used.
This meant that we had no comments on our YouTube video. Therefore we decided to use a focus group to gain the kind of comments we would have got off YouTube, but in more detail.
Our focus group was comprised of an opportunity sample of nine 16-19 year olds, 5 females and 4 males. We sat them down in a room and let them watch our pop video through. Afterwards, they were asked a number of questions which were discussed in an informal group chat, and noted down. The questions follow below:
1) Did you enjoy the video? Why/Why not?
2) What do you think the message of the video is?
3) How do you think the band is represented?
4) Is there a typical band image?
5) Is the video effective?6) How effective if the opening shot?
7) What did you think of the performance element?
8) And the narrative?
9) How effective was the use of the blue screen?
10) If you could change anything about the video, what would it be?
I decided to use a focus group rather than a questionnaire for two reasons. First, with a focus group you can keep people to the subject, make sure they take it seriously and ask additional questions. With a questionnaire, people may not pay that much attention and will only answer the questions asked, limiting the amount the data that you can collect. Secondly, a focus group gives you more “life and feel" for audience reactions to a pop video like ours.Before discussing the answers we got to our focus group questions, it is appropriate to talk about some media theorists who have been influential in the area of audience. Stuart Hall said that media texts are sub- and consciously “encoded” by people when consuming media. Media is subconsciously encoded with the values and beliefs of those that produce it, usually in western society meaning white, middle class men. But as we know, audiences are not composed of entirely white, middle class men and so many interpret or “decode” the media text in different ways. This process can have one of three possible outcomes: The preferring meaning (where the audience member wholly accepts the meaning that the media producer is trying to get across), the oppositional meaning (where the audience member rejects all of the meaning that the media producer is trying to get across) or the negotiated meaning (where the audience member accepts some of the preferred meaning, but not all of it).
The preferred overall meaning of our video was that society is a corrupt, violent place. A member of our focus group said, in response to question 2 that:
“I think it might be something to do with corruption or madness. The message is something to do with the faults of the world”
This is a negotiated meaning of what we were trying to get across, as they understood that general message of the world being at fault but did not totally understand the intricacies of what were trying to say. In previous work, I have talked about the band star image, which the video tries to show. The star image of our band is that they are aggressive, anti-authoritarian and generally rebellious. Almost everyone in our focus group picked this up form the video, as demonstrated brilliantly by the following quote:
“The performers are rebellious against society and very in your face, maybe even a bit aggressive, while their performance shows sheer rebellion”
We tried to use the blue screen to realistically construct old crimes scenes without the logistical nightmare of trying to construct one using materials and build it ourselves. The idea of this was to construct an “alternate reality” for the narrative element which was believable and interesting. We were given positive feedback on this by several members of the group:
“It worked well with your concept and it looks pretty believable that the singer is actually at the scene of the crime”
However, as was expected, not everything the group said was positive. It is important to have constructive criticism, so you can evaluate your own product and know what to do better next time around. Many people commented on our choice of lead singer:
“I would have liked to have seen more shots of the band collectively. I also think the bassist’s looks would be more effective for a lead singer”
We spent a lot of time looking for a singer and decided on the boy that we found as we thought his looks were most suitable. However, it is clear that our target audience thought that the bassist would have fitted the image of singer better. In fact, the bassist proved to be a very popular member of the group:
“I’d like to have seen more of the bassist as he has a good way of moving and seems very energetic”
Blumler & Katz also have a major theory about how media texts affect or are read by their audience. As with Stuart Hall, Blumler & Katz write about television news. But I think that the theory can be as usefully applied to other media texts including pop videos. They created a model that claimed that audiences are active consumers of media – they chose and consume different products to satisfy certain needs and gratifications – which they aptly called “the uses and gratifications model”. They said that there were several different uses and gratifications including: Diversion – using media to escape everyday life, Personal Relationships – feeling a sense of attachment with figures in the media, and discussing them with our peer group, Personal Identity – comparing your own life with that of a media character, and applying their experiences and situation to your own life and Surveillance – using the media for information about what is going on in the world. The two concepts that would be most relevant to audiences from our pop video would be diversion and personal relationships. Clearly our pop video is entertaining through its performance and narrative. While we give the audience four characters of their own age, who have star quality of youthfulness and rebelliousness in Dyer’s terms, which is an element that the audience would want as a matter of personal identity. The group are also clearly concerned with serious matters and again our pop video puts that over for an audience which is also concerned with social issues etc. Many people watch music videos on the internet when bored, or just for fun. Arguably the most useful aspect of music videos from the point of view of a record company is that it will attract interest in an artist, and bring in more fans. The Personal Relationships aspect of the model also helps to add to an artists star image, as I have discussed in previous work.
Stuart Hall also has a theory about social mapping. This revolves around the idea that all of us have individual parcels if you like of interests and concerns. For my target audience this might be love, romance, rebelliousness, youthfulness, being anti-authoritarian and just being a bit “wild”. We took account of this theory in our production by trying to appeal to these elements in peoples social maps. Largely it worked as when I asked my focus group an additional question about this and explained social mapping to them, 8 of the 9 agreed we had triggered interest from their individual social maps. Grace, an energetic 18 year old girl summarised their reaction when she said:
“Rebelliousness, youthfulness, the serious issue of crime and I think corruption, which I hate, were all in the video – along with a great performance from the band – so I think it hit my social map really well”.
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