PRE-PRODUCTION

Before starting work on our product it was important to conduct research into my target audience and they’re expectations of music videos. Uses and gratification theory suggests that audiences do not passively accept media products; instead they take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their lives. The theory also identifies that the audience take responsibility for choosing media products that meet their needs. This suggests that people use the media to fulfil specific gratifications.

When an audience chooses a media product; they choose it based on how beneficial it is to them. Media products can either enable the audience to ‘Identify’ with the product/person, ‘Educate’ the audience, ‘Entertain’ the audience and finally be used as a tool of ‘Social Interaction’.

We wanted our music video to gratify the audiences need to be ‘Entertained’. When discussing ideas for our music video we made sure our main focus was to keep it fun and upbeat and also allow for this idea of ‘escapism’, and for a few minutes have the audience forget the world around them; we wanted the audience to be captivated by our music video. We thought we could achieve the idea of ‘escapism’ through the use of special effects to visually present the idea of another world. We also thought about having a narrative that was revolves around the idea of freedom, and the audience can witness the star being free; this fulfils the audience’s escapism fantasies.

We also wanted to meet our audiences need for ‘Social Interaction’. We wanted our video to be likeable and be a tool for opening doors for conversation either through elements such as costumes or locations. We wanted to include aspects that people share a mutual interest in; this can lead to conversation which in turn can lead to friendship.

Below is a summary of the results from the interview:

People expected music videos to stick to their typical conventions. For example, if their favourite genre of music was pop they'd expect to see a lot of dancing and a wide use of colours in pop music videos.
They agreed our ideas would make the video fun and exciting to watch. They also liked our ideas for special effects such as a 'rewind' It's unique and would make the video more interesting to watch.
The group thought it would appeal to our target audience of 15-25 year olds so long as we got the tone of the video right. This would be achieved through the use of costumes, colours and our star's persona.
The use of locations such as the stake park would appeal to an audience of that age as it is perceived as a young person's activity the audience would be able to identify with the video.
It also pointed out how we should use the idea of the 'male gaze' to attract a male audience.

The information we had collected became very useful when we started to finalise the ideas for our music video. We knew that our audience really liked our ideas for locations and so we had to ensure we use it in our music video. The idea of appealing to the 'male gaze' was something we wanted to cater to in our music video; so we started thinking about ways in which we could do this and we thought of a 'club' scene and how we could include a modest amount of sexual gestures. Furthermore, we knew that somewhere in our music video we had to include a dance routine as that is something the audience expect to see in a Deep House music video.