Feedback from focus group

So far we have only carried out a focus group with one group which is our own media class of year 13's. The session was very helpful however, as we asked a range of questions which aided our initial ideas of how we were going create a music video for the genre of RnB. I had created a consent form so that the class were happy to take part and Eboni created a power point of visual aids which included pictures of RnB artists and extracts of music videos from these artists. Together we asked the questions and gained lots of useful feedback.

To begin the session, we informed the group about the background of RnB with some information about general conventions and how it had changed over time. We asked what the audience already knew about RnB and who their favourite artists were in general to see if anyone's favourite artist was in fact, an RnB artist. This was not the case however, once we discussed certain artists from this genre, it appeared that they were still very popular with our group.

Within the extracts that we showed, there were some older RnB videos mixed with some newer ones and so we could show this comparison to our audience. When asked which type of RnB was better, the audience response was generally that an older type video was preferred as they gave more of a sense of reality.They didn't like the newer videos as they focussed more of wealth and success which came across arrogant as well as the desirable, sexual representation of women which was not approved by many.

A question that I proposed was 'do you think that you will prefer a video more if the artist performing is the same gender as you?' There were mixed responses to this question as in the RnB genre, most songs are made and performed by men which tend to target the female audience however, there may be less focus on the artist in the video and therefore people of the same gender as the artist may just enjoy the music itself. We therefore could understand who our audience would be with the resources and performers that are available to us.

Another question that was put forward questioned whether narrative videos were more popular or performance based videos. We showed them extracts of Drake's 'Started from the bottom' which is very much followed with narrative and compared it with Usher's 'Yeah' which is predominantly a performance by Usher himself. The audience were again mixed. Some people enjoyed the story telling element of the music video as it was something to follow however, the more popular choice was the performance based video of Usher as it focusses more on the song itself rather than a story which allows the artist to dance to his own music and let the music do the work.