Unit 13 Archie Coupar 16/03/2021

Focus Group:

My focus group helped me to understand, different ways in which I could develop

my idea and open it up to a wider, more diverse demographic. This will help to
keep more people engaged with my production and make it more entertaining,
considering that two of the people who participated in my focus group, do not play
the guitar or listen to music that features a guitar, so to hear there perspective was
helpful.

I started out by asking the participants, what they thought of my chosen idea. I
wanted to hear more peoples opinion on the idea in general and what they thought
I could do to improve it. So for the two that don’t play the guitar, they gave
response like, “I think the idea is unique”, “it needs a stronger narrative”, and “you
need to make sure it can appeal to a wide target audience.”, This has helped me to
understand how I can connect better with my potential audience that doesn’t play
an instrument and don’t really know what goes into to making a guitar and frankly
aren’t interested. I took from these responses that I need to take a look at my
target audience and, really think about ways I could reach out to a broader range
wether this be looking into younger age groups or the older generations. I think
that I should look into the younger age group more than the old, because guitars
aren’t as prominently used is music today as they were say 20 years ago. I have
been working on developing the storyline/narrative structure of my production and
have started to work with a client to create a product video. However the ultimate
end goal of the production is to build a guitar and play it.

Asking the participants, “What my production should include” especially from this
focus group as, we have one person that plays the guitar and two that don’t, and
they both gave me very different answer, for example, the participant that play the
guitar stated that “it should include lots of information about the guitar” meaning
that he would like to see what it is made of, a more in-depth perspective of how it
is made and what components that I use. Compare this to what the other two
participants said things such as “it need humour” and “if you just did a montage of
someone building a guitar that would be really boring”. What I took from this is,
they want to see information about the guitar and how it is built but they don’t
want, it to just be clip after clip of me building it, they want breaks in-between,
they want to see where I struggle, and where I have problem whilst building it, and
they would want to see pieces to camera, and voice-overs expelling my process
more instead of just showing it.

The next question I asked the participant was, “what do you think I shouldn’t
include in my production”. Asking this question helped me to further understand
what they wanted to see, and give me more of an in-depth boundary, as to what
they consider to be enjoyable and what they don’t. One answer was “a solid
structure of a storyline of why he building the guitar, what form etc” This quote
backs up the idea that they don’t want to see loads of information about the guitar;
how its built, or what its made out of.

Unit 13 Archie Coupar 16/03/2021

I then asked them what they thought I could improve about my idea in general, as I
know what they would like to see and what they would like to see in my production
but I wanted to see how they would like it to be implemented. An example from an
answer that I got is “You need a stronger storyline and some background on the
character”, after checking with the participant who said this, I now know he meant
presenter, meaning he wants to know more about me in the film, why I chose to
build a guitar, wether I play the guitar , if so for how long, he wants me to use this
to help build a storyline from, aiding the viewers engagement in my production.

Finally I asked wether or not each participant would watch my production. The
answers from this were 1 outright no, one who said no and then changed his mind
and I quote “ill give it a try” and one who said yes. It comes as no surprise to me
that the two that said no (at first) are the two that don’t play guitar or any
instrument for that matter and the one that said yes, plays the guitar himself. What
I took away from these answers is that I really need to try hard to make this
production appealing to people who don’t play instruments and I really need to
focus on those people in my research as people within in the music industry will
already understand what i’m going for, with my production.