Audience profile

Age:

The age of our target audience is between 15-19 years old. One of the reasons we chose this age group is because the video itself is going to feature a 17 year old girl which could be a relate able character for them. It’s common for teenagers to feel alone even though they have several people around them. ‘Alone In This’ (our chosen song) is most likely going to be listened to by a younger audience. It’s got an indie vibe with pop elements, something that’s quite popular at the moment.

Gender:

We’re targeting our music video at both female and male teenagers. The song is sung by male but the character in our video is female therefore both genders are going to be able to relate at some point.

Social demographic:

Our target audience falls under group E or D this is because at that age you’re more than likely to still be in compulsory or higher education. Some may be in full-time work but aren't going to be on extremely high wages or high skilled jobs due to their age.

Occupation:

Teenagers often have part-time jobs in retail or catering but other than that the majority of our target audience are going to still be studying or just starting out in the world of work.

Hobbies:

They'll enjoy going to festivals with their friends or attending gigs of their favourite bands. Music is key for people who listen to indie bands, they often enjoy browsing the internet to find unknown bands they can share with their friends.

Inspiration: From 'Into The Wild'

This film is called Into The Wild. this film inspired us as its all about one person travelling on their own as they don't like reality and will do anything to get away from it. We like the idea from this photo as it is a good picture to show him travelling with all of his belongings. We want to show our character travelling with all of her things too, but she'll be travelling through streets not the wild, but we want her to be walking through all different things to show she'll travel anywhere to get away from where she 
came from.

This picture is a great shot as it shows the audience that the character hasn't got anywhere to go so they will literally sleep/stay wherever they can. This shot is him on top of an abandoned van, in our video we will change this to our character sleeping on a bench or something like that just to let the audience know she hasn't got much else. When we video her sitting on something higher, we want her to be admiring the scenery that she can see so we can tell she loves where she is and that she finds comfort in it. 

We love this shot as it shows the main character from the movie doing something he admires in a place that he loves, this inspired us to do this in our music video with our main character. We want her to be sat somewhere alone, reading also so it shows the audience that she has a peace of mind where she is and that she is relaxed and happy. In the shot we want to capture a good part of the scenery to so we can fully portray her happiness now that she is alone and far away from her home.


In our music video we want a shot exactly like this where it shows a closeup of the characters face to try and show all of the emotion they have. In our case we want our charcter to be looking out to an open field or scenic area and have tears in her eyes to show that she feels like she is where she belongs. We want this shot to be at the very end of the video, so we can show her looking a little scruffy from where she has been travelling for days, but we want her to be smiling and feeling like shes finally got to where she has always wanted.

Weather conditions

The day before we plan to film we need to ensure to check the weather conditions. We learnt the hard way from last year; it snows a lot in January so we need to be prepared for filming cancellations. Other than snow, weather won’t affect us filming as we want the audience to have the impression the music video is over a period of time, the change in weather will highlight this. Preferable we want to film the ending to the video when it's sunny to reflect the change in the character mood from depressed to happy.

Previous The Shape of the Earth artwork

Below you can see previous album art from The Shape of the Earth. They pick simple designs that reflect their music. All of the covers works together as they all are like paintings and the colours used are subtle. We want to portray the simplicity of the bands style in all our promotion material; music video, digipak and website. Every design features the band’s name and the song title we want to continue this with our digipak.

Location: Scouting

We’ve started to think about filming locations for our music video. One we are certain on is the train station in Peterborough. The difficulty of filming  here is we would have to obtain permission from the station which could be an obstacle. Also we would have to schedule filming around rush hour otherwise there would be too many people around interrupting  the filming. Despite this we are sure we want to include train shots in our music video as it gives the audience the impression she is travelling far away from her hometown to get rid of her problems. We have a vision of Lateshia (our actress) sitting on the train staring out of the window, pondering about life.

This is Peterborough's train station from the outside:

Our music video will include shots of our main character walking into the station.

And from the platform:

This is where the majority of the scenes in the train station will be shot.

For another part of our music video we want Lateshia (our actress) to be surrounded by crowds of people, to portray she feels alone even when there’s people around. The perfect location for this is Peterborough’s City Centre, on a busy day there’s plenty of people in the square. Like the train station we might have some difficulties filming here, as people could purposely try to interrupt our filming.

Here's an image of the square in Peterborough's City Centre:

The rest of the locations we’ll be using will probably be scouted on the day as it’s just open space.

-http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3166476

-https://maps.google.co.uk/

Inspiration: From 'On the Road'

We have got some inspiration for the storyline and the feel of 

the music video from the film 'On the Road'.

This is one of the shots from the film ‘On the Road’. It portrays a similar image of what we want in our music video. You can clearly see the character is on the ‘move’ due to him carry his luggage whilst walking down a train track. The audience can instantly identify this. His dark costume is a contrast to his bright surrounding which support Levi Stauss’ theory of binary opposition.

We like the effect of the sun behind the characters head in this shot. We are aiming to recreate this shot for our music video as it portrays the image we are looking for. Our idea is to have the sun in the background when our character is filming her smiling (handheld) to give the audience the impression her mood has changed to happy.

Another scene from ‘On the Road’ sees one of the characters dancing in the middle of a group of people which indicates she’s comfortable around them to be herself. As time goes on in our music video our character begins to loosen up and find herself. When she’s around her friends she becomes more comfortable and happier.

This shot from the film is something we want to portray in our music video as is focuses on the emotion of the main character which is a big part of our project because of the song and our storyline. Showing how she is feeling throughout the music video at different points and in different situations she is put in within it helps the audience to know how her emotion changes within the stages so that the viewers feel the same way and get more of a vibe from it.

The scene from 'On the Road' where there is a close up of a women laughing is a shot that we want incorporate into our video. We want to show her happiness every stage that she smiles or laughs to really emphasis upon it as this.

Permission to use song - 'Alone In This'

One of the benefits of using a unsigned bands song is your more than likely going to be able to obtain permission to use the song. We browsed through The Shape of the Earth’s website and after a few minutes were able to find a email address we could contact the band via.  I emailed them straight away explaining our reasoning for wanting to use their song 'Alone In This' for our music video. The email I sent can be seen below:

  

Unfortunately the band hasn't been very active in the past year so we were unsure if they still checked their emails or were even still together. However not long after sending the email, I received a reply. Gavin (from the band) went on to say how they are happy for us to use any of their music and if we would like to send them a finished version our music video they’d be delighted to see it. The reply from Gavin can be seen below:





Budget

Our production is rather small; we won’t obtain funding from any outside sources like directors of music video featuring signed artists. This restricts us to some degree. Luckily our school provides us with the editing software, we have a camera within the group and the costumes needed are everyday clothes which we can pick out of our own wardrobes. The only cost we’ll have to pay out for is travel. We are planning to shoot some of the music video on a train to give the illusion the character is travelling far away from her home. Train tickets can become quite costly therefore to cut this cost we thought it would be easier if only the character and one other person to film were to go and shoot these scenes.

Costume Idea

To the right is costume we’ve put together as a group from looking at online shops. The music video is set in the present day therefore the costume needs to be up to date with the latest trends. On the other hand our main character comes from a working class broken home meaning she wouldn’t be able to afford the clothing from expensive shops; her outfit consists of all high-street stores.  Lateshia (our actress) will feel comfortable when filming in this costume as it’s quite baggy. The outfit is effortless and shows she doesn’t care about her appearance. By adding a beanie to the outfit it portrays the character opts to keep her appearance low key. Often when people are feeling down and depressed it reflects in their clothing, this is something we took into consideration when deciding a costumer for our main character. We are going to recreate this outfit from clothing that Lateshia already owns.



Music video synopsis

The music video starts off with our main character - Lateshia – waking up because of an argument between her mother and brother. This is the norm for her. She’s had a violent upbringing as her father used to beat her mother until he walked out. Before the song starts we’re going to add a voice-over of muffled shouting and arguing; Lateshia won’t react like you’d expect a ‘teenager’ to. This is because it happens all the time. From the first few seconds in the opening the audience can why the following events happen. The song immediately starts as the door slams.

We aim to shoot the majority of the music video like a home video, therefore Lateshia will be filming herself  a lot (handheld). Everything that surrounds her will be dark and unresponsive to reflect what she’s feeling. Upon hearing the argument she starts to pack her little amount of possession into a backpack and leave.

Once she’s left the house the atmosphere begins to change; getting a little brighter and brighter as time passes. She starts to embark on a journey, she walks through rough estates, towns, catches a train, anything to get away from her troubled past. On her journey she makes friends who influence her mood, who begin to make not so ‘alone in this’.

Digital technology we plan to use

The main piece of technology we’ll be using is a Fujifilm S2995 Digital Bridge Camera. We’ve decided to use this as it was better quality than the ones provided by the school, the battery life is longer and it just gives our final piece a more professional look to it as it films in 1080p (HD). 

Alongside this we’ll be using a tripod which will make it easier to film shots we in-vision whilst making making the final product look smooth and not shaky. Like the camera we have chosen not to use the tripod provided to us by the school as theirs have a tendency to break, not something we want whilst out filming.

Another piece of digital technology we'll be using this year is Adobe Premier Pro; this is the editing software available to us. Adobe Premier Pro is advanced enough to help us create the final product we want. It's simple to import and edit videos, you can also add layers of music and images.

Finally we'll be using Blogger to record our planning and research process of making our music video for A2 Media Studies. 

- http://image.ceneo.pl/data/products/17447535/i-fuji-finepix-s2995-czarny.jpg

The Shape of the Earth - 'Alone In This'

As a group we decided to use a song from an ‘unknown’ band. We came to this conclusion because we thought it would be it easier to create a music video for an unsigned band rather than a well-known artist. Creating a music video for a well-known artist has its downsides; you’ll be consistently comparing your own to the original.

I came across the band The Shape of the Earth on YouTube a couple of years ago and really liked their sound. I thought their song ‘Alone In This’ would be perfect for our A2 Media project. The song has meaningful lyrics (which can be seen below) whilst having a steady beat. We didn’t want a club, dance or rap song because when we starting researching into previous music videos created by A2 students we found making a music video to a fast pace song was quite hard without making it look amateur.

‘Alone In This’ lyrics:

'All these names and people places,

Oh I’m not that sure,

I’m not that sure,

Am I alone in this X4

                                                                             And I          

All around the world they tell us oh we’re not that sure we’re not that sure,

Am I alone in this? X4

And I

I don’t know how to breathe,

 Oh I’m not that sure,

I’m not that sure,

Am I alone in this? X4

And I

I always try and work on this a lot,
What I have I’m sure you haven’t got,
I can only, only tell the truth

Oh oh oh'

The Shape of the Earth - 'Alone In This':

‘All these names and people places’ suggest that your surrounded by so many people whether you go but your still questioning yourself am I alone in this?

The character in our music video relates to this part of the lyrics as she has family and friends but still feels so alone because they don’t show any affection; her family has a lot of issues. She needs to leave her current situation and surroundings by leaving home to try and find herself.

-http://theshapeoftheearth.com/?page_id=12

Actress confirmed

Looking for an actress to star in our music video was easy. Our good friend Lateshia is a drama student who is going to university to pursue it as a career. We talked her through the general story of the video and she is happy to be a part of it as it will give her some experience at taking direction. With our actress now confirmed we are working together to pick a date in which to start filming.

Final Idea

 

Questionnaire: Male results

How old are you?

What genre of music do you listen to the most?

What music videos do you enjoying watching?

Do you prefer songs that relate to you?

Who do you like seeing in the video?

Who is your favourite artist/band?

§  Luther Vandross

§  Swedish house mafia

§  Blank X3

§  Foo fighters

§  Twin Atlantic

§  Kayne west

§  Fun

§  Biffy Clyro

§  Imagine dragons

§  Eminem

§  KSI  X4

§  My chemical romance

§  Guns and roses

What is your favourite music video and why?

‘Snow Patrol – Open your eyes because it’s simple one shot and brilliant and imaginative’

‘Blank’ X7

‘Imagine Dragons - Radioactive because in the video there are teddy bears’

‘Hammer time’

‘Fatboy Slim – Weapon Choice because of the dance routine with Christopher Watkins’

‘Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out I appreciate the busyness and simplicity’

‘KSI - Get Hyper’

‘Cupcake song’

‘KSI - Get Hyper because he gets somebody and shakes them’

‘Imagine Dragons - Radioactive cause of the fighting bears’

‘KSI - Get Hyper because it’s got a beat’

‘Kayne West - Black skin head because the words and it is in black and white’

Questionnaire: Female results

How old are you?

What genre of music do you listen to the most?

What music videos do you enjoy watching?

Do you prefer songs that relate to you?

Who do you like seeing in the video?

Who is your favourite artist/band?

§  Justin Bieber

§  My chemical romance X2

§  One Direction X2

§  Olly Murs

§  Little mix

§  Big time rush

§  Katy Perry X2

§  Not sure X5

§  Chase and status

§  One republic

§  Lana del Rey

What is your favourite music video and why?

‘Edward Sharpe and the magnetic zeros - Home. The effects are vintage and adorable they dance with reckless abandon’

‘Lana del Rey – Ride because it’s the most beautiful thing ever this is fact not opinion’

‘My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade because it’s part of  a story and the effects are amazing’

 ‘Aha – Take On Me because the complexity and amount of time it must have taken is unbelievable’

‘Coldplay -  Strawberry Swing because it an animation video and its really interesting to watch’

‘Katy Perry - Roar cause it is cool and the video shows different nature’

‘Tulisa - I’m Young because it’s awesome’

‘One direction - One Way or Another because they filmed it themselves and the money raised was donated to charity’

‘Animated because they look cool’

‘Macklemore - Thrift Shop because it is a funny comedy video that’s about the song’

‘Katy Perry – Roar because it is in the jungle’

‘The cup song because I the song and the video is related to the song’

‘Paradise because it’s really funny’

‘Justin Bieber – Beauty and a Beat’

Questionnaire: Gender results

A great way to get audience research is through questionnaires, it gives you an idea on what your target audience likes.

We gave the questionnaire we created to 36 people; 18 female and 18 male.

What gender are you?

We then spilt the two gender results as our target audience are young females.

Audience feedback: Creating Facebook

We learnt from last year that audience feedback is very valuable, therefore we decided to create a Facebook page for our A2 project. To ensure the feedback would be relevant to our music video we invited people similar to our target audience. As of present we have 16 likes, we will be updating our page regularly sharing our progress.

Facebook is used by millions of people; as you can see in the graph to the left the majority of Facebook users are in the age bracket of 18-25 which makes it a good platform to reach our target audience.

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment s are a great way to resolve any potential problems that may prevent us from filming therefore as a group we sat down and produced this risk assessment to ensure our filming went as smoothly as it could.

What are the potential problems?	What measures have been taken to prevent this from happening?	Level of risk (1-5)
The battery for the camera could die.	To take two sets of spare batteries with us when filming.	4
Actor gets ill/hurt	Ensure we have backup actors/filming days	4
Weather: Rain	Check weather forecasts before planning to film	3
Bad communication: Actors/members of the group don’t know what’s going on	Check we have contact details for everyone involved with the filming process, and let them know the arrangements well ahead of time	3

Questionnaire: Questions

Questionnaire

Gender?

Male                                                   Female                                                          

How old are you?

< 13             14 – 18            19 – 23 24 – 27           28 – 32           33+

What genre of music do you listen to the most? (circle more than one if necessary)

Pop              Rock            Rap             Hip Hop          R ‘n’ B          Dance

Alternative                 Indie               Grime                  Country                

Other (please state)……………………………………………………………………………………………

What music videos do you enjoy watching?  (circle more than one if necessary)

Dance                    Story/narrative          Animated           Action            Concert/live

Other (please state)……………………………………………………………………………………………

Do you prefer songs that relate to you?

Yes                 No                   Not really                  

Who do you like seeing in the video? (circle more than one if necessary)

Artist/singer/band       Dancers         Actresses/actors        Narrators   

Other (please state)……………………………………………………………………………………………

Who is your favourite artist/band?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

What is your favourite music video and why?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………