Applying audience theory to one of your products.

The product I created during A2 was a music video of a pop female artist Taylor Swift, which I made with my partner Shannon. The target audience for our video was primarily aimed at young females between the ages of 13-21 years old. We chose this age group as we believed that the pop/country genre of our artist was most enjoyed by this audience, and as our artist was a young female artist we believed they would be able to relate to her.

Aspects of our video that were aimed at our target audience was the the use of costumes worn by our artist, which primarily consisted of feminine floral and nude pastel colours. The connotations of such outfits is a sense of innocents and youth we wished to portray our artists as possessing. These outfits are relevant to our young audience as they are meant to emulate the clothes they too will wear and a look they aspire to achieve.The male actor within our video was also intended to appear attractive to our target audience,  with the aid of his trendy smart outfit, depicting an aspirational relationship at the beginning of the video. 

The narrative storyline of our video is also intended to appeal to our audience, as it expands on the meaning of the song and provides a story the audience can empathise with and relate back to their own lives. Narratives are a common feature of modern day pop videos, and so we purposely included this convention to clearly express our genre and provide a video the audience expects to see. Within our narrative our artist is depicted breaking up and fighting with her boyfriend, a situation we believe would be apparent to young girls. I believe, as suggested by the effects model, the audience may have been influenced by feelings of empathy but can passively absorbed the music and pleasant mise en scene. Our audience is however not intended to be a passive audience but actively gratified by our work. For example The Uses and Gratification Model suggests that the audience is active and receives gratification from the viewing of mediums. I think a way this model can apply to our video, is with the concept that the combination of music and narrative can provide the audience with feelings of pleasure and escapism. By becoming absorbed by the simple narrative and catchy tune of our video, they may be able to temporarily forget about issues in their own life, find the tune uplifting and may even be reminded their own life isn't so bad e.g. they're in a happy relationship. The smiling and friendly face of our artists may even provided hope for an audience, as they see her strong response to the bad situation and aspire to be the same.

The intended reception of our video is for our audience to appreciate the video on two levels. The physical appearance of our artist, admiring her beauty and talent and the pleasant aspirational surroundings. The audience then sees the narrative and becomes emotionally engaged with our female actor, and may be reflected of their own relationships. However Morley's theory suggests that members of an audience will always interpret media texts in differing ways, with also a negotiated or oppositional view. A potential oppositional view of our video would be that the audience regard it to be amateurish and evoking no emotion. The storyline may be seen to be so simple it is not captivating at all, and could be seen to follow a predictable pattern to other videos of the same genre, a cliché. Or a negotiated perspective may appreciate our video represents a sad story and may empathise with the narrative however they may also have conflicting opinions that the story is very simplistic and lacks realism. The repetitive nature of some of the scenes may appear to highlight the fake quality. However the fact our video presents a fictional situation allows the escapism of our audience. 

The feedback we received from our target audience during the production of our video  allowed us to formulate a product tailored to that market. Some of the comments we gained on our first draft were that some of the settings appeared unrealistic, some shots were blurry and did not contain enough star image. By incorporating and correcting these suggestions e.g. improving the quality of mise en scene with better lighting & props, using an HD camera and including more close ups of our artists face, we created a video that more successfully gratified the requirements of our audience.  This in turn would allowed our audience to receive more pleasure and diversion from the video. 

Overall I believe our video  is appealing to an audience, as it takes the initial audio of our song and transforms it into a story that adds meaning and interest. The addition of the visuals provides the audience with a further medium to enjoy the song and engages their attention further. Our video is also applicable to most young girls and boys in many cultures across the world who will encounter similar situations in their own lives. Even to those who have differing values and relationship dynamics, the simple nature of the narrative makes it clear to understand.