"When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet."
Started with us learning about star image; and the synthertic or organic that music groups or artists fall into. A synthetic image fitting into a sterotype, or ticking a box appealling for a certain group, usually appealing to younger audiences, with 'one hit wonders' and have short lives in the industry.
Childlike yet streetwise font/graffitti.
The greyscale makes her appeal too organic with the gentle image of the field.
Easy going..
Cheeky...
We really liked this image of playfullness and her mysterious image being 'cracked' so she seems less stern.
These caged boulders, gave a really good effect of her image.
We discussed that the greyscale doesn't work, however the darkness and high contrast does work. It portrays her mysterious side well i think.
A2 COURSE As a group we were to develop a concept, image and brand for a new solo artist, group or band and develop and produce their first pop video, their first DVD cover and their first magazine advertisement. In order to establish the groups image and brand, for a particular target audience.
After forming a group of five we were told we could have no more than four in a group. So Greg and I split off into a group of two and began working on choosing the track and artist, quickly as we were behind.
we had the idea of a Good the Bad and the Ugly spin on the video. For example, the band members would be riding down the streets on a apparent horse, then the camera would track away to reveal they are ‘riding’ chairs and the studio to come into shot, with girls creating horse sounds with coconuts. Yet, this again would become too repetitive.
The suggestion of childish/cartoon like drawings would set the narrative, with the narrative being interrupted by the performance aspect of the singer in a place, like a coffee shop, or a personal space to the singer drawing and singing the lyrics. Being an acoustic, faraway style song, the idea of doodles around the pictures and even taking over the performance would come into it. 
* Research 
so for example “Grey’s Anatomy” or such.
ow an established soloist his main competitors in this broad genre, would be the likes of Coldplay, Jason Mraz, and Joshua Radin and Azure ray. All these artists and bands have an image of passion and devotion and originality about their music, they do not necessarily sing soulfully but they show it through their lyrics and treatment to their fans. They are concerned as well as they could be. The fact that he sings about all universal fears and feelings of love, in a soulful way that could act as a soundtrack to a relationship or place memories or set a scene and can hit a nerve or relate to anyone it brings a problem where to sell him to; his stories and poetical lyrics implicate him as a very well educated talented man however, he can be understood and be inspirational to the lower jictar scale. So his star image would be sold as original down to earth creative and true.
14th Floor Records looks after the releases in the UK, Europe and the Rest of the World (through Warner Music). Other acts that are signed with the label are the likes of Joshua Radin, Biffy cliffro, Milo, Sneaky Sound system and The Wombats. 
Therefore we had in an ex student, who has gone into animation, to advice and inform us on what we had to do. The original idea was to add animated extras or stick men to walk by, to create a sense that our artist is in a world of his own. However, this is now not the case. For every one second we would have to produce seven images for one movement, this would be ultimately time consuming, and we would have to start drawing as soon as possible, and not being 100% clear on what the exact sequence was this was a very unlikely situation. However, the advice he gave us, such as, creating a simple frame for the pictures and manipulating film with after affects was as effective and less time consuming.
On completion of the practical task of production, the results are a music video, a promotional magazine cover and a digi-pack compromising of four images that represent a CD cover of our artists debut album.
When watching any media product, viewers expect certain conventions, ingredients and elements and it is these expectations that are used to catch the attention of the audience when they are distributed. Pop videos like any other product in the media industry have certain conventions that immediately signify to the viewer that they are watching a music promotional video. They will contain alone, a performance element featuring the band or singer, imagery and a narrative structure accompanying the song, or used together. Within these elements, another convention is the flexibility to disregard realism, for example the Chemical Brothers video ‘The Salmon dance’ where the fish dance and sing. Other conventions include, quick cutting to the beat, special effect, a high ratio of camera shots. As well as using and developing these various forms and convention, we also challenged the conventions of real products.
After listening to the song countless amount of times and researching the story of ‘O’ , it was apparent there was a strong, personal, narrative to the song. We wanted to create our artist as humble, organic creative image that appealed to the every day person, we gave him a the cafe...
This friendly romantic yet ironically seedy location emphasises the strength of ones love, to his soul mate that our singer is trying to portray. The dusty warn look represents the idea of ‘through richer through poorer’ and that our artist is a loyal normal guy, who will look after his love through the bad times. His conventional clothing compliments his environment and generation and in doing so allows a certain continuity that is key to many films, though not necessarily music videos. Plus, though it would be uncommon for a narrative film to be set in a solitary location this is not an actual subversion of a music video convention. Though it is hard to say what mimics a music video convention in terms of setting, the fact that a Café is not a particularly revolutionary idea for the scene of such a video would lead me to suggest that this is more an imitation than subversion.
We added the sepia and vignette effect expressing the idea that love is endless, that throughout the ages love has been present to help the humanity pull through the tough times. However we did discuss the colour palette of colder colours such as blue and green, though we decided that love would be a stronger theme than sorrow of our protagonist distance between his and her love.
The imagery of older and newer flowers are used as a device to represent metaphorically, the life of a beautiful relationship that through the dying dull moments, there is new life blooming. This constructs him to be admired an idolized. It is pull into focus in the foreground so that the cello player in the background is out of focus in the background, we chose to do this so she would not be confused as “Amie” by the audience. This use of a sepia effect is used to add a melancholy feel toward the frame, and this effect has been used in modern day videos, a few including the likes of Elbow in their music video ‘Grounds for divorce’ and The young guns video ‘A Winters Kiss’. However, we used the flower shot as a transition between the cello and guitar playing in this slow paced and sombre nature of the song.
We also lead the using the X axis to create a calming effect,moving the eye comfortably with ease in watching. The flowers are shot on the left had side, which is subconsciously the most pleasing to the eye to watch and represents a good positive a thought to whats on the screen. We then lead to the singer...
This subconsciously is a good subtle marketing technique in that the viewer will more likely to succumb to liking him. Also by showing a full grown flower he then represents this, as hope and full of talent. Challenging the conventions of a fast pace cutting and a high ratio of shots we could not do this with our slow paced track, we used focus pulls and addissive fades as transitions, this therefore creating a soft organic quality that is more suited to our artist who is humble and he cares more about the music and songs and meanings to be heard.
This shot presents our singer performing , again on the left suggesting the protagonist, it also increases audience/character proximity with him, and to aim to sell the album , this should hopefully increase sales.
***
Question two:
According to Dyer, explain your Artist.
Having the advantage of students having free lessons at school and the use of the other demographics like YouTube, focus groups and a questionnaire, we could easily collect a variety of feedback from these sources for our pop video and other products to these specific target audiences.
Our target audience was the female population of sixteen to late twenties. We aimed for the high end of the JICTAR scale; A to B (more specifically, A2 or B1). The JICTAR scale is a scale that depicts certain target audiences related to their education, area and aspirations.
Our higher end target audience is located around the South Midlands, south England, with a reasonably well educated background. Their aspirations would be to go into a blue collar or the arts profession and enjoy life as it comes. This explains the higher end of the JICTAR scale, B to C are usually from a background where the parents are from a tertiary service sector and will live in the midlands, and have aspirations to follow in their parents profession, whereas the lower end of the scale C and D are generally from the north of England, with their background in the primary to secondary sector, and therefore their aspirations would be to earn higher and to achieve a higher end JICTAR status, like C1 to B.
The first responses we gained were from the YouTube comments. We had two valuable comments made on our video of Amie originally performed by Damien Rice:
“ ...the end feels rushed, it needs a clearer narrative ending.”
“I found there was confusion of the relationship between the singer and the cello player, and then the girl who i presume is his love at the end”
This i thought was very interesting, we originally placed the cello player in the scene, to add a sense that our singer expresses his love through his talent for music, and that the Chinese ethnicity of her, would add a cultured side to his brand. However, this obviously got confused, and we did not think of the theory of Kuleshov that 70% of the meaning of the content is seen through the images and mis en scene. To improve on this we could have never seen her face, or again reinforce the idea of Amie, the girl at the end more, so that it is clearer, asI think the cello shot are aesthetically pleasing to the eye and work well with the sombre atmosphere.
[ A Kuleshov Example ]
With only two valid comments, there was little information about enjoyment and understanding of this product. However, I feel these constructive comments, are valid, and suggest that the sombre message about longing for someone is apparent, however there is a confusion the imagery and cutting to suggest that the characters needed to be more defined to place there purpose. However a good comment suggests that our singer Alejandro Roberts image, dress sense and musical talents works well for a female audience
“The singer works nicely with the Damien Rice song, and his image works well to attract a particular target audience”
We then conducted a focus group discussion, consisting of 11 17 to 19 year old students, of which 5 were girls and 6 males. Three females were 17 and 2 were 18, and two males were 17, three 18 and one 19. We posed 10 basic straightforward questions in the form of a questionnaire...
“This video, I felt has a spin on male/female roles in dominance, and that the girl had power of the singer”
This was after watching a very male dominated violent product, therefore i think this is tainted, however, a very valid point was that the singer seemed feminine. We knew that he would attract the female audience rather than the male audience, however this comment made us re evaluate this idea, and saw that it was quite noticeable. Most noticeable was the waiter(ess) position. Then we track shot of the counter, showing cutlery and cake, was registered as his anger and violence towards Amie, maybe suggesting killing her. This was an extreme comment, but logical explanation.
Are questions posed about the meaning, story and representation of the song, can be evaluated to come across well. All members of this group, suggested that he was longing for a lost love, and that they sympathise with him, with a soft star image.His star image, as Richard Dyer would put it was that he is soft, and an organic image, this is more attracted to the female audience. An interesting comment made was from the difference between a male comment to a female comment..
“ I sympathise with him and what he sings about is quite feminine, so i think girls would be able to relate more, and singing for a girl is cute, I want to support him..”
whereas., the male comment was
“ by listening to the song its a good score, but when looking at him he seems too feminine and a bit weak...”
A collective agreement was that the colour palette and set worked, the yellow behind the sepia added to his lost and longing, the warmth of his love yet the coldness of his dismay, and the set and dead flowers suggesting him being run down by his huge hurt.
The evaluation from this focus group, was really useful in the fact that the intended message and imagery was not what we exactly planned, however from this we can tell that our target audience enjoyed and sympathised with him and that we succeeded in capturing the female audience at this particular age group and JICTAR scale.
From a general commentary from the start to the finalised product we had judgements and general feelings from peers, that include, teachers fellow students, past and present and family members. this ranges from 16 to 50 year olds. From this I believe that the audience, and mainly the female audience enjoy this product as it addresses the idea of love and longing which most females incur at this age, which our singer presents in our pop video.
The uses of Blumler and Katz were used as this theory argues that an audience are not passive in observing televised products, and look for certain points or or items. After receiving feedback I agree with this statement. Blumler and Katz distinguish four gratifications that audiences always look for..
We diverted our audience, in producing a visual product to represent our song and singer, then representing ‘longing love’ which is a general attribute that our target audience concern about. Plus with our tracking and panning shots, the audience will feel like they are part of the action and surveying the scene.
STUART HALL’S THEORY OF ENCODING/DECODING
| PRODUCING INSTITUTION / COMMUNICATOR |
| MEANING / MESSAGE |
| AUDIENCE |
| PRODUCING INSTITUTION |
>. Sends >> | PREFERRED MEANING | >> Sends >> <<> | PREFERRED MEANING ACCEPTED |
|
|
| E.g. Al Jazeera v BBC, ITV, Sky, CNN v Fox |
|
NEGOTIATED MEANING |
|
|
| E.g. Offside at Soccer |
| OPPOSITIONAL INTERPRETATION |
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”
(Lazurus Long)
To the final thoughts of Media A2 pop videos, but more dramatically the end of an AQA A-level.
...Media language helped with my video’s form and content. Form is what the message of the product is and content is the way in which it is received. This is supported with the tools of media language, which are camera editing, lighting camera angle sound and movement. The form is my pop video where we try to portray our singer’s brand of a soft talented thoughtful organic product.
My production is of ‘Amie’ originally by Damien Rice, it involves imagery combined with performance set in subtle narrative. The meaning of the song is of longing for lost love and by using media language, this aided us to achieve something of the sort.
The use of the camera was essentially our main tool to achieve the brand of our singer. Kuleshov explains that 70% of what an audience’ evaluation of meaning is registered through imagery, what is seen in the frame.
The majority of our shots of Alejandro are shot at eye level.This reinforces the idea of portraying love truthfully. We also film at a 30 to 33 degrees, this gives the audience a sense of reality and a 3 dimensional effect, thus creating an idea that he is touchable, which Dyer defines as stardom. An example of this was the performance element; we film him in a close up to give a sense of intimacy and therefore focussing our attention upon him enforcing his longing for that love.
Movement was used frequently in our shoot, using mainly ‘Dolly tracks’ this gave a sense of being involved with the action and therefore sympathising with him. It is also aesthetically pleasing on the eye, especially combined with the rule of thirds and the X and Y axis.
We slowly track from one side of the cafe to another stopping at Alejandro then dissolving to another shot of him playing the guitar at the point at where it last finished. This is relaxing for the viewer and sympathises with his longing.
The continuity editing gives an illusion that shots are real. However, with the focus pulls and pans of the imagery, flowers and the cello player, this adds an impression of a continuing occurrence over a period of days, again his longing for his lost love. Also, with our ratio of 10 to 12 seconds, cutting in a dissolve transition this adds a sombre effect.
