Audience Research Questionnaire

Our Questionnaire to give out to our target audience members to research what exactly they like/want in an R&B song. These are our questions.

1. Do you like R&B music?

2. If so, how regularly do you listen to R&B music?

3. Do you like to spend your money on buying albums and CD's?

4. If so, roughly how much would you spend on CD's and albums?

5. Do you have a favourite R&B artist? If so who?

6. Do you have a favourite R&B song?

7. What would you expect to see from an R&B video?

8. Do you prefer song about love or journeys to success?

9. Do you prefer a smart dressed up style or a more rugged urban outfit?

The questions are simple and there aren't many, due to the fact that our audience member may get bored or confused when answering this. We have made it very simple. We will use the results from this anonymous questionnaire towards putting together our artist Joseph SoMo, taking into consideration peoples opinions on existing R&B artists, giving us ideas on how to base ours.

Beyonce Halo - Basic Lyric Analysis

-At the beginning of the video, the word "Sound" is emphasised as the music in the background stops. This is almost ironic as she says "Didn't even make a sound" and the sounds stop. This could be a possible convention we could use in our piece to make words stand out.

-The word "Halo" is clearly addressed to the male character in the video.

-Where she says "I've got my angel now" the lyrics relate to relationships so audiences can relate this to their own.

-Beyonce is not singing while the song repeats "Halo" as this would look silly she only sings the last -

-"Halo" which gives it more meaning, making it stay in the audiences head.

-When she sings "Its written all over your face" she looks at the male actor in the video, representing she is seeing something others don't. It looks like she's speaking or whispering to him.

-Whilst singing the lyric "Hit me like a ray of sun" it appears she is thinking deeply as she is on her own, this gives a sense of introspection, although she is singing a monologue when she sings lyrics on her own. The sun is also shining on her, which gives a literal sense to the lyric.

-She looks vulnerable in this video, which is contrast to some of her others around this time such as 'Single ladies' this relates to the love side of the song/video showing she has completely let down her guard to the man in the video.

-When she sings "Surrounded by your embrace" the man is very close to her, and all around her. Giving the lyrics meaning again.

Theorists of music videos

This is a brief overview of theorists and how they will relate to my video

Steve ARCHER
Music videos cut between narrative and performance of the song by the band. Artist/singer will be part of the storyline.
(Our video partly includes this, we are going to use cuts between narrative and performance, but our artist is not a big part in the storyline, the narrative part tells the story)

Andrew GOODWIN
Visuals match lyrics, there is a relationship between them. Goodwin also says the video serves to frame the star and enhance them.
(We will relate to Goodwin's theory in our video, as our visuals and lyrics will partially link to the lyrics of the song such as "Girl put in work" having shots of the girl working really hard when dancing)

John BERGER
Ways of seeing the video. Berger's theory states its all about the visuals of the video, such as the dancing. He also states that we automatically generate our own storyline for the video.
(Our video will cohere with this theory, as we have a dancer who tells the story line, but our video leaves it open for the viewers to make up theory own mind about parts of the storyline)

Vladamir PROPP
All media texts have characters such as a Hero on a quest, a Villain, a Princess (the prize) the Helper, the Donor and the False Hero. The Villain can be elemental (not actually shown such as an illness)
(Our video does not relate to this theorist as much as others, as we do not have the characters although there us a Villain which is portrayed as the things making her life bad, and she is the victor of this)

Roland BARTHES
Dictates that every media text has Binary oppositions/cpdes sich as good v's bad, love v's hate, rich v's poor, happy v's sad, isolation v's crowd, pretty v's ugly, public faces v's private persona.
The five codes of the videos are
Enigma code - audience intrugued and feels the need to solve a problem
Action code - audience is excited and feels the need to solve a problem
Semantic code - audience is directed forwards, additional meaning by way of connotation
Symbolic code - audience assumes that character dressed in black is evil/menacing and forms expectations of their behaviour on this basis
Cultural code - audience dreives meaning in a text from shared cultural knowledge about the way the world works.
(Our piece does follow some of this theory such as the enigma code, with the audience sympathising with the character and wanting to help them.)

R&B Artists Backgrounds and rise to fame

I have researched R&B artists to find out more about them, as our artist is also R&B


Drake

Aubrey Drake Graham also know as Drizzy signed a recording deal with Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment in June 2009 which helped him rise to fame. Drakes songs have been very popular in America and Canada, his album Take Care was released in November 2011 producting multiple smash hits such as 'Headlines' 'Take Care Ft Rihanna' and 'The Motto' , the latter of which is also credited for populizing the widley used acrynym 'YOLO'.







Other than his music career, Drake is a songwriter for artists such as Alicia Keys and Jamie Foxx. Drake also continues to persue his acting career with his latest appearance being in the box office hit Ice Age: Continental Drift.




                      (OVO is the Owl official mascot of OVOXO which is Drakes colaboration with The Weeknd)











Beyonce

Beyonce Giselle Knowles-Carter is an American singer, record producer, dancer and actress. Beyonce rose to fame in the late 1990's as the lead singer of Destiny's Child, one of the worlds best selling girl groups of all time. Around 2005/6 Beyonce branched out as a solo artist bringing out singles such as 'Deja Vu' 'Beautiful Liar' and 'Irreplacable', then later in 2008 bringing out singles such as 'If I Were A Boy' 'Single Ladies' and 'Halo' which helped her earn six Grammys in 2010 from here on Beyonce has been a popular solo artist.

I have done this research into similar products to investigate into how we portray our artist as he would be classed as being in the early stage of his carreer, these artists have worked their way up from the place our artist is at now. From this research, I can see that both of these successful artists started out as a group such as Young Money and Destinys Child, which helped them work their way up, after this they branched away from the group, focused on a solo career and made a name for themselves. I also learn from this research that the artists collaborate with other famous artists in their songs, making me decide to have some of our artists songs featuring other artists which we will either make up, or use other unsigned artists. This will make our R&B artists more autientic as it is popular for a male rapping, with a woman artist singing the melody to the song so we will focus on this when making our digi pack for Joseph SoMo.

Progress post

In our lesson on the 27th of September, I wrote up the lyrics of our song The Morning by Joseph SoMo and found out which words we will have to edit out, as they are inappropriate or swearing. We also started to look deeper into our lyrics, starting to find ways we can connect them to the video as we are using a mixture of illustrational and amplification style when linking our lyrics to the video. We have a mixture of these two, as we have a narrative (the girl dancing) crossing between a performance (the singer) although our video will denotate the lirics of our song, there is not a very obvious strong link, we are keeping it subtle which makes the style lean towards amplification, as well as illustration as we are partially telling a story linking to the lyrics.
Also in our lesson today, we finished making our sliderocket presentation which tells the audience everything they need to know about our R&B artist. We also presented this to the class at the end of the lesson, and our teacher filmed it. I wish to get this up on my blog soon.

Audience Research

We played our song The Morning by Joseph SoMo to a group of 17-18 year olds (which is a big part of our target audience) these are some of the opinions/ideas from them;

Some of the thoughts that came into our audience members head whilst listening to our song were
-Piano shots (indoors)
-Cross cutting between narrative and performance
-Girl is working due to lyric 'Girl put in work'
-He's singing separately
-Up high singing
-Mirror shots
-Closed eyes of singer
-Singer swaying to music
-Dull night/ low lighting
-Dancing to the music
-Shots looking like something they are not (looks like violence, but turns out it isn't)
-Shots of bank notes due to lyric 'All that money, the money is the motive'

We plan to use many of these in our video such as mirror shots of our girl dancing, cross cutting between narrative and performance, dancing to the music and dull lighting. The other ideas our teacher has come up with will help us be more creative with the narrative and conventions of our piece.

This is what else our group of 17-18 year olds thought about the song
-Rough setting (city/alley way)
-Fighting with a girl and a boy
-Story of girl meeting someone new
-Money flying away in the wind
-Emotional scenes
-Singing out a window
-Raining outside
-When chorus starts, artist moving about more - cut to young dancer for contrast
-Slow motion
-White room
-Bright lighting
-Playing the piano
-Black and white
-City scene due to the lyric 'calling cabs' showing the fast life
-Winter
-Vulnerability - girl struggling through life
-The good life - references to money
-Simplicity
-Slow/calm (intro)
-Drinking
-Party life due to the lyric 'Sold out tour' and 'Make that money rain'
-Hip hop conventions
-The morning after

These ideas have also given me a lot of inspiration to see what our ideal audience member see's from the lirics, and would want in the video. Although there are some contrasts between ideas of different people, we are going to try to include a lot of these conventions in our piece as they have proven popular with the audience we wish to watch our video.

Progress post

Today in our lesson, me and Miles started to gather ideas for our storyline of the music video. We have started to make a storyboard which features what takes place in each scene of our music video. Having a storyboard will make our filming easier and help us keep on track of what we are doing as we can follow each scene from the pictures and writing about them. We will carry on with our story board in our next lesson with Jon too and will upload pictures of it once it is successfully finished.

Ideal audience member/audience research

Our ideal audience member is either male or female. They are American, with maybe half Jamaican of African ethnicity's. The audience member listens to R&B and Rap music which can be soulful or fast paced. Tha age of our target audience is between 17-24 which is a wide range, but our music genre appeals to a wide range of people and ages. Our song is a slow, melodic song, which means it is aimed more at a female audience, I have gathered this information by looking through other slow R&B songs on youtube such as Drakes, showing that due to the 'love' theme of the songs, more girls listen to them and relate to them. I have seen comments from the male audience, putting negative feedback on artists songs due to them being too slow and girly. Although our song could fit into this category, we aim to make our video versatile so it appeals to both the male and female audience.

Audience research into our chosen genre

R&B audience research.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyv4Bjja8yc - Drake - Find Your Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PN78PS_QsM J.Cole - Work Out

Our song is similar R&B to some of Drakes songs, so I have decided to use his audience fans as a guide of what our audience will include. I have looked at Drakes song Find Your Love (link above) from the comments posted on the song, I have concluded that Drakes audience is from 16-22 year olds, 16 due to the explicit content in some of his songs - although I'm sure younger audience members do listen to Drake - although mostly older. A lot of this specific audience are not white Caucasian, many of Drakes fans are Asian or of other ethnic backgrounds such as African or Jamaican. This could mean that a percentage of our target audience would also be of these races. Drakes fans who comment on these videos are clearly interested in Rap, as they talk about 'Drakes rap style' our song does not include any Rap, but the style may interest people who like the Rap and R&B genre.

Another song and artist that I think may link to our song is J.Cole, from looking at some of his videos such as Work Out (link above) I can see his audience is very similar to Drakes, young audience, with a minority of white Caucasians. As J.Cole is African American, a lot of his audience members are from America, as he is not a very big artist, meaning a lot of his fans stay local to where he is. From comments and views on his videos I have proof of the fact that the majority of people watching this video are infact American.

From this video showing the top locations, and demographics of J.Coles Work Out video, you can see the most popular places are America and Canada, then the UK. This also shows the ages/sex of the people that have been watching the video, showing the ages and sex of our target audience. This is mostly male and female's 18-24 years but there are some views from females aged 13-17 showing that younger girls like him, more than younger boys.

Progress post. Our chosen song -The Morning

Our artist Joseph Somo responded to our email, saying that it was okay for us to use one of his songs, our chosen song is The Morning.

The Morning (The Weeknd Cover) By Joseph Somo

This is the song that we are using for our music video. The genre is RNB with a slow melody to the song.

Detailed video analysis UNFINISHED

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk48xRzuNvA The Script Hall of Fame Ft. Will.I.Am

For this video analysis I have decided to focus on The Script and Will.I.Am's video for their song Hall of fame. I have chosen to do my detailed analysis on this, as it is mostly R&B and in a similar style of what we wish for our final piece to be like as it features the singers, cutting with shots of other people's lives (including a ballet dancer) analysing this video will help me get ideas of conventions of R&B to contribute to the authenticity of our piece.

The lyrics do strongly link to the performance of the narrative in this particular instance as they sing about people accomplishing what they need to do, although they have struggled through, this is shown in the video through two young peoples lives which as represented as difficult, and towards the end of the video they succeed in what they wanted to do linking to the lyric 'you can be the bestest, you can run the mile'

This video starts with images of the two characters succeeding in their dream, but you don't really know who it is or whats going on. This allows the audience's mind to wander, and think up their own stories for the video. The audience is then introduced to the characters actual life, showing them waking up, which then shows the audience that the beginning was their dreams. This instantly makes the audience empathise with them, as the boy seems to be from a poor background, with an uncaring mother, and it is revealed that the girl is deaf. This instantly makes the audience sympathise with the two characters and makes them root for them. This is a typical convention of R&B music videos, such as the underdog coming through and making something for them selves. We are going to use this in our music video, and it gives the feel good factor at the end.

 

(shows their difficulties)

There is a short section where you see into the two characters at the beginning of the song, you see their homes and mum/dad. We wish to do this in ours also, using shots of our character in her bedroom. This is an effective convention of R&B as you get an insight into their private life, such as their homes/bedroom making the audience more attached to the character.

The first shot of this video is Danny from The Script's hands playing the piano. This can often be seen as un-nerving (close ups of the hands) but in this video, it is very effective as the solo of the piano is played over the top. This gives the audience a feeling that the singers and band are actual musicians and playing in this video.

Our media genre and song (progress post)

We have found a song that we wish to use on SoundCloud which is by an artist called Joseph SoMo, the song is called The Morning. The genre of the song is R&B, we had previously decided to do Indie as our genre, but decided R&B would be better as it is different and we found a very good song which we already have a story line thought out to go with the video.

Genres post

Most likey genres we would use;
Pop - represented as fun
Rap - fast paced
R&B - soulful
Indie - alternative
Soul - emotional
Acoustic - freedom

Other genres
Rock
Folk
Punk
Stadium
Dance
Classical
Trance
Electric
Country and western
Grunge
Jazz
Swing
Riot girl
Boybands
Hardcore
Melodic
Synth

Andrew Goodwins Theory

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwin is a director of music who has identified a number of key ideas which distinguish music videos as a form:
-There is a strong relationship between the visuals of the video, and the lyrics, the visuals can illustrate, exaggerate and even contradict the lyrics of the song.
-Close ups of the artist shown in the video build relationships between the visual of the artist, and the audience, which gives them more publicity.
-Intertextual reference is used, meaning other music videos, artists and media texts can be featured in the video such as Rupert Grint featuring in Ed Sheeran's music video, and product advertisement such as phones in videos.
-The idea of voyeurism giving an insight into the artist making the audience feel they know features about the artists life.
-Goodwin also states there is a link between the actual song, and the video that goes with it meaning the dancing, cut rate and instruments being played going along with the song. This makes the video overall more appealing as it has a purpose.

Short prezi

Alan Rickman: "The audiences response is absolutely crucial..."
I have made a short cycle explaining and showing the Audience Cycle

http://prezi.com/xa0-bywr4izz/alan-rickman/

Audience research

This is a quick audience research post into two different genre/style artists.

 

From these two pictures of Kanye Wests twitter page, he has a huge fan base of followers. Through looking through the first couple of pages of his followers, which you can see in the second picture, I have found out that he has a fairly equal amount of girl/boy followers, although I have seen slightly more girls, this may be due to the attraction to him. Kanye's followers are very much the young generation, you can see just from their pictures that most of them are between 16-24. This shows that his style of music, and his texts are aimed at a young audience. Kanye West is an R&B artist, as Joseph SoMo (our artist) also is so I have looked at Kanye's fans to get an idea of our target audience.

On the other hand is Indie style which differs from Kanye West, so I have viewed Jamie T's twitter, who has a more acoustic, indie sound so I can get an idea of the fanbase of other genres. As you can see from the first picture, Jamie T has a huge difference in the amount of followers he has as he is a lot less famous. From the second picture, I can see that Jamie T has a very similar fan base as Kanye, as from looking at his followers, who mostly fit into the 16-24 category, he also has a very equal ratio of boys to girl followers. The difference between the twos twitter followers are that looking at the people who follow Jamie T, they have a more Indie style than those who follow Kanye.

Horton and Wohl, Parasocial Theory

Horton and Wohl developed Parasocial Theory which is the idea that fans have a parasocial relationship with the artist they like, particularly when they use direct addresses, real names such as Ed Sheeran, and cultivate fan appreciation such as Lady Gaga calling her fans 'Little Monsters' meaning the fans can relate to the celebrities if they have normal names, and feel appreciated at times. There is a relationship between the fans and celebrities.
The Internet and online fans have shown the ability for fans to further cultivate a pararsocial relationship with an artist such as fan videos, and commenting on youtube videos meaning the public can have their turn or say.
R&B artists use this such as Facebook and Twitter pages, so fans can actually direct comments and questions towards them, building a relationship between the artist and fans which is crucial as fans love to feel wanted and appreciated.

Creating your audience

This is a quick post identirying what I wish to find out about our target audience

What I wish to find out about our audience through audience research:

Demographic for a musical artist

-Age
-Gender
-Class
-Sexuality
-Interests
-Beliefs
-Values
-Cultural activities
-What they spend their money on

Why make a music video?

These are some of the reasons that artists make a video to go with their song:

-It is a trend, and an expected thing
-Video provides identity/narrative
-Source of income
-Artist image
-Visuals
-Attraction
-Makes it more interesting
-Can be shown in locations such as clubs, gyms and bars
-Get other people in videos to boost image such as Rupert Grint in Ed Sheerans Lego House video
-Some people dont listen to the radio

Audience; expectation of music videos and McQuail theory

Audience expectation

-The video/text will reflect their style choices
-The song/video will be appropriate to the songs
-That the style of the artist can be expected and emulated


McQuail uses and gratification

McQuail argues that the audneices consume their media texts for a variety of different reasons:
-Surveillance
-Personal identity
-Personal relationships
-Escapism
-Diversion
-Relating to the artist

The purpose of a music video

The main purposes of a music video are:

1. To sell the song to the audience react and therefore to leave them something that will make them remember the song.
2. To give the audience greater understanding with the song.
3. To entertain the audience
4. To make sales to the target audience. These sales may come in the form of CD's and DVD's.
5. To enhance the artists image


An example of a successful music video is Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. It was labelled the most successful music video in 2006 by The Guiness Book of World Records after selling over 9 million copies. After that, in 2009 the video was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library Congress. It was the first music video ever to receive this award and was given the award for being 'culturally, historically and aesthetically' significant. This video abides by the purposes of a video listed above as this video was very iconic, many people would relate to the video whilst listening to the song. The video would have also helped sell the song, as it promotes the story of the song. The thriller dance also became very famous and people would perform it, known as 'the claw'. The video is entertaining, as it is a mini film for people to watch, they want to see what happens which engages the audience using the enigma code.