2. Melbourne’s
live music scene
Synopsis:
Melbourne's music scene is overpopulated at best. Bars, clubs and other
venues offer live music any night of the week, and half the CBD is full of
buskers. This is a quintessential part of the city's personality. Finding a
singer at a small venue, We will go into what the city means to this
particular local musician and look into the definition of musician from a new
angle. My partner and I went searching for a local artist, at a nightclub in
North Melbourne, Club Voltaire, which significantly contributes to
Melbourne's nightlife and encourages emerging local artists.
This is where we met Steven. Steven has been singing for over 6 years and
regularly performs at Club Voltaire a few nights a month. We had the
pleasure of meeting him and he has kindly accepted our proposal to tell his
story in this episode.
3. Demographic & Ads
There are two main demographics our episode will target. The first, the main audience, are people interested in
Melbourne. This is a broad audience, but is too important to overlook. The web series is about Melbourne, and
aims towards people with some kind of interest in the city. The audience includes tourists and potential tourists
who can watch the series to learn more about the city's culture and may not know about things like the live music
scene. This main target audience also includes locals, or Australians from other parts of the country, who are
interested in Melbourne and want to know more about what our city has to offer.
The secondary audiences are 'musos'. This episode, being about a local musician who plays in Melbourne, will be of
interest to anyone musical or with similar aspirations. While this is an important audience, it is secondary to the
previously mentioned audience purely because this group is smaller.
The episode will get to our audience using advertisements on a variety of websites. Social media will be important to
get the episode out to our secondary audience. Most of Melbourne's young musicians and bands use Facebook,
Twitter, MySpace and other social media websites to advertise themselves, connect to their audience and network
with other musicians. In addition, most bars, clubs, music festivals and venues also use social media to advertise
upcoming events and get people interested in visiting. Using the social media pages and websites for these
venues, and specifically the website and Facebook page for Club Voltaire (the venue we will be filming at), will be
imperative to getting the episode to the right audience.
Just as importantly the episode will be advertised on websites and blogs about the city of Melbourne. Alongside these
advertisements, websites such as thatsmelbourne.com.au and onlymelbourne.com.au will have a link to the web
series. These websites are sites that only show current events and share new information on Melbourne. Using
sites like these we will be able to reach a larger audience of people interested in the city but not specifically the
music scene. This will mostly reach out to our primary audience.
Ideally we will also be putting video ads for this episode (and indeed the entire series) on YouTube and TV. The TV ads
would be aimed at people within Australia, but could possibly extend to overseas channels. The YouTube ads will
not be aimed at any one specific audience, but will reach a much more broad range of viewers.
4. Significance of Melbourne
and live music
There is not one person in Melbourne who hates music. Melbourne has one of the most highly regarded
live music scenes in the world. As it is such a multicultural city, sharing music and expressing
individual talent brings people together and lights up the dark city. This is why my partner and I
chose focus on Melbourne's live music scene, it largely contributes to Melbourne's culture and
gives individual people a platform to express themselves in such a welcoming environment. There
is so much talent out there and so many people performing for different reasons. We want to
explore these reasons.
Why will people want to watch it?
We hear music everyday, we see people performing everyday whether it is on the streets, a celebrity at
Rod Laver Arena or someone in a bar or nightclub. We are asking the question why are they here
and do they have a personal story worth telling?
What is it about your topic that will make your episode
compelling? And why should people care about the story
we are telling?
We see live music everywhere through performances, we see those train drivers on our way to work,
we see that same guy every day at Flagstaff handing out the Big Issue and yelling jokes at the
average workman. I doubt anybody can tell me who they are, or better yet, what are their names?
How old are they? What are they doing there? And why are they in Melbourne? It is these
questions that we ask ourselves on the odd occasion, although we will never really know; What is
their story?. That's what this episode will explore, the personal lives of those who are already such
a major part of our lives.
5. Steven Theochari: Introduction
FILM : (https://vimeo.com/64800162)
Name: Steven Theochari
Age: 20
Artist: Singer
Performs: Club Voltaire
"We want Steven to narrate our documentary and take our
audience through his life. What are the places that
influence him and piecing together certain aspects of his
life that makes important to Melbourne."
6. What we are planning to get from
Steven and what makes him ideal for
our story?
Steven is perfect for our story because he connects to Melbourne so strongly. Steven grew up in this city and he has
never given up on his dream to one day perform internationally. Steven failed to complete a degree due to his
singing ambitions; he spends most of his time performing in clubs all around Melbourne and contributes to live
events around the city. In his free time he likes to record music at home and go out with his friends at local places
such as the Melbourne night market and local pubs. He also likes to support other local artists by attending 'gigs'
and following them on 'YouTube'.
We want to not only interview him, but we would like to interview who he works with and the owner of Club Voltaire to
get a grasp on the live music scene. Who he works with also has a lot to do with Steven and we can get a different
perspective on the singer rather than everything coming from him.
Is it realistic that you can get them?
Yes. We have already met our subject and he is 100% ready to participate in our project.
What might be the challenges that you need to overcome to make your
episode?
We need to make sure that we are not telling the story and it completely comes from our subject's point of view by
filming over the shoulder and taking a lot of point of view shots. We don't want to ask him scripted questions (this
is one of the main things we want to avoid). We will also need to abide by the ethics of journalism -- defamation,
privacy and private property. We are developing careful ways to avoid these problems such as contracts. We will
also advise Steven of what video material we are using before publication, so we don't misrepresent him.
7. Putting the episode together: Plan
of gigs and functions
- Primary location: Club Voltaire in North Melbourne
We plan to develop a map and highlight all the locations
Steven takes us to.
Other locations: His personal Studio, other places in Melbourne that inspire him
and public locations when busking
8. Putting the episode together: What
kind of impact will it have? How will we tell
the story?
We will be telling our story in a series of still images, voice-overs and film. The impact that this series will have on our
audience is that we all want to know what somebody's passion means to them. We all have our own perception of
music. What does singing mean to Steven? How does he feel when he performs? In what ways does he connect
with Melbourne and the people in it? And does he have a personal connection with this city? We want to
emphasize that live music plays such a massive part in Melbourne's culture and history. Not only that but music
impacts people's lives everyday and we should tell Steven's story because he produces music that influences
people.
We want to be talked through his struggles as a musician, how his passion has escalated, where does he perform and
who are the influential figures in his life? What helps him to strive for his ambitions and why should he matter to
others?
We want a walk through his life, his beliefs and what he finds important. Our subject is the narrator; we want him to tell
the story.
We want to start with Club Voltaire in North Melbourne where we first met Steven. We are going to gather statistics of
the amount of local artists in Melbourne and let Steven explain why live music is so important and why it matters.
We want to portray his outlook on everything, with him still in the shot. We do not want any of us in the shot while
interviewing Steven as we are trying to so vividly convey his point to view to the audience. How he see's
Melbourne and what obstacles he had to overcome in order to become the person he is today. There will rarely be
voice over narration from us, this is what we want to avoid. We think that it will disrupt the narrative conventions
and make it more like we are controlling the angle of the piece. We want to capture the angle without influencing
it.
We will be using some still images of him singing at different events with his own voice narrating, some short videos of
him performing, although majority of the footage will be of him taking us through the parts of Melbourne that he
believes to be significant to himself and his story.
9. Putting the episode together:
Structure of the film
[Part 1: In the first few minutes we will explore Melbourne's Music scene and look at Club
Voltaire and explore what its like to perform here.]
→ Steven introduces himself and explains what he does at this venue. He talks about why
he performs there (does he know people who work there/own it? Why perform at such a small
place?).
And more importantly why is music so important in Melbourne overall?
*Visually we will switch between scenes of him sitting there talking to the camera, to videos of him
performing there, and videos of him doing other things there (interacting with the owner/audience
after or before his performance, maybe having a drink and a laugh or just being natural). This will
not interrupt him talking about the place, we will constantly have him talking through voice over.
[Part 2 – Steven's life as a musician]
→ Steven start's to talk about his personal life in this segment. At this point he can talk about his
life, his inspiration, what other things he does in his free time – We shall find out as much about him
as possible! This is where we can get shots of him busking, shots of crowds all around him listening,
possibly shots of him walking down the street holding his equipment or setting it up. We have made a
plan of the possible locations, where he will take the audience.
