Audience Essay

An audience is a spectator or listener at a public event such as a play, film or concert. Our audience is people watching our music video ‘TUMBLEWEED’ by can’t sleep. They are also spectators of our website, digipak and other ancillary texts we have created for our music video.  Our target audience for our music video is teenage girls. Our target audience is teenage girls because at that age, teenagers are listening to different types of music and finding their own type of music they love. It is also aimed at girls because its main focus is on two female characters. These female characters are not shown through voyeuristic angles, but rather as strong women.

Within the research we carried out before we begun creating our music video, we learnt a lot about conventions and in particular the theorist Andrew Goodwin. Goodwin states that there are six different conventions within a music video. We implemented some of these conventions within our music video. One of the conventions we used was the amplification of the lyrics. This is when the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals are shown in the video. For example, at the point in the song when the lyrics sing “Television won’t you say my name”, on the screen there is an old fashioned TV with the main artist on it. The TV is in the centre frame of screen and is therefore the main focus of that screen. The visual of the TV matching the words of the song, amplify the lyrics and gives the audience a greater understanding of what they are watching.  Another convention we used was the use of iconography. Iconography is presenting a prop, or costume within the video and using this as a way to represent the band/artist. In our video, we used the colour pink a lot – one of the settings was a room with the walls covered in pink sequined fabric. We carried on the use of the colour pink from our set, onto our website, digipak, magazine cover and posters. This use of the colour allowed us to represent a theme and the band simply through a prop, therefore making the band more recognisable to the audience outside the music video.  The genre of our music video was Indie Rock. The main conventions of an Indie Rock music video are psycadellic and confrontational. We used Goodwin’s idea of creating a star image through camera work. By using multiple close up shots of the artist, we were able to portray the character clearly and allow the audience to know that that character is the ‘star’ of the video.  Whilst we conformed to some of Goodwin’s conventions, we also subverted some of his conventions such as voyeurism. Voyeurism often plays a major part in videos, especially in relation to females. Stereotypically women are sexualised in music videos, but we decided that we did not want to conform to this convention but rather keep the women in the video fully clothed and kept up the confrontational persona that is relevant to an Indie Rock video.

As stated before our target audience is teenage girls. Teenager girls can be harder to attract because they are looking for music to relate to and they can enjoy any day of the week and whatever mood they are in. To attract our target audience we decided that Indie Rock is a less popular genre that Pop, therefore it provides a different spin on everyday music. This can attract our audience because they are at the point in their lives when they are discovering their own music and do not want to follow everyone else, therefore our music provides this ‘escape’ for them. The video’s main themes are the colour pink – a stereotypical favourite colour of girls-, a confrontational manner and slightly psycadellic. These main themes will attract our target audience because it portrays women as just as strong as men in their personalities. It highlights that men are not the only ones who can be aggressive and get what they want. The video is empowering to women and girls because it shows what they can achieve and this message in today’s society it is really important to get across. The fact that our video contains this message will attract teenage girls even more because it shows a good, strong role model for them to believe in.

Our video was released on YouTube and the song was released on iTunes. We used these two platforms because they are the most common and easily accessible platforms today. Millions of people watch YouTube everyday (including our target audience), therefore not only is it easily accessed by our audience but it is a great way of marketing because it can be advertised to people outside our target audience as well, therefore potentially gaining more interest.

As well as creating a music video, we also created a website, digipak, magazine cover and posters for our band. This cross media branding will ensure our band is promoted significantly in multiple areas of media. The use of the colour pink and the theme of the psyacadellic/confrontational manner are present across all these media products, therefore making the band easily recognised by multiple audiences. By making the band easily recognisable it will involve the audience more because again they can then relate to the band on a personal level because they have become a part of the audiences daily lives.