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Now that I have an idea of the song I am going to animate, I am able to do a little more research into my target audience. As I mentioned briefly when I went into more detail about Robin Skinner and Devil Town in general in my music subpage, this music is primarily targeted at queer youth and young adults. In fact, recently I had the amazing opportunity to go and see Cavetown perform live at the O2 Institute in Birmingham back in February, and I was able to see firsthand who the target audience is. It seemed to be primarily young people—generally young girls and genderqueer kids—between the ages of 13 and 16. A lot of Cavetown fans, especially online, might have mild to severe autism and other neurological disorders, and so a lot of Skinner's songs have hints of those themes as well. With all of this in mind, I will take a look at the kinds of media that interest this demographic in particular.
Cartoons
Cartoons
A huge part of pop culture for this demographic is the idea of cartoons and western animation. Of course, every generation has a series of TV shows and cartoons that they grew up with; whether it be generation X with Thundercats and He-Man or millennials with SpongeBob and Family Guy, each demographic can be enticed to watch a piece of media if it reminds them of their childhood; it's a commonly known and used tactic for enticing in and locking down a target audiencedhood; it's a commonly known and used tactic for enticing in and locking down a target audience. When it comes to my target demographic, however, mainly young Gen Z, I want to be looking at cartoons released between around 2006 and 2019.
Something else to consider about my target demographic is that, generally, queer and neurodivergent kids in this generation tend to continue watching cartoons far beyond childhood; the majority of my queer friends still watch cartoons as teenagers and young adults. This is in part due to the fact that western kids TV shows are beginning to display more openly queer and neurodivergent characters, and a lot of the time the indie creators are themselves queer and neurodivergent. Furthermore, there is a lot more investment in making a worthwhile plot for these kinds of shows, and creators are beginning to broaden their target demographic to include these teenagers and young adults. Shows like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, The Owl House, and Gravity Falls are all very appealing to today's youth and are a large part of their culture.
This is all extremely important to keep in mind when animating my Devil Town music video, since including styles that allude to these cartoons will be very advantageous in making sure I can appeal to my target audience. Utilising an animation style that appeals to this demographic is a very effective method of getting publicity. A good example of this is Billie Eilish's My Future, which I analysed in my modern animated music videos subpage, as this music video uses the style of Studio Ghibli to appeal to the millennial/gen Z audience it is targeted towards.
Fan-Made Content
Fan-Made Content
Another important thing to remember is that fan animation is another large part of this demographic's culture, and that fan-made content in general is a big part of the media that interests them. I go into more detail about what a lot of this fan-made content entails in my fan animatics subpage, but as a general idea, this content attempts to interpret existing media, such as music theatre, songs, and even film and book extracts, in a way that more audiences can relate to. For example, if an animator feels that they resonate with a song or another piece of media, they might choose to make an animatic or write some fanfic based on it. Then, other fans of this existing medium can watch or read their interpretation and perhaps relate to it as well. This has been done a hundred thousand times by a hundred thousand fans of all different kinds of media, but needless to say, my target demographic is a fan of existing media being interpreted in a different way than how the original creator intended. Of course, realistically, this is exactly what I am going to be doing: taking a popular piece of existing media and interpreting it in my own way. However, by studying what techniques and themes fan content uses, I might be able to get insight into how best to make my music video.
I have noticed, when looking into different fan animations and fanfictions, that one common theme between all of them is the attempt to make sense of lyrics or subjects that are potentially more abstract and intentionally vague. This is one of the reasons why fan theories are so prominent in the media; however, a lot of fan content attempts to personalise and rationalise potentially irrational media. Take, for example, the fanfiction trope of the "Coffee Shop" alternate universe. This is a very common layout of fan fiction, wherein the writer will take their desired characters out of their original universe and into the real world, where one or more of them work at a coffee shop. This is such a common trope in fanfiction because it attempts to give these potentially very unrealistic (at least in setting) characters some more grounding in the real world and means that they can form more meaningful connections with the other characters in their world. Another example of this is, of course, fan animatics, where a fan (or group of fans in the case of a MAP) will find a song with which they resonate or feel that a piece of media resonates, and then apply the song in the form of an animation. A lot of the time, creators will see a song that they feel they relate to and will create a video that demonstrates how the song has affected them. Take this video as an example: this person felt that this song fit with them and what they were going through, and so they created an animatic to display that.
In conclusion, it seems like fans in my target demographic love seeing their favourite media rationalised and made into something more recognisable. They seem to enjoy seeing other people's perspectives on their fandoms, as demonstrated based on the fact that fanfiction and animatics get hundreds of thousands of likes and views, and so when it comes to animating Devil Town, trying to create a tangable narrative from this song is probably going to be my best bet when it comes to attracting my target audience.
To conclude, I think that when animating my music video and creating concepts, I should focus on trying to amplify and illustrate the song's lyrics, and also attempt to make the characters look as similar to 2010s cartoons and online art styles as possible.
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