The performer of our song is the musician Claire Cottril, known professionally as Clairo. We focused on the way that she portrays herself, particularly on social media, in order to gather an idea on what the conventions of an indie star are and how these play into the metanarrative surrounding her. A metanarrative could also be described as the packaging of her entire brand, and it plays a major role into how they deduce who their target audience are and how to appeal to them.

Richard Dyer came up with the reception theory as a solution to how a star should present themselves to their audiences. His theory outlined the idea that stars should appear to be relatable to their audience in order to retain their attention as fans, while still remaining as an unattainable ideal, also described as being ordinary vs extraordinary.

In order to find inspiration for our music video, we had a look through some various other music videos from our genre, as well as some from former students. This helped us to visualise some of the shots that we could use in our own music video, and inspired us to consider some shots that we hadn’t before. Through this, we’ve been able to identify some shots that we’d like to include in our music video, shown in the padlet below.

Due to copyright purposes, in order to use our chosen song for our video we must first ask permission from the artist; even if they do not see or reply to the message, they must be notified of its use. To do this, my partner sent a direct message to the artist, Clairo, on Instagram, as shown in the screenshot below.

Mini Pitch

Music Video Pitch

Feedback

• Liked the main theme of childlike wonder that we’ll incorporate into the video
• Our teacher thought the sock puppet idea added to this childlike, innocent feel
• He liked the idea of the ‘bedroom pop’, which has a very lofi, almost surreal, dreamlike nature –  this idea of surrealism will allow us to play around with less naturalistic elements in the video

Targets

• Need to hone in on the ideas more specifically, and figure out our direction more clearly in relation to shots/locations etc
• Decide on the significance of the sock puppets – from this, we have decided that the sock puppet shots represent the star’s memories of the past relationship, giving the video a playful, childlike feel
• Reconsider the idea of side by side shots suggesting flashbacks to the past relationship – shots like these could become cheesy and fake, so we’ll focus only on the sock puppets in the flashbacks instead

In order to create as successful of a music video as possible, I need to determine who my target audience are. This is important because by figuring out the other things that my audience enjoy and the other types of music they listen to, I can determine what elements I should cater to, ensuring a more successful music video overall.

Collage of interests for our target audience

The audience that we’re aiming for are teenagers and young adults, aged between around 13-25, and since our song is in the indie genre, we hope that it will cater to the audience’s interests of more alternative cultures, music, and brands. Also, our audience tend to have an interest in fashion and more alternative styles, so we will try and take this into account with the costuming of our star.

YouGov data for our genre

Above are the top 10 most popular artists of our genre in our target demographic. One artist among these is the Arctic Monkeys.

Below are some of the other interests that fans of the band share. It appears that our target audience enjoys comedy and female actresses, which we will take into consideration when deciding on the direction of our music video.