Monday, 28 March 2011
Blog Evaluation Task 4
Directors Commentary Script
Open with an iconic wipe, fitting to the time period.
The dresses you can see where sourced were ordered of the internet from a small shop in Camden called Vivienne of Holloway, as you can see this costumes also represent the old-fashioned style and were essential for believability.
We used green screen screen for the police line ups as it would have been difficult to create are own believable background, creating authenticy.
In pre production we looked at other media such as footage from the film Chicago and other music videos by female stars such as- Christina Aguilera’s Candy man, and Lady GaGa’s Bad romance.
We cross uot three different several different setting in the video, giving a story line.
In the editing process we sorted our footage into the different locations e.g, club, prison and dance break. This allowed us to easily pick the best footage and made the process of editing a lot quicker and easier.
We used shots from the day in the digi pack and poster bring a sense of consistency between all three products. We also kept the same colour themes in all products, red and black.
We shot the video on a Sony HD camera which organised each take into its own file, making the editing process a lot easier especially when sorting the footage in to the separate bins. We shot a large amount of footage which gave us a lot of choice and room to be picky on the selected clips in the final video.
Throughout the editing of the dance sequence and other aspects of the video we used feet markers, allowing us to have snappier cuts on the beat as well as syncing the footage to the song.
After the couples dance section we wanted to end on footage of the band showing their unity as well as reinforcing their identity.
We brought Sabrina back from the front to show that they are all equal, to make up for Sabrina being at the end of the thrust we placed her further back when the girls are behind the prison bars, reinforcing their equal parts and USP’s as cheeky dangerous and flirtatious girls, appealing to both men and women.
Blog Evaluation Task 3
Pre-Information The JICNARS Scale
A - higher management/ administration/professional
B - middle management/ administration/professional
C1 - supervisory/ clerical/ junior management
C2 - skilled manual
D - semi and unskilled manual
E - subsistence income/ pensioners/ widows/casual labour/unemployment
Defining the Audience - It is useful for institutions and academics to be able to build up detailed accounts of how audiences are constructed.
- Rather than seeing audiences as masses or in simple numerical terms, it is common practice to find ways of segmenting the audience.
- This segmentation can be achieved both demographically and psychographically.
Demographic Segmentation - This is where an audience is segmented according to various significant social criteria eg gender, class, race and sexuality. One of the most common demographic approaches to audience involves the JICNARS scale.
Audience
Audience Engagement - This describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text (Stuart Hall) Audience Expectations - These are the advanced ideas an audience may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Producers often play with or deliberately shatter audience expectations (Roland Barthes)
Audience Identification - This is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle. (Katz and Blumler)
Audience Foreknowledge - This is the definate information (rather than the vague expectations) which an audience brings to a media product (Roland Barthes)
Audience Placement - This is the range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel that the media text is specially 'for them'.
Audience Research - Measuring an audience is very important to all media institutions. Research is done at all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and once produced audience will be continually monitored.
What have you learned from yor audience feedback?
Having collected a variety of feedback for our pop video and digi pack from members of the target audience, and from other audience demographics using a questionnaire we created on a website called Survey Monkey, we proceeded to answer this question. We got together a focus group and asked them each to answer the survey after viewing our video and ancillary texts. Once we put all the results of our feedback together it was interesting to compare and see which of the results tied in with Stuart Hall's concept of preffered, negotiated and oppositional readings. A number of the questions on the survey recieved similar or exactly the same answers from the members of the focus group. 70% of the focus group stated that they think the band genre is 'country and western' and 84% stated that they think the girls are sexy.
Click on this link to see the survey- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P6KWMGM
From the survey, the results showed that many of the participants, when shown the digi pack believed that the band were in the country and western genre due to the style of the dresses, and the way the girls are poised on the poster, i found this observation interesting.
Audience Theorists
Roland Barthes - Plaisir and Jouissace
Audience expectations - expected or unexpected
Katz and Blumler - Diversion
Surveilance
Personal Relationships
Identity
Stuart Hall - Preffered Reading
Negotiated Reading
Oppositional Reading
A - higher management/ administration/professional
B - middle management/ administration/professional
C1 - supervisory/ clerical/ junior management
C2 - skilled manual
D - semi and unskilled manual
E - subsistence income/ pensioners/ widows/casual labour/unemployment
Defining the Audience - It is useful for institutions and academics to be able to build up detailed accounts of how audiences are constructed.
- Rather than seeing audiences as masses or in simple numerical terms, it is common practice to find ways of segmenting the audience.
- This segmentation can be achieved both demographically and psychographically.
Demographic Segmentation - This is where an audience is segmented according to various significant social criteria eg gender, class, race and sexuality. One of the most common demographic approaches to audience involves the JICNARS scale.
Audience
Audience Engagement - This describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text (Stuart Hall) Audience Expectations - These are the advanced ideas an audience may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Producers often play with or deliberately shatter audience expectations (Roland Barthes)
Audience Identification - This is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle. (Katz and Blumler)
Audience Foreknowledge - This is the definate information (rather than the vague expectations) which an audience brings to a media product (Roland Barthes)
Audience Placement - This is the range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel that the media text is specially 'for them'.
Audience Research - Measuring an audience is very important to all media institutions. Research is done at all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and once produced audience will be continually monitored.
What have you learned from yor audience feedback?
Having collected a variety of feedback for our pop video and digi pack from members of the target audience, and from other audience demographics using a questionnaire we created on a website called Survey Monkey, we proceeded to answer this question. We got together a focus group and asked them each to answer the survey after viewing our video and ancillary texts. Once we put all the results of our feedback together it was interesting to compare and see which of the results tied in with Stuart Hall's concept of preffered, negotiated and oppositional readings. A number of the questions on the survey recieved similar or exactly the same answers from the members of the focus group. 70% of the focus group stated that they think the band genre is 'country and western' and 84% stated that they think the girls are sexy.
Click on this link to see the survey- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P6KWMGM
From the survey, the results showed that many of the participants, when shown the digi pack believed that the band were in the country and western genre due to the style of the dresses, and the way the girls are poised on the poster, i found this observation interesting.
Audience Theorists
Roland Barthes - Plaisir and Jouissace
Audience expectations - expected or unexpected
Katz and Blumler - Diversion
Surveilance
Personal Relationships
Identity
Stuart Hall - Preffered Reading
Negotiated Reading
Oppositional Reading
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Blog Evaluation Task 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Prepare a PowerPoint presentation with reference to Richard Dyers theory of star image; demonstrate how elements of the star image are sold through your creative choices in the video, digipak cover and poster. In particular you should look to show how the three products work together to sell the artist and/or where there may be some contradictions in the images created. Make sure that you illustrate with images from your work and, where helpful, existing products.
Hunky Dory’s USP’s:
-Cheekiness/flirtatiousness
-Organic/Raw Talent -Sexual Attractiveness/Magnetism
-Traditional
Richard Dyers theory suggests that a star image is constructed from a range of materials. This is evident in our ‘digipak’ for the ‘Hunky Dory’s’. Their main unique selling point is their cheeky flirtatiousness, which is then juxtaposed in our video with a sense of power. There are several ways we have made this clear in the video. We have made this clear by having a shot of the girls ‘winking’ juxtaposed with a shot of the victims murdered. We then cut back to a ‘cheeky’ shot of one of the girls in a mug shot. Hunky Dory’s are a young organic band but they cover some of the criteria of a synthetic girl band, as they dance as well as sing and flirt with the camera. This draws in an older female audience as they can relate to the young girls. In our video we made a creative decision to include a lot of red. This tied in well with the sexual appeal of the girls. We had the girls wearing red dresses and red lipstick; we also had a red velvet curtain as a back drop behind the stage. Another USP of Hunky Dory is the fact, they are traditional, they are part of the classical jazz genre, which makes them appeal to a different audience. The combination of all their USP’s make them appeal to a different audience from other artist of a similar genre. They are different because they are young, they have a certain cheeky/flirtatiousness about them, they can dance and they have sex appeal. The girls are being marketed as an organic band as apposed to a synthetic band. All of the girls are very young but attract an older audience, partly because their cheekiness and flirtatiousness reminds the older females of how they used to be when they were the same age as the girls, but also because their genre of music is more appealing an older audience.
Prepare a PowerPoint presentation with reference to Richard Dyers theory of star image; demonstrate how elements of the star image are sold through your creative choices in the video, digipak cover and poster. In particular you should look to show how the three products work together to sell the artist and/or where there may be some contradictions in the images created. Make sure that you illustrate with images from your work and, where helpful, existing products.
Hunky Dory’s USP’s:
-Cheekiness/flirtatiousness
-Organic/Raw Talent -Traditional
Richard Dyers theory suggests that a star image is constructed from a range of materials. This is evident in our ‘digipak’ for the ‘Hunky Dory’s’. Their main unique selling point is their cheeky flirtatiousness, which is then juxtaposed in our video with a sense of power. There are several ways we have made this clear in the video. We have made this clear by having a shot of the girls ‘winking’ juxtaposed with a shot of the victims murdered. We then cut back to a ‘cheeky’ shot of one of the girls in a mug shot. Hunky Dory’s are a young organic band but they cover some of the criteria of a synthetic girl band, as they dance as well as sing and flirt with the camera. This draws in an older female audience as they can relate to the young girls. In our video we made a creative decision to include a lot of red. This tied in well with the sexual appeal of the girls. We had the girls wearing red dresses and red lipstick; we also had a red velvet curtain as a back drop behind the stage. Another USP of Hunky Dory is the fact, they are traditional, they are part of the classical jazz genre, which makes them appeal to a different audience. The combination of all their USP’s make them appeal to a different audience from other artist of a similar genre. They are different because they are young, they have a certain cheeky/flirtatiousness about them, they can dance and they have sex appeal. The girls are being marketed as an organic band as apposed to a synthetic band. All of the girls are very young but attract an older audience, partly because their cheekiness and flirtatiousness reminds the older females of how they used to be when they were the same age as the girls, but also because their genre of music is more appealing an older audience.
Blog Evaluation Task 1
In what ways do YOUR media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Choose 6 (which are most relevant to your video) of the following including ‘direct address’ finding
Visually stylish – ‘artistic’ mise-en-scene
‘Rhythmic’ montage, fragmented style
Inter-cutting
Experimental use of camera/editing
Fast pace
Conspicuous lighting and cinematography – (high key lighting in prison)
Often break the rules of continuity editing
Direct address by performer
Significant shots of band playing instruments/singing
Significant shots of bands attractiveness
Significant shot of bands USP – star image
Back lighting
Significant shots of promos key concept- (girls so crazy in love they kill)
Our music video ‘crazy in love’ uses the convention of direct address by the three performers looking into the camera to pull the target audience’s attention in and get them interested, although we have developed this by having them not look at the camera for too long in the medium close up and instead looking down or away. The girls look at the camera in a flirty manner, each making a different gesture, creating their own individual personalities within the group, making the band seem polysemic. As soon as the girls’ look at the camera in this way, they look away; enticing the audience in, as they feel a connection with the star. Another way we have developed this convention is by cutting the shots to a fast pace, so the audience only get a second of the performers direct address before it has cut back to a wide shot again. The fact our video is cut to a face pace also helps keep the audiences interested for longer. During post-production we have inter-cut the murder scenes and the mug-shots of the girls with the prison dancing and the jazz club performance so it all ties in well with the narrative of the video. The juxtaposition of the murdered man and the cheeky smiling girl creates a polysemic view of the band, making them seem complex and interesting to the audience, making them want to know more.
We chose to use high key lighting for the prison, as we felt this gave the girls a celestial quality, subconsciously encouraging the audience to look up to them as stars, relating back to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image. This is in keeping with the forms and conventions of real media products of this time period. Having the audience looking up to them in this way also creates a voyeuristic view of the girls, linking back to the girl’s flirtatious looks. Another convention we used to enforce the 50’s setting was the wipe into the opening shot of the girls on the stage, which was an iconic feature in media products of this time period. The opening shot of the girls on the stage enforces their star status and should create a preferred reading. We have emphasised the bands unique selling point, by including shots of their cheekiness and flirtatiousness for example them winking at the camera, or blowing kisses. We have also included examples of their power, with shots of the dead men juxtaposed with the cheeky/flirtatious mug shots, which again enforces the polysemic view of the band.
Choose 6 (which are most relevant to your video) of the following including ‘direct address’ finding
Visually stylish – ‘artistic’ mise-en-scene
‘Rhythmic’ montage, fragmented style
Inter-cutting
Experimental use of camera/editing
Fast pace
Conspicuous lighting and cinematography – (high key lighting in prison)
Often break the rules of continuity editing
Direct address by performer
Significant shots of band playing instruments/singing
Significant shots of bands attractiveness
Significant shot of bands USP – star image
Back lighting
Significant shots of promos key concept- (girls so crazy in love they kill)
Our music video ‘crazy in love’ uses the convention of direct address by the three performers looking into the camera to pull the target audience’s attention in and get them interested, although we have developed this by having them not look at the camera for too long in the medium close up and instead looking down or away. The girls look at the camera in a flirty manner, each making a different gesture, creating their own individual personalities within the group, making the band seem polysemic. As soon as the girls’ look at the camera in this way, they look away; enticing the audience in, as they feel a connection with the star. Another way we have developed this convention is by cutting the shots to a fast pace, so the audience only get a second of the performers direct address before it has cut back to a wide shot again. The fact our video is cut to a face pace also helps keep the audiences interested for longer. During post-production we have inter-cut the murder scenes and the mug-shots of the girls with the prison dancing and the jazz club performance so it all ties in well with the narrative of the video. The juxtaposition of the murdered man and the cheeky smiling girl creates a polysemic view of the band, making them seem complex and interesting to the audience, making them want to know more.
We chose to use high key lighting for the prison, as we felt this gave the girls a celestial quality, subconsciously encouraging the audience to look up to them as stars, relating back to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image. This is in keeping with the forms and conventions of real media products of this time period. Having the audience looking up to them in this way also creates a voyeuristic view of the girls, linking back to the girl’s flirtatious looks. Another convention we used to enforce the 50’s setting was the wipe into the opening shot of the girls on the stage, which was an iconic feature in media products of this time period. The opening shot of the girls on the stage enforces their star status and should create a preferred reading. We have emphasised the bands unique selling point, by including shots of their cheekiness and flirtatiousness for example them winking at the camera, or blowing kisses. We have also included examples of their power, with shots of the dead men juxtaposed with the cheeky/flirtatious mug shots, which again enforces the polysemic view of the band.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Monday, 15 November 2010
Keith Negus
The Ideologies of the music industry
• “What I’m looking for is the working act. The real act. The act that can get up on stage and do it. That act will give you career. I signed Black Sabbath umpteen years ago; they are still making records. These are acts that are career acts… Two years ago I started a dance label… now that’s not a career-orientated label. I mean those records are one-off situations and every now and again maybe you’ll get an artist come out of it.”
• “When I first started it was more about going out and finding bands. That method is becoming more and more redundant. More and more these days I find it’s as much about: I sit here and think ‘there’s really a gap in the market for this kind of project…’. I don’t go out to gigs. That’s not how I find my stuff. It comes through various writers and producers. So if a writer comes in he may have some great songs and maybe is looking for a front person. Or maybe I have the front person who I want to launch into the market but I haven’t got the songs. So you put the two together.”
• Keith Negus – Producing pop
• Identifies two distinct ways of thinking about potential artists from within the music industry.
• These ideologies shape the way in which the artists’ images and careers are developed, and the way that they are marketed towards specific target audiences.
• The organic ideology of creativity and…
• The synthetic ideology of creativity.
• A ‘naturalistic’ approach to artists
• The seeds of success are within the artists, who have to be ‘nurtured’ by the record company.
• The image of the artist is ‘enhanced’ by the record company.
• The artist is given time to evolve and progress through their career.
• Emphasis is given to album sales and the construction of a successful back catalogue.
• Often aimed at older or more sophisticated consumers
• Profits generated by this kind of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record company.
• A combinatorial approach to artists and material.
• Executives attempt to construct successful acts out of the artists and the songs at their disposal.
• The image of the artist is often constructed by the record company.
• The artist will be given a short time to prove their success before other combinations will be tried out.
• Emphasis is given to single sales and to promoting first albums.
• Often aimed at younger, less sophisticated audiences.
• Profits generated by this kind of artist tend to be part of an immediate, short term strategy by the record company.
• In practice, the success of synthetic acts will fund the development and investment in organic acts.
• Most big record labels will look to balance their roster with a combination of successful synthetic and organic acts to ensure that there are funds available for the day-to-day running of the company as well as long term profit making potential.
• There are clear distinctions between the ways in which different types of artist are represented to ensure short term or long term success.
• Organic acts are often sold on their ‘authenticity’, both musically and socially.
• The image of the artist appears ‘unconstructed’ (although, of course, this is in itself a carefully constructed look)
• Synthetic acts are often sold on their ‘look’ or personalities
• The image of the artist is carefully and unashamedly constructed.
Richard Dyer
Stars and Stardom• In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider the roles of music star.
• The term ‘star’ refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience.
• Youthfulness
• Rebellion
• Sexual Magnetism
• An anti-authoritarian attitude
• Originality
• Creativity/talent
• Aggression/anger
• A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour.
• Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods
• Success against the odds
• Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, TV and music.
• Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common: A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg. Advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])
Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings.
• Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media – magazines, TV, radio, the internet – in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences.
• The star image is made up of a range of meanings, which are attractive to the target audience.
• Fundamenally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and ‘open’. Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes.
Paradox 1• The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer.
• The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to ‘complete’ or to ‘make sense of’ of the image.
• This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products.
• In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always ultimately unsatisfying.
• This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image.
• Finally, the star image can be used to position the consumer in relation to dominant social values (that is hegemony)
• Depending upon the artist, this may mean that the audience are positioned against the mainstream (though only to a limited degree, since they are still consumers within a capitalist system) or within the mainstream, or somewhere in between.
• “In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society. There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person’s “self” from his/her social “roles”, and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now wish to contest (eg. Gays in recent years). Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.”
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