Audience Research - Interviews

In order to get some detailed quantitative audience research I have done some personal interviews. This way I could get opinions and feelings of a variation of people finding out what they expect and want to see in Rock Music Videos.

Questions
1. What kind of things would you typically expect to see from a Rock Music Video?
2. Which conventions do you think our most important in terms of what you would want to see?
3. How would you make a Rock Video effective?

Answers
1. In most Rock videos there is a lot of performance. In most the videos I watch they show the whole band performing, sometimes they take the performance from their gigs.
2. I like to see the performance and a focus on the band image, most of the Rock artists I listen to rely on their image and its something that I think is significant so I like to see the bands true image.
3. To make an effective video I would have a lot of performance shots of the band backed up with a story behind the song about the lyrics.

1. The band, guitars, drums. Sometimes a story about the band or lead singer.
2. I think it is important to actually see the band instead of just something random, I do however like some excitement in the video.
3. If I made a Rock Music Video I would to a recording of the whole band on stage, I would have a lot of shots of the band and close-ups of them playing their instruments, for example maybe a long clip of a guitar solo. To give it more excitement I would record maybe the band back stage to show a bit about their life outside performance.

1.  In a Rock video like near enough all videos I would expect to see the artist. In Rock it is usually the band performing but sometimes it would be a story but acted by the band. They do all however usually feature the lead artist and some instruments.
2. I think it is important that it features the band as this is what it is about and what the audience want to see. I think the video should also have a story because this is what makes the video interesting and worth watching.
3. If I was to make a music video I would have a mix of performance and story. It would be a mix between them performing and a story so maybe start with them playing as the band for and audience or just practicing and then it turning into some kind or story.

Interview Analysis
Just by interviewing three different Rock fans I have learnt that they all like and want the same things. Using this information could help us create something that the people I interviewed and people like them would enjoy.

The first main point that I have reduced from this information is that the audience want to see performance aspect of the band. They like to see them playing their instruments and performing, as performing in front of audience would be extremely difficult for us to create this would be out of the question but we have a studio to work in so we will show the band playing together and performing. Including all the instruments would please the audience as most of them said they like to see a lot of instruments and shots of them playing the instruments.

Another thing that all the people I interviewed wants is some kind of story, something to make it more interesting. We had always planned to have a story but having this information tells us that it is something that needs a lot of focus. With what I have analyzed already I know the audience want performance and a story, so therefore the perfect thing to do is make a mix of both.

This information has been useful for telling us the simple layout of the video but it has also shown us a variation of small factors that we could consider. Such as close-up of instruments and solos, back stage footage and a story with a lot of action.

'Foo Fighters - Pretender' Performance Analysis

I am looking at this video because it films band performance in an unusual environment. The video like a lot of Rock music videos is a cross between band performance and narrative. The video starts off with the lead singer entering the warehouse followed by the rest of the band and they start playing.

On the performance part of the video we see a lot of quick cuts between the different band members and the band as a whole. Camera shots that you see are close-ups of the band members particularly the lead and the band members instruments. There are also a lot of long shots of the whole band in the warehouse. These camera techniques are something that we could bring into our performance although they are not in a studio as such more of a warehouse we could still use these performance techniques. Long shots of the whole band would not be as easy because we will not have this kind of size but it stills gives us a better understanding of how we could use the studio.

The other main part of this video is the narrative. At the chorus of the song the riot control man enter and we start to see conflict. We see close-ups of the band and the riot controllers and consistent cuts between both of them. This is something we will not be recreating as they have brought the narrative into the studio unlike most rock videos which will separate the performance and the narrative and this is what we will do.

New group!

Since the preliminary planning we have made adjustments to the groups. In the prelims we chose hip-hop but now in the new group (Me,Harry,Josh,Will) we will be doing 'Rock' so the focus of my research will change.

Preliminary Digipak

Our other task we had to do as part of our preliminary planning is our own digipak. Using what we have learnt about digipak's we took a series of photos and created a digipak to fit out chosen genre 'hip-hop'.

Chosen artist and song

As a group we have found and chosen our song and artist, the artist will be a rock band called Raided By Waves a local rock band and the song will be Secret Sin.

Our finished music video! (Preliminary)

Preliminary Music Video (Prop List)

After watching and analyzing our chosen music video we realized that a variety of props would be required. We have therefore prepared a list of necessary props that would be needed. We knew that it would not be possible to get the props identical but we did our best to find that closest matches we could.

Prop List

• Tent (Josh)
• Vest (Mike)
• Sunglasses (Mike)
• BBQ (Me)
• Sausages (Me)
• Chair (Josh)
• Hat (Mike)
• Watering can (Me)
• Lighter (Josh)

This is the prop list we have created based our chosen video. We have decided the fairest and easiest way to gather these props is to assign each of the group members certain props to gather.