1B Audience Essay

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of Audience

Within media the audience are the people who view and listen to your work. Throughout the construction of my A2 coursework which included a Music Video, Digipak, website and merchandise, etc,  the concept of audience held a significant role. We undertook target audience analysis and once we had established a target audience for our artist we constantly carried out research to see what would attract them to our media products not only did we do this but we also gathered extensive feedback from our target audience through Surveys, Big screen viewings, online questionaries’ and interviews. This helped us to reflects on the ways in which we tried to capture our audience through what they liked and suggestions they felt we could have improved on. 

The Artist we created was NOVA a young female artist who was edgy and into fashion she was also a feminist and a strong independent women which made her a role model to younger girls. The music video was to the song "Nostalgia" by NAO which has a retro pop vibe. After establishing the artist and song we felt the target audience would be primarily aimed towards teenage girls aged between 16 to early 20s. We then researched similar artists who had the same target audience to see what their music videos included, for example we looked at Dua Lipa 'New Rules' and various Miley Cyrus music videos. We saw that the videos included dancing and elements of fun and pop through the use of their colourful locations and wanted to incorporate this into our music video. 

We used Mise en scene to capture our target audience for example Nova had a variety of outfit changes showing her love for fashion which young girls can connect with. We also used colourful props such as neon glow sticks, fairy lights and balloons to capture our audience through the use of bright colour. When it came to editing we also used colour correction to implement a purple/pink tint over the music video this is stereotypically a "girls colour" which would also help to capture our audience. We used quick cuts in time to the music which made the music video come across as fun which would make you want to dance this was also extended upon in shots where Nova is seen dancing making the audience want to dance along with her. We used a variety of camera angles facing up at Nova to create a sense of empowerment and star image, it created the concept that Nova was a strong independent female which her audience would aspire to. This links to the Effects Model which states that the media presented will have an influence on the audience, we used the concept of this model to portray a positive text.

Once our final music video was complete the final target audience feedback was extremely positive many felt the video captured them and would watch it again, the improvement feedback suggested we could have used more locations after reflecting on this was agreed that if we had more time we would have used more locations such as a drama studio where we could have used the space to show more dancing to really attract our audience.

Our other media products also were constantly aimed at our target audience for example the merchandise consisted of colours such as baby pink, white and purple. our digipak and website also showed Nova to be centre of attention creating female empowerment and a successful artist for young girls to look up to.

In order to gain deeper understanding into the concept of Audience we looked at theorists such as Blumer and Katz that suggest audiences want media products that gratify particular needs such as entertainment. This helped us to understand how our Audience are intrigued by our music video, which connects with them to our artist’s music, overall providing them with their need of entertainment. For example, we kept our audiences needs fulfilled not only through our music video but through our interactive website and social media platforms such as twitter and Instagram which meant the audience could feel some sort of connection to Nova as we would tweet about what she was up to and release interviews that her fans could send in questions. We also released teaser trailers for our audience in order build hype and excitement around the release of the music video.

In conclusion, the main aim behind the music video was for it to be successful with our target audience. Therefore, the concept of audience was vital throughout the construction of our media products as was the feedback we received. We overall learnt that there were many detailed aspects to 'audience' which we would not have considered prior.

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