Evaluation, Question 3: Ellie Scott.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As a group we decided that our target audience profile was a 17-year-old boy who attends college. Our target audience likes to watch programs such as: Kerrang, MTV Rocks, NME TV and Q. Typically, he enjoys reading magazines that focus on the music industry and the Punk/Rock genre, which include the following: Kerrang, Mojo, Q and NME. We decided that our typical viewer would shop within High Street shops such as: Topman, Urban Outfitters and the vintage shop Rockit. To choose our typical viewer we ensured that the character is interested solely in the Punk/Rock genre and enjoys listening to bands similar to The Clash. We went on the website www.barb.co.uk to look at viewing figures of the typical TV programmes that our demographic would watch. The viewing figures showed us what programs are more popular than others, in particularly for our target demographic. Here is a link to our demographic blog post; http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7146979394170621760&postID=375997397254153749&from=pencil.

When deciding what to add in our music video and what setting to have etc, we looked at hundreds of well-known music videos for inspiration and to look for similarities to our own ideas.  The first video we looked at was from Blur called For Tomorrow, this video was similar to our idea as it is set in London and visits all of the main attractions in London. We used this video as an inspiration for our own video, gaining ideas for main places to visit such as the river Thames, Trafalgar Square and shots of London buses and taxis. We also looked at a video similar to the Blur video as it is also set in London; this video begins with a shot of Big Ben, which is a shot we definitely wanted to include within our music video. As a group we also looked at Adele’s video for Someone like you, this video is set in Paris and is in black and white. We liked this video as it is alike our video idea in the fact that it is set in a famous city with several well-known landmarks. After watching this video we did think about shooting our video in black and white, as we liked the classic affect the dark colouring portrayed. However, we decided not to do this, as we wanted to include traditional London colours several times throughout the video such as Red, Blue and White.

To appeal to our target audience of those who enjoy listening to the Punk/Rock genre, we included various elements to target this audience. We wanted to include a very rebellious and controversial theme to fit with the Punk/Rock genre and how the genre is and has always been very aggressive and bizarre. To add to this, within typical Punk/Rock songs, and in particular those by The Clash, the lyrics usually go against the government and promote anarchy; we have represented this within our video with the Protests at St.Pauls. This is where our idea of the politicians came into our music video; we wanted to show how The Clash, especially within London Calling, do not like the government and their policies, we have therefore used irony by including them within our video.  The irony is conveyed by the way in which we have made out that the two politicians are having fun and there is no trouble within Britain, which obviously does not fit with the reality of the British government or the opinion of Punk/Rock bands. The irony and the mocking of the politicians targets our Punk/Rock target demographic and is something they would definitely like to watch. When looking at our target demographic, a young boy of 17 would probably not like the government due to factors such as newly introduced University fees, budget cuts etc.

Regarding audience positioning, we wanted our audience to put themselves in the position of the general public, not that of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Our video, in particular the section focusing on the St.Pauls protest, presents the trouble our country is facing at the moment and how the citizens of the UK are obviously really angry and frustrated by the government’s actions. The audience, with the use of such positioning, is able to see the troubles within Britain and in particular London and the position of both the public and the two politicians. To appeal to our target audience, we, as a group, included various techniques within the making of our video in order to appeal to our target audience. An example of this, is the style of editing we adapted to our music video, we edited our video with very quick edits to fit with the fast beat of the song as well as the rebellious, energetic audience from the Punk/Rock genre. To add to this, the fast editing hopefully will keep the audience engaged. Our target audience of young people has to be constantly engaged whilst watching the video; this is why we included various mise-en-scene factors that would appeal to our audience. One of these factors was the masks that we introduced, these were featured to keep our audience interested with the use of comedy within our video. To add to this, our target audience is interested in politics and the affects it has upon the public, this is why we also had our characters wearing masks within the video. We also included various props to target our typical British audience, examples of this: are teacups, newspapers such as the Sun, telephone boxes etc.

Overall, we received very good feedback for all the work we did to contribute to our coursework mark. For our music video we managed to get four pieces of audience feedback to help us develop our video into a better final piece.  The first piece of audience feedback we received was on a powerpoint that we made in order to present to the class our initial ideas of our video and what it was going to consist of. We included the narrative of the video, the characters that will feature, where it will be set, and also mentioned factors such as costumes and camera shots. This went very well and everyone was very positive about our idea, commenting on the originality of the work that we have come up with. The last audience feedback we received was on our final finished video, this was very positive; our fellow classmates watched the video. They all thought that the video was very funny and entertaining and they specifically liked the stop motion affect that we included with the tape over the mouth. Also, our fellow pupils commenting on the colours involved, claiming they resembled London and Britain, the patriotic theme within our video. Our fellow classmates also commented on the narrative of our video, claiming that it was easy to understand and that it shows continuity throughout. As a group we were very happy with this comment, as this is how we aimed to make our video as it could easily have been very confusing for our audience and may not have been easy to follow.

We also gained feedback for our dig pack and our magazine advert, this was also very positive. Both our teacher and the pupils that looked at both the digi pack and the magazine advert said that we used the colours very well and stuck to the same theme throughout, keeping patriotic colours as a main theme- blue and red, making it similar to that of the Union Jack and sticking to a rebellious and aggressive tone. The aggressive and rebellious tone is portrayed within the digi pack as we have included images of the two politicians swearing, this is ironic as this is not how the audience would expect the two characters to be portrayed, as they are constantly presented as ‘clean cut’ MP’s.  The magazine advert also sticks to the rebellious and patriotic tone, as it is very similar to that of the digi-pack, with the same font and colours and the main focus being that of the two politicians. To fit with the usual conventions of a magazine advert, we also included the rating of the album from music magazines that focus on the Punk/Rock genre and we also have added logos such as the ITunes logo and the record company logo to make the advert look both professional and realistic. We thought it would be effective to keep the same theme throughout as this is what bands and artists normally do when promoting their video. It ensures that both the album and the magazine cover engage the target audience. Within our digi-pack we included text inspired by the Sex Pistols and their album cover, we used this text purposely as the Sex Pistols are also within the Punk/Rock genre and the text fits with the rebellious tone that we are trying to stick to as the text is bold, eye-catching and very colourful representing the trouble and anarchy the Sex Pistol and the Clash caused when around within the 1980’s.

For the camera work within our video, our teacher looked at our video and said that overall the camera work was very good; a good variety of shot sizes, balanced camera and tri-pod with no unstable shots and also the colours are highlighted well by the camera. The most positive feedback, however, was for our use of mise-en-scene, the use of settings, props, costumes, body language etc. Everyone that watched our video commented on the use of the Politian masks. All our classmates have said that they really liked the use of masks, saying that they ‘make the video’ and make it really entertaining and stand out from other traditional music videos. We also received really good feedback on the props used, throughout our video we included traditional English props such as tea cups in order to stick to our patriotic theme of Britain, our fellow classmates said that this was very effective and added more to the video and the characters of the two politicians. We included two costume changes within our video, the two politicians wearing masks and the ‘Where’s Wally’ scene. The costume changes, we were told by our classmates, added to the humour and comedy of the narrative of the video, especially the ‘Where’s Wally’ scene, in which gave the audience a refreshing change of scenery and added a new character, Ed Miliband to the video, targeting a larger audience; those in favour of the Labour party. As a group, we also received positive feedback on the body language of the two characters playing politicians, claiming that both characters looked similar and played the two politicians really well.

When meeting the OCR brief, I feel as though our group’s coursework is successful in meeting up to the exam board standards. We were given a brief in which stated that we had to produce a music video alongside a magazine advert for the album of the artists and a digi-pack album. We made sure, when making our video, that the camera work was stable and included a variety of shots in order to gain further marks for our coursework. To add to this, we made sure that we white balanced the camera every time before filming in order to make sure the colours within our video were visible and clear. As well as this, we made sure that the narrative of the video was reasonably easy to follow and that the video showed continuity, yet again in order to receive more marks for our work. Lastly, we also ensured that we featured a good setting and lots of suitable mise-en-scene factors in order to make our video more entertaining and elaborate on our original ideas. As a group, we do think that our video meets the standards of professional videos, obviously we do not have the equipment and funding to make videos as good as those made for professional stars, however I feel we have worked very hard and that is shown within our work. Within the performance scenes, the camera and lighting is not particularly good in comparison to that of the other scenes due to the shutter on the camera which was broken so we could not unfortunately change this. Factors such as this, do make our video look a lot worse than those made professionally, however we did not have the correct lighting and cameras to make this look perfect. The editing of the video matches the standard of professional videos as we ensured, whilst editing, that we edited on the beat and made it look very professional and clear.

As a group we are positive that are video features the genres essential ingredients and is very eye-catching and hopefully makes people want to watch it more than once and recommend it to their friends and family for them to watch and further pass on. To add to this, hopefully it is a song and video that people would want to download and buy after watching the video and even buy the album and digi-pack. From the audience feedback, I would definitely say that our video would be promoted to a wide scale audience even though we have targeted the Punk/Rock. I have come to this conclusion due to the fact that all my classmates, who are interested in several different genres of music, all enjoyed watching our music video and gave us really positive feedback. This therefore proving that even audiences that are not specifically interested in the Punk/rock genre, and enjoy listening to music from genres such as R&B, pop etc still enjoy our music video and would listen to it regularly through choice.

Our music video is most definitely unique and very different to that of the ‘typical’ music video, even from the Punk/Rock genre. Personally, I would say the unique selling point of our video is the use of the masks to portray the characters of the two politicians. Every bit of audience feedback we received mentioned the use of masks and how it has made our video have a ‘comical edge’ to it and has made it so very different to all other music videos. It would definitely be suitable to have merchandise made from our video, possibly t-shirts mocking David Cameron, Nick Clegg and David Cameron and even the masks we used within the video. I definitely think merchandise would be suitable as our video is very humorous and this is how we would make the merchandise; very funny and eye-catching. We could also add photographs from our magazine advert and digi-pack onto the clothing.

Read Evaluation on Wix:  http://www.wix.com/ellie_scott202/gliscoproductions#!question-3