Questionnaire Results

We have managed to finally collect the results of our questionnaire, and have formulated tables and graphs below. The main problem we encountered with this part, was the fact that it took so long to collect the results in and make the graphs, and once again we find ourselves behind the deadlines we originally set from our Production Schedule. We will endeavour to work hard in the coming weeks with hope that we can manage to stick to the deadline.

The fact that the top two genres our target audience listen to are Rock and Pop has helped us, as the genre of the song we will use is Pop. The music channels that the majority of people watch also accomodate more chart singles, as opposed to parody videos, which will hopefully help us in the fact that they may not have stereotyped views of the genre, therefore meaning they are more likely to accept our video and interpret it with a "Hegemonic Reading".

At the time that we conducted our questionnaire, artists such as J.L.S, Cheryl Cole, The Black Eyed Peas and Alexandra Burke were at the top of the charts, and so are likely to have been influential on the results of our questionnaire. By examining the difference in age between artists such as these, and the people we asked, there is not a lot of difference, and so the ideas conveyed by Keith Negus do not seem to be apparent at this day and age.

The majority of the singers around at the time of the questionnaire have also had several number one hit singles in the past few weeks/months, and so it can be interpreted that they have become "Commercial Exhibitionists" through Sven Carlsson's theory. Because of this, it means they are likely to rely very heavily upon appearances, which reinforces Laura Mulvey's "Male Gaze" theory, which is a theory that has featured very prominently in recent music videos.

By using The Black Eyed Peas as an example, it is also somewhat evident that there is still some truth in Emanuel Levy's theory about Hollywood film stars. In the band, the lead singing female, Fergie, is seen as a victim of the "Male Gaze", therefore making her attractive to the viewer. When contrasted with other group members, such as Taboo, who often appears looking somewhat scruffy and with long hair, it would appear that the female star does take more pride in looking beautiful and youthful, which agrees with Levy's theory.

Questionnaire/Initial Ideas

Questionnaire

We have finished the draft for our Questionnaire, albeit much later than we had originally anticipated. The draft document is included below. From the questionnaire, we hope to learn more about the target audience for our music video. We will try to ask people of a wide range of ages, however we will focus more on asking younger people, as they are the target audience that we are aiming our video at. By learning about people's age and their favorite genre of music, we will also be able to establish the relevance of Keith Negus' theory of popular music, and whether younger generations listen to music made by older artists.

By questioning the target audience for our music video, we will also be able to estimate whether they will enjoy the style of video that we intend to make, which could be important in us establishing a "Hegemonic Reading", in terms of the Encoding/Decoding model.

We will hand out the questionnaire today, and collect the results and formulate tables/graphs as soon as we can.

Initial Ideas

Our original idea that we preliminarily finalised on was an idea that involved a stripping 'audition' set against a performance of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" by Joe Cocker. It would begin with a short sequence of acting without the song to establish the scene and then the music would begin and the performance would be used as a multi-strand narrative along with the comedic stripping audition story-line. In relation To Sven E. Carlsson's music video theory, this idea would have been a "conceptual clip" which means it integrates a visual story with a lip-synced performance of the song. We eventually had to pack this idea in because it required too many actors and where we may have been able to get willing victims, we did not want to be too dependent on too many other people because if they let us down, did not take it seriously or were simply not good at the part then it could have been detrimental to our finished product and grade.

Initial Photography

We next adopted a completely different idea. We went from a traditional music video idea to an artistic one. The video would have been set to a possible Coldplay record and it would have attempted to make the audience think and have an influence on them with its abstractness and subtly clever ideas. The video would have been about the solitude yet romanticism of isolation. It would have focused on solely one character throught. In terms of Sven E. Carlsson's theory, this would have been a "narrative clip" meaning that it would have been ultimately a short move set to a musical backdrop. According to Carlsson, a true narrative clip contains no lip-syncing or performance of the song.

Even though we really fancied making a comedy video because it was something we had not tried but had curiously wanted to, we were excited about the idea of a narrative clip because we believed in doing so we could use our film production skills to make a video that incorporated many technical and skilled elements of film production that would showcase the best of our abilities. We went out and took some initial promotional photographs as a means of inspiration and testing for the look of the proposed idea.

(Click to make full size)

We used a combination of effects of Macromedia Fireworks to create these images and we were quite pleased with the zeitgeist we had created for a potential film. Eventually however, the idea fell through due to lack of a rock solid plot-line and an improved idea regarding the comedy genre we had wanted to see if we could pull off.