Conventions of narrative music videos

The music video contains a series of events that make sense to the audience and also appears to be unified in time and space. Therefore, to repeat viewings and to make it interesting for the audience, the marketing of the band/artist must be effective and the narrative code must be loose and creative rather than realistic and detailed.

Analysis of Chase and Status- Let you go

Equilibrium- The man is a TV show host where him and the audience laugh at the people on the show who are drug addicts and always looking for fights. He also has a family.


Disruption- happens when he leaves the programme and his life goes downhill.


Acknowledgement- Starts taking drugs and alcohol in the clubs by himself. Has sex with a random girl while on drugs.


Attempt to restore- wakes up in the morning with a hangover and allows the make up artists to cover his bad look and goes back on TV to look at people being miserable.


New equilibrium- He now has a new life full of drugs and sex, which is similar to the people he and his audience laughs at. He repeats the cycle of being fine on TV and a mess outside of it.

Narrative Theories in music videos

Todorov- he proposes that all texts have a narrative structure. He states there are 5 stages to each narrative structure and he analyses old Russian folk tales in order to demonstrate his theory.
He argues we have the following:

• Equilibrium-normality at the beginning
• Disruption- an event occurs to disrupt the normality.
• Acknowledgement- when the main protagonist understands that he/she needs to act in order to restore normality/equilibrium.
• Attempt to restore- is the act of fighting/rectifying the problem in order to solve the issue.
• New equilibrium- Is the restoration of normality, however due to the act/journey taken by the protagonist this is a new normal as the old version of normality no longer exists.

The narrative structures don't have to come in a specific order and can often start at the point of disruption or acknowledgement and then work in a non-linear fashion towards the new equilibrium.


Vladimir Propp- Russian folklorist in the early 20th century. He said that there are only ever 7 different character types that exist in literature:

• Hero
• Donor
• Helper
• Villain
• Princess
• False Hero
• Dispatcher

He added that it's not a necessity for all 7 character types to appear in the plot, but after analysing a range of different folk tales and literature observed that these 7 characters types were the mainstays of all fiction and therefore media texts.




Hero- Enrique Inglesias:
Starts at the point of disruption because someone's been robbed and the princess and the hero have run off together. Acknowledgement occurs when Enrique realises he needs to fight the villain to win the princess. He cannot escape the villain and restore equilibrium without fighting him first, to win her and the money. They attempt to restore when they plan to meet up in the desert and fight the villain. The winner takes the money however, they aren't aware that the princess called for the police but they don't make it in time and the hero dies, therefore subverting stereotypes. New equilibrium is where the villain is arrested, the hero dies and the princess rides off in the sunset with a bag of money.


Band of Horses- Dilly:


Equilibrium- riding on the bikes, with people having casual drinks at the pub.
Disruption- The bikers go into the pub at the wrong time and realise they are not liked.
Acknowledgement- The bikers start shooting the people in the pub and the person in the pub calls the police for them to come and the Bikers get out of the pub.
Attempt to restore- Police and Bikers are in an empty road fighting.
New equilibrium- The bikers ride off in the sunset after they kill the police and they are now murderers and won't ever go back to that place.

Analysing organic and synthetic CD covers

Synthetic CD cover

 

• The bright colours connote something synergic and attract the viewer. Also to appeal to a main stream audience of young people as the bright colours tell us that her music is fun and is pop. 
• The CD cover is has well bright lighting creating a positive mood
• Her face is in the centre of the CD, telling us that she is selling herself and not the album.
• The close up of her face is to attract herself to a male audience, which is selling her looks. 
•  Her red hair and red lips make the album cover look bright and appealing.

Organic CD cover 

• Dark colours and the dark lighting connote that his intention isn't to sell himself, it is to sell him own music 
• The guitar reflects an organic nature to him as an artist, also making him seem more real. 
• He is not directly looking at the camera showing he's not selling himself but the focus is on his music and how he plays the guitar, rather than on his looks. 
• His name is in bold and more of a mature font to subtly introduce himself into the music industry 
• He is a song writer who is trying to appeal to his target audience who are mature people. We see this through his clothing as he is wearing a hat and more mature clothes compared to what a synthetic artist would wear. 
• The medium shot of him and the shallow focus draws our attention to the guitar which has been lit, giving an old fashioned appeal to his target audience. This sells his music.

Star Image

Stars and Stardom:

• In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider the roles of music stars 
• The term 'star ' refers to the semi- mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience. 

Richard Dyer 

• Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, tv and music 
• Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common:
• 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 (e.g. advertising, magazines etc as well as films (music))
• Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings 

• Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media- magazines, tv, radio, the internet, in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audience 
• The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audiences. 
• Fundamentally, the star image is incoherent that is complete and 'open'. Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes. 
• Simultaneously the star is present in our lives and absent 

common features of music stardom: 

• Youthfulness 
• Rebellion 
• Sexual magnetism 
• An anti- authoritarian attitude 
• Originally 
• Creativity/ talent 
• Aggression/ anger 
• A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour 
• Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material drugs 
• Success against the odds. 

The Star Image:

• The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to 'complete' or to 'make sense' of the image 
• This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image. 

As you can see, these photos are taken of Beyoncé in 1997,2004,2009 and 2017. These photos of Beyonce over the last 22 years show 3 clear stages in her image. She began in the band Destiny's child where she was more covered up and it was more about the music and exposing their sound to the world, this is clear to see by her clothing in the first image as she is wearing bright colours but is covered up and is also smiling. When she went solo after Destiny's child, she began to sexualise herself and felt she had to expose her body in order to start gaining a fan base as a solo star. In this 6 year stage, she gained a huge following and sold millions of albums and millions of dollars and became a worldwide star. Now in 2017, she is a well known star and does not need to build up her star image anymore so she is more reserved with her clothing and is a mother so does not need to sexualise herself as much as she knows she still has a massive fan base and her records will still sell. The more reserved look in present today also shows signs of maturity and a potentially a start to becoming a new artist with a new image and making a different style of music.  

The promotional Brief for year 13

• A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video
• A website
• A cover and 4 sides including the spine for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)

The positives of making a music video will be travelling round different sites to record part of the video. Also I don't have to have a narrative as it can be performance based. However, the negatives of making a music video will be making sure the lip syncing
is spot on and all the camera angles are correct. It will also take a lot of time editing the video. You also have to have good actors.


Analysis of a student music video-Morning Blues:

• Star image- represents herself as girl next door type in urban setting
• Organic- use of buildings, clothing and use of thrift stores help sell her as slightly alternative and organic
• Narrative- through the lyrics we can see the song is about relationship breakdowns and sells her as vulnerable and through the visuals we see her shopping to get over the break up. Thus reaffirming her as a girl next door and not sold through her sexuality.
• Locations and editing help sell the artist through the fast pace cuts, lighting, whip pans and hand held camera movements. Through the locations, quick cuts of people, her image is reinforced as slightly alternative and independent.

 

How to make an album cover using photoshop

I am recreating the cover of powderfinger by using photoshop.


 I created this image by cropping the outside of Angelina Jolie's face. I would then use the posterize tool to crop everything out. I would then select black and white background. I would then drag and drop tears onto her face, I would use a magic wand tool then rasterize the layer so you are only left with the tears and no white background. I would then use the free transformer tool to change its positioning and rotate it. I would also use the eraser tool to make it perfectly positioned outside of the eye. I would then change the colour of the tear to a light blue as in the image. To get the circles, I would use elipse tool and hold shift down to get the perfect circle. I would adjust the opacity to make it transparent.