Effective Ways to present and evaluate research methods

Before I began work on my music video, I thought it were best to learn as much as I can about the structure of music videos, by educating myself on different codes and conventions that they posses. I began by taking notes from a powerpoint that was designed to brief us on some of these codes and conventions. We where then introduced to two theorists, Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin, whom specialise in film theory and understand what it is that makes a music video what it is.
They both had written books on their individual theory's, which I was able to utilise and make my own music video the best it could be. I primarily gathered information from the Goodwin's book, "Dacing in the Distraction Factory" as well as articles that he had written for major newspapers such as the Guardian.
I have never myself analysed a music video before, despite being an avid music video watcher myself. After reading material from both of these theorists I was able to expand my knowledge on how to derive the directors intention behind different music videos. It also allowed me to fully appreciate the different genres in which music videos had been placed in, which would later prove useful when planning my own music video.

I decided to analyse 3 different music videos and pick out their genre, codes and conventions. Due to the research that i had conducted previously which broadened my understanding of the different structures of music videos,  I was able to efficiently identify different codes and conventions without too much trouble. This also helped me pick out what genre my own music video would belong to. When choosing the song for my music video, I thought it were best to conduct primary research amongst my own HNC classmates. I played two example tracks and out of the both, the majority preferred the song "Corrine" by Black Honey and therefore I chose this track. This benefitted me extremely as I wanted to produce a narrative based video and this song, which contains familiar themes is extremely adaptable for just that.

I also produced a questionnaire which the public could fill out in order to get a better understanding on what people prefer to see in their music videos.I included questions such as:

What is your preferred format of music video? 

-Live performance (stage)
-liver performance (studio)
- narrative 
- experimental 
- non linear 
- conceptual 

What engages you the most in a music Video?

- Riveting narative 
- Relatable themes 
-Interesting visuals 
- Controversial themes 

The results of this survey helped me choose what kind of format and genre I would make my music video as well as what themes it would contain.

A

As you can see the majority of my audience  preferred the music video to contain a narrative which helped me make the decision to include a narrative which explores the themes that are presented in the lyrical content of the song.
In the end this genre music video was achieved and i was able to stay true to the primary research that I conducted.

The other question i asked was what engages you most in a music video? The top answer appeared to be "relatable themes" and therefore I decided to explore the themes of love and relationships in my music video considering the song itself is also a love song.

Conclusion:

Overall i felt that quantitive data gathering and research methods worked in my favour as it allowed me to make easy decisions regarding the format and genre of my music video. It also helped me come up with the themes in which i wanted to explore which ended up driving the narrative to what it is now. However my research methods didn't exactly give me a solid idea of what I wanted to do with the video as a whole. The information i gathered was fairly vague and didn't apply to every aspect of the video. This is because of the lack in questions that were put to the public in the questionnaire, if I were to have written more and more precise questions I may have gotten a better idea of where Wanted to take the video from the start. Instead I spent a lot of time storyboarding and visualising different shots when listening to the song itself. The research did in fact make it easier to choose how the video was going to look and what themes it was going to explore.
I also felt that qualitative research collecting such as the focus group with my class was also incredibly useful as a research method as it allowed me to talk directly to my audience and gather their opinions down which would further benefit the final outcome of my music video. The people involved with the focus groups were able to bounce ideas of off each other which proved extremely useful when brainstorming concepts.
What further expanded my understanding of the structure of music videos was researching the two film theorists Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin by applying their theory to different existing music videos as well as my own. I searched online for different interpretations as well as additional notes on these theorists and their theories which helped broaden my understanding of their specialty. However I had to ensure these we sources were correct by reviewing the references section just in case.

Improvements:
To ensure that I gained as much qualitative data as possible I could have set up a camera and microphone during the focus group. This would have allowed me to revisit the footage and apply any opinions or information i could have taken fro the individuals involved.

- I should have also included more questions in my questionnaire to cover a wider spectrum of aspects which could have further improved my music video.

- I could have also staged a focus group with a higher amount of participants to ensure that a wide range of opinions could have been collected.