Skills Audit (Research)

In the AS Year we were looking a thriller's and now we are looking a music video's , even though they are different I have still taken some of the things I have learnt in the AS year and will use it for this year to help me. Compared to the research I done for my thriller film this time around I have learnt and understood they way of researching and incorporating them in my own way. Through researching I know what makes a video good and what does not this has helped so that when I do start on my filming I would know what works and what does not.

Lady Gaga Reinvention Of The Music Video (Research)

Lady GaGa

You might think why am I making a post on lady gaga it's not because I'm a Little monster or because I'm a fan. I think you can't talk about Music video's without talking about lady gaga. In the last 3 years lady gaga has gone to become one of the worlds biggest pop star and her video's have gone to become the most watched video's online. Even in the Hight of illegal downloading and piracy battles gaga has pulled through and has come on top as her last album have all gone platinum all over the world. Why is this you may ask well it is the power of the music video. Just when music videos started to die out and had no importance as less and less people bought cd's and had no real reason to watch a music video. Like a shooting star arrived lady gaga who's video premier have become event's as so many people Anticipate to see what wacky thing she will do next. Lady Gaga video are her biggest marking machine as her video are viewed my Millions across the world through youtube and other social networking sites. One video that will stand the test of time is The Bad Romance Video.

Bad Romance 

The video went to win a grammy and be one the most nominated video in the Mtv Video awards. The success of her video also sky rocketed her to stardom and the songs that accompany these videos also go onto selling million and topping chart's. When everyone started to see the success of lady gaga other record labels and artist took and and everyone in the music industry stepped up their game to create bigger better music video's. Lady gaga  music video's always consist on great mis en scenes like the amazing fluorescent bath house in the Bad Romance video and costumes. When you watch her music videos you want to see her you want to go and watch her perform this is another reason why her tour grossed an estimated $227.4Million making it one of the highest growing tours of all time. In a time when artist profit more on touring and concerts this is a great achievement for her record label.

Copyright clearance for new song

Having changed the song we want to use and making up our mind on it, myself and team mates wrote a copyright permission to the production company of the song. Below is the copy:

05/09/11

Universal Music

Dear Sir/Ma,

Request for Copyright Permission to use part or whole of: Guilt by Nero.

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 acknowledged 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,

I.K.

Kehinde Ibrahim

AA25900@student.candi.ac.uk

Research for Music Video: Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin is a theorist who feels that traditional narrative analyses don't necessarily apply to pop videos. He believes that it is not because pop videos are trying to be avant garde, they just approach narrative differently than novels or films. The structure between them is completely different. This is because:

- pop videos revolve around songs, and usually songs are not built around traditional structures, (normality-problem-resolution)

- the singer, or singers of the pop video dominate the scene because they are used as both a narrator and a character

- finally, the singer usually looks directly at the camera and has the most camera time than any other characters in the video, this is trying to get the audience involved with the performance.

He also claims that pop videos rely on repetition. This can be shown in repeated images in the pop videos, which mirror the way songs repeat choruses. Moreover, the video would be constantly playing on the radio or on the TV (music channel) or even in adverts so the song gets a sense of familiarity when listened to.

Some videos have very different ways as how they connect their lyrics to the pop video. The visualization of a song can go from a direct, literal meaning or it might have no meaning or contradict the lyrics completely. Therefore, we can say there are three types of relationships between songs and videos: illustration, amplification, and disjuncture. Below I have posted the meaning and an example of a music video that relates with the idea. Enjoy and try not to get too distracted by my amazing song choices :)

Illustration - this is where the pop video tells the story of the lyric. Dance is often used to express emotion and ideas in the video

Amplification - this is when the videos introduce new meanings and ideas that add layers of meaning to the song, but don't tell a complete story from finish to end.

Disjuncture - where there is little connection or no between the lyric and video, the video contradicts the lyric itself.

Until then!

Stephanie

Research for Music Video: Analysing a music video

In order to get a better understanding of how music videos work and get inspiration for our own music videos that we will produce, I have taken and analysed one of my recent favourite music video and song of mine, Pixie Lott - All About Tonight . This is a song all about having fun, dressing up, being with your friends and having a great night out not worrying about tomorrow. This is a mainstream pop song which is aimed at girls to really get our there with their best friends and let loose and have a good time. I also like at the same time the empowering message it gives girls, that you don't need a man to have fun, 'Cause I'm so over you, and it's all about tonight'. On the contrary, her lyrics contradict themselves as she then continues to sing, 'Ready to show all the boys what I got'. This along with her costume being a very revealing leotard connotes that her video is also for the males viewing pleasure along with the females. Regardless, the mise-en-scene and dance choreography of this video is fantastic and I really like it. I think it is a great example of a music video as there is dance, performance and great shots overall.

The mise-en scene of a club/city scene, really captures the essence of going on a night out and having a great time. The bright lights and extreme high angle shots of the city at night helps to capture that. Additionally, the layering of the scenery over Pixie Lott's face helps to mesh the two together, giving the audience the message that she is in the scenery and that she enjoys it. Her tight revealing costume and heavy make up also match the lyrics and the scene and her image as an artist, and as a person, a young 20 year old who likes to party and experiment with looks, as shown by her various costume changes into different party outfits.

The dance choreography is a great example of how music videos should structure the video - having the main dance within the chorus (the repetitive bit in the song). It is simple and sweet yet still effective to give a sense of movement and fun within the song. Furthermore, it does a great job of promoting Pixie Lott as an artist because she gets most of the camera time, she is mainly the focus of the video and it ends with a close up of her face smiling, so the audience gets a everlasting picture of her youthful face in their minds

Until then!

Stephanie

Research for Music Video: What is the function of a music video?

In class, we had a discussion about about what is the purpose of a music video. Most of us were still in the mindset that we had to visually tell a story in our music video, using real-time and aspects of editing that are usually seen in TV dramas and films, such as match cutting and shot-reverse-shot. However, we were quickly informed that music videos have a completely different structure to TV Dramas. There simply isn't enough time in a 3 to 5 minute video to put a whole story line inside it. Music videos get straight to the point and use more iconic things to get a meaning across. For example, in a movie, a story of someone getting married would involve them falling in love and planning wedding etc, whilst on the contrary, a music video would perhaps just show the couple meeting then they at the altar. This fast approach to showing meaning is because the function of a music video is to promote the artist. An example of this is Cee Lo Green - Forget You. Here I have posted a video of it.

Until then!

Stephanie

Research for Music Video: Copyright clearance

Over the summer holidays, I thought long and hard about the type of genre I wanted to do, as I didn't want my music video to be boring and generic. I decided on an indie/pop or R'n'b genre because I thought it would be the easiest to have a base track on and lip syncing would be fairly easy. I chose two female solo artists from Britain and emailed each of there respective record companies asking for permission to use their song in our music video. Here are two of my print screened requests.

Until then!

Stephanie

Costume ideas

Interms of giving the lead artist and identity, we watched Emelisande-Heaven amongst others to see how she dressed. Our artist will not dress like her in this video but watching it was all about getting information.

On the other hand, we are still stuck on what the dancers will wear. Some of us did not want the dancers to dress too urban as it could contradict with the song.

Back to square one

Sadly after making up our mind to use Nero-Innocence, we gave a feed back to one of our teachers who then watched the video and gave his comment. He said the song was O.K but did not have enough lyrics to enhance having more shots and lip syncing. Here is the song if you feel like watching it:

He advised us and tol make a decision of either going along with our plan or trying out another song. Since it was still at the early stage with plenty of room to change our mind, make another decision and also not taking a chance of choosing a song that will bring down our grades, we ended up looking for another song. We actually did not look far. 

We searched through other Nero's song like Promises (video below).

We made up our mind on Nero-Guilt because it was also a dubstep genre with lots of lyrics (able to have various shots of lipsyncing). With the approval of one of our teachers and his advise on Music video production, we have started have ideas and thoughts over our music video. Again Whoo hoo!!!!!!!!!

Winner- Nero

In my group, we have decided to let go of our choices of songs, while browsing through songs, we came across Nero-Innocence and we all agreed to use it. One of the main reason we have chosen this song as our choice is because of its genre. This Dubstep song fitted what most of us had in mind to feature in our music video. We wanted a song that allowed dance steps (since one of our group member is in dance class and has friends who can dance in the video and make it, perhaps, different form other people's video), has a drop, catches attention, rare to produced by other student and is capable of making us get the best grade. Whoo hoo, we have our song!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hence ideas about production will begin.

Reflecting back on AS year: Lip sync

I didn't get the chance to properly edit my film, but I do know that you need a base track for a music video in order for it so have a proper structure. I also know that it should be cut in time with the beat, and there shouldn't be no match cutting as it isn't a TV drama; music videos aren't meant to tell a story in real-time, they are meant to promote the artist. Hopefully my future blog posts should expand more on my music video knowledge.

Until then!

Stephanie

Decision, Decision, Decision.

After being grouped, we started making decisions on the song we were going to use. My group is of 4 people and annoyingly and confusingly, we all had songs that we wanted to use. The songs were:

Don't judge this book: V9 collective

RD: Do it like me

Noisettes; Wild young heart

Low key: My Soul

With such a confusing situation, where everybody wanted their songs to be used, we decided to just drop all our ideas and start afresh by sorting through music videos together and choosing the one we liked best together. Hence, it was the start of good team work, understanding and compromise on our part.

Reflecting back on AS year: Technical skills learnt in AS

AS was a good year for me, a chance for me to expand my skills and knowledge about media studies. We learnt a variety of things, from TV Drama and representations to the music industry. However, I am going to discuss the technical side of things that helped us with the making of our thriller films last year, such as Final Cut Pro, LiveType and Soundtrack Pro.


Final Cut Pro was the key to our thriller making days. It allowed us to make an opening from scratch. Once I grasped the basics of Final Cut Pro, such as match cutting, it became fairly easy. The most difficult part of using this program was editing, as sometimes it affected the audio and video, making it out of sync. On the other hand, once editing was mastered it really improved the quality of the clips. Editing allowed us to change the contrast and brightness of the video, and even the hue so we could make it a rosy hue for a romantic setting, or dark and blue for a cold, sombre feeling. Overall, I learnt how to import clips, export clips, and make two clips appear in one scene.

LiveType was somewhat harder to conquer, but overtime I learnt the basics of it. LiveType is a program designed to make animated texts to put onto whatever you want to, or on it's own if you want. I learnt how to have different backgrounds behind the text and how to animate the text in two different ways; professional and informal. The only thing that could have been improved was the variety of font it had, as it was very basic, but we worked our way around it and found out that dowloading fonts made it appear on LiveType, so that was a good skill learnt for this year.

Soundtrack Pro was probably one of my favorite things to learn. I loved combining all the different sounds, from people screaming to an acoustic track. I also learnt how to adjust the volume, and even make the final audio product fade out and fade back in. I also learnt how to import it into Final Cut Pro, which also learnt me the importance of knowing how to import and export different things into different programs.

Overall I think I learnt a lot and I cannot wait to put forward and incorporate my ideas and skills into my music video.

Until then!

Stephanie

Reflecting back on AS year: Digipak

 Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to produce a digipak over the summer holidays, but hopefully my digipak I will create this year will top anything I would have done!

Until then!

Stephanie

INTRODUCTION: Just me!

Hello! The wordle you see above you are just a few words to describe myself :) For our A2 year we are making our own music video and I am so excited! I will be researching ideas, increasing my knowledge and brushing up on my skills to make sure that our music video is the best it can be!

Until then!

Stephanie

State of music Industry In 2012 (Research)

When you think of music in 2012 you would say it is in it's hight as where ever you are or go there will always be a way for you to listen to music. Well think again The music industry is struggling and is facing problems, many can argue about why once such a lucrative industry is dying.

• Illegal Downloading - This is the biggest problem facing the music industry right now. People can now go online and get their favourite song for free it is great for listeners but this is a huge problem for music bosses who are loosing money. This could have been avoided as once there was only one site that people can go to a share files this site was called Napster. Napster had million of music consumers sharing files with one another this was a big chance for music bosses to work with napster and find a way for both to profit instead napster was shut down and all those millions of subscribers went separate way to other file sharing sites. 

• With less and less people buying music this has hit other businesses hard. I remember when I was younger I used to go to my local music shop and buy singles and albums. That shop is now closed and many more like them have gone. Even big music shops like Hmv are struggling, it was reported that 60 hmv shops where due to close as shares and sales slump. The success of itunes made people think that it can help save the struggling industry but with cheaper single's it destroys the notion of albums and there is not a huge profit to record labels

All is not lost as it has been found that older people prefer to buy physical cd's then download them. And also artist and bands with big fan bases can still shift cd's even in this digital age.

My Favourite Previous Student Video (Research)

h

The world is yours from 283goswell on Vimeo.

This is my favourite previous student video. I really liked this video because I felt like it really went with the song like when it came to choosing the mis en scene, they shot scenes of the inner city vibe urban areas and people. I also thought that the editing was done on point as they had cuts ever 5 seconds so we got to see different scenes and locations. I also liked the use of the fish eye lens as it conveyed the sense of intimacy and gave the viewer that up and close feel while watching.The lip syncing was in sync and he really interacted with the camera and sold himself as an artist. The audience for this video would be young urban males and the genre is hip hop. The was no clear narrative in the video but some of the shots went with some key lyrics.
Here are some pictures of my favourite scenes from the clip

Andrew Goodwin

A summary of Andrew Goodwin's theory.




In music videos Andrew Goodwin has identified key aspects that make up a music video.
These are the following:
A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals either illustrating, or contradicting the lyrics.
In addition the second key to a music video is the idea of music having a relationship with the visuals, this time the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the actual music itself.
Furthermore the idea of constant close ups of the artists or vocalists to promote the artist with as much publicity as they could require. 
Also Inter textual references to other media texts may also be present.
He also mentions that Voyeurism plays a huge impact in music videos especially in relation to woman.


Here are some examples of music videos that follows his main ideas.

Although this video is very simple it covers the key ideas Goodwin mentions for example the constant use of the close up on the artists, whilst also having the artist dancing/moving along with the beat. Also with some of the lyrics going along with the actions of the artist as the lyrics say ''hips hops in my heart'' logic(artist) puts his hands towards the other person pointing at his chest to repersent the heart.

Heres another example that shows some of the keys in Goodwin's theory. Once again many close ups are shown but this time a specific edit is done to show many characters faces put into one to make it a full face. In addition it s an example of Disjuncture as the lyrics really do not show what the video is showing, which means it contradicts the lyrics, this song is more of a dance song then a romantic one.

This is an the final video which shows an example of Illustration, this is when the video is telling us a story along with the lyrics. 

And this is Andrew Goodwin himself..... 

Research : Developments in research skills

AS-A2

From my AS practical work, I am now aware of the importance of detailed and thorough research.
Research widens one's knowledge and insight into a particular subject area. It provides adequately preparation before the work begins.
Even in my blogs, I have learnt how to find adequate information and how to make it interesting and entertaining for people to read.
I have also learnt how to sift and sort through information as quick as possible in order to get the best information that will enhance my chances of a better grade.

Research : State of the music industry

"Music is Thriving, but the business is dying. Who can make it pay again?"
This quote is the headline for 20 February, 2011 issue of the Guardian.

Despite all the hype about Digital revolution, the music industry, as represented by the major record labels, is in serious financial trouble. Sales were down 7% last year in the U.K and by nearly 10% in the United states, the world's largest music market.
Two of the four music majors, Sony and Warner Music, admitted their pre Christmas sales were down 10% and 14% respectively.

It has been a decade since piracy and the arrival of iTunes which destroyed the notion of an album on favor of single, downloadable tracks, but the music industry has found nothing to repair lost CD sales.
The music industry has roughly halved in size since the last days of the CD-fuelled peak, when NSync's No Strings Attached album could sell more than 10m copies in 2000, but the hope was that one day, digital sales would pick up the growth as CD sales or physical sales leveled off. However, in the US, from where all music business trends start, download sales growth has all but stalled, posting just 1% growth throughout 2010.
Both the small record shops and big ones are in trouble. The fall of Woolworths and Zavvi has been followed by problems for HMV has lost 60 stores.

Solutions??? & !!!

However, the industry has come up with diverse new strategies in dealing with this crisis.

• Radio head: The honesty approach is one of the methods in which people could donate whatever they thought the album was worth, but it was priced at £6 for an open format MP3 download or £9 for a higher "CD-quality" WAV format file.

• Deluxe Edition: This is when the physical product is made more attractive and interesting. For example, Katy perry's new album is a nude picture of the pneumatic singer lying in a cloud of candyfloss, the audience are also given a fairground treat as the pack also smells of candyfloss.

• Ellie Goulding: who likes to run and sing hooked up with Nike and through her facebook page invited a small number of selected fans to run with her in seven different citie son her U.K. tour. A label niche market.

• Spotify: Many hope that music subscriptions services such as Spotify in Europe and Pandora in the United States, can generate new, meaningful forms of revenue. A streaming service with free advertising service. With more than 500,000 paying customers to its £9.99 a month all-you-can-listen-to-service.

• Merchandising: For example, Billy Bragg has got six different types of T-shirt that he sells for about £20 a time when someone adds in postage.