Music Piracy

Music Piracy Article

Media Codes

Media Codes

The article itself shows how people use story charts and visual tools to help them to put stories together in a way that helps add visual context. The article also held references to Tim's blog at Projector Films is packed with useful resources and ideas. In the post called beachcombing, Tim discusses how gathering together fragments of ideas from which I might eventually make something is a process that doesn't happen instantly and needs to be worked through. Tim mentions throughout that what has fascinated him about New Media is that Technology is finally combining with Storytelling, and he also underlines why using story charts are so vitally important to success and accuracy when compiling a piece together. Tim Clague was also single handily responsible for creating 'The Scriptwriters Life' a useful template for writers before making their piece, visible below.

The article has allowed me to understand that Tim's ideas are aimed at helping people get the most out of their jobs, notably media creatives, but they could apply equally to media students such as myself when making my music video this year. For example, this article mentions the art of story boarding seen below, and how it can be an effective and creative visual scripting tool for any piece of media that I wish to make.

The article also stated that many years ago, director Mark Adcock stated that he used to put together a 'steal-o-matic' before making a music video, which consisted of ideas from films that he wanted to use. These days, with so much stuff on the web, it is much easier to get these ideas together and make your blog your 'steal-o-matic'. the key for Mark, as for Tim, was not to steal just from one place but to get ideas from everywhere. I personally feel that this method is far more efficient than just collecting ideas from one source, the web as previously mentioned is a fantastic resource and so using it to my advantage could make my music video 10x better and more accurate.

Music on-line

MTV were a massively dominant company for music distribution within the 1990's as they were really the only company distributing music videos worldwide at the time, with Radio also being an incredibly powerful source . However, in the modern day world technology is now availible for individuals to create incredible music videos and promotions, there are also so many more artists than in the 1990's as anyone with a device that can record a sound or video a performance can create their own music video. The video also stated that today's business has enabled smaller independent labels can now compete, consumer relies on carriers to tell them whats good for them. Online zone has also become a free for all, with artists trying to get their stuff online through every type of way possible, something that the internet lets them do. People have began to get away from norms and expand on their music videos going out of the box to attract attention. Also it is clear from the video that with the uprise of the internet there is a huge focus on sharing and consuming and the blogs and internet web tools enable everyone to do this highlighting the huge change in consumption since the 1990's.

Carol Vernallis

The video I chose to analyse using Carol Vernallis' worksheet was:

 Ain't It Fun - Paramore

Below I have personally analysed this music video against the criteria provided.

Audience Theorists

·       Jeremy Tunstall – primary, secondary, tertiary audience engagement

·       Blumler and Katz – uses and gratifications theory

·       Katz and Larzasfeld – two Step Flowtheoty

·       Adorno – passive consumption, hypodermic model (Frankfurt School)

·       David Gauntlett – producer as consumer (Prosumer)

·       Stuart Hall – audience positioning and dominant, negotiated, oppositional readings

·       Stanley Cohen – moral panics

·       Martin Barker – challenging moral panics

·       George Gerbner – cultivation theory

David Gauntlett

Blumler and Katz

Overall Guide To My Promo

Overall Guide To Our Music Video - Overexposed

Lip Sync Exercise

Using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 we were able to create a Lip Sync Video to highlight some of the skills we will be using throughout the Production of our actual music video. We were tasked with creating a Lip Sync video for any song, however we thought it would be very beneficial for our group to get to know the actual song which we will be using in our final music video so that is what we did. We originally planned to do only a little part from the compilation we will be using but after filming a series of short clips we combined them all and ended up lip syncing the majority of the song which again was beneficial for all of us as it meant we got to grips with the song we will be using. The actual final product is seen in the video down below.

The below screenshots perfectly underline the huge amount of detail and skill that this particular lip sync and group session took in order to put together. We felt we should showcase our skills and make sure that we could use the editing and camera software to our advantage, something that will prove extremely handy when we come to make our real A2 Music Video in a few months time.

Star Marketing

Star Marketing refers to the overall brand image of the individual and not just a song that they produce. Star Marketing engulfs all the elements of marketing a business item or piece of goods, your selling the image of the entire individual as an item, you market them, you sell their brand, you tell your audience why investing in your star is vital, and find a way to make them want what your selling. The image of the particular individual is sold through every single media imaginable, the way they present themselves in the public eye, the way they are raved and sold on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Blogs and much much more. Your star marketing can tell you audience many things, it tells them what they can expect from your products and services (your star), and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors (other artists and stars). Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.

One of the reasons so many pop performers are described as pop stars is that they are quickly promoted to this status by their management. This is easily done courtesy of a few judiciously placed stories, a famous boyfriend/girlfriend, attendance at premieres/parties and a feature in HEAT magazine. It can be easy to forget about the music in the light of the outfits or love affairs. There are some who appear to leapfrog the performer stage entirely, but they do have to go through it. However, a true pop star does have a lasting significance, and has "brand awareness" amongst a wider market over a period of time. Many of the so-called pop stars populating the top forty currently have not made a sufficient sociological or cultural impact to be classified as true stars if we return to Richard Dyers’ definition. They will be forgotten by all but their most avid fans within a few years.

Dyer proposes that: '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)'. Yet that construction process is neither automatic nor fully understood. Record companies think they know about it — but witness the number of failures on their books. TV programmes such as The X Factor show us the supposed construction process, how an ordinary person is groomed, styled and coached into fulfilling a set of record company and market expectations.This is not true stardom, which must happen through a combination of factors. None of them labelled 'X'.

Star Marketing Of Drake

Star Image/Power Analysis

Created with Padlet

Star Vehicle

Star Image

Drake's started from the bottom completely underlines star image by showing every single viewer of the music video where he came from and where he is now. The video constantly highlights Drake's wealth, fame and power as well as making sure the audience know that he literally went from nothing to something throughout, shown via fast cars, clothes, money, power and other things associated with vast wealth.

Star Construction

Exhibitionism

Voyeurism

Voyeurism

This idea comes from the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud and originally refers to the notion that erotic pleasure may be gained by looking at a sexual object (preferably when the object is unaware it is being watched).

It has been proposed principally by Laura Mulvey, 1975 that, because the filmmakers are predominantly male, the presence of women in film is often solely for the purpose of display rather than for narrative purposes. The purpose of this display, it is argued, is to facilitate oh voyeuristic response in spectators, which presumes a male gays regardless of the gender of the spectator, one that is, or may feel like, a powerful controlling guys at the female display, who is effectively objectified and passive.

The idea of voyeurism is also frequently evident in music video for a system within screens – characters shown watching performers or others on TVs, via WebCams, and images on a video camera CCTV. Indeed it has almost become an obsession and music videos.

Eric Prydz – Call On Me 

In this music video by Eric Prydz there is an apparent use of voyeurism with the use of women wearing basically nothing and using camera shots and angles which emphasise the performers bodies .Sexual objectification is clearly displayed in this music video as it involves one man dancing with a room full of half naked women, he has the satisfaction of watching them along with the audience. Voyeurism is also commonly seen in the rap genre as the stars want to show of the uber attractive women they can now attract thanks to their money and success in the industry, putting across that if one has money and fame they can have women with a click of their fingers.

Example Of Laura Mulvey's Theory At Work

After finding this particular video on YouTube in my free time I was fascinated by teenagers opinions on Nicki Minaj's new song Anaconda. This commentary video perfectly highlights the modern day opinions of the Male Gaze, where people have extremely mixed opinions regarding what is shown and how female pop and rap stars make their way in the business in comparison to male singers and rappers.

Representation Of Women

Quotes Provided By Rihanna From The Following Link

Rihanna Interview

Laura Mulvey (Theorist) on Representation

Laura Mulvey ‘Gaze theory’ – Pete Fraser

 

Representation - Theorists

Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory

 

Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze

 

Stuart Hall – dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings of representation (we covered at AS)

 

Richard Dyer – stereotypes legitimize inequality

 

Levi-Strauss – binary oppositions and subordinate groups (see dyer)

 

David Buckingham – representation and fragmented identity

 

David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one” (pluralism but within a  hegemonic framework)

 

Baudrillard – hyper realism

 

Tajfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination and stereotyping (also useful for youth and collective identity)

 

Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification

 

Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth

 

Judith Butler – queer theory (referenced a lot at A Level so good to look at)

 

I think this is a really interesting area of study personally. I've just looked at representations of ethnic minorities recently and I personally feel that they are Politically Incorrect, a fantastic talking heads and clips show reviewing all politically incorrect television in Britain, much of it from the 1970s. Stephen K Amos features prominently and says he'd never heard the word 'nig nog' until people started calling him it at school after Love Thy Neighbour started. He also used to get comments like "I saw your family on telly last night" after the Black and White Minstrel Show. Such shows have their defenders, Davidson included, but I myself am genuinely shocked at the casual racism with Curry and Chips perhaps being the nadir. The new Walliams and Lucas stuff was extremely surreal for myself as a student to view - I'm uncomfortable with it, personally but its an extremely fascinating and indulging project of study.

 

Angela McRobbie

 

British cultural theorist, feminist and commentator whose work combines the study of popular culture, contemporary media practices and feminism. She is a Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London. McRobbie's academic research spans almost four decades, influenced by the work of Stuart Hall and the British sociologists of the school of Birmingham in its inception, and developed from the theoretical traditions of Feminism and Marxism. McRobbie has authored many books and scholarly articles on young women and popular culture, gender and sexuality, the British fashion industry, social and cultural theory, the changing world of work and the new creative economy, feminism and the rise of neoliberalism.

 

Her current research focuses on the 'new culture industry', particularly on the labour practices in the world of freelance, casualised creative work and micro-enterprises of creative labour such as fashion design, art-working, multi-media, curating and arts administration. McRobbie has begun to follow up to The Aftermath of Feminism titled Feminism and The Perfect: The Pathologies of Contemporary Femininity, along with work on a book about the global fashion industry titled Faster Fashion: The Sociology of Start-Ups, Mass- Luxury Brands and Supply Chains. In 2015, she will begin work on a study of the conditions which underpinned the emergence of the Black and Asian British Artists with reference to the writing of Stuart Hall.

 

Applying Narrative Theory

This essay is in answer to Question 1 of Section B of my exam but also helps give me more of an idea of how theorists can be woven into my writing. It has been written by a student who made a short film rather than a music video.

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Narrative Codes and Their Theorists

Narrative and Performance

by danielbruce22

Narrative Terminology

I personally feel from these definitions that Manipulation Of Time is one of the most crucial jobs in video editing is manipulating the perceived flow of time. Although there are occasions when your video will be real-time, this is rare. In most cases the video duration will be much different to the real-world time span of the story you are telling.

I have since learnt that there are three possible ways to present time in a video or film sequence:

1. Time is expanded, i.e. slower than real-time. For example, you might have a fight sequence that is shown in slow motion and/or from several different angles. An action sequence that only took a few seconds in real time might take half a minute on video.
2. Real-time. The time in the video is exactly the same as the time it was recorded in. Examples: Live music video; sports event; a walk-through of a scene without interrupting the recording.
3. Time is compressed. This is by far the most common situation. The story takes place over a longer time period than can be used in the video so various tricks are used to compress time into an acceptable duration. Virtually all feature films use time compression — stories can be set over weeks, months or years but still fit within a few hours of film time.

Director as Aueteur

Gold Digger - Kanye West ft Jamie Foxx (Directed by Hype Williams)

Ne-Yo - So Sick (Directed by Hype Williams)

Screenshots from Hype Williams' directed Music Videos underlining his themes perfectly.

Aueteur Theory

The Creative Role Of The Director

I have analysed the work of some of my favourite Music Video Directors in the following post  embedding some of my favourite music videos that have been directed by themselves over the years.

David Fincher

I personally love the overall depiction of both Justin Timberlake and Jay Z in the Suit and Tie music video. David Fincher does really well to mix both modern with old in the music video to fantastic effect. I also like the fact that the entire music video is in black and white something that I myself was hoping to encapsulate in my own personal music video. As well as the camera work I feel that David Fincher uses miss-en-scene to a great extent in order to truly highlight the true class of what it feels like to live an uptown singers lifestyle always wearing a suit and tie, drinking whisky and smoking a cigar etc. The following video also underlines David's quote in this blog as he truly hasn't followed protocol of just depicting lyrics he's filmed a great degree of meaningful footage and managed to make it work with a catchy song in the Performance based video. I myself wish to create a Music Video with this sheer amount of meaningful visual imagery just as David Fincher has here, I truly feel it leaves the audience in a state of the past, wishing they were in that era and living the life that Jay Z and Justin Timberlake are making look exceedingly glamorous.

Jonathan Glazer

I really like this particular Music Video directed by Jonathan Glazer as I feel he creates a really moody tone something that I wish to create in my own A2 Music Video production. Glazer utilizes elements such as Camera, Editing, and Mise-En-Scene to create what appears to be an extremely moody and eerie environment, matching the title 'Street Spirit' with the constant slow motion editing making people appear to have some sort of inner spirit inside of them that is being let out. Furthermore, the more and more I watch this video I become further engulfed and intrigued as to what will feature throughout the video and analysing separate components for meaning. This particular video subscribes perfectly to Jonathan Glazer's theory of creating a visual statement and really hooking your audience, a particular feature that Radiohead’s Street Spirit highlights all the way through.