AUDIENCE RESEARCH

Since my project’s purpose is to give empathy towards the audience who have the same problem with me, therefore it’s really important to ask the audience about their opinions and experiences on dealing with all of that, not to mention about ensuring that they are comfortable enough to share all of their concerns. Online survey is the method that I choose to explore audiences’ thoughts, since it’s more convenient and easier to send and receive statistics. 

Overall, I have 2 surveys for my audience research, one is to investigate whether there are audiences who have the same situation on mental illnesses, music genre and artists. The other survey is to see what they want to see in my music video and which of the color grading that they would prefer. Two of these surveys have help me a lot in gathering audience opinions, which make it easier to make the music video more pleasurable to them. 

☆ MEDIA STUDIES SURVEY ( pt. 1 ) : 

This is my first survey for my music video, its purpose is to explore the audience's mental situation and their causes of it. One special thing that I put in this survey is the choice of choosing the song that I will make. I have 3 songs on my mind for my final outcome, however, it’s quite challenging for me to choose since those 3 of them were suited to all of my criteria that I have set for what I want to deliver in the video. 

The 3 songs that I have thought about are Opening Sequence, Skipping Stones by TXT ( Tomorrow x Together ) and Butterfly by P1Harmony. The common thing that all these songs have is the way they delivered their feelings, which is painful and miserable. That’s why in this survey, I have included 2 questions that let the audiences read the lyrics of each song and listen to their instrumentals. 

( the lyrics question )

( the instrumental tracks question )

All of the lyrics and instrumentals are from the 3 chosen songs, which the audiences didn’t quite know about. All of the drive links were open and anyone who clicked this link can view the lyrics and the audio tracks. The lyrics were translated since they are all Korean. The results show that for the lyrics question, everyone seems to prefer lyrics 2, which from Skipping Stones by TXT. The major reason for this is that they feel relatable, show a strong sense of hope and poetic. Some of them are also like the metaphor of the problem being swallowed up and embraced by the 'river'.

However, the result is quite different from the instrumental question, when the majority of audiences who did this survey preferred track 3, which is the instrumental of Butterfly by P1Harmony. Most of the audiences state their reasons why they choose track 3 is because of how catchy the bass and drum beats of the track are, some of them also think the rhythm and melody is really dreamy.

This gives me another challenge on choosing the final song since the choices are really different. One solution that I did is to proofread the lyrics and listen to the whole songs, which include both the vocal and the instrumentals, then compare with the criteria that I have set in the mindmap. After a long time of listening over and over again to 3 chosen songs, I made my final decision, which is Butterfly by P1Harmony, since the song in general was upbeat yet tranquil and melancholy. It brings a dreamy and painful vibe at the same time, thus it can balance the feelings, make the audiences feel relatable, also healing at the same time, without offending anyone.

Nevertheless, the questions that I gave in the first part were mostly optional, since some of the problems that I mentioned are sensitive to some people, that they just want to keep to themselves. Therefore, giving them a choice to keep it personal by typing in “private confession”, for me is the best solution since they can give a general answer, without forcing them to tell exactly what they have gone through. This is the way that I can give my respect towards their mental condition and ensure that their feeling are safe. 

 (I have included a small bracket as the disclaimer, they don’t have to answer the next question if they don’t want to share their experience )

☆ MEDIA STUDIES SURVEY ( pt. 2 ) : 

The second part of the survey is to find out what the audiences would prefer to see in a music video, which is also essential since the audience might feel unfamiliar or inappropriate. I also include some questions about Wong Kar Wai and give some examples of his scenes for the audiences to choose since my music video have a quite heavy influence from his movies, therefore, it’s important to ask them did they know him and what kind of color grading from him that they think it’s good for them 

It seems like most of the audience that done this survey were not really interested in lip - synching and great narrative. They would rather immersed themselves in retable story, feelings and emotional reactions. They also seem to enjoy cinematography, acting and great performance in music videos. All of this were proven through the statistics from the form.

The next section of this survey is the questions about Wong Kar Wai's style of cinematography and colors. Due to the fact that this music video will be influenced by his styles, therefore, it's important to seek audience's most preferable style, in order to give a pleasurable experience while watching it. 

 ( Some questions about Wong Kar Wai in the survey )

The results show that most of the audience have heard of him somewhere but never actually watched one of his films, or maybe have seen some of his films sneak peak on social media platforms, or else. The percentage between them have heard it before and have absolutely no ideas about him, which means that the audience didn’t know much about his films, even though he’s a really famous director. About the color grading choice, the percentage lean a bit into fallen angels, as for its dreaminess, and how magical the red light manipulated the actress, not to mention the neon light surrounded by buildings and city life elements.

From the result of the survey, Fallen Angels ( 1995 ) is my final choice for the color grading and camera shots for the MV, however, I might add some details from Chungking Express ( 1994 ) also. According to the script, in the bridge part of the song, there will be scenes that include me running on the streets, overlapping the dancer scene. I decided to use the “step-printing” shot from Chungking Express, and add some glitch between the scenes, to demonstrate how emotions can be chaotic and mixed up. Therefore, the audience can understand that this character ( me ) is still enduring her hardships and trying to find a way to escape it, yet, new problems still emerge into her mind and some of them still stay even though it has been over a long time ago. This made her mind mixed and didn’t know what to think first, and how she can control herself under the pressure. As I have mentioned before, the butterfly and the human character herself have a conflict with each other, which made both of them become deprived. Thus, giving the scene glitching effects and also overlapping the scenes can create a chaotic sense of feeling. 

☆ MY IMAGINATIVE TARGETED AUDIENCE : 

The audience that I imagine it’s a normal person, no matter the gender, who have a normal appearance, normal personality, but somehow in their face, even though they are still acting like normal, however, there’s still something inside them that doesn't show much. It’s quite tricky for me to describe the type of audience that I aim for since it’s more in the personality than appearance. In general, the audience that I aim for is a person that seems to be different from others, they tend to have different interests, different ways of talking and styling, but in some magical ways, they can still fit in with their friend groups or any communities. You might be quiet while their friends have a lot of chit chats together and you just listen to them, or you might be more mellow than them and tend to observe them playing around and give a big smile. You might burst into tears in a scene from a K-drama series and everyone seems to don't understand why you cried. You might have many things that you have kept and want to share as it gets frustrating, but you are afraid that everyone cannot understand it and thinks it’s wrong, therefore, you just keep it to yourself and  still survive until now. 

( the audience that I imagined can be quite unrecognizable and seems to resemble a lot with my personality )

In general, my music video is for everyone. I hope that whoever watches this can have related feelings and know that they’re not alone. There are still people that understand their feelings and always be on their side.