In for the kill - La Roux

The next CD cover I am going to analyse is 'In for the kill' by La Roux released on the 16th of March 2009.
La Roux are an English electropop duo made up of Eleanor Kate Jackson, and co-writer and co-producer Ben Langmaid. Eleanor Jackson says the song is about telling somebody how you feel about them regardless of what you get back. This could explain why Eleanor who is featured on the Cd cover is dressed like an assasin who are typically not afraid to do anything. The CD cover also links into the 1980s TV program Pole Position which the song is partially based on. Elements of this included in the CD cover include being dressed in a spy outfit and featuring a Toyota MR2 the main car used in the TV show. Like the David Guetta album the name of the artist is clearly displayed in white to make it stand out and the title of the album cover is displayed is smaller font which like said before in the David Guetta album could signal it of being less important than the artists name. The dark background with the city lights could be used to try and link into the name of the title which uses the word kill this background expresses the feeling tthat someone is going to get hurt which combindes to the fact most bad things happen in the night.

Music Companies Research

Today I decided to take a deeper look into the music industries behind successful artists and to find out what they contributed to make the artist a successful product.

The main company behind music is the record label which manages over the marketing, manufacturing, recording, legal rights and distribution of the music. Contrary to most peoples beliefs the record company isn't just responsible for getting the music heard by other people.

Nowadays record labels are nearly all owned by another company and can use their skills/expertise to promote a product or to borrow money for the initial big start-up cost of promoting an artist. There are 4 big record labels currently in the world Sony, EMI, Universal and Warner who are all sub-divisions of conglomerates and together make up around 70-80% of the world's music market. These sub-divisions are then split down into departments such as sales, artwork, publicity and management.

Applying this knowledge to my own work, I decided to look at how the record labels used media to promote their artist. On youtube I watched various videos by Jimmy Iovine the head of Interscope records. What I learnt was that sites like youtube and Facebook are becoming more popular ways of promoting music. Now even on printed work like magazine adverts and on album covers it is common to see Facebook links tempting you to like or share the artist's page with your friends. This has given me the idea that when I am producing my own print work I will include something similar so that people can connect with my artist and share their findings with their friends.

I would like to share some links with you to show you how powerful the internet has become in the music industry. The first is a link to an article about Justin Bieber who not matter what you think of him you cannot deny that as an artist he has been a big success. He was founded on youtube. 


http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Weekend/teen-pop-star-justin-bieber-discovered-youtube/story?id=9068403#.T4GbjPuPn4s

The second is a video by Jimmy Iovine who talks about advertising by moving popular culture in order to attract an audience for your artist:

CD Cover analysis David Guetta

The first CD cover I am going to analyse is 'Just a Little More Love' by David Guetta. The album was released on June 10th 2002 by Virgin Records France and features vocals by Chris Willis and Barbara Tucker. The album, as indicticated by the title, is about showing more love to the people around you.

Looking at the CD cover itself it shows a man listening to some music through headphones. I think David Guetta picked this picture to show the modern style of how music is played and to adress his target audience. The man looks very young in the 12-24 age group most of my audience research put the electropop genre into. By using a young person David Guetta adresses the young population so they feel like the album is for them.

The headphones could possibly symbolise the way that music is genrally listented to in the 21st century. In the past it was cassets, radio's or even those big chunky headphones which covered your whole ear.

Instead of any of these options David Guetta has chosen to use red in the ear headphones to symbolise the modern style of listening to music and which will therefore help him adress his target audience.

Looking at the background it is jet black so you can focus on the things in other colours. The background is also made to look like some kind of puzzle with little puzzle outlines in the background . What is important about this is that on the mans face there is a little white peice of the puzzle which because the man is silver makes it look like he is robotic. This links in with the title because robots sterotypically don't feel love so the white patch and the puzzle links into the whole idea that we need more love and the man needs to unlock his human side.

One final thing to notice is that the 'David Guetta' writing is in white which makes it standout above all the other things on the cover which are darker colours. This could be to raise artist awareness since this was his first album. The fact that the picture expresses what David Guetta is trying to portray very well could be the reason while the title of the album is in tiny writing.

Arslahn answers my questions about pop music

Even though I had asked people to fill out a questionnaire about what they wanted from a pop music video I felt it was important to get a proper one to one interview from someone who is genuinely interested in pop music. So I headed over to Arslahn's house who is a close friend of mine to see what he thought makes a good pop music video:

Mi Español Amigo

Today I am sharing with you a video about my research and planning in which Oscar, who did the course last year talks about what he did to prepare for the construction of his music video last year and he also answers my questions about planning and research to help me improve my plans for my video.

What I have learnt is that you should stick to your storyboard plan, be careful in what locations you film in and try to relate the genre of the music to your video.

Audience Research Q&A

Today I carried out some audience research on what people would expect to see in a music video and more importantly what people would like to see In a music video.

After reading the responses from friends and family I learnt that most people would like to see a narrative based electropop video and that people found props and positioning of characters the most usefull techniques for making an electropop music video. I was expecting these results since they are used in most modern electropop videos today. However what surprised me was the answer to question 7 which was given a near identical answer by both male and female genders. Q7: In the past few years most electropop videos have had a love story narrative particulary focused on an attractive woman. Do you think this makes the video better?  Give a reason.

The majority of the people said yes because that when they listen to electropop music they think of erotic images. The girls who answered the questionaire also said that they like a preety girl on the video because it makes them think wow thats the girl I want to be like. This explains why artists like Cheryl Cole and Katy Perry have been doing well recently because they are considered Idols by girls. I will keep in mind these results and use them to plan my storyboard.

Artist Choice: Arty the next David Guetta but with a voice

 

                                              http://www.myspace.com/artytime

Arty is a electropop artist who lives New York. He not only sings but produces and writes music as well.

Arty is an unsigned artist which means that he has no company to help him market his music and that he alone holds the rights to it. Understanding this is important to me to make sure I am getting permission to make the music video from the right person and therefore am not breaching any copyright infringement.

Arty describes himself as a insperational person who draws his thoughts from the people he has come to know and his experiences living in different parts of the world.While living in New York, ARTY gained exposure to new sounds and techniques of New York’s eclectic musical scene in comparison to living in Europe where he was greatly influenced by artists such as Martina Topley-Bird and Jens Lekman from Stockholm, who changed the way ARTY looks at his poetry. Although ARTY’s music is considered electropop music, he firmly believes in his music’s ability to alter and go beyond the typical framework of any one genre. 

I chose Arty because I feel he has real talent and that if more people get to know his music he could become a real contender in todays charts.  The Song I have Chosen of Arty's is Heat. I chose this song not only because it sounds good but because it describes the hot and energetic feeling people get from electropop music. 

Now I have the Song and the Artist it is time to conduct some audience research and to to begin planning my music video. 

Electropop analysis 3 Kid Cudi vs. Crookers - Day 'n' Night

My third and final analysis video is Day 'n' Night by Kid Cudi. I chose this video because it shows a more prerogative side of electropop music. It shows the fact that the main audience of electropop music 14-30 like something that is upbeat and that they can dance along to. We saw part of this displayed in the video where Nero talks about breaking free. Kid Cudi shows it too in his video by making a narrative where he looses himself in his dreams. The video features Cudi who is acting as a shop worker late at night falling asleep dreaming of his desires (which in particular include women).

Like the videos before it has a short intro explaining the narrative and then the beat/lyrics come in after. In addition, another similarity is that the video tries to be humorous like in the David Guetta video where the old people are dancing. Instead Cudi expresses this humor by having a magical pen that takes woman's clothes of when you press the top. However unlike in the other videos there is no love scene and the video is more focused on having a good time.

Electropop analysis 2 Nero - Promises

The second video I will be analyzing is Promises by Nero. I chose this video because it shows a lot of familiar techniques used in the electropop genre. In the first few seconds of the video for example there is a little intro to the the narrative in the video which is shown without music. This was the same case in the video I talked about previously by David Guetta and Chris Willis. This technique seems to be used a lot in the electropop genre to explain what the video and song is about since most of the video's are narrative based.

Contrasting the video to the lyrics, we can see they are very much connected. In the video Nero talks about breaking free this is shown in the video by the woman who is forced to take tablets to stop her from feeling stops taking them and essentially breaks free from the toxin that is stopping her from feeling. Once again like in the David Guetta video we can see the main focus of the video is on a woman adding the the idea of the male gaze.

However, unlike in the last video we saw Nero takes more of a role in the video. We see her a number of times in the video singing the lyrics. This was unlike the David Guetta video where the singer or Guetta weren't featured much at all and the characters were miming the lyrics. The funky style has although been kept the same with characters wearing big chunky glasses and doing robotic dance moves while in a army kind of building.

Electropop analysis 1 David Guetta - Love is Gone

The first video I have chose to analyse is Love is gone by David Guetta. I chose this video because it has the funky kind of style you expect from a electropop genre. What I mean by this is even though it sticks to some boy/girl love drama you see in most video's it try's to make it humorous by having people do weird things.  For instance, in the video people start dancing in cafe which you would expect to see. But in addition if you look at the types of people dancing it is not just the typically young but also the elderly as well. An example of this is when the old lady starts jumping up and down while playing the drums. The video challenges the modernist idea that everything can be explained by making people do unusual things. For example when the police officers are kissing in public with their hands all over each other. Whereas in real life we would expect police offers to be much more professional about their relationships.


 Another thing I noticed in the video was that the artist does not take a key role in the video. David Guetta is only featured once in the video for a brief second and Chris Willis is not featured at all. Instead the people in the video mime some of the lyrics to look like they are singing it. This is a key concept of most electropop videos and one I will look to include when I make my own video.

Contrasting the video to the lyrics we can see that they have a positive and relationship. What I mean by this is that when Chris Willis says "What are we supposed to do after all that we've been through?" the girl in the video has her hands on her head crying because she doesn't know what to do about the problems she has with her boyfriend. On the other hand though when the chorus "Love is gone" is being sang people are dancing and it shows the clip of the police offers kissing which contrasts the lyrics.

To conclude this video has added to the idea of the male gaze which is a concept created by Laura Mulvey which states that most things we watch are from a heterosexual male's perspective. This video's adds to the male gaze because the prime focus of the video is on a very pretty woman who has just fell out of love with her boyfriend.

Music Genre Choice Electropop

After a wonderful summer holiday in Canada it's back to media coursework.... fun fun. I have chosen to make a music video out of the electropop genre because I think that people who listen to electropop music tend to ignore music videos because they all look the same and therefore I think it would be interesting to create something different. In addition, I noticed that a lot of other yr13 groups who are making music videos have chose to do indie/alternative bands because it is easier since you can have the video performance based for 50% or more of the video. Whereas in a electropop video all the music is made is the studio which means that if you filmed the video performance based it wouldn't look as effective since music studios are rather plain and doesn't give the same experience as if you were performing to a big crowd. This means that I will be making the video narrative/concept based which is harder because I have to listen to the lyrics and make a story that will follow them for the whole video.

My next step will be to analyse some famous electropop artists and find out what makes their videos so effective that millions of people watch them on sites like youtube. Some artists I have in mind are David Guetta, Nero, Basshunter, DJ Tiesto and Kid Cudi.

Post-Modernism

Post-modernism is wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. Basically instead of thinking that there is a definite answer for everything that can be explained through a certain method it says that nothing can be fully explained and that things will always be changing. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be relative, rather than certain.

With reference to music videos post-modernism is shown through questioning idea's and world pratices.
For instance in the song Diamonds by Kanye West he talks about how people are abusing the human rights of people in Africa by making them work incredibly long hours with little pay to get hold of diamonds (from which the concept blood diamonds arrives). In the video it shows young people in caves and constrasts them to rich people in America who earn their money from the blood money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92FCRmggNqQ (Kanye West- Diamonds youtube link)

Another song of a differnt genre that imports post-modern idea's into the music video is Beautiful by Christina Aguilera. This soulful song is based on a simple concept that basically everyone is beautiful no matter how they look or what their sexuality is. It combats modern thinking by some people that some groups of people like emo's, goth's, gay's and people who stand out are lesser than other people. The video features clips of these groups first looking unhappy and then towards the end looking more confident as the song becomes more upbeat. The message is also very clear in the lyrics "You are beautiful no matter what they say, words can't bring you down. You are beautiful in every single way. Yes. Words can't bring you down. Don't you bring me down today." Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAfyFTzZDMM

History of Music Videos

 

 

The first form of music videos came to be in the 1930's, when short films/clips were made based on music. Jazz musician Louis Jordan had short films made for his music which were then put together to create a feature film named 'Lookout Feature'. The video to the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen was the first proper music video as we know it to be made.

In the 1980's Madonna and Michael Jackson were famed for their use age of music videos as they took inspiration from hit Hollywood films, for example, Madonna's 'Material Girl' which can be linked to 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend' from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, staring Marilyn Monroe.

In 2005, YouTube was launched, making music videos extremely internet-friendly. This also allowed for many many artists to become well known through music videos which had been viewed almost entirely online - for example, rapper Soulja Boy found his succes through this way. Many videos are deemed controversial for their content of sex (such as 50 Cents Candy Shop which showed depictions of intercourse), violence (M.I.A.'s 'Born Free' shows the US military killing kids through ways such as blowing them to pieces), and drug use (Soulwax's 'E Talking' cycles through various club-goers taking drugs).

Introduction

 Hello, my name is Nathan Felix and welcome to my A2 mediastudies blog.  In groups we will be making a music video, an album cover, and a magazine advert . On this blog I will be updating on our work and detailing our process, as well as analyising other music videos, album covers and album adverts which have some relation to our chosen genre and products that we will make.