First Ideas

As I  previously mentioned, audiences are a hugely important factor in the sucess of a music video, if they like it then it is likely that the artist will become more popular. Audiences vary depending on the genre of the chosen artist, so music videos do differ greatly. It is important to know who the audience will be for the video, their age etc.

My first idea for my music video is to film my drum teachers band, 'Angry Vs The Bear' peforming one of their songs. I would have to vary the shots, making sure to include each member of the band with close up shots of the instruments. I would also include other shots of the band, not performing so that the lyrics compliment the images shown. The song I would probably choose would be one of their newer singles 'Show Emotion' which Ross, my teacher, has told me is one of the more popular amongst their local fanbase in Colchester. As the band are based here it may be slightly difficult to arrange a time to get all of the band together when they are not performing a gig or on tour.

Here is the existing homemade music video for their song 'Show Emotion' :

I like the existing video for this song as it flows well with the music and the use of jump cuts fit in well with the overall tone of the lyrics. The band themselves are shown throughout the video, with the lead singer Mitzi also being the focus of the narrative story. As we studied Goodwins anaylsis of music videos, I noticed that there is some reference to the notion of looking, Mitzi is seen looking into a mirror briefly in the video. The bands genre is 'pop/punk' and their fanbase mainly consists of people aged between 14 and 30.


My second idea for my music video is to focus on the song 'Magic' by B.O.B featuring Rivers Cuomo. This is a fairly recent pop/rap song which is quite upbeat and fast paced.

This music video fits in really well to the fast paced beat of the song, it seems really energetic and both of the artists are shown to be having fun. The video largely focuses on B.O.B who is the main performer of this song, once again he is not only shown as a singer, but is also incorporated into the narrative. As said in Goodwins analysis of music videos, voyeuristic treatment of the female body is shown in this video as many scantily clothed girls are seen throughout the video.

My idea was to have many different jump cuts, creating deliberate continuity errors, linking to the songs title 'Magic'. I wanted these cuts to fit in with the beat so the images on screen changed to the pace of the song. I wanted to have many different objects which are often associated with 'Magic' to be shown throughout the clip, these would include playing cards, top hats and even rabbits. My initial idea was to have a stack of playing cards growing and shrinking in height to match the beat of the drums at several points during the video. I would also film the 'artists' singing at regular intervals.

Music videos are really important for both audiences and institutions. The audience seek enjoyment from them; it is a chance to see as well as hear their favourite artists, putting a face to the name which markets the artist. Music videos can also provide an extra meaning to the song, making any underlying points or issues clear to the audience. They can also provide motivation: the audience could want to emulate the artist who forges an identity through their music videos. They also offer a form of escapism and often focus on enhancing different emotions.

Music videos often improve the popularity of an artist as well as increasing the sales, making the institution a lot of money. In certain videos, often those of a hugely popular artist, product placement is used, promoting both the product and the artist. It is important to know who my target audience is as I will need to follow certain guidelines if my music video is going to appeal to them, genre is a deciding factor so once I have chosen a song I will need to research similar products so I can conform to the conventions used.

Target Audience Research:
To help me discover more about my target audience I decided to conduct a small questionnaire asking 20 people a series of questions.

 Are you male or female?



How old are you?

What type of music out of the following genres do you like best?

From this brief questionnaire I can see that every person I asked was relatively young and a huge majority of them liked Pop and Rock style music the best. This has made me think that this would be a good route to go down and I will try and base my ideas around this new information so as to appeal to my target audience 17-25 yr olds.

Distribution:

My music video would be available for people to watch on certain television channels, mainly music based channels such as VIVA and MTV. These channels play a vairety of different types of music and I have watched them to help me when identifying common conventions of music videos. My music video could also be accessed online on websites such as youtube. I should also consider this when making my video as if it was to be passed and viewed on T.V certain guidelines would need to be adhered to, for instance it should not contain any explicit material which could be harmful or offensive to viewers. This also applies to online media, although it is not as strict as online media is a lot harder to regulate and. I have also realised that most artists have their own website, where their videos are shown.

For example Professor Greens website:

This promotes his new video 'Jungle' which due to its content, may not be shown on television. I have decided that I want my music video to be non-offensive so that it would be suitable for viewing by anyone and could be shown in all of the mentioned areas.