Who are Mia-Mae's audience and Why?

From the responses in our focus groups and also by researching which age groups might be most likely to listen to our artists. We concluded that the audience group we were going to be aimed at were pre-teens and teenaged girls who could identify with the songs.

We asked 50 boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 22 whether they would buy the song if it was on sale in a shop.

The responses were:

This gave us more ideas as to our image and style and how to approach the music video. We thought that the narrative should be one that the audience could relate too and the image must do the same. We saw that we our audience were young girls we looked at ways in which we could relate our music video to our audience.

We felt that many music videos give the wrong impression of what girls should aspire to be and so we decided a more realistic approach would be beneficial to our audience. Therefore, we made our artists look as much like the audience group as we could to make them more identifiable with the young girls.

Some of the responses from the people we asked was that they felt that at some point they could relate to the lyrics and so they liked the choice of song we were using. Proving we achieved our aim and made ourselves identify with them.

The Lyrics- Fantasy Boy

Below are the lyrics to the song chosen by our audience. These lyrics will help us in deciding ideas such as themes, colours, genres and other ideas for our music video, digipack and website.

Fantasy Boy:

It will never be

That you can ever have me

Just that I can't have you

Suddenly, you make me really happy

Even when I'm not around you

I don't wanna think about this

I feel I'm not allowed to like you

Even though I wish we could kiss

That wish ain't ever gonna come true

It won't come true.

Ooooo-Oh

You're just some kind of fantasy boy

You're gonna make my heart destroy

You're everything that I can't have

And I don't wanna make you mad at me.

There's this thing,

I have for you

You're just something that I can't set free.

When I'm alone,

I wish you were beside me

With your arms around me

Suddenly this makes me so unhappy

I need your company

I don't wanna think about this

I feel I'm not allowed to like you

Even though I wish we could kiss

That wish ain't ever gonna come true

It won't come true.

Ooooo-Oh

You're just some kind of fantasy boy

You're gonna make my heart destroy

You're everything that I can't have

And I don't wanna make you mad at me.

There's this thing, I have for you

You're just something that I can't set free.

I will e-mail you

Over the internet

With complete, honesty

And the good thing is that

You will never know it was me

Because I did it anonymously.

Anonymously

Because you're just some kind of fantasy boy

You're gonna make my heart destroy

You're everything that I can't have

And I don't wanna make you mad at me.

There's this thing, I have for you

You're just something that I can't set free.

London Film Festival 2009

On the 21st of October, we visited the BFI London Film Festival. We saw a Turkish film called 'Men on the Bridge' by Asli Ozge. We thought that the way that the characters used a computer is order to form new relationships illustrated an accurate idea of how dependent society today is on technology.

Likewise a short animation at the festival called 'Speechless' by Daniel Greaves implied a similar suggestion about modern society. In this animation it exaggerated how people have become so dependent on mobile phones and the internet that they have lost the ability to speak. We thought that though an exaggeration, it gave the correct idea of what society is like and we decided to use this. The relationship in our narrative will also display communication through technology.

Cinderella Story

A cinderella Story...

As our song is called 'Fantasy Boy' We explored fairy tales. A Cinderella Story is a modernised version of the old Classic fairy tale. This helped us as a base for our narrative as our protagonist is also searching for her Prince Charming. This version of the story allowed us to see both sides of the story. Firstly the 'Happy- ever-after' ending and also the reality, which we decided to illustrate in our music instead of it following the classic line '...and they all lived happily ever after'. Similarly by watching the side which demonstrates reality, we were able to remove the clichéd elements of a fairytale and replace them with less conventional aspects which still keeping to the theme of fantasies.

Paramore: Misery Business

As our genre is Pop Rock, we viewed two different artists to find any conventions which fit our music video genre. Paramore, is more of a rock band. We were inspired by the background of the band shots as it read 'Riot' which is relevant to the atmosphere of the song. We decided that our song fitted the same idea however it was necessary to tone it down as our song didn't have the same power as the one below.

We also looked at the use of both narrative and band shots in this video. The balance seemed to work well and there was a distinction between the lead singer and the main character in the narrative which we thought was similar to how we pictured our music video.

We took the lead singer's image and decided that she defeated all the conventions of female stereotypes whereas the lead in the narrative was more conventional was here made up face, revealing dress and attitude. We liked the idea of the two sides of female portrayal.

Focus Group

Focus Group:

We wanted to find out directly from our audiences what they think of our band. We filmed them in focus groups in order to retrieve our results. We asked then questions such as words to describe three different songs: Fantasy Boy, My Heart's in a Whirl and Unloved, these responses as well as asking directly which song audiences liked best helped us to pick the song 'Fantasy Boy'

I found this an original and helpful method as people are less likely to take such a thing less seriously when they are being directly asked than they would if it was on paper. Equally I saw it a an example of 'We media' as my partner and I were allowing our audiences to tell us what they wanted rather than just assuming ourselves what would be most popular.

Lip syncing...

Lip Syncing Video:

Last summer, my partner and I worked together on another task. This was an opportunity to grasp lip syncing and introduce us to the music videos unit. As it was shortly after the tragic death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, we decided to combine this task with a tribute to him.

Lip Syncing was proven to be an enjoyable challenge as timings had to be very specific for both the actresses in the video and also in order to match the music's timing. This also gave us a creative opportunity as we were introduced to the effects which are on offer to us. We had a lot more freedom within this to play with shots than with our thrillers as it wasn't serious and so there were many more appropriate shots which enabled us to illustrate the fun we had while making this and at the same time releasing the atmosphere onto our audience.

Storyboard cont.

Pre-Production Storyboard

Before we began anything, we sat down and planned our initial ideas on a story board. We decided that although this is a good idea, when we come to film, we are likely to deviate quite a bit. There are possibilities that our storyboard won't work realistically and so we'll have to adjust it.

(Click image to enlarge)

The blogging begins...

After taking focus groups and questioning them as to what they thought of the song samples we played them from our group, Mia-Mae, and which they would like to see as a music video, we created a short film to present our results in a more creative way.

The words provided by our focus groups alongside the lyrics allowed us to become inspired as to what should appear in our music video.

The group Mia-Mae is a family group consisting of two vocalists, one of which also plays guitar.