Research Evaluation

Research Evaluation 

For my Music Video Production unit, before filming began, I knew that I needed to undertake substantial and effective research. This would give me a better understanding of the codes and conventions that I needed to utilise for my chosen genre to produce my music video. I started by researching Andrew Goodwin and Carol Vernallis, who provided well established music video theories, looking at how the videos are positioned, filmed and edited for defined audiences. I took notes, during my teacher led seminars for selected background information and approaches to employing music theory; this gave me a general overview to base my research upon. From this primary research information I built an idea of how to conduct my secondary research. Using Andrew Goodwin’s ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ and Carol Vernallis ‘The Kindest Cut’ allowed me to assess the usefulness of analysing existing music videos for technical codes and conventions and also narrative techniques.

Having looked at the theories my next method of research was analysing music videos, this was important as it provided me with ideas of how to understand what codes and conventions of different genres of music require.

Some Codes and Conventions for Pop genre are;  
- Artist in mainstream outfits.
- Often relates to teenagers, who are the main target audience.
- Close up to show the artist, star image. This also helps with advertising. 

Questionnaire 

To get a better understanding of what other people would like to see in a mainstream pop music video, I created a questionnaire on survey money. I sent the survey out to as many people as I could, to gather as much information as possible before I started to compose ideas for my own production. This research method is quantitative and relies on facts and figures. It provides statistical data that would help target specific genre related audience appeal and production techniques to make my production successful. Overall my questionnaire reached 45 participants, not as many as I had hoped for. Nevertheless, this was sufficient enough to justify the techniques I intended to include in my own mainstream production.

This research method mainly offers data reliant results; some of my questions did allow for quantitative results though, where someone could go into more depth and what they actually thought about mainstream pop music videos and their production techniques. These were the most effective type of questioning that I employed. The purpose of the questionnaire was to see what others thought about these types of music videos and what they would want to see in a similar music video production. Examples of questions that were effective included; ‘What do you expect to see in a music video?’ and ‘What type of music video do you prefer?’ I hoped from the questionnaire that I would get a lot more information and this as it would help with developing further ideas and inspiration. However, this didn’t happen because not all of the answers that I got provided that much detail, and some of the replies where far too short and brief. This could have been because some of the answers were multiple choice; this might have affected the results and made the questionnaire not as reliable as I had intended. Providing more choices rather than limiting the responses might have affected the answers, it therefore would have been better to allow them to give their own opinions to strengthen the results.

Focus Group 

The focus group gave quantitative research results from a primary source; this was done within the HNC class of 12 participants. This was helpful because it provided valuable and reliable inspiration and ideas from a focus group who would be producing similar productions. The also had knowledge that I could rely upon and that would not be biased towards one genre or another. By conducting this qualitative research, I knew that I could get results that would validate my initial research and enabled me to make the correct choices when it came to selecting techniques for my own production.

From my other research methods, I had some ideas of what my music video could be. As a class though we went through everyone’s ideas and we were able to expand these to develop productions that would target our target audiences with more purpose. We went through the ideas in more depth, we conducted the focus group to get qualitative data from a primary source. This face-to-face communication was highly effective and I would argue that it was the most beneficial approach I used.

 

The focus group was very helpful as I had a more structured idea of how to produce a mainstream video and was able to develop my production with a far better knowledge. When I presented my idea, I asked for feedback and suggestions about what else I could add into the video. I found that this was helpful because it meant that I could come up with some different and more innovative ideas.

Conclusion 

Due to the production of the music video, I needed more quantitative research, however when doing the questionnaire, it gave me far too many quantitative results. This is because the responses that I received didn’t go into depth of information that I required, which couldn’t help with ideas and inspiration. I found the focus group to be most effective method as the ideas were in more detail and I got far more from qualitative results. Writing better targeted questions with a ‘follow up’ suggestion option would have been a better method.

The theories that I researched, Goodwin and Vernallis, were extremely beneficial as it gave me a very sound framework to use for my production. This was valid and justified my mainstream production techniques.

My analysis of existing videos was useful, but I could have gone into more depth in regard to the specific technical codes and conventions of my chosen mainstream pop genre. My posts on similar genre related videos lacked depth and discussion. Identifying key camera, lighting and editing techniques would have added to my research overall. I tended to take too much for granted, rather than break the production down to the more technical aspects of production such as cinematography, performance and editing.

Improvements that I would recommend for further research:

• ·      Record the audio of the focus group to allow myself to recall the results that I received. This would give me far better information to base my production upon.
• ·      Create a questionnaire with text boxes, where they can go into more detail. This would allow for more depth in the responses and also give more qualitative results as well as quantitative.
• ·      More detailed analysis of the codes and conventions of music videos and looking at different artists and genre. This may have given me more knowledge of existing videos that I wasn’t aware existed.
• ·      A more detailed analysis would have also helped me to construct a better narrative for my finished production. Visually the piece works well and is produced to a good standard, however producing something with more narrative would make it more appealing to my target audience. Mainstream pop audiences tend to appreciate a story that they can relate to with the interpretation of the lyrics. This is something that I concentrated upon in my analysis of existing music videos.