Star theory.

Here is my description of Star Theory and how this can be applied to my singer who I have chosen for my final music video. (Ella Henderson)

Music Video regulation.

Here is a prezi presentation based on the rules of regulation of music videos and how inappropriate things are dealt with by the BBFC.

Mine and Emily's Picth

Here is mine and Emily's pitch that we will deliver on camera.

Charlotte and Emily’s pitch.

Charlotte: The song we have chosen to use is Adele’s ‘When we were young’. We originally selected an Ella Henderson song but we didn’t feel like we could create a video that would complement the song well enough in comparison to this song.

Emily: We have chosen this song because we both really like the artist and feel the song is more powerful which gives us more chance to be creative with our video.

Charlotte: We are still unsure exactly what will happen within the video but Emily will be lip syncing and then we will have several different shots of old and young couples from past and present and families to emphasise the meaning of the song, which is to make the moment matter and value every minute.

Emily: Our target audience is a broad range of teenagers-adults as the song can be interpreted in many different ways. Both genders can be included within our target audience depending on the genre they like.

Charlotte: We feel we are good time keepers because on a previous task we thought we’d have difficulty to complete it within the allocated time due to busy schedules but we managed to produce a finished product on the deadline as we used the time that we had effectively. 

Emily: We are also good team workers as we both put forward ideas and put the same amount of effort in as one another which is useful so it’s not just one of us working hard and the other doing nothing.

Charlotte: The equipment we will need for our music video is a DSLR (or a good quality camera similar to this one), a tripod, we will experiment with different lights

Emily: We feel people will be able to relate to this as many people value their family and the sense of belonging. Some people may also watch our video for escapism and for entertainment which is diversion.

Charlotte: The song can create personal identity as people can relate themselves with the context of the lyrics. We intend to film inside and outside but are yet to decide on the location but we do have a range of ideas which would be effective for our video.

 

 

We will post a video link to this post after we deliver this to our teacher.

Best CD covers of all time.

There are several iconic CD covers that always stick in your head for one reason or another. I want to explore the different meanings and interpretations on some famous album covers to identify why they were such a significant importance in the art work of CD covers.

The first CD cover I will look at is Van Halen's album 1984. This was quite popular as it shows something you wouldn't expect, something that would shock an audience and spark up conversation. It's of a baby/toddler with angel wings smoking a cigarette. Obviously, this isn't what we expect a young child to be doing, we expect them to be immature and playing with toys etc. This obviously made the band and album popular as it touched on some boundaries for e.g. religion and parenting.



The next album cover I will look at it is ACDC's Back in Black album. This was the first album released after Bon Scott's death (the lead singer of the band). They decided to go simple by having the album black and the name of the band and album faintly outlined on the top and the middle of the cover. This implies darkness or stereotypically rock/heavy metal music is often seen with the colour black. The album nicely fits the genre of music that the band creates.




This album cover caused a lot of debating within the band as it took them from being Blondie to just Debbie Harry and her band. The title was even written in what looks like pink lipstick, she's the only one wearing something different to the rest of the band, almost isolating herself from the band trying to show her dominance. In the end the band parted from their manager as he was the one who suggested the idea for the album cover.





The last album cover I am going to look at is Rammstein's Mutter (mother). This could easily be linked because it is unborn foetus (inside the mother) and it could be implied that the title is from the babies voice. It was kind of a turning point for the band as before this they were not taken as a 'serious' band and they wanted people to understand the messages they were giving out and the importance of some of their songs. It's pretty difficult as a English person to understand their messages unless they've been translated for you because all their songs are sung in German. However, this has not stopped the popularity of the band in fact the amount of people who like and support the band in the UK is growing each year. The music on the album is known to be haunting so they wanted a picture to match their theme and as awful as that sounds because it's only a baby the fact it's an actual picture of an unborn child is quite haunting so I feel this album hit all the targets they set out to do.

Controversial music videos.

I read through the article that was published in 'Q Magazine' about Rihanna's music video 'Bitch Better Have my Money'. It created so much controversy within the audience who watched it as some people found it disgusting and told people about it and some people found it inspiring because of how strong females were represented within the video. However, this did get people talking some people portrayed it as bad and others as good, this got people watching the video either way because of how much they'd heard about it.

  

A controversial music video that caused a lot of discussion was Nirvana's - 'Heart -Shaped Box'. It shows an old man climbing the cross that Jesus was crucified on wearing a santa hat which is seen as inappropriate from a parents perspective, it shows a woman with her insides painted on her body trying to pick foetuses off a tree which is again very inappropriate because the woman is meant to symbol an angel, but instead of having a halo and a light look about her she's got black, dirty wings and looks quite scary depicted from her facial expression. There is also a small child in the video, wearing what looks like similar to the Klu Klux Klan's dress code. It's a white cloak with a pointed hood, although it isn't covering the child's face it could still be implying the same meaning as if it was and they were wearing the hood properly, either way how awful is it to expose a child to any scene in the video and to make them wear possibly such offensive clothing??? 

I honestly am not surprised this video caused huge discussions and isn't exactly the favourite of some people. Besides all that I quite like the song and think it's a good listen but it's a shame the video is portrayed in such a bad way. Contrastingly, Nirvana could have wanted this video to be symbolic in a different way, in a way where they make a point, saying things and showing things everyone else is afraid to do and touching just below the line before it gets too explicit to some discriminating footage. Maybe not and maybe the just wanted to make a very very strange music video? who knows!

Director of Duran Duran's - 'Rio'

The director of the music video is Russell Mulcahy an Australian film director. He directed a lot of music videos during the 80's including: Spandau Ballet, Buggles, Elton John & Queen.
This could be suggesting that because there wasn't a wide range of music video directors in the era of the 80's henceforth a lot of the videos that were released during that time were all very similar because of the lack of directors/one off directors that were available to direct the music videos.
This could also suggest why some singers have similar music videos to all their songs as they use the same director for all of them and they have roughly the same idea for each song because of their genre etc. Unless it was a video that was lengthy like Michael Jackson's thriller (similar to a short film).

Textual analysis of 'Rio' by Duran Duran (applying theories).

Duran Duran, formed in Birmingham 1978 and became very famous throughout the 80's releasing albums, singles and touring the world. The 80's was a very unique decade as people started to dress differently, act differently and people started to 'come out of their shell more' this is exactly what the video represents.

It starts with an extreme close up almost as a 'key hole effect' this focuses on things the band or stereotypically people in the 80's valued and admired hence why the director of the video felt the need to isolate them, in this case it's a young lady and a beach/holiday destination. Not only does this highlight how people in the 80's admired beauty but it also showed how travel was becoming a main part in their lives as holidays were not that popular until late 70's early 80's (abroad) and if you managed to go abroad you were lucky! After this introduction, it uses quick changing shots of girls in bikini's laying down on a wooden pier going out to the sea, with a cube shape constantly zooming in on the video. It portrays the band members as admirable and rather charming, they're all in different positions on a yacht yet again making the boys seem more desirable. However, I have noticed that the girls in the video are wearing very little clothing, which seems like the only way to show their beauty. Mulvey suggests that women are used in the narrative as an erotic object for the characters (the band) and as an erotic object for the spectators (audience). I feel this is shown clearly within the video as the opening is focused on a woman laughing, her lips and her eyes, two of the 'seduction tools' that women use.

At 48 seconds into the video it shows something unusual. It shows a close up of a lady with a knife strapped to her leg, in an obvious way this can be again referred to sexually. However, I see this as a contrast in dominance, yes these woman are being portrayed as 'easy' in some ways just roaming around the beach waiting to fall into the band's arms, but it also shows how females include weapons to scare men in some ways and show them who's boss and totally showing Mulvey that it's not always how it seems. This could be classed as intertextuality as 'Bond girls' are seen as tough and villainess but have a beautiful figure and delicateness about them the girl in the video holding the knife strapped to her thigh could be classed as acting out or trying to be a bond girl.

Later on in the video it flicks to Simon Le Bon at the front of the boat singing with his band members behind him sailing away in their yacht using a wide shot to get a full view of the beautiful scenery, the sun and trying to show off the bands fashion and good looks. Fiske says that genre's tell us what was popular at the time of the release, for e.g. in the 80's shoulder pads, blue eye-liner, curly afro's, mullets and make-up itself was a key factor in every young/teenagers life, girl or boy. This video definitely fits this theory because of the way they are dressed and act in the video representing the stereotypical 1980's 'pop category' look.

Hodge and Kress tried to say that the genre limits what the band can do in a video and in this case making Duran Duran look like a typical boy band, every girls heartthrob. All the members in this band are very different unlike other bands, the uniqueness of Nick Rhodes for example is a total contrast to how a normal boy band member would be. His quirky fashion and the vanity he shows within how he looks is totally different as you can tell he styles himself unlike other bands. He doesn't smile in the video, early on he has a close up of him with bright pink lipstick on and a very serious face which contrasts with the rest of the band members as no other wears lipstick and the others look very happy and cheerful, it makes it a unique 'look' for a stereotypical band. This proves that Hodge and Kress' theory is not always true and actually this 'typical' band of the 80's actually shows a different style in their videos and their fashion choice in the video is shown through the wide shots of the band on this luxury island, making them seem different and more desirable.

CD cover to 'Spooky' - Dusty Springfield.

Here is the CD cover (front and back) to our preliminary task music video. It's quite plain as it's set in the 60's not many artists had 'fancy' backdrops, it was just plain and simple which I feel this is. It shows how the consumers full attention should be entirely on the singer and no one/nothing else.

Preliminary task - Dusty Springfield - Spooky.

Here is our preliminary task of 'Spooky' by Dusty Springfield.

Places to film our preliminary task.

We watched several different 60's video's to influence our ideas on what to do for Dusty Springfield's 'Spooky'. In some of Dusty's other videos she uses plain backdrops like flowers or trees etc. For ours we chose a retro style and went with a plain black backdrop with a single spotlight on the singer. We also decided to edit it adding sepia on to give it that crackling effect/ and older look to the video without actually damaging the footage. This works well with the era.
We just used a frame and a black sheet with a spotlight to film this and to get the look right, we filmed in school for convenience but in our real video we won't film in school as there are many things that complicate it like signs, classrooms etc. Here is an example of how our video should look after we have been through the editing process.

Voyeurism within a music video.

Within a textual analysis, you note down things on camera, mise en scene and editing. Something else that I have been noticing in quite a few music videos is voyeurism. It was first notice in Dead or Alive's, 'You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)' as the lead singer stands in a frame/canvas which gives the impression that we are looking into someone's life and someone elses perspective of the
canvas.
.
Another video I noticed this in was Nik Kershaw's 'Wouldn't It Be Good'. The main character in the video has another story happening within the person. It's really bad editing because of the era (80's) but the effect is quite good as it gives the impression that other things are happening behind the persons life other than what is actually happening in the video.


I feel these are two great examples of voyeurism and the effect it has on an audience as a whole.

Discussion of gender within a music video.

Previously, I explained how Morrissey the lead singer of 'The Smiths' showed feminine signs even though he was male, e.g. swinging flowers, wearing chains etc.
However, it has come to my attention that I have missed one of the biggest music videos when discovering different genders in a video.
Queen's song 'I Want To Break Free' shows the complete gender swap as he waltzes round in heels a tight top, a skirt, fish net tights, a wig and a moustache.
All the other band members also took part in this complete gender swap almost as if a protest with Transgenders on how they 'want to break free' from their bodies and become the real them.
This, however is just my perspective onto the video, Freddie Mercury being a gay man himself fully supported all rights in that respect and this seems to be the only logical solution.
However, as this kind of behaviour was looked down on even in the 80's it may have been a hidden message below the ridiculous idea that a man would want to change his body to be seen as a woman.
But in today's modern day society I see it as a way for people to break free as shown in the video, which I personally feel is a very noble thing to do by Freddie and as that I believe this video is worth the watch.


Including this in our preliminary task would have been interesting and effective for the audience especially for the time of the song release as being gay, bisexual etc. was frowned upon in the 60's and is only just becoming acceptable in today's society.
However, Dusty Springfield came out herself as lesbian, including this in our preliminary would have been an interesting thing to include purely for the audience effectiveness.
Unfortunately, we did not include this in our preliminary because our storyboard was already complete at this stage of the process.

Our preliminary Storyboard.

We decided to do the song 'Spooky' by Dusty Springfield, here is our storyboard we have created for this task. 

Our Preliminary Ideas.

We wanted to do something that wasn't mainstream or overdone, using the examiners tips from a guide he has given to students (Pete Fraser's steps to making a music video). He states not to do something that everyone does and to not copy the original music video used.
For this reason we chose a 60's song and a song without a music video, this will most likely create a good impression to the examiner, we are hoping to do something similar to this for our real task, maybe not 60's but nothing that anyone else is doing and make sure it's original.
We had original ideas about using a Whitney Housten song for our real thing, which we may do but we haven't fully decided on a final idea yet as we have all of summer to decide this.
Here is the song we have chosen for our prelim task.
For this we will use a plain back drop and a spotlight creating isolation on the singer so all eyes will be on her, we are going to try and wear 60's clothes and make up to give it that 'groovy' but unique style and we will attempt to get out hair into the iconic beehive do but it may be quite difficult. We are going to change the effect of the video into black and white to again bring the 60's feel in the video.

Textual analysis of Dusty Springfield's 'Son of a Preacher Man' & Amy Winehouse's 'Back to Black'.

For our preliminary task we have chosen Dusty Springfield's 'Spooky'. Therefore looking at one of Dusty's other hit songs is beneficial for us based on the mise en scene, i.e. the costume,the backdrop & the makeup.

Dusty has the stereotypical beehive hair do, she wears long sweeping beads around her neck and a dress that's not fitted so it's straight down past her hips. Her make up is iconic and represents the 60's style, with winged eyeliner, big eyelashes and a bronzed face.

The backdrop is set in a jungle/somewhere with trees. It's not too distracting keeping the main focus on the singer and not on the backdrop.

For our video we need to try and get this look to make it seem like a 60's video. We have decided to go for a plain backdrop with a spotlight on the singer, almost making her isolated away from everything else.

In Amy Winehouse's 'Back to Black' she uses similar effects and the mise en scene is almost identical to the iconic music video's from the 60's.
She has a beehive hair do, black winged eyeliner, big eyelashes & a slinky dress that fits straight down. In addition to all this she camera effect is in black and white making it have a 60's feel to it. We intend to do the same with our music video to Dusty's 'Spooky'.
The old car shown in the wide shot of the video proves the era the video is set in as them types of cars are very rare nowadays but were extremely popular in the 50's/60's. The two close up's in both Amy's and Dusty's videos show almost identical images of the two female artists.

4 Recommended Music Videos.

The song 'Hold Fast'- San Halo is an alternative dance song with a video which is fast paced with images in time with the beat. The video set seems very plain with a white cyclorama making it look very boring and depressing. There is a gallery set out, this creates voyeurism and makes it high brow because it is related to art and intelligence.



The song 'Robbers' - The 1975 is an indie slow ballad, some may class it as a pop or mainstream song. The video is classed as low brow in contrast because of they trashy image it's portraying. The video includes sex, drugs, baggy shirts, jeans cigarettes and mildly explicit images of breasts. The video almost glamourises the use of drugs.






The song 'Don't look down' - Martin Garrix is a dance/pop song, this is definitely classed as a mainstream song, it uses bright colours which makes the video seem upbeat and links with the theme of summer. There is humour within the video which makes it an easy watch for every viewer.


The song 'Riptide' - Vance Joy is an acoustic/ pop alternative song. The words in the video match the images that are seen on the screen, every time the word is repeated the same image is repeated like a montage of images.

Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer'. (mini textual analysis)

This video was probably one of the most complicated but unappreciated videos of the 80's.
Peter Gabriel spent hours of taking photos and montaging them together, there wasn't one shot of the video that was actual video footage, it was all just photos merged together to create a moving picture. Many people still don't know about this work of art , yet it is still (of 2011) MTV's number 1 played video EVER. It was produced by Adam Whittaker who funnily enough created Wallace and Gromit, yet again a huge success for photo montaging moving images. 
Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours while filming the video one frame at a time.
This shows true dedication for a song to become globally well known and did he succeed? Of course he did. This amazingly inspirational music video would be really good to try and adapt or even attempt. However, the task we are being set is far too time limited to take on such a massive task, it is also very risky which isn't good if it goes wrong leaving no time for changes etc. 
Here is the great video that is 'Sledgehammer' by the wonderful 'Peter Gabriel'. 

'Happy' - Music Video at THS

Here is our 'Happy' video that we created last week as a beginners task to our year 13 A2 course.

Californiacation storyboard

We started sketching out a storyboard to the video californiacation to practice for when we storyboard our music video. 

It has to be in detail to ensure that each shot is clear and obvious. 

It can't be lacking because it wouldn't be easy to follow. 

Textual analysis of 'Happy'

In the music video for 'Happy' there are many different shots, close ups, wide shots, high angle, low angle and the list goes on.
They use quick shots of a various amount of people some including celebrities from the film 'despicable me' some just actors in place for the video.
Some of the sound links to the action that is on the screen at the time, e.g. when Pharrell starts to clap the sound of claps are played in the song. Throughout the video there are sections which are lip synced as well as bits that are not and instead just has people dancing around.
Most of the shots used in the video are either wide shots or a middle/close up shot of the people in the scene at the specific time. The shot changes almost every time the people in the shot change so it's not just filmed in the same position throughout the whole video, this would be boring.
In addition to this, they didn't just film in the same location every time, they used a variety of locations including: buses, a choir/church, a bowling alley, a bridge, some streets & an alley.
All colours in the video are bright and vibrant hence why the name 'Happy' it gives a happy and funky vibe to audience making them want to partake in the dancing throughout the video, so much so that it became a worldwide thing to do 'We are happy from...' using a range of locations. I will attach the real 'Happy' and 'We are Happy From Paris' version to show the extent to this constantly growing video.

Significant Moments in the History of Music Videos.

Textual analysis of The Smiths - This Charming Man

Here is my textual analysis of The Smiths - This Charming Man music video I discuss 3 different areas and refer back to Goodwin's conventions of a music video.

Intro - Year 13.

Hello,

this is my Year 13 blog I will be using for my A2 media course 2015/16. I will be uploading different blog posts all throughout the year of what our task is and how we actually completed them. The main task for this course is to make a music video and CD package and website.


Charlotte:-)