2. Before even starting production of our music video, me and the rest of my group
had to carefully think about the type of audience our artist and the final piece are
going to address in order to make the most effect and so the people watching it
will be able to understand our intentions.
So, the audience we targeted in the music video are:
Age: Between 16-19 years of age (easier for teenagers to relate to our artist)
Gender: Both, but putting more pressure on the male, because of the storyline.
Nationality: British/European
Lifestyle/attitude to life: Only caring about himself/wants the most from life.
Location: Very local location of the artist and the primary audience.
When the music video was almost finished, we created and sent out a type of
questionnaire for our peers so we can broad idea of what people think about the
music video overall. They were asked to watch it first and then write down all the
points (negative and positive) to make it useful for us when it come to the
“cleaning” process when we are going to do all the corrections needed.
3. From the feedback that we have received, we found that the music video does
work and people do understand the main concept and the message that we are
trying to pass to the audience. The only points that we had to consider working on
was lighting in some of the extracts. This got to with the scenes from the club,
where the lighting was not always co-operating with the camera and some of the
shoots were not clear for the audience. This was really helpful comment and the
whole exercise of the audience feedback was meant to show us that there are
some things that we as the directors and producers might not see because we are
so used to it.
Another thing that we have find out is that people liked the overall narrative of the
music video and the change between the flashback as well as the little kid singing
did not confuse them at all, but actually made them think deeper into the message
and symbolism that has been plotted in it. Considering the sad and complicated
narrative people also had time to find some comic bits in the music video which
made them laugh and enjoy every second of it. It made us think that the video
might also appeal to different type of audience as it goes from being sad and
putting audience into ordinary mood up to party/laughing/mocking style which let
them enjoy watching and gradually relate to the time which is represented on the
screen.
4. From I found out, I know that our music video appeals to the audience because it uses
Codes and Conventions which can be found in the video of the same type across the
genre that we picked. The audience can easily engage and relate to the narrative.
Because our audience is teenagers, they can relate not only to the whole story but the
main singer as well through many things for example: clothes and lifestyle. At the start
of the video audience is hit by a very strong message and the acting of the main artists
tells them that something is wrong. When they see the letter dropping on the floor, it
straight away represents disappointment and trouble. This keeps the audience attracted
to the screen as they want to find out what happens next to the main guy and what
happened before that it gets to the point of him looking shocked and dropping the
letter on the floor and walking away without saying anything. It is really important that
we keep shocking and making people and our audience to enjoy the music video at the
same time. This lets us make up our fan base of the group and it will be mostly the
people on the border lines of our initial “audience format” which you can read about in
the previous slide. Another things is that the artist that we are doing the music video
for is a local artist and the same happens to out target audience. We want our audience
to also be very local, as they know more about the artist are really into the music he
represents. Having national or international aim of audience would be pointless
because not everyone might know the artist even thought he has a lot of his on
YouTube and have couple of his own albums out in stores.
5. To be also more effective when it comes to filming and editing, it is useful to use
many techniques and tactics that not only have some impact on the audience, but
also are impressive and the fans will be coming back to the video because they
experience pleasure from watching it. The first point that I am going to talk about
is the choice of the genre that may be popular with my expected type of audience.
For the music video we have chosen Indie/Rock on the line with Alternative music
too. This is the kind of music genre that does not speak to everybody and only the
specific type of people might be actually enjoying and listening to it. This made it
easier for us when it came to the audience feedback, because we also knew who
we are going to give the forms to in order to get the best result from the
questionnaires. This could be decided by already knowing what people are
listening to which bands and sometimes the way people dress might tell us more
about what kind of music video they are listening to. When you someone who is
dressed similarly to our main artist Freddy you know that this might be the right
audience/person.
Another point is that there is a lot of editing techniques used init. The music video
have continuity editing, but it is jumping back and forward with a lot of
FLASHBACKS involved. This creates an effect of deeper and more interesting story
line.
6. From what we have found in the audience feedback it also creates a sense of a film
that tells us a story of a character and issues that surround him, not only a normal
music video with a lot of performance involved in it. Another type of editing that
we have used is montage. This is used at the end with the slow emotion pace
used. This was done on purpose to remind the audience of all the
scenes/issues/character that were involved in the whole music video. Because our
story line is a bit too complex, we wanted to make that montage reflecting on the
audience feedback. Even though people understood all of the story line at the end
some of them did not remember everything that has happened. So by putting the
montage of all of the most important scenes at the end will make the “de-ja-vu”
effect for the audience.
The last point of the tactics that were used is that we actually gave the audience
what they have wanted. We introduced them the main character with very original
and complex star image. This made the audience more able to relate to the
character and his life style. It was obvious that we are not going to show this music
video to a person who is about 40+ years of age, because it would be pointless and
the person watching would not find any similarities or connections between him
and the main singer in the music video.
7. So, to conclude our audience feedback led to improvements being made in order
for it to be perfect and appeal in the right way. The changes that we have made
involve: swapping the dark clip of the club scene with another one which
represents similar story line. This was useful for us because it actually made that
10 seconds of the video more clear and we could also play more with the editing
which also gave us more experience. The feedback really affected the perception
because now we were sure what kind of audience we want to have and gradually
after we read all the messages we could decide on that kind of poster/magazine
advert and cover we want to make so it will be even more affective when it comes
to appealing to our local audience and maybe very small percentage of national
ones. This also made some effect on the way was finished. We had to add some
shots which made the music video story line more obvious. There was also
problem with our “Sex Scene” being too pornographic. So this had to be changed
in order for it to be suitable for our target audience as we want it to be starting at
16/17 roughly. Even thought this is already teenagers doesn’t make any reason for
us to be showing sex act that explicitly.
