INITIAL IDEA OF TARGET AUDIENCE
When considering the making of our music video and ancillary text, the initial idea of who are target audience would be were produced through both research and personal experience. We focused more on young teens who are familiar with the indie-rock genre scene and typically live the 'laid-back' and independent indie lifestyle as I felt that they would easily catch onto the style of music which the Jungle Doctors play and we therefore already have an established audience who are interested in independent and authentic bands.
Since our target audience are always so active on social media, sites such as Twitter and Facebook was key to gathering information mainly due to the fact that its always up to date information on the Zeitgeist of society and efficient secondary research. we were enabled to use the 'Jungle Doctors' pages to look into the ages of people who had followed and liked the web page.
Other aspects of the internet that allowed me to get an insight into the general target audience involved Youtube which allowed me to view music videos similar to that of Jungle Doctors such as videos from Circa Waves and The 1975 comparing their similarities and differences. We also viewed the comments of the fans and their average age range to get a feel of what they appreciate in their music videos and perhaps any room for improvement.
Personally, being a fan of their music and the indie-rock genre helped when researching into the target audience. Having attended one of Jungle Doctors' gigs, I was able to gauge in the audiences which attended and seen the types of people who listen to their music to only find that they are similar to myself in not just the way I dress but also personality and behaviour wise. Aside from seeing gigs I've also attended Reading Festival in both 2014 and 2015 to see similar bands play such as Bombay Bicycle Club, Foster the people, Cage the elephant and The Libertines which in return further supported my interpretation of the types of people who go see such indie-rock bands in larger events but also relate to the target audiences we as a group would try to direct towards. Although research is significant for discovering the type of audience to focus on, its also allowed me to see on a personal level what people enjoy about these bands alongside their preferences and dislikes.
I was also able to conduct primary research into finding the type of audience to revolve our music video on, this included conducting a questionnaire around the school asking students questions like 'what do you normally notice when watching an indie-rock music video' alongside if their likes, dislikes and preferences on the genre. One of the results showed that audiences commonly notice the close ups of band instruments in music videos which we then took on board and implemented into our music video. I've also noticed that indie-rock bands such as The Arctic Monkeys and Catfish and the Bottlemen are seen on popular music magazine NME which is well established within our focused age group.
Specifically, Youtube videos of the genre was an example of research into the target audience which helped to accompany my own experiences of gigs and festivals. Its allowed me to research live gigs of similar bands to that of the Jungle Doctor and visually interpret audiences that they were playing to. One example that stood out was the music video 'Homesick' by Catfish and the Bottlemen which presented the band playing live to their audience, because the band is fairly similar to the style of play of Jungle Doctors, the audience would no doubt be of similar interest. Seeing crowd in their live-gig music video took influence in terms of potential target audience for Jungle Doctors, visually I was able to distinguish a mix of both male and female audience members mostly in the age bracket support by my questionnaire of around 15-25 years.
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| It can be seen that the audience for Catfish and the Bottlemen are predominantly young men and women who dress similar to the style of the bands and reflecting their style of music. |
For the process of audience feedback, we conducted various focus groups of up to 5 people each time however although it had it advantages I did not feel that it was very efficient and valid form of feedback mainly to the fact that I discovered that people within each group despite giving detailed feedback were quite immature at times and was easily influenced by peers often giving the same answer as the previous person, sometimes failing to give specific examples that I could make significant improvements on. Instead we also turned to focus groups but on various individual perspectives balancing the boy/girl ratio fitted to our target age range to tailor perfectly into the target audience in order to get valid feedback.
Aside from audience feedback from our peers and focused audiences, we also showed our working music video to our subject teacher in order to get a detailed, critical and analytical feedback yet also personal opinions of an older audience. After having shown the music video, she first gave us positive feedback such as the 'framing of the bandshot' along with the lighting "being able to highlight each band member distinctively". However with positive feedback, we also received an equal amount of possible problems that pose the music video such as the difficulty in finding a relation between the time lapses and narrative sequences as they were proven to be both two different settings, one being at Central London whilst another a simple park. This did not reflect the idea we had in mind and on the storyboard which therefore made sense that it wasn't working out. A notable feedback was also the fact that the transition from day to night sequences and the bandshots in between failed to be fluent and did not compliment one another.
The critical comment that signalled the failure of the initial idea we had was that the narrative sequences came of confusing overall alongside the bandshots and posed no actual plot relating to the song lyrics and general vibe. Along with this, its also made us as a group notice that our chosen actors to be in our music video did not seem authentic and convincing in portraying the plot very well but rather just awkwardly placed.
After receiving this jarring feedback we've understood that there was many improvements needed to be made in our music video but with time given and planning we weren't able to re-shoot particular scenes again and therefore decided as a group to scrap our original idea changing it to one that would make more sense and actually tick the boxes of the generic indie-rock genre and audience expectations. We've acted on this and decided to have a new song accompanied by a new idea and a significant improvement we were planning to have was that both narrative sequences and band shots should focus solely on the band and the band alone as a key aspect of the indie-rock genre that we've been ignoring is the authenticity of the band and the music they play; they don't focus much on the narrative but rather the promotion of the band and what they stand for.
With this we've chosen a new (much better) song 'Late' by the same band which was a more fast pace upbeat song that we had more opportunities to cut to different frames and overall have more movement of both band members and narrative sequences as we've felt that in the original video, it gave off a fake and slow atmosphere which didn't reflect the genre. The new song also was more easy to interpret and make scenes out of in contrast to the other song which lyrics didn't revolve around the shots. alongside these changes we've also switched around the lead singer as the previous one didn't seem very enthusiastic whereas the new singer was best suited to the new song with his active and bubbly personality. We've also chosen to do all narrative sequences based in Central London because its accessible to our group, makes each frame fluent with each other and reflects the bands home town which in some cases is shown in indie-rock music videos.
Without receiving the very informative and genuine audience feedback, we would have not been able to make the sudden realisations and quick changes that lead us into making our current successful music video. I felt that with the importance of audience feedback I was able to identify strong areas of the music video and areas which were available for improvement, with audience feedback we could see which boxes of the genre and audience preferences we were accomplishing and making great use of.
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Print Products - Magazine Advert
The use of audience feedback was also essential for the production and improvement of my print products. Throughout the production process, audience feedback allowed us to make any drastic changes straight from the minds of the audience and onto the ancillary text. It changed from an amateur poorly positioned product to the development of a professional equivalent looking design which wouldn't look out of place among the work of official magazine adverts. Our first draft of the magazine advert, although possessing many of the important aspects to be included in the advertisement such as the release date, title of band, and details on where to follow them and purchase their album, it was very poorly positioned the less important texts were made the most visible in contrast to the most important context made barely noticeable but from audience feedback we were able to pick this up and make improvements.
The new magazine advert now possesses the qualities of a genuine advertisement one would potentially see inside well known music magazines NME and Kerrang. The context in the advertisement was placed around the picture of the band sitting on the bench to portray that besides the album information the main focus of the advertisement was to promote the band overall and their music. The title remained the same and the most visible because that is what we want the audiences to associate the advert with (the band) and the layout is professionally placed so that on each context has its own attention spot meaning that the information we're trying to send is not cluster around one part of the poster. The audience feedback also lead us to experimenting with the colour pallet of the poster as we were told that it was preferred that it matched the shades on the digipak cover and vibe of music. Therefore we made the shade of the band shot more of a pastel colour to reflect the light-hearted mellow vibe that the band is highlighting in both their music and digipak cover.
DIGIPAK
As well as the magazine advert, the digipak was also transformed dramatically with the help of audience feedback. Originally the digipak would not involve the image of the band at all but from the feedback we've noticed that the audience found it more easier and pleasing if the bands image was involved in some way within the digipak so we then decided to make it the front cover as its the first thing audiences will see and associate with. The Font of the digipak remained the same throughout to be associated with the band and reflected their simplicity and ambiguous personalities. Audiences appreciated the layout of the digipak overall whether it was from the bands personal message to the list of songs, it all "maintained the vibe presented by the bands style of music and everything was where it should be with the key aspects presented".
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Overall research into the target audience of Jungle Doctors as well as feedback was majorly important to the development of the final cut video, magazine cover and digipak. Without it we wouldn't have been able to make the changes to the ancillary text but most significantly the main text as we had a whole new idea which the ancillary and audience expectations were dependent on. It was made clear that throughout the production process i was able to tailor and change the produces based on the feedback we received. I felt that throughout the process of making both main text and lending a helping hand on the ancillary text, I've come to notice that my opinions on what I prefer on the products would often make way for the majority vote during audience feedback but at the end I made a clear balance between my ideals and audience viewpoints in order to produce the professional feel of my products.
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