AUDIENCE
In media products like a film opening or music video,
it is important to appeal to an audience in order to achieve the primary aim;
sell/ become popular. The target audience for our music video production was females
aged 17-25 who were middle class and enjoyed embracing their female-hood. To
research what our audience wanted, we looked at artists similar to our genre
(indie), such as Lana Del Rey, and found out what their audiences like. From
this, we found that the vintage/ retro theme is a big hit (like in American
50s/60s culture) and also someone/ some people to identify with and idolise is
very popular. The reason they want these things can be explained by Blumler and
Katz who think that audiences want media products that gratify particular
needs, for example to escape or for entertainment. Our audiences wanted someone
to identify with, therefore they would be watching is to gratify that particular
need.
Within the music video we used camera shots to attract/
engage the audience in the following ways. We used close ups of the main artist
Emma to help our audience identify with the main artist. As there was a clear
gap in the market for our girl band, we rolled with this. The girl band is not
seen as superficial, they are seen as down to earth girls. Therefore, the use
of close ups aided the identification for our audience as we focused on this
down to earth girl who audience members would idolise. The motive behind these
close ups support the theory proposed by Blumler and Katz. Another theory which
helps understand why we did this is by Andrew Goodwin who believes the use of
close ups is important to appreciate the “star persona” of the lead singer. The
majority of our shots were close ups and therefore our audience was able to
appreciate the “star persona” of the lead singer as well as identify with her.
The way in which we edited the music video uses the
hypodermic needle theory proposed by Frankfurt School. This theory thinks that
audiences might be directly influenced by media products as the producer of the
product injects what the audience’s wants into them. So, with our editing, we
used many effects over the top of shots like retro/ vintage filters as this is
what we found out our audiences wanted with similar artists such as Lana Del
Rey. We also cut the shots to be really fast and create a certain pace of the
video, which in turn became more enjoyable and entertaining to watch for the
audience.
For sound, we applied Carol Vernallis’ theory of
cutting the music to the beat. The prime purpose of this is to reflect the experiential
properties of sound. We found this to be really effective and enjoyable for the
audience as it successfully reflected the experiential properties of sound,
which means that the properties of our sound was based on observation. This resulted
in the beat of our music cutting directly when certain observations could be
made in our music video. For example, when the very first beat drops, it shows
one of the members of the girl band dropping into the water at the exact same
time. This was consumed by our audience and applying Carol Vernallis’ theory
proved to be a successful move.
To conclude, it was really important to consider our
target audience in depth as they are the primary consumers. The consideration of
our audience affected our production overall as we were able to receive appropriate
and helpful feedback which aided the improvement of certain aspects of our
music video production and resulted in a more successful grade.
