To research target audience the best thing to do was to play the song to as many different people as possible and see what they think of it. The best way of getting feedback from people is to ask them to fill out a questionnaire that we would have already prepared for them. This means that we can decide what questions we want to include on the questionnaire so that we are provided with the relevant information when receiving reviews from people. This is the questionnaire we created:
Target Audience Questionnaire
Erick Baker: ‘When will I be loved’
Age: 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60
Favourite genera of music:
Hip-Hop / R&B -
Alternative Rock / Folk -
Rock / Metal -
Jazz / Classical -
Dub step / Electro -
Pop / Dance -
Other… -
Do you like Erick Baker’s song?
Yes No
Would you like to listen to more of his music?
Yes No
What age do you think the main audience of the song is? (tick as many as you like)
10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60+
What gender do you think the song is aimed at most? Male Female Both male and female
We plan to give this questionnaire to 5 people from each of the age groups in our first question so that we have a variety of different ages. The information we gather will allow us to help decide on a target audience we will try and aim our video at.
I believe that the target audience for this song is males and females aged 16+. People don't usually have serious relationships until the age of 16 onwards so anybody younger than this may not be able to relate to the lyrics and the visuals very well. This may not be true for some people but it will apply to the majority of people under the age of 16. Most people at the age of 16 wont have experienced love and breakups to this extent yet but they may be able to relate to it having had some sort of experience with love before, even if they have only had small relationships they may be able to relate to the story and the song in some way. Teenagers dont experience true love and don't tend to be looking for love much until they grow up a bit more and start to leave school.
I don't think there is an age where you would be too old for this song. People can experience love, breakups and loneliness until the day they die so will always be able to relate to the song. Even the very few people who do not experience love in their lifetime will be able to relate to the loneliness aspect of the song.
I think the song would be mainly aimed at females however males will also relate to the song and enjoy the song. I think females listen to more music on the whole than males and this genre is one of the more popular genera's for a female audience. Female's usually show more emotion and are in touch with their feelings more than male's which would allow them to connect with the song more. However, the artist (Erick Baker) is male and the song is about him not being able to find love so its his own experiences. As it is a male writing the song, other males could also relate to it which means the target audience is male and female.
The song is part of an alternative rock/folk genre so the target audience would include people who like other songs from this genre. However, I don't think this sing is limited to just this target audience, the power of the lyrics and the story behind the song could touch people who's preferred genre is completely different from the alternative rock/folk genera belonging to this song such as Hip-Hop, R&B or Pop fans. I think the song relates to anybody and everybody that have shared the same sort of experiences as Erick Baker has.
Directors: Danny, Shannon, Ally, Leah
Filming: Danny, Shannon, Ally, Leah
Shot Choice: Danny, Shannon, Ally, Leah
Actors: Ally, Shannon
Props: Phone, Guitar
Costume:
Shannon costume 1- Beige boots, black leggins, white vest, black top, beige jacket and scarf.
Shannon costume 2- Black shoes, denim jeans, white top, beige jacket and scarf.
Ally costume 1- Black & white shoes, beige chino's and red blue and white checked shirt.
Ally costume 2- Gray shoes, brown chino's and blue and red striped top.
Ally costume 3- Black & white shoes, beige chino's, black top, white sweatshirt and navy gillet.
Ally costume 4- Blue shoes, denim jeans, white top, blue jacket and navy gillet.
Shot Locations: Danny's bedroom. Ally's front door. Brasenose Drive, Kidlington. Lyne Road, Kidlington. Gosford Hill lecture theatre. Gosford Hill english classroom. Cutteslowe Park, North Oxford.
The mise en scene in music video's of the same genera are usually quite similar so by researching some of the mise en scene used in these sorts of videos, we know what to include in our video so that it resembles the right genera. Three artists that I am going to look at for inspiration are 'The Script', 'James Morrison' and 'Adele'. By looking at the mise en scene in a video from each of these artists, I will be able to see what would and wouldn't be good to include when making our music video.
The Script- Breakeven
The first thing I noticed about this video is the black and white theme used throughout a lot of the video, however there are also coloured shots of the characters ex partner. The audience see the black and white theme as the feeling of unhappiness and loneliness, this is contrasted with the coloured scenes which signify happy times when the couple were still together. The contrast between the black and white clips with the clips in colour show the difference in moods, happiness and unhappiness, at different stages of his life. There is a glow effect put onto all the clips of when the two are still together, this gives the effect of it being a dream and in the past. As our song has the same sort of storyline as this, we could apply these effects to give the desired effect.
The clothing in the video changes throughout, however all the way through, the clothing is reasonably tight fitted and smart rather than being baggy and more scruffy looking. It is also plain clothing with no big logo's or stand out colours. Jeans and chino's are worn throughout the video by the males so this will be a thing to remember when choosing clothing for our video.
There is an on stage performance that include the use of a guitar, microphones, drums and a keyboard. The use of these props help to bring the genera through the video, these instruments are associated with the alternative rock genera. A mobile phone is also used as a prop, it is in the hand of the character through a lot of the video. This gives the audience the feel of desperation like he is waiting for a call from his ex partner maybe. It is also used as a way of showing video's remembering his ex partner.
The video has elements of a rural setting for parts of the video and a more urban feel for other parts of the video. some of the video is set in a house, there is a shot of the house from the front and it is a town house so this is a more urban setting. However, most of the flashbacks are set on the cost by the see, walking by the sea, this is more of a rural setting compared to the town house. The time of year the video seems to be set is the autumn / winter time, this is because the main character is often wearing a jacket and a scarf which signifies it being quite cold outside.
James Morrison- Please Don't Stop the Rain
This video is set in a very rural environment, a field with nothing there but the character. This gives the effect of being all alone. However, he is always walking in the video in a straight line forward which tells the audience that even though he is all alone, he is on a journey and he knows where he is going. Quite a lot of slow motion is used throughout the video, this may be to help the tempo of the video match with the tempo of the music.
The clothing worn by James Morrison in the video is quite tight fitted and looks quite smart. The colours are very plain black and gray. This is something to look at when choosing the clothing to use in our video so that it has the same characteristics as other alternative rock video's.
The main two props used in the video are the dog and the sparks used as rain. The dog seems to be in the same sort of situation as the character, it may be being used to represent the character being out in the wild but can still look after its self going somewhere. Sparks are used to represent raindrops, these may have been used to make the raindrops more visible to the audience but also to make them look nicer. Rain is usally considered to be bad but as they are sparks not rain, it gives the effect that something good may come out of a bad situation.
The video is quite dark for a lot of it, not bright sunshine. This shows unhappiness. The technique of having a dark, shot or a black and white shot to signify unhappiness in the character is used in most video's, we have seen it in the script video and this video so far. it is very effective and would be a useful technique we could use to show unhappiness in our video.
We chose this location because we needed a front door to walk out of and this is the one out of our 4 houses that we thought had the best space outside to work with and the road outside was the one we wanted to use most so this went well with the road for continuity. This had a more open drive with no obstacles on it that would get in the way of filming so we could track the shot all the way across the driveway.
This is the road we decided to use, it is quite a long, flat stretch of road so it was easy to film on and see me at quite a distance for the shot we wanted. We wanted to use a jump shot of me walking down the road so a flat road is easier to see the progression I am making quickly. Also, as we already decided to use the house on this street to do the scene before, it would work better to use this street for the continuity of the video. We also liked the layout of the road as it looks like a more rural area compared to the other houses and streets we could have used.
We decided to use this bus stop for the rejection scene because it gives more of an urban feel to the shot, the scenery is not as nice here which is a contrast from the last outside location we used. This gives the sense that something is getting, or about to get worse in his life, this is backed up with the rejection of the phone call.
We decided to use this location for some lip syncing, we had an idea to project some flashbacks of a previous relationship onto a wall in the background with lip syncing going on in the foreground. The lecture theatre at our school had the perfect layout for what we needed, going up towards the back of the theatre there is a plain wall where we could project the film onto. We thought that with the character sat a few rows down from the back with the film being projected over the shoulder on the wall would give the perfect shot for lip syncing and give the sense that he is a long way away from the happy times playing in the film.
We decided to use this location for our rejection scene because it is a sofa area which looks very homely to represent the characters home. The character is sat on the sofa when she receives the phone call. It looks very realistic because she is lounging around on the sofa just like anyone would do at home.
We used this location for flashbacks and with me on my own to show the contrast between the two periods of time. In the flashbacks we used it as somewhere to show the two characters sat down talking when they were both happy together. This is a very rural place with the trees and bushes in the background. The autumn colours in these shots will help represent happiness and brightness in their lives back when they were together. There is a huge contrast when the flashback is followed by a solo shot of me on my own with a black and white effect on the clip, this represents the unhappiness in my life. We decided to use this bench instead of others around it because this is the one with the most colour around it.
We decided to use this location because is a bright, sunny clip with the leaves on the trees it looks like a lovely place but with a black and white effect it looks all dark and gloomy and this represents the moods of the characters at the time.
We chose this location for a walking scene again because in the flashbacks, with the leaves on the trees it represents a happy mood but in contrast, in a solo shot with a black and white effect it brings the mood right down and shows how happy he was before compared to now.
The website, www.unsigned.com, that we discovered Erick Baker from included an email on the page to contact the artist.
Reply
The reply e-mail contained the message below.
'We’d love for you to use Erick’s song – please send us a copy of the project so we can see it!'
However we could not display the whole e-mail because it contained personal information that we could not share due to the message also included in the email saying;
**This message may contain confidential and/or proprietary information, and is intended for the person/entity to whom it was originally addressed. Any publication or use by others of information herein is strictly prohibited and may be subject to legal action**
The concept we want our music video to include is rejection. This is because the lyrics of Erick bakers song talk a lot about the love life of a man and how he is so unlucky in love.
We have planned to start off our video as a normal day with the leading character leaving his home and walking down the road to start his day. We plan to do a long shot walking down the road into the distance to give the effect of walking away from everything. We then plan to have a long shot walking along a path with autumn trees in the background. The next shot we plan to do is an over the shoulder, tracking shot while walking to show it from a different angle walking to the bus stop. The next shot we plan to do is the one that will bring the concept across to the viewer. We plan a point of view shot looking at a phone which will be making a call to a partner of the man, which will be followed by a reaction shot of the partner seeing the call come through to her phone and rejecting it. This is the bit where our concept will be shown most and it will help bring the whole video together. The next shot we plan to shoot is a close up of a clock, fast forwarded to show that a lot of time has passed and the man is still feeling the same. For the next shot we plan to do a shot in a lecture theatre with a film playing on the wall behind the character showing flashbacks of happy moments the character had while he was in the relationships. This shows how the character used to be happy and everything used to bee good and now his relationship is over he cant move on. This shot will also have lip syncing in it. The final shot we plan to do is a shot of the character on a dark stage performing on his own with nobody in the audience. This would reflect the loneliness he is feeling and the unhappiness well.
This is our rough cut of our music video, I am going to analyse the video to see what areas we need to improve on, where are weaknesses are in the video. We kept the shot steady every time we needed it with the use of a tripod. We had the camera stood on the tripod for every shot that we wanted steady so that there was no camera shake and the tracking and zoom on every shot is very smooth and works well. For some shots we hand held the camera to give a certain effect which worked well.
We framed shots well throughout most of the video, making sure that we included everything into the shot that we needed to. There was one part of the video where framing the shot did not work well, 2.52 we had the shot framed so that when I was lip syncing, the flashback film was playing in the background. But the film stopped playing so we had to zoom in so that you could not see the film ending in the background. This was well framed because we didn't want to include the film ending, but this was not a good looking shot so we may have to re-shoot this.
We have used a variety of different shot distances throughout the video. Close-ups, extreme close-ups, medium shots and long shots. We used different shot distances where appropriate using them for different effects. As well as different shot distances, we also used different camera angles throughout the video to give different effects. Low angle shot, tracking shot, point of view shot, high angle shot and over the shoulder shot.
Most of the shooting material in our video is appropriate to the task set. However, there are some shots where when we looked back at the rough cut, as a group, we did not like so we will need to take these shots out. The shot at 2.33 is the main shot we do not feel fits in to our video very well. There are also some of the lip syncing clips that we feel we need to re-shoot.
I feel that we have selected mise en scene well in the video including colour, costumes, lighting, setting, objects and figure. Costumes were based on alternative rock/folk genera so instead of wearing big baggy hoodies with big chains like you may have in a R&B video, I am wearing chinos or jeans and a checked shirt or a slim hoodie. Most of the video is set outside and we have used less built up areas and more woodland/park areas to go with the alternative rock/folk genera. The colour we've gone with is mainly a black and white theme for a lot of the video to represent the unhappiness and heartache. When we use flashbacks colour is used to represent happiness and we use a glow effect to also show happiness and to show that it is almost like a dream or a memory of old times.
More work needs to be done to make the meaning more apparent to the viewer. The concept that we are trying to get through in the video is heartache, loneliness, rejection and unhappiness. This video does not reflect our concept very well so we need to edit the video with more contrasting shots between the flashbacks and what he's like now. The concept is not clear enough to the viewer yet.
We haven't used many shot transitions in the video, I think transitions would be a good thing to put in where the shot cuts between flashbacks and lip syncing or walking. This would help the viewer realise the difference in time between the two shots.
I think most of the lip syncing is good, well edited and in time with the music. There are a few shots where the lip syncing is out of time so this will need to be re-edited to sync the music with the visuals. The opening shot with the guitar playing is well synced in time with the music and it is a very good clip to open the video with during the instrumental.
When editing we all did it as a group making decisions that everyone agreed with. we made sure that everyone spent time physically doing the editing on the computer while everyone was making decisions as a group. As I was in all of the clips I couldn't do any of the filming, however, I did help make decisions on camera angles and shots as did the rest of the group. I think I will have to make sure we include a clip that I can film so that I am contributing in all areas. This will be hard to do as I am in every shot but we will need to decide on a shot that will go well where I am not involved so that I can film it for our final music video. The software we used for our editing was iMovie 11.
