Research: Music Industry- Examples of companies

These are just some things I had done in class, researching about what companies had which artists, and what conglomerates they were under. The last image is a task I had to do that was set by teachers.

Planning: Mood Boards

This is our mood board that we made on Powerpoint. Our core target audience is young females from around 13-21, because the outfits we think would suit the song are dresses (floral/stripy), and we want to play around with foot wear so heels, converse, boots. We want colourful hats and glasses as it gives it a real fun look and shows a girly side to accessories. 

As our core text are young females and would be reflected through the music and outfits as the dresses and heels are girly. So the artist can be aspirational towards them through clothes or the fact that they are a British artist trying to make it in the music industry gives younger girls wanting to make it some where can get inspiration.

Musical influences are Eliza Doolittle who's song we are doing a cover of and Ellie Goulding, as they both have a uniqueness about their voice and both very into their own style and what they are comfortable with. Eliza is more out there with her style but is still quite casual. Same with Ellie but she has simpler clothes but they both wear clothes that a lot of young people like to wear. Same with their genre of music as they're (indie/pop/folk) and they are both singer/song writers which isn't as common as a lot of people would believe.

Fashion/style influences are girly/quirky look. The style is in the mood board above but the hair styles could be plainish maybe plaits because that fits with the genre but having a hat means you don't really have to worry as much about the hair. The make up could have different colour lipstick.

Research: Reflection on blogging so far.

Research: Reflecting On My Progress So Far...

This my vlog talking about my progress through the A2 year so far. 

Research: Skills Audit

This is my skills audit as a video.

Research: Music Video Analysis

I really like Professor Green's music video to 'Read All About It' featuring Emeli Sande. The scenes which involve Professor Green are quite simple he is in a warehouse, which is very darkly lit with the crack of the door letting light into the room. There is a story to this song so it shows illustration, as we see who we assume to be as a little Professor Green's home life. There are a lot of meaning in his lyrics and the way he performs them during the video shows that they mean something to him. The song also builds up to a climax when we see mini Professor Green at his dad's house as the song builds we see the boy to crack and as it reaches climax he starts to destroy the other children's  room. Throughout the video it is very eye catching to the location watching his performance to trying to understand the hidden story as you can't hear them speaking, so you interpret what you think is happening. As Emeli Sande is featured you also see her singing and she is also alone which hints to how the mini Professor Green feels, as he walks into his dad's home which has more children and with all them he just feels alone.

Planning: Song Choice's

Our group is all females so when we had to think of music we knew we had to either go for a female group/band or a female artist we chose the female artist route. We came up with three potential artists; Eliza Doolittle 'Skinny Genes', Ellie Goulding 'Lights (Bassnectar Remix)' and last choice was Florence & The Machine 'Spectrum (Calvin Harris Remix). 

Florence & The Machine's song would be good to make because it is upbeat and it gave us a few ideas like having a lot of different coloured lights. One thing wrong was that we like this song and for me personally because I know the video well I would be tempted to keep things the same. As she changes outfit's and hair styles. But we did want to have dancers but that probably wouldn't be possible.

Ellie Goulding's song we really enjoyed but we prefer the remixed version but it has a heavy beat which we weren't sure how cope with it as you can't really dance. We did think that if we did this song we would definitely use lights (again) as that is the name of the song and that can give us some strong imagery to use, from different locations being different colours etc.

Eliza Doolittle's song is very quirky which suits us quite well as it will be easier to reinterpret the song to make it our own, as we can play around with a lot of ideas and locations. This also lets us have some fun as there seems to be a hidden meaning behind the song so we have a wider selection of things we could do, with outfits, locations and editing.

Research: Skills Audit

Research: Analysis of Music Video.

The Music Video i am going to analyse is Lady Gaga's video called Telephone:
This video has a narrative and leads on from Lady Gaga's previous song/video Paparazzi where the video ends with Lady Gaga's character goes to prison.
This music video contains all of Cara Venallis' observation and relates to Laura Mulvey theory on gender in the music industry. I chose this video because it is very dramatic, theatrical and fun and will be interesting to deconstruct.


Analysis of Music Video by vintageloverrrr on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations

RESEARCH: Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulveys theory on representation:
Representation consists of many parts, this may include thing such as gender, age, ethnicity and place. Laura Mulvey states "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly."The image of an aritist(s) in a music video will have been carefully planned out: the clothing, the style, the hair, to the situation/narrative they are put in.

In most music videos we see women literally being advertised with their bodies. Mulvey discusses the idea that women are 'dismembered' in all forms of media- that there is a focus, not on women as a whole but the focus is on their body parts. She argues that this is responsible for some womens' focus and obsession with specific parts of their bodies such as legs bums etc. Men on the other hand, she argues, are shown as a whole, they often don't dismember them especially if its a male artists' music video.

An example of dismembering is Dizzie Rascals' 'Holiday' music video. This video is mainly about showing off these girls' body parts. The camera solely concentrates on their bums and breasts. Such as at 2:10 we see the girls' lower half of the body, whilst she is walking. This videos target audience seems to be more for the male gender since they are showing these girls in bikinis and directing the camera at their body parts only.

RESEARCH: Analysis of a music video

I chose to analyse Katy Perry's 'Wide Awake' music video. It relates to what Andrew Goodwin had said, its a sort of 'disjuncture' video; the video doesn't exactly connect with the lyrics.  Lyrically its reminiscent of the reality of a break up and moving past it. However, the music video has a sort of fairy-tale plot to it. Viewers that do know of Katy Perry will maybe understand the link to the previous music videos she has produced. Such as the beginning, it is from a scene after a show of 'California Gurls'; Katy takes off her wig and then we see her as a dark person, shown in a dimly lit and mysterious surrounding. Throughout the music video, it has references to her previous videos, such as the strawberry: it refers to her first album "One of the Boys". And another scene where she pushes the wall and a firework comes out of her chest, into the sky, it refers to her "Firework" song and video. Other references consist of the pink ribbon in her hair who has eyes identical to Katy Perry (in her E.T video). I like the way the directors have made all these relations to previous videos, it gives it more meaning to her viewers, in a sort of suttle way.

There are also a variety of base tracks in her video. The different locations used and the use of CGI is very effective too, it blends in with the fairy-tale storyline, its not real, but it leaves an obvious impression (of it being a fairy-tale). The costumes used are thought cleverly too; in the darker scenes, we see her with a dark dress on and a black cloak. Others such as the extravagant nude coloured dress she wears when she is infront of the cameras that are taking pictures of her. In my opinion, this is a good example of a music video because it has a lot of meanings to it (even if its not the lyrcis) it shows a lot of references to the artists' previous music videos, it also has been thought greatly. Then again it is Katy Perry, and it must of been expensive to produce the video. The video has around 69 million views on YouTube, showing that it is pretty famous and liked all around the world.

Research: analysis of a music video (class work)

We looked at the music video called 'Stars in their eyes', by Just Jack in class. We mainly looked at the editing of the music video and camera works.

Research: Function of a music video.

The function of a music video is to promote the artist and song and sometimes another product. Like in Avril Lavigne's 'What The Hell' video she promotes herself through her perfume & her clothing line and she also has her name in bold right across the screen at the beginning. Also her conglomerate company is Sony and this is shown throughout the video as they single shots showing different Sony appliances e.g the TV, the phone and the laptop. I also think that this is a good music video because there are plenty of shots, and her mise-en-scene fits well with the music and the artist.

Laura Mulvey

Quote: “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determined male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly”.

Mulvey expresses her views on the separation between male and female’s, “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance” here is an example of this she addresses that there is pacifically sexual inequality between male and female’s she later addresses there roles being that males are “Active” and females are “Passive”. Women are often shown in a way to visually please the “male gaze” this usually consists of the woman being dresses in a provocative way or are exposed sexually, women are dismembered for the purpose of the male gaze when only certain assets of there body is the main view point for example if there legs, arms and head are out of the frame this is mainly for the purpose of the viewer. Men are rarely exposed like this but although men look at these videos thinking about the attractiveness of the woman women are also looking at the video in the same way but on the other hand judging themselves in the process by thinking about what the men think about the video and applying it to themselves.

                               Flo Roders video for 'whistle' really expresses Mulvey's annalysis.

Research: Lip Sync Tutorial

This is my trial at putting together different base tracks and make sure the lip syncing is correct. It isn't very long but I learnt how to make it a lot easier on myself instead of it being really complicated. Here are some things I learnt and know to do when we are planning/shooting/editing our own videos.

• Plenty of locations (it gives the audience more to look at and keeps the them interested.)
• Film the whole song at each location, at different angles.
• Plan so that you know exactly what you need?, where you are going?, what props yo might need?
• Also think about clothing. Do not just turn up in clothes for college think about the type of song you are doing and make an effort.
• While editing make sure that you put each base track on top of each other and syncing, then it makes it so much easier. Then all you have to do is cut to the beat.
• Also you need to make sure that the markers are in the exactly right place so that it syncs well and it flows so that no one can notice that they are not actually singing.
• Also when filming you need to make sure that you put in effort during the performance and even if you can't sing, sing loud so that it makes it easier to edit, when we have to add the markers.

This will be a big help to us during the process of making our own music videos. 

This is a screen shot during the process.

Carol Vernallis’s ideas

 Carol Vernallis’s ideas:

Vernallis realised after closely studying the editing and camera work of music video, that there are many different mise en scene used and stand out as separate scenes plus the editing usually has a rhythmic basis closely connected to the song.

She goes on to discus her main points being that the breaking up of the order is done to draw more attention to what is on the screen therefore making it more interesting overall. Also the edits may be really obvious to draw attention to themselves, such as wipes and special effects added plus jumps cuts are often used as well. A base track is frequently used to give the video a structure and a main point and lastly the camera may move in time with the music.

Beyonce's video "countdown" uses allot of the points Vernallis discuses, the first picture shows how the video has been edited to split up the screen with different images to make the shot look more interesting. The second image shows the video's base track and the third image is when the video has been edited in beat with the track by changing the colour of the image video clip shown.

Research: Lip-Synching.

This is an example of lip-synching editing that i did in class, the editing was hard at first as i was more comfortable editing as though the clips were for a television drama, but after i got help on how to edit music it became easier and easier to do and was very fun. By using the Razor Blade tool i was able to add spontaneity to the music video and made the video more entertaining.
I think that the final product came out very good but it looks very amateur, i have learnt from this video to film in alot of locations for mise en scene and to film as much as you can to fill space. Also each time your in a new location to record your whole song sothat the video is frequent.
  This is a screen shot of the process of editing, as you can see i had already began to use the razor tool to cut each scene.

Practice video of other students work

This is the practice video that I had to edit and put together. To do this we 'marked' where we wanted to cut the video so that it matched the lyrics of the song. By marking the videos, it made it easier for me to see where I could insert the other parts of the video. We had to put the videos on top of each other, which I didn't do at first because I was confused, I started cutting before hand, but then the teacher showed me that it would have been easier if I had just put them on top, and then cut the scenes I didn't want later on at the end.

Editing a music video (using markers)

In this lesson we had to edit a previous music video, given the clips and tracks to help us practice editing a music video. We learnt how to use markers to split up the clip accordingly to the track so that the lip syncing would be in sync with the music, and instead of splitting up each clip like when we edited the thriller opening by razoring the clips up accordingly to your plan they will sync together perfectly.By singing the whole or majority of the track when filming in each destination when its come to editing it will be much quicker and easier therefor saving us allot more time.
Also we learned that when it comes to filming, the person staring in the music video should actually sing the track as it would help when coming to edit as we know what she is saying.

Above is a quick example of what i was doing and the outcome, this has helped me know how to edit our music video in the future.

RESEARCH: Previous student work

I really liked the group that did Florence + the Machine's Howl song, made by Mustafa, Nick, Poppy, Charon.  Straight away when we start watching the video, it seems like the movement in the video is going a long with the beat, such as when the sharp sound is rung, the girls eye turns to face us. I like the way that they have used a lot of base tracks in their video, around 12 or so, they all link in terms of the setting. The editing was well done, the use of the strobe lights, flickering onto the main girl posing as the artist, was effective and it looked different. The use of the different camera angles was also well done:

The use of mise en scene has been thought thoroughly too, such as the fairy lights that have been wrapped around her and some just placed around the floor. They have also made use of make up, such as the eye tear drops, with blue eyeliner/paint, and the glitter too. I also really liked the way they had used the green screen, they didn't over do it, they kept it minimal, as well as going to the locations they wanted to. The lip-syncing was done well, the girl who played the artist also seemed to be enjoying it, with the sort of actions she was doing to maybe get the feel of the song. This made it more enjoyable to watch, it didn't seem to bore me, it kept me interested throughout the whole video, because of the fast paced edits too. 

Research: analysis of previous students works

This is what we did in class, we watched a few students' videos from the previous year, and analysed them. We concentrated on the narrrative/structure, media language and their representation. These were the key features we wrote about. Also, we had to guess how many marks they had achieved, which was tricky.

RESEARCH: Andrew Goodwin

 Andrew Goodwin’s theory:

Andrew Goodwin has identified a few key features in a music video, which are:
-A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals whether it amplifies/illustrates or contradicts the lyrics
-Genres tending to have their own musical style and iconography present in their music videos
-Numerous close ups of the main artist/vocalist
-The theme of voyeurism, plays a major part
-Intertextual references to media

Goodwin says that music videos often lack the visuals with its lyrics and artist. These relationships are built in the video whilst the close up shots of the artists gives them the publicity they need. Voyeurism is used to bring in more views, for it to be attractive to the males and thus making the video more popular. Then we have intertextuality which is often used maybe for a humorous effect.

E.g  Lily Allen's 'Smile' music video. It shows us the story of the lyrics, which is basically about taking revenge on the guy, and then smiling after it. We can see the links between the video and the lyrics, it illustrates it.

 

E.g:  The Script ft Will I Am "Hall of Fame". The music video hasn't got that much of a relation to the lyrics, but it adds meaning to it, because it shows how two people rise to the hall of fame after being bullied and then trying hard to succeed.

 

 

E.g: Kaiser Chiefs' 'Ruby' song. This song clearly shows that there is no connection to the lyrics, the lyrics is based on a girl, but in the music video you just see the band playing the song with miniture people and buildings.

RESEARCH: What makes a good music video?

RESEARCH: The Functions of a music video

A music video may mean different things depending on the artist. It may promote the artist in a certain way, and also promote some things in it such as products. It's another way to get the viewers' attention, whether that'd be through a narrative video; a performance video; or even a conceptual video. Music videos help establish, visualize or contain the artist's image, they may also show this through indirect or direct messages.
There are three people that I will be writing about;
-Andrew Goodwin
-Carol Vernalis
-Laura Mulvey

RESEARCH: Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis' theory:
Her theory is says that 'continuity' editing are broken down in order to draw attention to what is on the screen. Edits are also shown very obviously such as Justin Timberlake's 'Rock Your Body' music video, you see at the end where he is in the room and theres replicas of him, these are the obvious edits that have been done on purpose:

    

Most music videos frequently use jump cuts to keep viewers entertained, unlike a tv drama. An example of this would be Backstreet Boys' "As Long As You Love Me". When the boys are sitting down and then they get up, we can see that the colour of the trousers changes, and then we also see another band mate in the same position:

Base tracks are used frequently to give the video a structure, and the camera may move in time with the music. Carol Vernallis believes that her observations from a music video is what makes it different from film.

Technical skills I learnt during AS

During the course of AS I think I have learnt a mass amount of technical skills such as:

-Filming; learning how to use the camera properly; making sure that we are actually recording on a flat angle; making sure the camera is in focus; getting as many shots as possible; making use of the different camera shots etc.

-Editing; using Final Cut Pro to edit, learning how to cut parts of a video; learning how to add effects on the video; making use of the over laying since my previous video in AS had a lot of it.

Sound; using Sound Track Pro to add sound to our videos; learning how to add sound effects too; using our own pre-recorded sounds to add into our video but altering it on there first.

Summer Work 2012

The finished piece of the summer video is here: http://www.summerworkprojects12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/derya-lynda-zubier_26.html

In my opinion, I think we did a great job in imitating the original video. Whilst filming, we had to have a good amount of base tracks, this meant that we filmed the whole song in every scene we went to. Once we had all of our shots, we then went onto editing the piece. Editing was hard because we had to get the lip syncing correct which took most of our time. Also, the cuts we made had to match the original, this took a lot of time since we had to keep going back to it. I think that the lip syncing was well done; it goes along with the actual lyrics, but maybe next time we could try to make it more clear for people to understand since some bits looked like we didn't know the lyrics. We sped up some of the scenes for it to give a edgy effect to it, rather than just to have everything in normal speed. We decided that next time in our official music video, we could experiment with speed, maybe use slow motion too. A weakness of the video is that we figured out we needed more scenes to be shot, after we had finished and started editing. We thought that there wasn't enough scenes, and some had to be used again, but it turned out good. We made note that for the actual music video in A2 we would have to get as many shots done as possible, and film as much as we can since all the filming could come in handy to fill in some empty spaces.

Research: Functions of a Music Video.

Research: Previous Student Work

This video is from last years music videos http://vimeo.com/32961505#at=0 and I just liked it from the beginning so here is a goanimate movie showing what I thought about it.

Previous Student Work by LyaAAh on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

Here are some screen shots that I talk about in the video. The whole video is in black&White but all these shots show good lighting as some are quite subtle but some are a bit more harsh.

Research: Copies Of Copyright Clearence =]

This is a copy of my email that I sent to Atlantic Records for the use of Ed Sheeran's song 'Small Bump' I haven't yet received a reply.

10.09.2012

 Atlantic Records

 Dear Sir/Madam

 Request for Copyright Permission to use part or whole of 'small bump' by Ed Sheeran 

 I am a student of A Level Media Studies and for my Advanced Portfolio I will be working in a group to produce a promotional package for the release of a new album track.  I would like to request permission to use the above track for this project. 

 The finished project will not be made available publicly and will be used solely for coursework purposes.  The holder of the original copyright will be fully acknowledge in the finished project. 

 If you do not hold the rights for this song I should be grateful if you could forward this request to the appropriate person, or return it to me with the contact details in order that I might approach the copyright holder directly.

 Yours faithfully

 Lyah Scott-Flanagan

Research: The Music Industry 2012 =/

 A lot has changed through the years due to the speeding change of technology. We are able to download anything by a push of a button and this has caused a problem for the music industry. They have over priced tours and a lot more of them. They are in magazines, on adverts (Beyonce - L'Oreal & David Beckham - Sainsbury's), have their own lines if its either clothing or perfume/cologne. They merchandise especially on tour so people can buy the t-shirts and programmes.They have brand endorsements, they also have a niche (small/target) audience for limited edition pieces that are highly priced (like limited edition cd's with bonus tracks ect.).  Here are also pictures of my work showing the 3 big major record labels today in the music industry that was done in lesson.

Research: Carol Vernallis's Theory =O

This is my interpretation of Carol Vernallis's Theory...

This is some of the screen shots I took of the song 'The Big Bang' by Rock Mafia. These show that it uses broken edits especially from (2.59-3.15) of the song as it changes very quickly to four/five different scenes. This video also has a lot of edits as when the main male character is on the tube the glass part of the doors also show his face when he was drawing at the beginning of the video. They also had a three way screen as it was split into two and then one half split again showing different sections. I really like how it keeps up with the very fast beat of the song and lyrics, I was engaged all the way through. Also each time when it comes to the chorus they show the car crash which is like a big bang to this gives some structure to the video.

  

This is 'Earthquake' by Labrinth and these are some of the screen shots I took to show obvious edits. From all of these shots you can see that almost everything you are seeing is an obvious edit. The mini cooper turning into to speakers, the giant speakers everywhere, the sound waves across the screen and also the circles and squares when he is in front of a white background. This as well keeps me watching as it is so eye catching, these obvious edits also link to the artist itself as Labrinth is really into techno. The whole thing is very creative. It jump cuts to a lot of different angles in this video as there are crane shots to close ups which also adds to keeping the viewer interested.