So that I could understand what my target audience wanted to see in an urban musician, my partner and I created a survey that was uploaded onto Survey Monkey. As a pair we posted it on several social networks which includes Facebook and Twitter. This enabled us to gather a better understanding of what we could incorporate in our production, and this is what we found out from each of our questions:
1) Use at least three words to describe your ideal R&B artist.
From this, we could quite a range of answers. From very helpful responses such as "Fun, mature, confident, sexy, glamourous" to "not Miley Cyrus", which in some respect is actually quite helpful. The three most popular words that we got were:
- Mature (11)
- Confident (8)
- Glamorous (6)
- Promiscuous (6)
- Fun (4)
This has allowed us to understand that most people within our target market like to see someone that is quite confident and is respectable. This reminds me of artists such as Alicia Keys and Ciara as they have a bit of each of these five attributes. This is a very good thing as this is the path that my partner and I wanted to go for, so as far as things are going, our audience are fond of our idea, even if they do not realise it. Other mentionable comments were things such as "intimidating" and "street" - this is a typical urban aspect and does not change our idea at all, which is good.
2) What costume style would you prefer to see in a female urban artist?
This was a multiple choice question. We chose to make it multiple choice as we wanted to see what they thought of our options. We have an "other" option in case our ideas did not fit their's. Here are the responses for this question:
As you can see, the two most popular options were "casual" and "promiscuous". There is a three response difference between these two where "casual" has more options. The "other" responses said they wanted an "urban" style, which is quite interesting. However, for an urban artist, the casual look seems to be the most popular option as it clearly has the most votes. I believe that we could definitely work with this by using a similar style to Cassie that she used in her video, which is quite casual but still looks nice.
3) Which ethnicity(ies) do you feel suits R&B vocals?
This was also another multiple choice response. The answers to this were very mutual when it came to analysing it. 18 out of the 22 responses said that they believe that black people suit the R&B vocals best, which is great as our current artist is black. The next popular option was mixed race, which had 5 less votes at 13. This can be a good guideline as to who we may use as a backup if our first option does not work out. We also asked our audience to tell us why they believed it and most of them said things along the lines of how it originates from that, as well as popular artists such as Ciara and Mariah Carey being from their selected skin colour.
4) In terms of location, which of the following are your favourites? Select as many that apply.
Another multiple choice question that we added was this one. We had a few ideas in mind and wanted to see if anybody agreed with other possibly locations. We did not put anything that we could not actually film in ourselves, but we also wanted others to give us any other possible options. There was only one person that said "other" and they wanted a green screen (one colour background) as well as a stage. The stage idea is a great way for us to dip into multiple locations, so we will be taking this on board with us. The rest of the results are as follows:
A 'street wall' was a popular option, and so was a club. I believe that as a club is very conventional, we could possibly use it but this depends on how well it fits with our song. We could attempt this but as it is a very slow song about heartbreak, I am not sure whether or not it will work; but we shall give it a go. The 'one colour background' got the same amount of votes as the club idea (if you include the "other" comment) which is quite simple to use. This was our initial idea and it clearly is quite popular with our audience, so we can definitely use it because of this.
5) Which of the following music video styles would you prefer for a video of the R&B genre?
We gave our respondents options to answer this as well as the definition of each style in case they were not aware of the answer. Below are our responses:
The most popular response was "narrative", by 3 votes. We initially wanted to have a bit of a narrative in our video so this is good. Also, "performance" was the main part of our idea and that was also a popular option. However, as most people are fond of the narrative option we may have to slightly change our idea a bit as our audience is more fond of one than the other. Nonetheless, it is great to know that our initial ideas have not been rejected by our target market one bit as this means that we do not have to change much of it.
6) Please rate the following themes in order of preference. 1 being you’re most preferred and 5 being you’re least preferred
The responses for this question show that people rate feminism 27.3% which means 6 people have picked that as the first theme out of 22. Positive break-up theme is placed at first with the same 27.3% with 6 people voting it first as their most preferred theme. Negative breakup is rated 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen it as their preferred reading. Sex theme has been rated 18.4% which means 4 people have chosen it out of 22. And lastly the theme of friendship is rated 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen this out of 22.
Feminism is ranked fifth with a rating of 18.2% meaning 4 people have chosen this as their least preferred. Positive break-up is 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen this as their least preferred out of 22 people. Negative break-ups are ranked fifth as 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen as their least preferred. The sex theme is ranked fifth at 22.5% meaning 5 people have chosen this as their least preferred. Friendship themed is ranked fifth at 31.8% meaning 7 people have chosen this out of 22.
The most popular theme is tied between Feminism and Positive Break-ups. We believe that people like this the most is because firstly feminism is very empowering to females and as this song we have chosen is targeted towards females seeing that is something in which they can relate too. And the theme of positive break-ups is something very different and is not usually shown so by doing something like this we are giving something refreshing to the audience. The most disliked course is friendship, and we think that the audience says this is because when showing friendship in a video it can be shown as something very boring and can be drawn out so long that they start to loose interest. Especially to a r&b music video it is unusual to see a theme of friendship so if we were to do so it would look very out of place.
7) How many people should be included in a video for a song about a unfortunate relationship?
They were given options from 1-4+ the answer that came up the most was 3 people and the least that came up was 0 and 2 people. SO this shows that they prefer around 3 people in the music video which would be are main artist who we see frequently, the guy who plays the love interest and then in some of the performance scenes we would see back up dancers/singers.
The most dominant answers are 3 and 4 so to please our audience we have decided to include around 4+ people because by doing so we are able to expand on our ideas and explore more topics and techniques. The least amount of people that our audience wanted in our video are from 0-2 and we think this is because after a while the same old face can get really boring and by introducing new faces and having them reappear and disappear it keeps the audience interested.
8) In terms of appearance as well as music, please rate the following artist in order of preference. 1 being your most preferred and 5 being your least preferred.
Ciara was ranked first at 22.7% meaning 5 people out of 22 people chose it first. Miley Cyrus has been ranked also first for 22.7% meaning 5 people out of 22 have chosen this option first. Alicia Keys has been chosen first with a ranking of 9.1% which means 2 people out of 22 have chosen her as their favourite. For Rihanna people have chosen her first with a rank of 13.6% which means 3 people prefer her as their favourite artist. Ariana grande had a ranking of 4.5% which mean only 1 person prefers her as first.
And lastly Beyonce having a ranking of 227.3% meaning 6 people out of 22 prefer her as their first choice. Out of all these artist Beyonce has had the most votes as their preferred artist and the reason we think this is so because she is so iconic and well known her classy yet sexual style really tied in the audience and helps to create a different atmosphere when watching her music videos. The individuality she has as a female artist outweighs any other r&b artist that is out this moment and when creating out music video we will try to take aspects of Beyonce style in her videos and herself and try to re-create that in the best way in which we can.
As for the artist that is least liked from the survey we can see that people do not prefer Miley Cyrus with having a ranking of 31.8% meaning 7 people put her as their least favourite and we believe this is because her style can come across as really raunchy and tacky as an artist and it not as tasteful as other artist in this area. Also Ariana Grande has been ranked as an artist which they dislike the most with a ranking of 40.9% meaning 9 people have chosen her as their least favourite and we believe this is because her style comes across as being happy all the time and when we see her we don't see her being genuine and real. The audience reads her as being fake and not her true self. So when creating our music video we will try to stay away from these two artists style of music video and the way they are an artist in themselves.
9) Please rate the following videos from 1-5. 1 meaning you really liked the video, 5 meaning you did not like it at all. If you did not see the video, please click the "have not seen" option
Beyonce - Broken Hearted Girl : Was ranked first at 40.9% meaning 9 people had ranked it first out of 22. And it was also ranked fifth at 0% but had have not seen percent of 27.3% which means 6 people had not seen it out of 22.
Ciara - Like A Boy : Was ranked first at 40.9% meaning 9 people has ranked it first out of 22. And it was also ranked fifth at 0% but 22.7% which is five people who have not seen the music video.
Alicia Keys- Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart : Was ranked first 4.5% which means only 1 person out of 22 people chose it as first. It was ranked fifth at 0% but 18.2% have not seen the video meaning four people out of 22 have not seen it.
Rihanna- Stay: Was ranked first at 27.3% meaning 6 people out of 22 had chosen it first. It had been ranked fifth at 4.5% which means one person out of 22 placed it last. But 2 people have not seen that video.
Katy Perry- The One That Got Away : Was ranked first at 18.2% meaning 4 people out of 22 people had ranked it first. It was ranked fifth at 13.6% meaning people people didn't like it the most and was not seen by 2 out of 22 people.
Fifth Harmony- Miss Movin' On : Was ranked first at 13.6% which means 3 people out of 22 had liked it the most and was ranked fifth at 13.6% meaning 3 people out od 22 had disliked it the most and there were 9 people who had not seen it.
10) What affect does Mulvey's "Male Gaze" theory (the belief that producers film certain shots to emphasize a women's body parts for sexualisation purposes) have on an R&B video? Please explain.
Here were some responses from the 22 people on their views ...
We received a lot of feedback for this section and have understood that many people are fond of our idea. However, as similar artists such as Beyonce are sexualised, we believed that our audience would like this. From our feedback we have received mixed views about this. Some people say that they like the idea as it is something very typical within the genre of R&B, whilst others were highly against the idea as they believed that females should not have to show off their bodies in order to be successful. From this we can understand that we can include both of these aspects so that we can somehow manage to please both sets of audiences. We will be incorporating this factor into our work by allowing our artist the privilige of showcasing her body at some points, but not much. We can pan the camera on her body but instead of having her showcase her skin, she could be clothed, and the camera could be the one sexualising it alone, as opposed to the girl being involved in the process. This will allow our audience members to possibly be pleased as it is not as overdone as many artists today, for example, Miley Cyrus.
We also completed a magazine advert analysis of three different artists. This included Beyoncé, Ciara and Miley Cyrus. We wanted to dwell into our own market so we chose artists that shared some form of similarity to our own. This was a great way to understand the marketing sector of the music industry as we understood quite a bit. We found out that sexualisation was important as it enabled the audience to have their attention caught. However, Ciara's advert taught us that sometimes elegant women are also used for a promotional tool. With makeup, a nice outfit and a strong pose, we get a certain atmosphere delivered from the celebrity. We can take both of these things into consideration when working on our artist as we could sexualise her in some form, but as we would like to keep her class, having clothes would be a useful tool. We can still sexualise her by the camera positions, but the way she acts and dresses is very important, as taught by these analysations.
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