I began by explaining to the group that I am doing target audience research in terms of representation of class in the following video.
This is the official video to Black and Yellow by Wiz Khalifa which was released in 2010.
The mix between narrative and performance really engaged me with the video. I feel that Unorthodox and Black and Yellow are both very similar in terms of content in the video and how the director has considered the narrative and performance side of the video.
I showed all three of the participants this video the whole way through and then asked them to share their thoughts on it. Their feedback was very interesting and varied a lot. Despite person A liking heavy-metal, he said that he thought the video was very engaging and he felt like he wanted to watch more. I was surprised by this as I know people that despise hip-hop and therefore would not even want to watch this video the whole way through. Person B said they had already seen this video and thought that the performance side of the video is inspiring as Wiz makes the video fun and energetic and that is what hip-hop should be like. Lastly, person C really likes the song but the video didn't really grab her attention and she found it a little boring at times. This goes to show how fans of different genres do not necessarily dislike other genres or cant sit through a music video of a different genre to what they listen to. This is important to consider when editing our footage as we need to make sure we are mainly targeting the hip-hop audience, while at the same time, targeting a wider audience if possible.
Now I got the three participants to consider representation of class and status in the Black and Yellow video. This was interesting and I received again, a mixed variety of results. An interesting point made by person B was that almost every hip-hop/rap video he has seen always includes shots of the artist showing off their money or jewellery. This is a great point and I believe this is true. Being a true hip-hop/rap fan, I also recognise certain typical aspects of hip-hop/rap music videos that occur frequently such as cars, money, girls and bling. Black and Yellow is a prime example of this as there are constant references to cars and jewellery in not only the shots in the music video, but also the lyrics.
Then the three participants began talking about the representation of class and status in the video. Person B clearly knew a lot more about the background of the artist and the stereotypes associated with hip-hop as he is a hip-hop fan. Therefore he made contributions that directed towards connotations of the jewellery and car shown in the video and linked it with the transformation from a low class and status that the artist may have had in the past before he made it to be an established artist. However, person A and person C made followed stereotypes due to their lack of knowledge on the artist. Person A said he is aware of the fact that the majority of hip-hop/rap artists have come from a violent/criminal background etc. This is somewhat true but is not the case for artists such as Example and Wretch 32. Person C made a good suggestion when she said that this artist is obviously proud of what he has achieved and therefore boasts about it in his videos which may be part of the hip-hop/rap culture to demonstrate their power in the industry. It is important for James and I to consider different editing techniques in order to symbolise certain aspects of the video. For example, when I am rapping my verse, the editing should be done so I am clearly the main focus and my character profile is clearly portrayed during my air-time.
To conclude, I feel the focus group gave me a much greater understanding of what people think about hip-hop/rap and how James and I are going to have to edit effectively in order to reach our audience, if not a wider audience.
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