Apply Audience Theory to your Product

For my advanced portfolio I created a music video, this video was of a heavy rock genre and was aimed at young adult gig goers.  I wanted to pinpoint this target audience by making the music video fast and energetic, just like a live setting.  This meant I would need to use a small room that will allow the band members to seem packed in with lots of fast cuts from instrument to instrument.  We also wanted to include lots of movement from our band in our video, this is again very common in rock videos so will appeal to fans of the genre, our band moving about/jumping up and down/generally being aggressive will make our video more realistic and will make it stand out more to the target audience and fan base that are associated with the genre.

Using IMovie, I edited the footage to create fast cuts, this appeals to the audience as they want to be entertained quickly and they want the music they listen to to be energetic and quite crazy. This is also represented in the actors in the video, as the band is shown to be getting quite angry at the music in some parts but also in same looking like they are having fun and dancing etc. The lyrics used in the song also appeal to the target audience. The contents include being angry at the government and other things similar to that, this appeals to the chosen target audience as they are young and will feel good about the whole idea of rebelling against those in power as it makes them feel good about what they are doing.

For the draft music video, the feedback from our audience was moderately good, but there were comments about the slight lack of energy and the setting. We were aware of this and were determined to change the setting and alter the style of editing, and these comments we received helped us realise exactly what we needed to do to make our music video successful. The changes this had to our final product were very drastic and we saw a massive improvement. Firstly, the room was changed to a much smaller, cleaner one , this allowed us to gain a claustrophobic effect that is seen in many music videos of the same style, like ‘Kiss This’ by Hawk Eyes and ‘Ignorance’ by Paramore.

Overall I feel that my final product really appealed to my target audience, as it featured a young energetic band that they could relate to, playing fast music using real instruments. All of these conventions of the rock genre are in my video so make it appeal well to the target audience. Even the branding on the bass drum appeals to the target  audience as it is again a common feature of the rock genre and the audience will relate to is and will enjoy it being there representing the band, this could then further go into merchandise like t shirts that the target audience would buy and wear.