Target Audience Research

We conducted questionnaires to a range of different ages, in order to find out which age group best suited our 'pop' genre. With this information, we were able to decide on locations/props/fonts and suitable shots that would appeal to our chosen target audience. Finding out our target audience early on in pre-production stages was important as it allowed us to make the correct decisions in regards to our music video.
Here are a few examples of the questionnaires we conducted;

From the questionnaires we conducted we found out that the pop genre was most popular with people between the ages of 16 to 23. This was  not a surprising result as typical 'pop' songs usually contain content that appeals to the younger generation; such as song meaning, location, props and dancing. The results we collected also showed us that the majority of the people listen to 3-5 hours of music a week, taking into account that our target audience is the younger generation, this result is expected as most young people listen to music for a number of occasions; whilst doing schoolwork, at home or on the TV/radio. With the majority of the  questionnaires we conducted, people stated that having a good music video effects how well a track/song sells. From the previous researched we collected, music videos are important in how well a track sells as a lot of people watch music videos online and on the TV, which then leads them to buying the song. If the music video is bad or doesn't match the song, people are going to be less inclined to buy the track. A good music video is also a way of publicising a track, for example the 'Elastic Heart' video by the artist Sia caused  a lot of controversy, due to the content being questioned by a lot of people. Despite this, many have said that the video displays real emotion and everyday situations people can relate to. The questionnaires we collected will give us more direction in the creation of our music video, as we now understand what our target audience finds most important.

Planning-Storyboard

We decided to edit our first shot so that it is just a black background, this is because we wanted the letters 'H' 'A' 'P' 'P' 'Y' to stand out when they appeared on the screen. We decided to make the font large and bold and the letters to be in yellow, this is because after testing different colours, yellow stood out the most on the black background. We have also decided to edit the letters so they appear on the screen to the five beats at the beginning of the track; this is because it will grab the audiences attention and highlight our editing skills. On the next shot we plan to film our artist 'James Gomez' walking whilst lip syncing to the first lyrics of the track. We have decided to make this a full body shot in order to show his outfit. On the lyrics "sunshine she's here, you can take a break' we have decided to use a dancer, this is because we want to portray the fun and up-beat vibes the track gives. Whilst the dancer is dancing, we have decided to have our main artist in the shot; this is because we want him to be a prominent feature of the music video.

 

 



On the next shot we have decided to use the green screen in order to show how our skills have developed since AS. We plan to film our artist 'James Gomez' on the green screen, then to edit a hot air balloon in the background. This fits in with the lyrics "I'm a hot air balloon that could go to space". On the next shot we plan to use lots of balloons with people dancing around them. This shot will be used for the first chorus, we decided this as we wanted the colour and energy to present at the first chorus. On the next shot we have decided to use the green screen again, we plan to use a green morph suit in which our artist will wear under his normal outfit. When editing, we will then make the background a solid colour. This will then look like the clothes are dancing without a body. I saw a similar idea on the Cadburys advert, where clothes in a charity shop came alive. However we have slightly changed this by using a colour background instead of filming in a location. On the next shot we plan to have our artist walking along street whilst miming to the lyrics "Here comes bad news talking this and that", this will be a full body shot as we want the camera to catch all of his actions. Also in the original 'Happy' music video, Pharrell Williams is filmed with all the locations clearly seen, we also wanted to project this in our music video.

On the next shot we plan to have a black backdrop, with a dancer appearing on one section of the screen. They will be miming to the lyrics "Bring me down, cant nothing bring me down". We will then take another shot of a different dancer, this will be edited so they are positioned alongside the first dancer. We will continue this process until there are five dancers on the screen. Not only does this highlight our editing skills, we believe it will look professional and catch the audiences eye. The main idea that came up when choosing the song 'Happy' was that as a group we wanted to clearly outline the tone of 'happiness'. By having dancers and creative editing techniques, we are able to successfully act out the lyrics, and create a suitable narrative.

On the next shot we plan to use the same editing technique as the previous shots, however instead of the sections being filled with individual dancers, we plan to use the green screen and have our artist's head appear in each section. Not only will this look creative and test our editing skills, it will add colour as we plan for each section to be different. On the next shot we plan to have a dancer again, lip syncing to the lyrics "Bring me down... cant nothing bring me down". We wanted dancers to be a prominent feature of our music video, as they successfully represent the meaning of the song, and also give us lots of filming opportunities. On the next shot we plan to have another dancer lip syncing to the lyrics "My levels to high". This will be a full body shot as we want the audience to see all of the dance moves. On the next shot we plan to have our artist 'James Gomez' dancing whilst lip syncing to the lyrics "I said".

 

 On the next shot we plan to have five people holding up signs with the letters 'H' 'A' 'P' 'P' 'P' 'Y' whilst lip syncing to the lyrics "Because I'm happy". This gives us the opportunity to include more people in our music video, and also adds a sense of fun and creativity. On the chorus we plan to have lots of short shots one after the other of different people dancing. We decided this because the chorus is very upbeat so having lots of people dancing will portray the energy. We plan to include a range of different angles and shots to make our music video look interesting and professional. The next shot will involve our artist 'James Gomez' dancing and lip syncing to the lyrics "bring me down...can't nothing bring me down". We plan to film this in a nearby location, which will be a pathway by a river. We decided this because in the original 'Happy' music video, a lot of the shots were filmed outside. We feel this fits in well with the narrative, so also plan to do a lot of filming outside. The last few shots will be of people dancing again, both indoors and outdoors. It will be very fun and energetic, and we intend to use the balloons to create a positive ending to our music video. We want our last few shots to be very short and snappy, as this will fit in well with the quick beats the track includes.

In last years portfolio, we made quite a few changes to the storyboard whilst out filming. This year, we have decided that it would be effective to follow the storyboard as closely as possible, this is because it reduces the amount of quick decisions we would have to make whilst filming, this is positive as it will make our filming process run smoother. I believe that creating a storyboard for our music video was useful as it allowed us to put lots of detail into our narrative, and clearly see what lyrics were being mimed to, and what shots we needed for each scene. Another change we made from last year was drawing our shots on yellow sticky notes. This was useful as we were able to move around the different shots and place them in an order that fitted well. Compared to last year were it was harder to picture what our narrative would look like, and also having to restart when a mistake was made. A storyboard also helps a lot when it comes to editing as we will be able to refer to the different shots, this also allows us to effectively manage our time, as we will be aware that some of the editing choices we planned will take longer than others.

Green Screen Practice

In today's lesson we decided to practise using and editing with the green screen to make sure that we understood all the techniques and adjustment tools. Although we practised with the green screen in our AS piece, we decided not to include it in our movie trailer due to it not fitting in with our narrative. Even though we didn't plan to use the shots in our A2 piece, we decided to use the balloons so we could gain a perspective on how well they would look on camera. Before we started filming we adjusted the lighting so that the balloons looked bright on the camera, we also looked at the different light filters and how they changed the look of the lights. We decided to make the shot simple, with the girl playing with the balloons. Whilst filming I made sure that the camera stayed on the green screen, as the white walls would have effected the editing of the shot. I remembered this was important as last year when filming with the green screen, the background we edited on did not look as professional as there was a small part of the white wall showing.

Once we finished filming we imported the clips onto iMovie so we could begin editing. Once the clip was successfully onto iMovie, we dragged it down to the editing section and cropped the parts we didn't want to include. As we were only practising editing clips, we decided it would be more effective to edit a shorter clip, this allowed us to add more effects. I already knew how to trim clips, so this step of the editing process was very quick. We then experimented with the different enhancement tools; such as the colour and lighting of the clip. We made no changes to the audio, as there was no background noise that posed a problem; such as traffic or noisy people. This is something that we faced in our AS portfolio, as we did a lot of our filming outside, therefore we had to be aware of our surroundings.

The next stage was to choose a background for the clip. We clicked on the 'maps and backgrounds' options at the side of the screen and scrolled through the choices, we decided to choose the stars as it was a fun background to match our props. We clicked on the stars background and dragged it down underneath our original clip. We then went to the option at the top of the screen that allows us to activate the green screen. Once we had clicked on this, we chose the green screen option which brought up the star background behind our original clip.

 Once our background was in place, we changed different lighting and shading settings in order to gain an understanding on how they change certain clips. We also altered the length of the green screen clip so that it fitted perfectly with our original clip. This is something that affected us in our AS portfolio, as our music that we had created on Garage Band did not completely fit with our shots. This affected how professional our opening scene looked, therefore in our A2 production we plan to make sure that all our clips and audio tracks fit in well.

As we plan to make our music video as fun and creative as possible, we decided to alter the speed in order to make the clip stand out. We decided to put the clip in slow motion, and we also reversed the clip as this will also make it stand out to the audience. We decided that after making these changes, the clip looked more creative, and fitted in well with the message we were trying to portray. This led us to decide to include slow motion shots in our real production, therefore the green screen task has been successful and effective in aiding our knowledge on the different editing tools. 

Overall the green screen activity was useful as it allowed us to spend time looking at the different editing tools and how they work on the clips. It was also important as through our research of popular music videos it is evident that the ones people enjoy the most are ones with memorable editing techniques. Therefore it was important that as a group we understood how the editing techniques worked so that our video fulfilled to its highest potential.

Artist Profile

James Gomez

Our artist is named 'James Gomez' and is 21 from Brooklyn. We decided to make him quite young as chart topping music in todays society is predominantly performed by young artists, for example 'Taylor swift' and 'Sam Smith'. Gomez was brought up by his grandparents as his parents were unable to care for him, through music lessons he began to learn how to play the guitar, and used past experiences to write meaningful songs. Successful artists sometimes have troubled childhoods, which gives them the inspiration to write popular songs. Artists such as 'Lady Gaga' and 'Rihanna' were bullied as children for not fitting in with societies 'norms', however they used this trauma to inspire their songs. Our artist 'James Gomez' was scouted whilst busking on the streets of Brooklyn, which he did most days to entertain and show his music. He was then noticed by a employee of 'School Boy Records' who showed a video of James busking to manager Scooter Braun. James was soon signed to the record label and began performing small gigs where he sang some of his earlier songs such as; "My Town", which shows his appreciation towards his grandparents. James popularity soon grew and he made appearances on popular daytime chat shows where he promoted his music. His big break happened when he performed a duet with 'Selena Gomez' on the popular show 'Ellen', which raked in over 5 million YouTube hits. James is continuing to work on his debut album which is due for release in the coming months.

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