Feedback

Can you please post who the target audience is and the reearch into CD covers and digi packs - do a presentation or mood board if it is easier.

Your response is sound and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of headings with good layout and design.  Load the images securely I cannot see them.

You have a secure knowledge and understanding of who you want your artist to be signed to; perhaps you could link this further by stressing the advantages that your artist has signed to the particular record label. 

Digipack Cover

Since our song is quite queer and we would like to have a grungy, indie, black and white style.

 instead of Black and White title, we were thinking naming it Dummy as this would be the name of the artist.

 I like the idea of having a blur image yet defined image as this will portrat a mystery to it.

Our main target audience is any gender and age of 17-35 and who likes listening to alternative, indie music.

Research and evaluate the institutional context of PJ Harvey

Biography of PJ Harvey

• Polly Jean Harvey
• Born in England on October 9th 1969. 
• Was raised on a sheep farm in Yeovil, Somerset.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0367667/bio

In  1993, PJ Harvey was signed to Island Records. Island Records was founded by  Chris Blackwell and Graeme Goodall in Jamaica and was later relocated to UK in 1962.  Island Records is considered to be a bigger independent company. Just like the big 5 major companies (Universal/Sony), they too have big artists signed under different genres such as Rock, Punk, Alternative, RnB,Pop,etc to help promote their company, gain more publicity and moreover, income.

We have artists like Akon, Mika, FLorence and the machine, Macy Gray, Nicki Minaj,and many more.
So the Island Records used the advantage of the internet to create spider-web like to help cross-promote the artists. For instance, while I was looking at the Island Records for my personal research, they have a small box where they automatically play music videos from different genres and this is interesting as i was drawn into some of the songs.

Likewise, the Island company used synergy to cross -promote singer/songwriter PJ HArvey by having her songs on movie soundtracks.
This is the website where it will tell you about how she is involved through different sources of media.
  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0367667/
Official website : http://www.pjharvey.net/

Storyboarding

Storyboarding was very interesting. I am really enjoying it and that's because we were working together as a group. We all chipped in ideas and shot choices, so that made us easy to work with each other and feel positive about the video.
We listened to music while storyboarding as we need to ensure that the music video will tie in with the motion picture.













This is what we have so far...

The pitch

Before going further with our ideas for the music video, we had to present a powerpoint presentation for Luke who would helping us with equipments and supervise us on the day of our shooting day. As a group, we have divided the tasks among ourselves to do them for prep and then combined together as one presentation for Luke to see. He seemed to be happy with most our ideas and structure however, he wanted us to work on scene choices further because our shots are quite limited at the moment.

Pitch

Progress in developing ideas

Changes in the choice of track:


We changed the song to 'A Perfect Day, Elise' by the same artist, PJ Harvey. We chose this song instead because we felt that this song has a better transitions of song (different beats) than the previous song choice. Also it will be pretty difficult to find a suitable young girl to be in the video. 

• There's a load of double meanings in this...'Hitting on the girl' (as in way hay wink wink get in there boy) as opposed to 'HITTING on the girl' (should be slightly obvious - the guy hitting her).
• So there's a load of violent themes in here and sexuality issues.
• And I reckon she's got a thing against God...she seems to be attacking religion in reference to 'God is the sweat running down HIS back' - the guy is powerful because God is helping him but not her. -According to Sophia Kounopias.

We then analysed the the lyrics in order to help us with storyboarding. We came up with loads of ideas and themes. We then watched the original music video together as we wanted to know how they interpreted it and we also did not want to overlap ideas.

This is the original music video:

Shot styles and ideas we have in mind:


We love the idea of fish eye ball shots. It looked as if someone watching from a public point of view about domestic violence and take no action to it or it could be that it was from the main character's eye where she revealing her past. We wanted the ambiguity in our music video. We want audience to draw into our abstract music video and make up their own narration in their own way. We want them think. The reason behind it is because we are trying to sell the her song through the music video. We want the audience to draw into the music video and be on her side. 


We also like the idea of focus pull to reinforce the ambiguity to the audience. 
This is the video which Vlad showed us.

So the main themes we decided to include in the music video are domestic violence, water (cleansing the past/washing away), hands ( representing violence/torture) and cross (signifying religion). 

Research into real artists of a similar type

Sophia Ritter, Vladimir, Sophia Kounopias and me have finally came up with indie for our genre and we wanted a grungy feel to it. Like smokey effect, black and white texture with arty shots of hands.

Sophia Kounopias suggested that we should go for a dark grungy look and the song we should look go for is My Beautiful Leah by PJ Harvey.

I thought it was somesthing different from the pop music video and we as a group were happy to work with the song for the music video.

The  song is about a girl who was lost. And Sophie Ritter generate this idea of mother and daughter relationship and then we refer to Shining the horror film. Together we came up with :

We will definitely look further in details regarding the practicality of finding little girl or choosing a suitable location to shoot it. This is our basic idea which we have in mind and it might probably.

Another idea which I came up with was shots of hand choreography and I got this idea from the Dev- In the Dark. Since our music video is moving towards darker shade of lighting and grungy look, I thought we could use black background with red/black coloured hands to reinforce the metaphors of the music video. We have decided that we wil go for less narrative in the music video, rather more abstract more abrupt as this will make the audience to think more. So it is very ambiguious and different people with different ways interpreting it.

The artist we looked at was Pj Harvey. her style is very organic as her video is about her music and not her image, therefore she is not very advertised and that very few people know. She reminds me of Kater Bush.

PJ Harvey has a rock and roll / grungy/vintage style.

Feedback

A proficient blog which covers many initial concepts.  I feel there is some very understanding of the role of the music video and even better if you can support points with wider readings and a little more detail to your posts.  Well Done - good use of mood boards to support your creativity with the blog.

Synthetic and organic

We looked at what kind of image we would like to use for our music video. We looked into several videos consisting both synthetic and organic.

What is synthetic?
Synthetic is a a structred form of image to promote their songs/artist. It usually does not lasts very long and their target audience mainly for the 11-17 years old audience.
Let's take a look at this;

These three videos are a similar form of videos where their star images are a boy band group who are young and cute. Most young ladies would go crazy for them because of their good looks while young boys would follow their style of clothings.

Organic?

Their style of music videos and musics are quirky and their target audience are niche audience. For example, Radioheads and PJ Harvey whom I have not heard of them till this week.

Their videos are really interesting and I am really inspired to create a similar version of it.

I like the idea of having just one person in the music video as it is less messy in terms of directing the actor what to do.  I also thought that it will have a potential for us to experiment with differnt shots and effect with it.

Richard Dyer's Theory

A star is an image - constructed through advertising, magazines, and films.

For example,

She is represented as a sexy gorgeous singer.  This is extraordinary as we as a media wish to be like her.

Here she is represented as she gets married and pregnant and this is present. However she is absent as she is a celebrity with beauty and money. 

Music Industry, Music Video Concept

We have been working in groups of four to help us map out the idea for a band/artist to be promoted. In order to do that, we disussed what kind of genre we want for our music video. We talked about the significance of Star Image and Dyer's theory.

Let me recap with you about music industry.

There are 5 major music industry companies :



    

                                                              


Why are they major?

• 5 biggest conglomerate companies
• Own 76% of the music industry share ( the rest are 'Independents' -subsidiary companies)
• Aim to produce popular mainstream music video globally
• Often follow the concept of Richard Dyer's theory of creating 'synthetic acts' as opposed to 'organic' which the independents specialise in. The Independents additionally target their audience on a more national level and help to nurture the artist to hone their creative talents. Media theorist, Keith Negus, suggests that we have 'a web of major and minor record labels' and that music video is a 'promotional tool' and a form of synergy.

For example, synthetic artist are often constructed by the companies such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are disney childhood stars whom later constructed to a teen pop stars. They are often mainstream. Their star image are often about their sexuality.

As for 'organic' artist like PJ Harvey whose audience are niche and she is known because her  star image is her talents in instruments and her songwriting and not because her look. 

Britney Spears




















PJ Harvey

A2 Advanced Production

1)  Introduction to Advanced Portfolio

Brief

A website homepage for the  brand;

A promotional package for the release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package) ;

A magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

2)  My initial ideas/treatment

I was thinking of having a mixture of pop, upbeating music like ‘I can transform ya’ by Chris Brown,‘ and Lady Gaga-Bad Romance and use the style Radioheads- Lotus Flower. I think it will be very interesting as the music will be mainstream but the texture and the shots will be creative and quirky.  The reason why I chose songs like Chris Brown – I can transform ya or Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance is because I could easily add devised theatrical dance choreography into it and this will appeal to my main target audience whose age group is 14-24.

In what ways is the narrative important to the success of a music video? Refer to the narrative theory you have studied and examples of music video to show how stars sell their image through narrative.

Narrative helps to keep the audience interested in the story and its plot.  All narratives demonstrate structure, causality and agency.

Todorov, a Bulgarian academic, proposed 5 stages of narration in the narrative structure: Equilibrium, Disruption, Acknowledgement, Resolution and New Equilibrium.  The  new music video of ‘ Last Friday Night’ by Kate Perry would be a perfect example to illustrate Todorov’s narrative structure.

In the beginning, we have a wide panning shot of a newspaper boy giving out newspaper while cycling around the neighborhood on a nice day.  It is establishing or implying ‘normality’ of how everyday is. This is called equilibrium. Then we see a shot of the singer who just woke up in a state of shock when she finds out that her room was in a mess and this is the disruption as it introduces conflict and drama into a narrative.  Then we have a medium shot of a guy opening the door and telling her about how cool she was LAST NIGHT.  This is an acknowledgement as she found out that there was a party in her house last night. This then lead to resolution where she tries to figure out what really happened last night and it showed in the music video where the video was dissolved to indicate that it was her flashback. Lastly, we are cut back to the first shot of her in a messy bedroom and her parents are here. This is the new equilibrium as her parents did not have a problem with her about the party last night and she was able to sleep in peace again.  So the new equilibrium is that everything has returned to normal.

This video had applied Propp’s theory.  Propp uses morphology of the folk tale as he studied European and Russian folk tales and he identified 32 basic categories of action and they often have 8 broad character types or roles.  These character types or roles are villain, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher , hero,  and false hero.  In this video, the Katy Perry is the princess (the reward for the hero) although she is main character as she gets the most screen shots. This is to signify that the story was told from her point of view and this is also to promote as a star image as she is different from other videos where she was pretty and cute and  this is a contrast of her where she looked very geeky and has braces.  The hero is the nerd who served her drinks later at the end of the scene. He is the hero because he was fighting with the villain (the jock) who is good looking as he is only interested in Katy for her new transformation. We also have Rebecca Black as the helper who is like a fairy godmother as she transformed her from a unattractive geek into a preppy pretty girl.  We also have the father as her father.

Propp’s theory is useful as it helps understand the structure better.

Lastly, we have an enigma code when we see a shot of her waking up feeling shocked about her messy room. This is the enigma code as the video made us audience to draw attention to the storyline of the music video by making us to wonder about big questions like ‘ Why was her room in a mess?’ .  “What happened last night?”Etc. And the proairetic code would be the tiny details in the shot such as the mess in her room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A