Audience Research - Results

Audience research was carried out by George, Hugo and myself in the form of a 'focus group' (shown above) in an afternoon in Tunbridge Wells which helped us to draw a (somewhat) mixed audience whom to present our ideas to. We started by handing round a copy of the questionnaire put together by george and, whilst we played them our chosed track 'Lazy' by Pete Philly and Perquisite, the six-strong group used it to help them record their own initial ideas about a video for the track in terms of setting, words, colours, mood etc. Next we showed the group a copy of each of our own moodboards and asked if this had changed any of their minds about their response to the track, or if this prompted them to add anything, and after this we read out the gathered ideas and had a general discussion lasting around ten minutes. The combination of these different questioning techniques allowed us to gather both qualitative and quantitative results to aid us a group in the design and idea generation process.

The results of the focus group show:

-A unanimous trend in the types of colours that were imagined; predominantly yellows, browns, oranges - 'Warm, 'Mellow' tones
-People generally generally associate this track with summertime – which could be a problem for us being that filming will be in winter/spring. – Perhaps we could try and recreate the ‘feel’ of summer by filming on a sunny day, or by applying light filters or something in the post production process?
-Happiness, relaxation, and contentment were all words used to describe the feel of the track and how it should be represented
-A focus on particular aspects of the lyrics were raised – for example “lying on the couch, bag of chips on my belly, focus on one thing, only on the telly” was a line that everyone agreed should be literally reconstructed. An idea of having a shot of performance (by us) within the T.V screen was another idea agreed on at this point. Images of the bed, and things associated with the general bedroom e.g classic alarm clock was the other thing that the majority showed in their individual responses, and when discussed, it was agreed that there could be a big focus on the bedroom as a key part of the video.
-Other scenes were also envisioned including the beach, a BBQ, a sofa, sunny day, sitting under a tree/ in grass in a park, a flowerpot looking to the sun on a window ledge,…
-It was also raised that the video should include emphasis of the some of the jazz elements of the track, be it a performance (‘old man playing piano’ was a specific image that was suggested), or featuring a jazz instrument in the mis-en-scene etc. This is one way we are going to create a unique unconventional hip-hop video to do justice to this frankly unconventional hip-hop track.

Overall it was agreed that hosting a focus group proved invaluable in helping us see past the preconceptions we had drawn in each of our own minds about how our video should look, and taking the group advice from a mixed demographic who did have a certain extent of hip-hop appreciation but all had musical interest on the whole allowed us to come up with some ideas that would appeal to a broad audience and be effective in amplifying the track in question.