Location Plan

Above shows a mind-map of the locations I have decided to shoot my video at. In the mind-map I have explained the pros of shooting in certain locations and have included any cons that there may be about shooting in certain locations. From this, I came to the conclusion of where I want to shoot (this is explained in the summary of this mind-map)

Teacher and self assessment of blog currently

The table below shows a teacher and self assessment of my blog as it is currently. For the self assessment I looked through each of my blog posts and analysed what I had done well, and what I need to improve on in order to make my blog as good as possible so I can move up into level 4. My teacher then did the same thing, so now I have an understanding of what I think I need to do to make my blog better, and what my teacher has said to do in order to improve my blog.

Initial Music Video Storyboard

Here is my initial storyboard for my music video. As you can see, I decided to include a male and a female going through very similar trans* struggles in order to show my audience that this is a universal issue. I also wanted to include two character of two differing ganders because it means that my product is more likely to appeal to men and women as opposed to one more than the other. I have also included quite a few extreme close-ups and medium shots because my videos narrative is all about getting a message across, meaning that emotions need to be emphasised, so by focusing on important aspects if the narrative (such as body language and facial expressions) the viewer is more likely to empathise with the characters in the music video and therefore understand the message well.

Audience research - UGT

Audience research

Permission For Song Choice

In order to avoid copyright issues, I needed to contact Mac DeMacos recording studio in some way to ask their permission to use Macs song 'My Kinda Woman'. The main reason for this being that once my music video is finished, I will upload it to YouTube in order to post it onto my blog, and due to the fact that YouTube is an online website, anyone online would be able to hear his song in my video outside of where it was originally published, so it could be subject to copyright issues. I decided I would message them on Facebook as I noticed that they posted quite often on there so I thought I would have a high chance of them seeing it. However, a few days have passed since I have sent this and I have still not recieved a reply yet. If I do not receive a reply from them at any point soon, my only other option is to upload it to YouTube without including their name in the title and giving them the credit for the song in the description of the video as well as making a point that I do not own the music in the video.

Initial video idea

Finding an audience

I now need to find a demographic to target in order for my music video to have some level of success. In order to find my demographic I set up a survey on the website 'SurveyMonkey', and constructed questions based around the audience themselves and their likes and dislikes in relation to what I have analyzed in order to find out what people of what age and gender find appealing in a music video. From there I can make a questionnaire aimed at my demographic asking them what kind of things they like to see in a video and what attracts their attention, and then begin researching more and then begin planning my product with the demographic in mind.

This is a screen grab of my survey, it firsts asks for age and gender and then where you would tend to go to watch music videos. This is an important aspect of distribution because if it turns out that my demographic mainly watches music videos mainly on TV then  would need to make a product that follows formats of products on TV. Despite knowing that I am making a video as a student for my media course and not a video that will go on TV, it is still an important piece of information to know to gain a good understand of the interests of my demographic.

Music Video Genre

Due to the fact that my song choice is indie, it means that making my video indie would maintain continuity between the products. However, I think that having a video with a strong narrative will contrast the indie style of the song therefore resulting in a highly dysfunctional products as well as an original one which will then enforce the indie genre.

I asked my audience what they thought of the indie genre and this is what they had to say:

Emily: "I prefer the indie genre because it feels much more real and relatable and it's not the generic stuff that you see every day on TV"

Beth: "A lot of the music I like is indie. I like it because it's different to what you hear on the radio and the TV all the time"

Alexandra: "I mainly listen to people like ED Sheeran and he isn't indie, but I do like some indie singers, I just don't listen to them all the time"

David: "I love what you'd call the 'indie' genre because I like having bands that I can call my own and that other people don't obsess over because when bands get big and famous like the Arctic Monkeys they change in a way that I don't like, they're too generic and they're not individuals anymore"

Peter: "I don't really listen to music much but when other people have music on I hate it when they play stuff that people listen to all the time. It gets really boring but I like listening to stuff I've not heard before that it's the kind of thing you hear constantly"

Thomas: "I never listen to the music in the charts, I like finding my own bands that are low profile because I feel like indie bands can interact with their fans way more. I like the music because it's new and exciting.

As you can see, it is clear that my audience is very interested in the indie genre and indie band for numerous reasons and not just because of how they sound of look. The main piece of feedback I noticed from this is that my audience likes the fact that indie bands aren't conventional, they are their own style and are a world apart from what is in the charts.

Song choice

My song choice is Mac DeMarco's 'My Kind Of Woman' as I love the message that the song gives off when combined with the unexpected elements of the video (the 'woman' mentioned in the song is expected to be a woman that mac desires to have...when only listening; when combined with the visuals, the meaning of the song changes as the 'woman' described is then representative of the identity of Mac's character in the video). I feel that doing something similar but in a slightly more serious way would make this a very good political message in an artistic and original way.

'My Kinda Woman' is an indie rock genre song, so this means that it creating an indie music video may be the best way to go with this because it will link up well with visuals and will also mean that my video will not look like an attempted imitation of current media products on high budgets with elaborate settings and experienced actors.