Target Audience Description
Boldened words directly state the key features of our target audience
Our early intentions for tackling the main task is to create a semi-narrative based theme building on the contents of the lyrics in the song to ultimately question gender identity. This will be both a bold and challenging venture for a music video because it contradicts the majority of what is seen as pop culture in videos and more generally speaking, it challenges what society wants to see in a music video; through this, therefore, our audience will inevitably have to be open-minded, youthful and student (aged15-24) - (despite the age of the song) because of two key factors... Firstly, we are currently apart of the first generation of people who could be argued to be entirely accepting of open sexuality, beyond even homosexuality or bi-sexuality. There has been a complete shift from the values of the 1970′s at the time of release of the song meaning we would face far less critical reception and general lack of acceptance towards the themes in our video nowadays as a result of the breaking of stigmas due to consistent freedom of speech across the internet and in debate. Secondly, an older audience would attach themselves to the original song as it was such an influential hit at the time of release, meaning reinventing the songs content may contest those emotionally attached to the song for the classic that it is. Also, an older audience would generally be less in favour of unconventional techniques we plan to use in the filming of the project as well as introducing animation because it would seem foreign to them and their consideration of how a video might benefit the content of the song.
Above is an attached newspaper article highlighting the enormous popularity of the band at the time of the release of the single. Contextually if a band is earning £6 million a year in the 1970′s, they’re enormously popular. Therefore we see that potentially undermining the band through visually exploring themes such as transvestism might face more critical response from an older generation and would be far more widely accepted by a modernised, alternative and accepting younger audience
With regard to a narrowed, specific tribe of an audience member, we’ve concluded that a strong political standing (and through this a /C2/AB social demographic) as well as alternativity, is important to look for in our target audience. This is because LGBTQ society does remain a controversial topic and therefore an audience who are open-minded and well educated enough (to the extent that their family would classify as “higher & intermediate managerial, administrative, professional occupations or “supervisory, clerical & junior managerial, administrative, professional occupations”) to appreciate our interpretation of the song would be most interested in our video. More specifically, it is a rarity for a song discussing LGBT values to have reached such huge acclaim in the music industry and this is also true of music videos. So, therefore, an audience with a political stance and alternativity, who is willing to openly discuss many topics would hugely value a video directly involving non-straight sexuality as it would provide them with a voice that is openly discussing the topic. Therefore this would reduce the stigma to people unable to give examples of LGBT themes in popular media culture. Therefore for a media grouping, we believe that typically our audience will be interested in indie films and any alternative tv shows, albeit must have an interest in classic rock as this is the genre of the song itself.
As well as themes of transvestism, our music video will largely be original in that we plan to build on Andrew Goodwin’s theory of amplifying a narrative within a song lyric as opposed to typically making a performance-based video (as is typical of the classic rock genre). We also intend to include ideas such as animation, use of colour saturation and more generally filming our project in an unkempt, even messy environment. Therefore, because we will stray from typical themes within pop culture that a typical audience member might find visually pleasing, such as attractive woman and empowering close-ups - an unorthodox audience would be essential for our video. We wish to present the themes of isolation and instability that are a reality for some LGBT people so they need to be able to escape the trends of modern society to appreciate our piece as an artistic interpretation of the song and not be unsettled by its outlandish nature.
