Audience Experiment Results

In this experiment we plan to take a sample of students studying music at Weston College and present them with an extract of three different types of documentary to see which they prefer. The sample is of 70 students which will be broken down into three groups. Each group will watch a different extract of documentary (roughly 2 mins) and then will be presented with a questionnaire asking which they prefer.

The students will be told we are measuring the entertainment level of a documentary, what they won’t be told is that each group will be presented with a different style of documentary and what we’re really measuring is the effectiveness of a style on the audience. Hypothesis: The audience will respond more positively to the Live From Abbey Road extract than any other extract Independent Variable: The type of documentary Dependent Variable: The response to the documentary (audience opinion) How we will measure it: Questionnaire Evaluation: Questionnaires are useful as they provide quantitative data which is easily measured. Also as it is confidential participants are more likely to tell the truth. A big problem is that we are not being 100% honest about the experiment’s intentions but doing this shall not cause any distress and won’t change their rights to leave the experiment at anytime The three extracts: These three extracts are documentaries identified as appropriate styles for our own and a potential format Live From Abbey Road Description: Interestingly shot, artistic feel, exciting and full of focus pulls and depth of field Relevance: features an interview with a musician followed by a performance (a style we may explore in our documentary) Problems: features band which may not be popular with participants, may have negative result on audience Secret Millionaire Description: cheery music in background, ‘voice of god’ narrator, basic editing and camera work Relevance: follows charity work which is a main focus of our documentary. Technique of interviews and expressing charity work could be used in our documentary Problems: tailored to a more mature audience

03-10-2011 Entertainment. Pictures © 2011

Michael Jackson Description: fast editing, music in background (exciting), many interviews, ‘voice of god’ narration Relevance: follows story of a recording artist, features archive footage and news paper clippings which we have access to Problems: Michael Jackson is already a very famous artist which will have an effect on the results, audiences may respond positively as they have been manipulated by the use of music and fast editing

Results

We planned to do the experiment on 70 music students but when we accidentally printed roughly 260 pages we decided to repeat the experiment as many times as possible to whoever we could find. By doing this we actually discovered a clear distinction between audiences:

Firstly as predicted the majority of our target audience (students of music) preferred the Live From Abbey Road documentary extract. But what we also noticed when carrying out the experiment was this: when we showed the Abbey Road extract the class full of 70 students all fell silent. When we showed the other styles of documentary some students began to converse amongst themselves showing that they had lost attention, disregarding the extract as not worth their time. I’m also pleased to say the students were all very friendly and positive towards the task at hand - a few students commented after the experiment, asking which style of documentary we were going to use and when I replied Abbey Road they congratulated me on my choice.

What was also revealing was that the music department were all very aware of Live From Abbey Road, admitting to watching and enjoying it, but when we carried out the experiment amongst media students, hardly any had even heard of the show. This clearly shows that Live From Abbey Road successfully targets musicians and students of music, now we must investigate as to why and how we can recreate this.

Live From Abbey Road

12 part, one hour performance/documentary, features 3 artists per show, recorded without a live audience. Filmed in High-Definition, occasionally using 35mm lenses, “the producers have sought to record performances which “look like a movie and sound like a record” - http://www.livefromabbeyroad.com “If the first series of Live From Abbey Road ‘redefined and revolutionised’ music television to become the world’s premiere music show; the second series will leave its competitors standing with its high production values and truly

outstanding content.Directed by the visionary AJ Jankel, each episode is as insightful as it is elegant, as sophisticated as it is cool. Shot in a classy, almost dreamlike way, its style is inimitable.” - http://www.livefromabbeyroad.com Director - AJ Jankel Looking at AJ Jankel on imdb I have tried to understand her style and background. She has directed two notable films, Super Mario Bros (1993), a video game adaptation and infamous for being awful, and D.O.A (1988), an 80s remake of the classic and having seen it can confirm it’s style and edginess. Here, the producers of Live From Abbey Road have hired a film director to produce a music tv-show. This confirms what they were quoted as saying previously, ‘look like a movie and sound like a record’. This can also be seen by their use of High Definition video and 35mm lenses (the classic film lens). Distributors – Sundance Channel (US) One thing I’ve also noticed is one of the distributors of the show is the US Sundance Channel. The Sundance Channel is behind the Sundance film festival and also distributes acclaimed and stylish shows such as Breaking Bad. Codes and Conventions Technical codes: lens flares, large depth of field, cinematic look, high exposure/full of colour, steady cam, focus pulls, shots out of focus, features clapper board and pre-performance set up – these codes are typical in art house films and music videos but also including the clapper board at the beginning of interviews and performances creates a style similar to Reflexive documentaries in the sense that it is aware that it is a production Conventions: I’ve noticed the interviewer or the questions asked are never featured. Unlike documentaries such as Michael Moore’s Sicko, there isn’t a focus on the film-maker or their journey, but instead purely focuses on the content provided by performance and interviews. The don’t use archive footage but this makes sense as it’s not really necessary. In comparison to how we plan to do our documentary, we plan to record a live performance in the College’s tv studio (a similar set up to Live From Abbey Road) and interview Ryan Inglis and others. But what separates ours from Abbey Road is that we also plan to use footage from Inglis performing live and archive footage he has provided us with.