'Culture in the Digital Age: AC1: Informing Ideas'

Culture in the Digital Age: AC1: Informing Ideas:

Interpreting the brief:

In the induction lesson of this unit - we were given a brief with guidelines on how to go about making our documentary. In this section of the post I will analyse the brief - taking relevant information and applying it to the initial research I conduct in preparation for the documentary.

Identifying the target audience:

Every media product is tailored towards a specific audience. Media is structured and produced with the interests of the audience in mind. Understanding who my audience is allows me to conduct research in to the specific group of people I am orienting my product for - in an attempt to make my product more appealing to the audience.

It is stated in the brief that our documentary is intended for 13 to 19 year old's. This is the target demographic: meaning that I must tailor my documentary to appeal to the needs and interests of the audience in mind. One way in which I will do this in my initial research is to compose a questionnaire with questions aimed specifically for talking points in my documentary, and then give it to my college class - whom are in the stated age bracket of 13 - 19. 

I will also utilize this in the interview segments of my documentary. I will be interviewing many people, each with ties to music culture in some respect: Elliot Yule (Hot Rats), Luca Cilliberti (Fortunato 35), Lloyd Morgan (Fortunato 35), Ryan Brickle, Tyler Clementson, Tom Daly, and Lewy Farquhar. Each of these people I am to interview are also within the given age bracket. I have intentionally used people within the given age range as I feel that given the documentary is meant for 13-19 year old's - having people that are of a similar age allows the audience to better identify with the people in my documentary - a unique selling point that would separate my documentary from other documentaries in the minds of people who are in the given age-range. 

I have researched the concept of people being attracted to media personalities that exhibit similar physical and personality traits to themselves. In an article, on Oxford Bibliographies, by Johnathan Cohen, called, "Identification with Media Characters" - it is said, "Taking on a character’s perspective allows us to see the world through his or her eyes, feeling their feelings and adopting the character’s goals. This allows audiences to produce emotional and empathic responses that create a more meaningful media experience." 

With this in mind - I believe that making the people in my documentary more relatable in a sense, to the target audience of 13 - 19 year old's, would aid in the process of raising awareness for the causes in mind - the fledgling physical musical media market and as a result fledgling businesses that rely on people paying for independent music venues. As seeing how involved young people are in this process - it may inspire and educate - at a better rate at least than if I were to interview someone who the audience could not relate to.

Duration:

It is stated in the brief that the documentary should be between 5 and 15 minutes. Given that I am interviewing four people in my documentary I will divide my time in to set brackets for each interview - more or less equating each interview to 2 to 3 minutes as so that I have time to discuss my ideas fully in narration, as well as present my conclusions at the end of the documentary.

Deadline:

the deadline for our final product is the 22nd February. In order to make sure my project is complete by the given date - I will create a regimented shooting schedule as so that I can structure my documentary in a chronological sense, giving me an easier time during the editing process.

Client research:

CMP Media is our client, the company in which we are making the documentary for. While this company is indeed fictional, I can research similar media companies that produce documentaries aimed towards teenagers; their methods of being effective and how I can link this back to my own documentary.

VICE is a company that produces documentaries with a millennial audience in mind; they achieve this through releasing their media through social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram - which are primarily used by younger audiences. 

Existing Product Analysis:

'Everybody's Everything' by Sebastian Jones 

In preparation of making a documentary about the effect of the digital age on music culture - I have watched other documentaries with similar desirable traits that I wish to replicate in my own documentary. 

In looking for similar documentaries, I came across 'Everybody's Everything'  a biographical documentary about the tragic life of rapper-singer/songwriter Gustav Ahr, also known as Lil Peep. I believe this documentary will be beneficial in watching for preparation of my own documentary as it delves in to the mechanics of Peep's rise to mainstream success from releasing his own independent music on Internet based platforms such as SoundCloud. Given that a large segment of my documentary is based around smaller artists using such platforms, this documentary will be useful as a reference. I was thinking about making mention of artists such as Lil Peep as a parallel to the artists I will be interviewing in my documentary, as when Peep first started masking his music he, like the artists I shall interview, had a limited capacity of musical equipment due to him being an unsigned independent artist - giving the music a Lo-fi-esc sound. LoFi is a genre that has been in the music scene for many decades - though has seen a reinvention in recent years due to artists such as Lil Peep. 

In an article on 'DJ Booth', a reputable source of hip-hop news and  Lil Peep's contemporary SmokeAsac was quoted as saying, "It was interesting to me how he could write the progression from the hook to the verse to the pre-chorus, all this stuff. And he had it all in his head. Then he would layer his vocals himself. So he would do a hook, then he would layer the hook 12 times, and that's what gave him this super wide sound. No one taught him anything. It was just his idea. He mixed himself on GarageBand.” 

In a GQ article, titled "Lil Peep's 'Hellboy' Mixtape: Making Of", by Grant Rinder: frequent Lil Peep collaborator Yung Cortex is quoted as saying, “We were all sampling old emo bands we liked. It was us always going through YouTube and listening to old emo bands and chopping them up to see what they’d sound like as a beat." This is an especially important quotation as it highlights what made Lil Peep so interesting as an artist. As highlighted by Yung Cortex in this quote, the availability of established music on the Internet gives artists the ability to sample and meld genres to create new and truly unique sounds - as Peep did: mixing his childhood music of grunge, metal, and pop punk with the post-2015 trend of trap-drum heavy rap set by albums such as Travis Scott's 'Rodeo' and Future's 'DS2'.

As with my documentary - this documentary is mainly composed of interviews - with relevant footage spliced in-between to convey a convincing picture of Gustav's life. I will conduct my documentary in a similar fashion - using interviews to get information across to the audience. While my documentary is about a topic rather than a biographical documentary - I still think this method of putting information across through interviews is very effective. 

'The music industry and the digital revolution' - The Economist:

The Disrupters is an original series exploring how major industries—from music and cars to hospitality—are currently being disrupted by the latest wave of digital innovation. As well as enjoying privileged access into the world biggest tech start ups we show how industry giants respond when faced with such tech-driven innovation. This documentary provides many interesting facts such as the fact that "only three music labels own well over half the western worlds music." This is a point I wish to bring up in my own documentary as music labels are in direct contrast to independent artists - the basis of my own documentary. 

Mind Maps:

Audience Research: Google Forms Questionnaire

 

I used Google Forms to conduct research in to the general consensus about music culture and the popularity of physical music media as opposed to the use of streaming services. 

This question, "What is your favourite genre of music?", was used to emphasise the diversity of genres that have come with the accessibility of music in the digital age. 

Several genres cited by the participants of the survey - such as industrial hip-hop and K-pop are products of the digital age. While these genres did exist in minimal capacity prior to the invention of the Internet - they found a cemented platform within online communities: with artists such as Death Grips being at the forefront of industrial hip-hop despite their first album, 'exmilitary', being released on SoundCloud. I intentionally posed this question as a form of open-questioning as this lets me get a more diverse range of answers from the audience; ergo I then have more data to use in preparation of the topical content of my documentary.

For this question, I asked those that had took part in the survey to share their own ideas about how the Internet has benefited music culture. I can then apply this information to forming further ideas about the topic of the documentary further in to the production.

This question is a type of open questioning - allowing input from the people taking the survey. This range of information is beneficial as it allows for people to explain their perspective - giving me greater insight in to the reasoning behind their answer. This could not be achieved had I approached this question using closed questioning.

I asked the question, "What physical music media do you purchase?" I asked this question to get a general sense of attitudes towards physical music media from those that filled out the survey. 

Linking back to the information I received in a prior question, "how old are you?", those that filled the survey out are between the ages of 18 - 19+. This question reflects While I know that all participants that taken part in the survey were in the given target audience provided in the brief, by 'CMP Media' - 13 - 19, with all that took part being between the ages of 18 and 19: the way I formatted the question to end in 19+ hinders the effectiveness of this question as only 22.2% of participants are shown to be within the target demographic. 

This question similarly would've been more effective had I given the survey out to a wider range of ages that are between 13 to 19. Seeing as the questionnaire only reflects the views of older teenagers; when the brief states that the documentary should appeal to the whole teenage demographic - it does not fully encapsulate the viewpoint of my demographic from ages from 13 to 17 - which possibly have a different attitude to buying physical music media as opposed to the older teenagers that taken part in this survey.

In terms of data, I find the response to this question rather interesting. While, as predicted, streaming services are more widely represented with 55.6% of the response saying that they "don't use physical media" - vinyl records was a similarly popular response. This corroborates my research in to the sale of physical music media. While vinyl saw a decline in popularity since the commercialisation of the compact disc, in recent years, since 2015 - vinyl record has saw a rise in popularity and this answer corroborates this statistic.