Similar Text's, Inspiration, Audience Research

AUDIENCE RESEARCH:

Lost in colour have recently released a new music video to a new song called +354, we felt this video was very similar to what we hope to achieve in our final outcome. We especially felt that this video was vital in helping us understand the bands target audience and how we can appeal to our audience in our video.

There is a few things in my analysis on the video that helped my group construct our target audience. In particular, the mise en scene of the video. The boys are presented in formal white shirts, this gives the idea of a middle class, white collar, mature representation. However this is then contrasted to the mud smeared across the character's faces, this gives the impression of  childhood, little boy hood, and blue collar. with these two contrasting elements combined, i have come to the conclusion that they meaning of this is to primarily appeal to young men aged 18-24. As the shirt suggests that the characters are grown up, have careers and own independent, however the mud suggests that even though their growing up they still are left with their childhood desires, gives the ideology that 'boys never really grow up'.

Therefore this helps construct the meaning and audience of the text. This would suggest that meaning and themes of the video is about growing up, becoming who you are, mistakes and journey's.  These types of themes suggested through the video, make me think that the target audience is primarily young adults, who go through the transition of growing up and making it on there own. I also do not think that the growing up stage is aimed at say the teenage generation, e.g 13-18. This being from the locations used in the video, grave yard, tops of building and hills and next to stretch of railway track. These locations have been used specifically not to appeal to the younger teenage audience, the hills and scenic views are not something that typically teenagers and children appreciate, and it's more the mature generations that take to scenic excursions. Furthermore locations such as schools, parties, streets and parks aren't used which would be typical locations which youthful activity is found in. The graveyard has a sinister feel that teenagers and children would prefer to avoid as an audience, and the tops of building, hills and being side a railway track, all have the indication of a sense of journey attached. Journey that young adults endure.

 Also locations such as the park and swings are so featured, to contrast with the mature scenery. This is included because of similar purposes of the mud on the boys faces. to gives the sense of something being left behind, memories, this especially shown through the close up slow motion shot of the swing chain swinging. This done so to give the illusion of growing up and the journey to adulthood.

Furthermore the video also features alot of nature, close up of water, rain, leaves falling. The indication of nature also suggest to an mature audience, as nature is not usually appreciate by the young, the young's interest being more in materialistic goods. The reference to nature also helps constructs the meaning of the video, as nature undergoes changes, just like young adults do, and it represents the changes that they must make.

However although the nature and locations give the indications of a mature audience, other elements of the editing and mise en scene implies that they video is not targeted at all mature audiences. For example the dress sense of the band, tight jeans, shirts, cardigans, is connoted as trendy, trendy is a typical representation expected from a person aging from 18-25. As young people are more likely to care about their appearance as they are at their peak in there life.

Furthermore, the fast cuts and pans in the video, also suggests energy, to match the jumping and playing of the band. This type of energetic behaviour is also an aspect which is not typically expected of elder generations, e.g 30+. Also the casting of the key figures in the video gives us a vital clue to the target audience. For example only the band members which look as if they are aged 18-25 are featured in the video, they have not included any other extras of any other ages to suggest that the target audience is below the age of 18 or above the age of 25. Therefore concluding that target audience of this video is primarily 18- 29, and primarily male.

This is also backed up into research into the lyrics of the song:

Like a plane crash
It hits the best of us
And the colour burn off
To fade away
Mother says the time we have to live is never enough
And this is all we will ever have

You can hold back
To show some love for this
With reason to believe
And light the way
Father sends the map that holds the key to where you should be
And it's everything we all seek

It's who we are
The air we breathe
To come so far
To make us
It's who we are
The air we breathe
To come so far
To make it

I was the one who burnt out the light
What can we ask for? what can we ask for?

Specific words like father and mother, suggest that the persona of the lyrics  is someone who has a father or a mother and is not old enough to be a mother or a father

INSPIRATION: 

Another element that particularly inspired our music video, was the use of 'signs' within the lost in colour's video to help portray and communicate the meaning of the text. We similarly want to follow this idea into our own music video, by having themes in our video written on the signs to help show the corrupt themes in society.

Inspriation for new ideas

Our use of stereotypes was also inspired by the success of Katy Perry's music video Fireworks. Her video similarly features characters that are clearly defined by typical representation so the audience immediately recognise their characteristics and can relate to them easier. The video constructs the stereotypical representation by mise en scene, location, cinematography and body language of the character.

For example, representations clearly defined above, vulnerable, scared little sister, comforting, brave big brother, with parents rowing in the background. the body language of the girl and the boy and the framing of the shot, all makes it very clear to understand the context of the situation.

Also similar in this representation, the woman is clearly shown as insecure, under confident and isolated, this shown my the mise en scene of her being dressed in dark boring clothes, whereas other females around her naked and clearly having fun. also she is positioned lower than them in the shot, representing that their confident is well above hers. All these features makes it easy for the audience to understand the content, which i similarly want to do in my video, by the power of representation and stereotyping.

Research into the use of Stereotypes

Stereotype:  A stereotype is a commonly held public belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals.


I found that from our research, stereotypes would be the most effective type of representation in portraying the unfortunate characters in our music video. This being as...

Stereotypes are immediately and distinctively recognisable, allowing no confusion or doubt of what type of character that person is develop in the audiences mind. We wanted no confusion of what roles the character was adopting, and we found that the most effective way of doing this was by stereotyping.

Also we found by stereotyping would in itself highlight the audiences own prejudices towards the unfortunate people in society. As they immediately recognise them, judging them on their appearance than anything else. this subsequently proving the message of the music video, that society is built on stereotypical conventions , and is corrupt in how it sees the unfortunate situations in society and how the people in these situations are overlooked, solely judged on their representation.

Change of Plan

Our journey and experience up to now, made us realise our errors and more importantly made us realise two put them right and improve our final outcome.

-We decided to still keep the shots in the white room, as we felt it suggested the idea of someone breaking free  from the corruptness of society very effectively, adding a fun surreal element, which contrasts to the harsh realism of the unfortunate situations we will feature in the video.

- Also decided to keep the idea of using band/performance shots in the video, as we felt from our research in music videos of similar genres, performance shots are vital in the rock pop genre.

-Decided to simplify our narrative, for example having Amelia play the role of a TRAMP, PROSTITUTE and ANTI SOCIAL person. we decided to choose this representations as we felt they were the strongest stereotypical representations in order to portray unfortunate situations in society. we also decided to have Amelia play all of the roles in the film, as it shows how easy it is for any one person to take on any one of the unfortunate situations and how easy it is to make the wrong decision.

- We also felt that we would use signs, with themes and emotion written on them, in order for the message to be suggested to the audience more effectively.

Thinking ahead - difficulties

Once uploading our footage and trying to fit it to the song, we realised that some of our footage was just completely irrelevant in what we want to portray in our video and irrelevant to the tempo and genre of the song. For example the train situation, we particularly found did not match the song...
 

< Amelia's outfit put in practice

 Also felt it was unnecessary in portraying our message the audience. And we decided me and Amelia need to be more simple with our ideas and the idea of taking the audience on a journey through the eyes of the main  girl character would just be too hard to portray, and at this stage can not afford to get this wrong.

We felt that even though we didn't use any of our footage in Cambridge we did not feel it was a waste of time, for example it highlighted how we definitely needed to change our strategy in portraying our message of our video.  Cambrigde magnified how uneasy it was to find unfortunate events in a typical city setting on the day. This led us to brain storm more simpler ideas in order to portray the same message but in a more effective and less complex way.

Cambridge

When we filmed in cambridge we realised we had our work cut out for us. Although we found good locations for example, abandoned garages, train stations and centre or town...

We came across numerous dilemmas, for example we discovered it would be very hard to find random unfortunate events on the day and they needed to be staged. This is shown from our difficulties in getting footage of a big issue man.

Also when filming and we began to think about how we were contrsucting our narrative to the audience we realised how complex our narrative was, and how it was be hard for the audience to follow the story. For example the constant change in locats, times of day, just would not sugest fludity to the audience, and would not reflect a successful final outcome. This made us realise we might need to simplify our ideas in ord

er to make the video and the message of the video work.Image of me opperating the equipment in cambridge

London Tube difficulties

Whilst doing our research major difficulties and complications have occurred already. One of the main ones being the restrictions on filming on the tube. For example in order to film on the tube, you need to apply for a permit, which comes at a cost. 

Filming finances ranged from £40 to £400, also we the added financial fee of £150 if you wish to publish or broadcast the footage. Me and Amelia can not afford these finances and are very reluctant to pay these.

Also, the guidelines on the London underground website ( http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/media/lufilmoffice/ ) also present further problems for our filming:

For example the restriction on begging, busking and anti social behaviour will mean we will have to jeopardise some of our content to our video, and wont be able to film it to the best of our ability. These restrictions made me and Amelia re evaluate our plans. We came to the conclusion to change the location. Instead we decided to use Cambridge to film.

London Filming Preperations

Next step for our video is to film the bulk of the video, this being unfortunate events around London that occur day to day, but people overlook.

Our inital sterotypes we want to target are :
- the homeless
- Rioters/ Troublemakers
- fights and arguments
- anti social behaviour
- prostitituion

     


We plan to film the train scene at the begining of the video on the way up to london. We believe the tube will be the best place for this, as it will demostrate the main characters journey around london on a normal day and all the unfortunate situations that arise when shes about.

On our first trip to london, we do not plan to take extras in order to act out these unfortunate events. Instead we want to actually get the proper feel of the unfortunate events, by actually having real life situtaions filmed, rather than pretended situations. Me and amelia think this will have a stronger impact. However if we do not manage to film these unfortunate situations, then we will take a later trip to london to re act these situations.

Research into good locations to find the unfortunate situations:

- The tube, outside and around stations for homeless shots.

- Speakers corner

- Campers outside Houses of Parliament for rioters. 

- East end flats                                           

                                                                                              

Editing Progress So Far and Editing Plans

So far we have uploaded the draft band footage and the white room footage. We still have a lot to film. but to help keep us on track we set out a brief plan of our timeline. The timeline shows the bits we need to work on, and bits we need to film. This should help us have a more wider overview of what needs doing, and aid us in keeping track of editing.

Further Editing

The editing develops, now experimenting with many editing techniques, for example i have in particular been looking at the method of overlaying footage, i found this worked incredibly well, when over laying shots of fire with Amelia in the white room, i found that it worked very well with her costume. This being as the the fire over layed looked like it was coming through the holes in her tights and through other flesh which was revealed. However in terms of this helping to portray the message of our video which is- to highlight the unfortunate situations which occur in society and how easy it is to make wrong decisions - this does not help the audience receive this message. Therefore although it has significantly increased my knowledge of editing, we most probably will not want to use this in the final edit of the music video.

Reseach into effects for editing

After we uploaded the footage we had filmed already we then set about research into editing, and the effects we could create.  
Some of the video filters that we experimented into were;  
- Glow, Dazzle
-Glow, Light rays
- Glow, Overdrive (stroppy)
-  Channel, invert
- Channel, Compound Arithmetic 
- Distort, Insect eye
- Distort, Wave

The Beginnings of Editing

In the last week we have began editing, we uploaded our music into final cut, and then began to trail through the masses of footage of amelia dancing in our white room scene and some of our performance shots. We began selecting specific clips we wanted at specific points in the music, and evaluating if they fitted to the music. So far we have quite a few specific parts we have created edited footage for, however there is still many gaps to fill with footage.

So far we have not been able to get the rest of our filming done, for example the footage in london. This has been due to awkward timing and our other commitments, and it seems likely that me and amelia might slip of our schedule for the project.  However me and amelia have decided if worst comes to worst and we do not get london filmed before end of term, we have numerous days in which we can spend a full day in london, instead of rushing the filming and neglecting other commitments. This will allow us to get the best footage we can, and in some ways benefit our video.

Difficulties found with draft footage of band

Recently we have uploaded our draft band footage and tried to fit it onto our searching for the sun in the dark time line. However when doing so we came across numerous problems!

- Lip synchronisation was all wrong
- Lyrics didn't match the lip movements
- Holding the notes
- Trying to create dark background with A1 boards and dimmed lighting, looked bad, and the lighting made the footage's quality decrease.
- Actor was not confident with the song and motions he had to perform in order to look like a lead singer of he band.
However these problems increased my editing skills. As i tried my hardest to match the lyrics to the mouth movements, i used fast cuts to hide the bits where the mouth movements were dubious, also i cut out bits of the mouth holding the note for too long, or copied and pasted a mouth movement if the actor hadn't held the note for long enough.


After this experience, we have set out numerous and vital checks and preparation for us to avoid when doing the real/official band filming.

- Get actor to listen to the song many times before actually needs to mine/sing it
- Count timing and how long to hold certain lyrics
- Practice the mouth shapes that need to be form in order to suggest exact pronouceation of lyrics
- Find a better suited backdrop

Draft Filming for Band/Performance Shots and Research

We began to think about our band and performance shots within our video. We realise they were very important parts of our footage, and realised we might need to do some draft filming in order to make sure we get in right in the official filming.

Also before we started filming, we were not through a few brief preparations before filming, for example i selected an appropriate costume that might be worn by the lead singer of a band. Similarly also selected an actor with long hair and  made it scruffy, as from my research this was the hair style and costume style band members of the same pop rock genre wore in their videos. Influence below

I similarly applied this research to my own draft filming and actor..

Also in preparation for the filming i purchased black A1 boards to blue tac to the walls, so it created the black backdrop we wanted.

Overall, Evaluation/Treatment of Research and Planning

We filmed our process so far, specifically focusing on how we met the criteria objectives in terms of research and planning.




We ran out of time to explain how we had met each criteria, so heres a written summary of the remaining criterias:

Criteria three: Work on shortlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.

• Together we listened to the song repeatedly on our iPods’, and came out with many draft notes and short lists of what we wanted to include in our video and how it would be structured.
• We made a storyboard of the scenes, shots, locations and characters positions we want to include in our film, in a structured.
• Also in terms of drafting before we filmed our white room scene, we did practice runs of dressing up in the outfits at home, drafting what it would look like on the actual day.

Basic


Criteria four: Time Management

• We set out a planner of when we planned to do what in the process of making our music video, so this helps us keep to a schedule and nothing gets delayed.
• We also give ourselves mini deadlines within our group, for example, get the story board done over the weekend, film the white room seen within this week. Mini deadlines helps our work get done in manageable deadlines.

Minimal


Criteria Five: Care in the presentation of research and planning.

• We take care of presenting our research in planning by using our blogs regularly, updating new research and planning measures.
• We also include videos, print screens and pictures, to try and keep our blogs as visual as possible so our blogs are ascetically pleasing, nice to look at, and will show our planning and research to its best.
• We also make sure we take a camera to every valuable session we have to produce lots of photos, and to help improve the presentation of our blogs, having personal evidence of our research and planning.
• We also keep a plastic wallet of paper notes, lyrics and images we want to include in our blog, so that we do not loose them, and remind our self of what we want to present in our blogs in terms of the research and planning.

Proficient


Criteria Six: Communication skills

• We exchanged phone numbers immediately, and immediately started texting numerous random thoughts we had on ideas for the music video content. This helped us dramatically with coming up with such a variety of ideas to include.
• When choosing the props and costumes for the first filming, we sent pictures of what we had found via email constantly through the evening.
• When we encounted a problem of charging our camera for filming after half term, we emailed each other trying to help each other and also our teachers to try and look for a possible solution.
• We very conveniently have the same free period as each other, within these we regularly meet up, update our blogs together, do further planning and research, such as looking for outfits in charity shops.
• Also at lunch time we meet up in the editing suit, evaluate our process so far, and what further planning or research needs to be done.
• We also send each other photos that we have taken to record our process, so we can put them on our blogs, we also email work and research we come across, as a way of communicating with each other.

Excellent

Uploading the Footage!

Since filming we have uploaded our footage into the editing suite and began to edit it!
We have decided to Edit alongside filming, to make our time more progressive, i produced a new media schedule to adapt to our new arrangements. We especially did this to keep our time management on track.

Below is example of us keeping to our schedule in lesson times, as we continue to edit our footage of the white room scene.  Also we have been experimenting with potential effects and edits we could potentially use within our footage:

;

Filming Part One

Filming day was a lot of fun. We began by setting up, this included; placing props down for example the white sheets to cover the grey flooring and getting the model (Amelia) ready with her outfit and make up.





















Once set up we then got the filming on the way, here are some photos from the event!

Preperation For Filming

Now we had permission to film, we had to set about finding props and materials to make the whole thing happen. Both me and my partner Amelia spent the evening, going through our wardrobes trying to find a suitable outfit, these are images of our costume attempts:

We sent each other the images and then came to a compromise and decided to put my black leather jacket with Amelia holey leggings as the final outfit.

Moving on to Hair and Make up:

We wanted to create a fierce, messy, rock chick affect with the hair and with the make up we wanted dark heavy eye make up. Inspiration we found for this was images such as;