A2 Coursework music video

Digipak

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Evaluation of music video Question 1

Evaluation of music video Question 2

Evaluation of music video Question 3

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Evaluation of music video Question 4

Media theory - Genre

What is genre?
Genre is a kind of type, for example in the film industry there are many different types of film genre a few of these are:

Sci-fi
- Futuristic
- Space
- Aliens
- Apocalyptic





Horror
- Murder
- Violence
- Gore
- Good against evil
- Religion
- Supernatural
- Insanity


Comedy
- Parody
- Slapstick
- Irony
- Sarcasm









Romance
 - Love
 - Struggle
 - Man and woman









Western

- Cowboys
- Guns
- Horses
- Desert
- Bandits




Thriller
- Chase scenes
- Murder
- Suspense
- Tension
- Cliffhangers
- Red herrings



These genres are known by the audiences and audiences find satisfaction when they can predict what will happen next. An example of this is in "Scream" which tells us the 'rules' of the genre at the start and for the rest of the film sticks to these rules and shows the audience what they want to see. This is also postmodern.

Narrative

Narrative is the way the story is organised. The elements of narrative are "Time", "Closure" and "Enigma". Time is the period in a film which the events take to unfold. Closure is what happens usually at the end of a film, the "happy ending" of the film. The Hollywood films always have closure. Enigma is the problem which needs to be solved.

Classical Hollywood narratives are usually always linear, and have very few if any sub plots (e.g. flashbacks) and always have closure which is a happy ending.
the theories of narrative are
1) Tzvetan Todorov who believes all films work with an Equilibrium which is the normal everyday life which then is changed by the Disruption which disrupts the equilibrium, which is then solved by the Resolution and makes the new equilibrium but this equilibrium is never the same as before. An example of this theory in work is in the film Scream's opening scene with Casey Becker played by Drew Barrymore 

The Cultivation Theory

The cultivation theory is essentially a more refined version of the hypodermic needle model which stats that repeated exposure to a text will desensitise the audience.
This theory shows the long term effect of media on an audience. Films such as "The Exorcist" and "The Hills Have Eyes", are examples of texts which over time would desensitise the audience. A person who has seen many horror films before watching "The Exorcist" would not be as effected as a person who has not watched many horror films before. This is a clear example of the cultivation theory.

Suture

The theory of suture is said to "stitch" the audience into the film by relating the characters or the views expressed. Then leaving the audience to fill in the temporal and spatial gaps between the scenes with their own imagination.

What is a Digipak

A digipak is a artistic style of packaging, usually a CD cover/case used for singles or special edition of CD albums. It can also be a DVD or Blu-ray cover/case.

They are in the style of a book and can be made of paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. The format of packaging

became more popular and is used more by manufactures.

A digipak benefits the artist by:
1) Using fonts which represent the style of the genre.
2) Embodying the style and message the artist wants to portray.
3) Using images and themes which mirror the creative approach of the artist.
It uses all these aspects together to form an informative, artistic and sellable brand image.



info:

http://www.slideshare.net/Valvainolivi/what-is-a-digipak-12871141

Editing process 20th january

Today we went out to film the a pieces of story which we needed to tie the video together and create a narrative. It consisted of filming in my house, this took less than an hour and we were able to return to class, upload and edit what we had filmed. We integrated it with our existing work to fill any of the gaps we had.

Significant Music Videos

Small Town Boy 
Bronski Beat (1984)

• This video is very narrative driven, there is no lip syncing which is uncommon for a music video. the video is about a gay man in the city who is being beaten up and forced out of society because he is openly gay. at that time some people where rather prejudiced against gay people and this video shows his isolation. 
• The video was shown on top of the pops which for the time was a huge success.

So Solid Crew

21 Seconds (2001)

• this video portrays escapism 
• the members of the band only had 21 seconds each in the video and that is what they based the lyrics around, trying to make themselves noticed in the short time they had.

Summary on chosen artist

Troy White is our chosen artist and his song master plan. Troy is a singer/songwriter from Melbourne, Australia. he has been involved with music most of his enjoyable life. He started out as a dedicated bass player and since branched out into guitar and has developed his voice along the way.


http://www.unsigned.com/troywhitemusic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12H4rRrLu7g

http://www.triplejunearthed.com/TroyWhiteMusic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW8wxzoKdME

Music Videos Evaluation

Owl City Fireflies:



MIKA happy ending:

Postmodernism

Postmodernism refers to the ideas after modernism, where people looked to the future and tried to improve where postmodernism is looking back because people believed that there was nothing more to improve or invent upon. it is portrayed in all forms of arts for example in music the band oasis copied the Beetles music and made theirs similar. Also in music videos the boy band Take That made for the time a modernist video to accompany the song "back for good" which was released in 1995. another boy band The Wanted released "walk like Rihanna" on the 23 june 2013 and in their music video they parodied many other boy bands including Take That, this is a form of postmodernism.

The Effects Model

What is the Effects Model?

The effects model is a theory which explores the connection between the peoples consumption of mass media and their subsequent behaviour. It is said that the media text influences the audience usually in a negative way. The audience is passive and powerless to prevent the text from influencing their behaviour or views, this is also referred to as the hypodermic syringe model. 

How will our music video influence our audience considering the effect model?

The effect our video may have on the audience is they could feel depressed, as the video's story is about a musician being kicked out of his home, and the lyrics are of the struggle of a persons life and the pain he goes through.

This could make the audience feel very sad and defeated feeling like there is no hope as the song has no resolution or "happy ending". They could feel that way because of the hypodermic model, which leaves the audience powerless to resist the message of the text (which is where the power lies).

The Bobo Doll Experiment
This experiment was conducted by Albert Baudura in 1961, its aim was to investigate if social behaviors (aggression) can be acquired by imitation. It was important because it sparked many more studies on the effect of violent media on children. Its also very controversial.
The study involved a group of 36 boy and 36 girl children aged 3 to 6 years old, From the Stanford University Nursery school. Under controlled conditions the boys and girls were asked to watch a video of a female model behaving aggressively towards the Bobo Doll toy. She attacked it by throwing it in the air, hitting it with a toy mallet, holding it down and beating it and kicked it around the room. All the children were pre-tested and graded on their aggressive rating. They were then individually taken to a room were a Bobo Doll was and 88% of the children imitated the violent behavior that they earlier viewed.

Sexism in music videos

Sexism in music videos has been around for some time, but it has recently reached a peak where many people have started to take note a what to change.
Some artists are using this as a way to build publicity for their songs, some examples are Miley Cyrus with "Wrecking Ball", and Robin Thicke "Blurred Lines".

Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" was her first number one single in the United States after the release of its controversial music video, and as of January 2014 "Wrecking Ball" sold three million copies in the United States. The reason this video caused such an outrage could be because of the contrast from the popular Disney star "Hannah Montana" who was played by the young Miley, to the singer she is today.
I think "Miley Cyrus" made this video because she wanted to get away from the typical Disney character she was expected to play while she was young. However I feel she has over done this as she has the responsibility to her younger audience to keep it suitable.

Robin Thicke's video "Blurred Lines" was a very successful song as it made number one on a varity of Billboard charts. the song went worldwide and toped charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealan, Ireland, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom, as well as reaching the top ten in other countries. The song sold over 5 million copies in 22 weeks of release in the US  and 6 million in 29 weeks. This is the fastest in digital history.
The music video was released on the 20th of March 2013 and two versions were made, the first includes models Emily Ratajkowski, Jessi M'Bengue, and Elle Evans being topless, the second has them covered. On the 30th of March 2013 the topless version of the video was removed from Youtube for violating the sites terms of service.
The song's lyrics and music video have been called controversial with some groups who claim that it promotes date rape, this led to the song being banned at universities in the United Kingdom.
It has later come out that Robin Thicke and his wife with whom he has been with for more than 20 years and have a child together are broken up, some people have said that the song "Blurred Lines" had a contribution to their break up but this has not been confirmed.

Proposal to increase sales, broaden audiences and expand audience

I created a survey which i gave out to a range of people in order to find out how many of them watch music videos and what do they look for in a video. The survey can be found below:

I am hoping that this survey will answer the question of whether music videos appeal to younger generations more than older people. I will then suggest what my reccommendations would be to boost sales and broaden the audience of popular music videos. The results are back and are as follows:
In summary:
-the generation between 11 and 30 watch the most music videos
-Most of the answers read that people watched music videos regularly
-Most wanted to see different morals and messages in the music videos instead of love and relationships
In order to improve sales and audiences, my suggestions are:

Focus Group

These are some photos of our focus group watching our music video. They then told us what they liked and disliked about the video, this included the shot types which they felt we fully utilised and effectively demonstrated, they all thought the shot of me and sean in the drama studio was the best. They also made it clear they could understand the naritive of the artist being kicked out and having to live on the streets leaving everything but his music behind. the fact they understood this shows that the story is easily understood and is clear to some one watching for the first time.

The problem with our focus group is that the three people involved are all female and between the ages of 17-18. this means that our results are not varied and we cannot know what a younger girl or what a boy of any age thinks of the video.
Athough our target audience is mainly teenage girls which means that the focus group could represent the audience we are targeting.

Animatic

Storyboard

survey results put into wordle

What changes if any would you suggest?

·      More stop motion

·      Slightly faster

·      No changes needed. It was really good

·      None

·      None

What was your favourite aspect or shot in the music video?

·      The stop motion

·      Lip-synching

·      The guitar shots

·      The lyrics on the screen. That was pretty awesome.

·      The one with the guitar player in the background

·      Drama studio with singer and guitarist in shot

How old are you?

·      Under 10 = 0%  (0)

·      11-18 = 66.67%   (4)

·      19-25 = 16.67%  (1)

·      26+ = 16.67%  (1)

Did you understand the story and the video of the song?

·      Yes = 83.33% (5)

·      No = 16.67%  (1)

Do you think the video fits with the feel of the music?

·      Yes = 100% (6)

·      No = 0% (0)

Did you like the music video?

·      Yes = !00% (6)

·      No = 0% (0)

Album Cover Practice

asking for permission/receiving permission to use the song