Chris - Audience Research

Our initial plan was to do a focus group using 4 questions after listening to our chosen track as this would allow the those in the focus group to bring up new ideas about the track that we hadn't thought about. However, a focus group can also just mean everyone agrees with one persons's view as they don't want to share their idea or may feel it is wrong and so a questionnaire allows people to write down their own thoughts without others hearing or seeing them. We asked 5 people to complete the questionnaire, all of thom like James Morrison's music and are familiar with the genre.

The questions we asked are as follows:

1. What words or images you would associate with James Morrison.

2. Listen to the song, After listening what comes to your mind? For example what images do you see? And what emotions does the song evoke?

3. On a scale of 1-10 would you associate this song with; a rural or urban location? 1 being rural and 10 being urban

4. Using the same scale, how popular would you say James Morrison is?

5. What do you think this song is about?

6. Have you seen the other James Morrison videos? And what do you think of them (naming specific examples)

7. What would you expect in a video of this song? For example filming style Sepia colouring, black and white, or normal? Please give reasons.

Here are some points following our research:

• There was a mixed response to the question whether the song felt rural or urban, 3 people felt it was more urban whereas the other 2 felt it was further towards the rural end of the scale.
• Two out of the five got the purpose of the song very close to what it is really about, the emotion Morrison has about his childhood and how his Mother treated her children, showing the song is sad but also about forgiveness.
• Acoustic was a main feature of the answers to questions 1 and 2 showing that this is an image strongly related to James Morrison's image and so we should include it in our video.
• Two of the five felt that the song related to a love story between a girl and a boy, and one of the two picked up that the song had a forgive and forget element even though they felt it was to do with the boy and girl relationship.
• All of the five said that they hadn't seen any other James Morrison music videos or that they couldn't remember any of them so it shows that perhaps they dont have a lasting impression on the target audience so we could either follow this style or make our video one that they do remember by leaving the audience thinking about the issues we bring up.
• The idea of using Sepia had a positive reaction with all 5 feeling it was appropiate as the song has a depressive tone and that colour scheme would suit the song.