Q1.b. Audience

Analyse the coursework production in relation to the concept of audience (25 marks)

At A2 I created a cross promotional package which included a digipak, a website and a music video to promote a new music video. I launched a new advertising campaign which must be clear in order to target my specified audience. It is essential that a music video appeals to the audience as being a new artist it’s important to make a good impression in order to sell records and promote my artist further. When creating my music video for the song ‘Buried Alive’ by Logic, I thought extensively about the kind of people I was appealing to and how I would do this. My target audience was predominantly males, as stereotypically the rap is a genre more appealing to males, in the age range of 16-22 due to the volume of explicit language. My target audience would mostly fit into the E category of the social demographic model as it’s aimed mostly at students who have a particularly low individual income compared to adults who are typically on a much higher income. I researched some music videos which clearly fall into the rap genre and made notes to compare to my video the typical conventions they included. I decided that they wanted fast cuts and transitions between shots as this would keep up with the pace of the song and keep them interested. They also wanted black and baggy clothing as this would ensure the music video would fit into the current genre of rap videos allowing them to make a clear connection. Throughout the construction of making my music video, I asked members of my target audience so that I could ensure that it was specifically tailored to the wants and needs of my target audience.

We can apply Bulmer and Katz’ Uses and Gratifications theory to my music video, which has four parts as to why audiences consume media texts: Personal identification which suggests that the audience can relate to the characters and situations, Information which is for the purpose of people obtaining an understanding, entertainment which is for the purposes of escapism and diversion and finally, social interaction which suggests that the audience look to the media text as a way of connecting with those around them. We can deduce that the audience would use my music video for primarily personal identification and social interaction, as the music video enables people of similar interests and hobbies to interact, also as music videos are often talked about as much as television programmes or films, particularly those that are especially controversial, provocative, or innovative. However, the other two points of the theory – entertainment and information – do not really apply to music videos necessarily, although it could be argued that some viewers may see the music video as an escape from reality.

Another way of looking at how audience consume media is reception theory, which is based on Stuart Hall’s encoding model. It argues that producers encode meaning into a media text and audience then in turn decode it. When creating my music video, I encoded meaning in many ways. For example when we shot the black and white scenes this is meant to symbolises the protagonist trying to find his soul as the lyrics of the song directly tell the audience he is being buried alive. We used some diegetic sound in the middle of the video to connote realism and a sense time being stopped and then rewound. The clothing that my character wears is typical for a rap artist as we decided we wanted our protagonist to fit in because this would make our genre clear to our entire audience.

In our music video, in order to keep our target audience engaged and interested, we used close-ups continually as we wanted to create a star profile image. This would mean that our character will be easily recognisable and it would make our advertising campaign much easier as he will be well known to our audience. Andrew Goodwin’s theory of multiple close ups of the main artist/ vocalist helped to amplify the creation of star image to promote a recognisable brand image. We tried to replicate this by ensuring we had many varied close-ups of our protagonist, meaning we could create star image. Goodwin identified that the star image is another key aspect within music videos. He believes that an iconic star image can increase the audience awareness of the artist and can show development of a star over time.

Another key aspect of Goodwin’s theory is ‘thought beats’ as this is what he thought was vital to make a music video successful. Seeing the sounds (the relationship between the music and visuals, which illustrate, amplify or contradicts the music) – chorus, verse and instruments. He categorised this aspect in 3 steps:

1.  Interpret the music by looking at verses and choruses
2. Goodwin says this is the ‘voice within the song’ – this is when the artists voice is extremely unique and can be recognised for this quality
3. Goodwin states this steps where the artist is telling a story within their songs as therefore generates their reputation as a ‘storyteller’. The music video is therefore create to emphasize.

We included thought beats in our music video through the use of sound and editing. In the middle of our music video we have some church bells ringing which are non-diegetic however, they were added to create a sense of realism for the audience. The bells rung in time to the transition of the shots which changed to different shots of the church and the graveyard.