Friday 1st October 2010 (By Ashleigh)
The focus today was on representation and post modernism. The aim was to understand what is meant by representation and how we can use the concept of representation in our planning to be aware and to be aware of the target audience for our music video. I feel we have grasped this idea and have well thought of what target group we intend to ‘market’ our video for. Although Fever Ray (real name Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson) is 35 years old, our main girl in the video is going to be 17 years of age. We have made this decision because after doing some research, we have discovered that most of the songs written by Fever ray are about young people, so we thought that having a young adult play her in our video would be appropriate.
The first video we viewed was ‘The Scientist’ by Coldplay. Before seeing the video, my gut assumption was to think the video would be set in a lab, with the main singer experimenting with Bunsen burners and chemicals. This is what impression I got from the song title, but the official video completely different. It was mostly narration with some conceptual parts. I thought the beginning of the video was engaging because the shot was a bird’s eye view of the singer on a mattress and he was making eye contact and ‘talking’ directly to the camera; this made it seem personal like I could emphasise with what he was singing about. For me personally, I thought the beginning of the music video was boring because there wasn’t much happening apart from the singer walking backwards through dark forest, streets, fields and train tracks. The tracking movement and different shots was one of the ways used to show representation of this character. For example, when he was walking across the train track, my impression of was that he’s fearless and bizarre and weird because why would you do that. Having said this, maybe that location was deliberate because it shows he’s depressed and mentally disturbed. The close up and mid shot tracking of him made us see things from his perspective. I thought the end scenes were the most interesting. He lip syncs ‘I’m going back to the start’ which suggests he wants to rewind time, start again and go back to the way things were. The video doesn’t make sense until we see a female lying on the floor then in reverse form going back into the car ( after falling out via the car wind screen) and puts on her seat belt. There was a car crash and I presume that she died as a result. The lip sync worked although it was slightly out of sync because the video director would have had to play the song backwards when filming it; which is a challenge within itself.
To view the video by Coldplay – The Scientist, please click the link below.
The next activity involved thinking about representation. We had to draw a picture of either Mel or Mike who are media teachers. Alice drew a picture of Mel. We picked Mel because of noticeable and identifiable image – her glasses, red hair and tallness. Alice then drew a picture of Beyonce. We picked this particular artist because again, her image is so iconic. We can associate Beyonce with her hair styles, lips, curvy figure, fashion (e.g. leotard) and eyes.
SKETCH OF MEL SKETCH OF BEYONCE
Images in the media of musician artists aren’t really realistic. There image is ‘perfected’ that way to sell records. The way the dress in photo shoots isn’t the way we would dress in everyday ‘real life’. Costume is an important element of representation; the clothes and fashion style tells us their personality, genre and presence. For example, Beyonce has her own fashion label; the majority of which clothes she’s designed she doesn’t wear regularly. She even admits the way she dresses in the media is for stage, premiers, modelling etc. She has a stage persona (Sasha Fierce) and the way how she is portrayed in the media isn’t how she is when she lives her ordinary life when she’s not working.
Beyonce not at work Beyonce 'Sasha Fierce' image
Beyonce at work 'To come' beyonce's latest image
Some props/ objects and colours are associated with some artists. Take lady gaga for example, we can recognise her because of her hair styles, fringe, coke can in hair, telephone, bizarre costumes and tea cups. I looked at an image before she was famous and her image now and they are completely different. She was singing way before she got famous. I believe that if she broke out on the scene with her ‘old image’, she wouldn’t have been as successful as she did now. This is because she talked about because of her ‘uniqueness and bizarreness,’ and fans like to see what the next is for Lady gaga and what extreme thing she’s going to do. She was pretty before but her latest image makes her different from other artists on the block and that is what makes her stand out and makes her records sell.
I was amazed at how much lady gaga has changed. To view the video of the changing phase of image, click below:
Why is image so important?
The main thing that I’ve taken from this lesson is HOW important image is. In today’s society it’s all about image; in fact we live in a modern day society where we are image obsessed! In the music industry, image is as important as the music and in some cases more important than the music. Take Jedward (famously known from the X factor and East Midland’s train advert) for example, they cannot sing or dance yet they still have a career in music! Why? Because of their image (high quiff hairstyle) and personality. Image used for marketing purposes, it’s used to sell the artists and give the record as Unique Selling Point (USP). It is what makes one artist different from another. It is used to make people idolise them, to appeal to target audience so they have a strong fan base and to make them easily recognisable.Someone in our class suggested that Lady gaga reminds them of Madonna in the early days.
Do you see any resemblance?
On the note of image, it is important to know who you need to consider when making decisions about representing an artist in our music video. They are:
1. Target Audience
2. Record label
3. Competitors
4. The band or artist themselves
This is important because you want the image of the artist to appeal to the target audience in order to build a supportive fan base and sell records. The target audience are the people who are going to be making the artist money (via buying records and concert tickets etc) so it is important to get it right. Take Cheryl Cole for example. Her image appeals to the younger generation both male and female. Some females want to be her and some males fancy her. It’s highly unlikely that she would market herself to the elderly or older generation.
Believe it or not, the music world is a business and cannot solely rely on passion to drive them forward. They market the music to make money. Record labels sign artists on to a 360 deal and as long as they recoup the costs that they invested into the artist, then the contract will continue. The record company has a big stake in representation of their artists because that’s what’s going to make them rich and their artists go further and global.
It is important that the representation of one isn’t the same as another. That’s why stylists and managers have to work on a distinct image to differentiate their artist from competitors. Lady Gaga is a great example. It would be very difficult to steal Gaga’s style because it’s so distinctive and rare. That’s why Stephanie (Lady Gaga) stands out from competitors.
It’s important to consider the band or artist themselves so that they can express their individuality. Although they have some input, It is mostly the manager that will have the concept of representation in mind and will tell a stylist to style them accordingly.
Looking at REPRESENTATION in more depth, we touched upon age, gender and class. As an example of representation of age, we looked at Basement Jaxx video for their song ‘Oh My Gosh’. This video was comic for me because the song sounds playful and youthful yet the people in the video were old aged people. However, this contradiction is not what he audience expects and therefore it’s easily remembered. Due to the lyrics, you would expect the music video to be set in a club not an old people’s home! This again was another factor that made the video comic. I would say the video is aimed at teenagers and people in their 20s. Again, this a contrast in age because the age of elderly people in the video is not the age group who the video is intended for.
To view the video, please click the link below:
We then watched Justin Bieber’s video for ‘One Time’. The video reflects some on the things young teenagers do e.g. play on video games, text, text on phones, flirt with the opposite sex and hang around with their mates. Justin’s target audience should immediately relate with Justin in his video because that is what stereotypical teenagers do at that age. Although he is 16 years old, his target audience is younger (11+ I would presume). Someone in the class suggested that Justin was trying to look older than he was in that video. I disagreed however. Although he was having a house party, there was no alcohol consumed, there was people skating around the pool doing their own thing; in fact people at the party looked innocent and young. Although he is having a house party and he’s wearing a hoodie trying to impress girls, everything from his image to camera angles to everything in the mise-en-scene is deliberate in order to appeal to a younger audience.
To view Justin Bieber’s video, please click the link below:
We compared Bieber’s image to Kesha’s image. Although Kesha is 7 years older than Bieber the age group audiences they target their music for is different. Kesha generally targets older teenagers and people in their 20s. Bieber on the other hand appeals to girls who are younger than him.
To view kesha’s ‘Your love is my drug’ video, please click the link below:
In terms of gender we looked at Call on me by Eric Prydz. The video starred all ladies in little clothing doing aerobics in a lesson. The video attracts the opposite sex firstly because it’s all females and because you see close ups of female parts like the bum and toned stomach etc. It’s a highly sexualised image. We compared this to the video called ‘Being a girl’ by Mansun. You would think an all male video working out would really appeal to the ladies but strangely enough, it was quite off putting. I think again, it’s down to image. The males weren’t the best looking we would expect to see in the gym. I think it was aimed at men who like fitness.
To view the ‘Call on me’ video, please click the below link
To view the ‘Being a girl’ video, please click the following link:
Another ‘gender’ video we watched was ‘The Shame’ by Robbie Williams. It’s one of his latest/upcoming songs about his split from his band. It explores sexuality between a man and man. The video includes close ups of them near together, taking their tops off and making strong focused eye contact with each other. This video is open to interpretations. Some may find the ‘closeness’ between the two gentlemen disturbing but then some may say that it’s just two friends that are close.
To see Robbie William’s ‘The Shame’ video, please click the following link:
We looked at two videos in terms of class; one of which was The Kaiser Chiefs song ‘The Angry Mob’. It was interesting to see the different types of class in this one video. They had middle (restaurant workers and hen night partiers), working (having a hen night party) and higher class (bosses at the restaurant). The video involve the two hen night partiers both of different classes having a fight and the bosses and workings telling them off in an attempt to stop the fight. There was an interesting shot towards the end of the video where there was a glass in the middle ‘separating’ the two classes; there was middle and working class on one side and the higher class at the other end.
To view the Kaiser Chief’s video, please click the link below:
We also re-visited the video by Kaiser Chief’s – Never miss a beat. Like mentioned previously in my last blog, the video is about judging today’s youth. It’s set on an estate and there are jump cuts showing a reporter reporting the action happening. This video explores how young children are represented in the media-especially those living in a council estate area. Another way the video is explores class is when the police (in authority/middle class) spots the children (on the estate, working class) running and chases after them.
To watch the ‘Never miss a beat’ music video, please click the link below:
------------------------------------------------------ By ashleigh Bossman
On the note of Image, I thought it is necessary to blog after watching the X Factor on Sunday night. Competition shows are meant to discover and develop talent but I believe this was not the forefront motive of the X Factor judges this time. At the judge’s houses, they had to shortlist their acts to three people who will sail onto the live show. After watching the hopefuls’ attempts to grasp this opportunity, I felt extremely disappointed with the judge’s final decisions with who to let go and who to let through on the live show. Two in particular I feel were put through due to their IMAGE and who would make the entertainment show money and not necessarily based on their talent. Some of the people who I thought sang really well were eliminated from the competition in favour of those who can’t sing but ‘look’ style quality and are TV personality. See below.
To view Cher Llyod (X Factor 2010, Judges House) performance please click below
To view Katie Waissel’s (X Factor 2010, Judges House) performance, please click below
Furthermore, there was this one particular lady, Treyc cohen, who caught my eye. I watched X factor last year and I remember seeing her audition. She came back this year after failing to reach the live final stage. I was amazed at how much she has shaped up her image. Even Simon Cowell said so himself. Even though she is the same person, I would get two different perceptions of her image after appearing in 2009 and now. Her 2008 image looks like a soul diva whereas now she's slimmer, looks more fashionable and got a sleeker hair style. To see the difference, please view the picture below.
Ashleigh.End.
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