This blog is about my media coursework in A2. It is going to show the work I have done on my coursework and the work I've done towards the making of our group music video.
This album looks very girly. You can see that by looking at the title, fonts, and the picture of the artist. The title is 'Teenage Dream' which automatically appeals to a younger audience, mainly girls.
The use of baby pink colour stands out as it is quite bright and it is the main colour on the cover. The baby blue at the top doesn't particularly pop out as it is shadowed by the pink colour annd by the title.
You can argue that this album is aimed also at the male audience as the artist is exposing her body, which could be a way to appeal to them and make them want to buy the album.
The font on the back of this cover is quite simple and very similiar to the font at the front. The same colours are used as the ones on the front, which makes it look well and professional.
The song titles pop out of the page as the font is quite large and colour is red which automatically contrasts with the dull background. You can notice a lot more of the blue colour at the top of the page, than you could see it at the front page. This could mean that they have tried to bring in a bit more variety into the page.
This album advert is quite different from the digipak that we've just seen. You could argue that this is a good thing as it makes the audience wonder what the album will look like, but it could lead to misunderstanding as it is so different. Katy's hair is purple, which is a lot different compared to her dark hair on the digipak cover. The clothes that she is wearing are quite provocative and the pose is different.
There are a lot more colours that we can see in this album advert. First of all her body looks like it is reflecting purple light and it looks quite alien-like. This is a nice touch as it matches her hair. The background colours are more subtle, even though we can see colours like green, pink, yellow and blue. Instead of using pink as their main colour, they have used a lot of purple and a variety of other colours that work really well together.
One thing that is same as the digipak is the font where it says 'Katy Perry'. Her name looks exactly like it does on the cover, except that it is in purple. The font underneath where it says 'Teenage Dream' is simple and white which makes it stand out of the page.
The image is a very wide shot of the house where the artist, Kate Nash, is barely visible. It is centred around the house and shows objects around it. The artist is not the main subject in the picture as she is very small, which helps the audience concentrate on the whole picture and think about what the meaning behind it is. The house is the main focus of the picture and it is in the centre which helps relate to the title of the album 'Made of Bricks'. This could quite simply mean that the house is made of bricks, however it could have a deeper meaning, such as the artist being 'made of bricks' representing how she feels inside. This title also makes the digipak of simple nature as it sounds pretty uncomplicated when you first read it.
This is Kate Nash's album 'Made of Bricks'. It contains a variety of colours which are all quite bright. The house on the cover of the album pops out as it is bright yellow where as the background is deep blue. The artist is wearing a classy red dress which makes her stand out as well. She is walking towards the house but still facing the camera. Her outfit looks simple and sophisticated and it works well with the surroundings. The other main colour is light and dark green which differentiates the bushes from the grass. The colours are very distinguishable from each other, as if the people who made it wanted us to concentrate on each of the different elements of the picture, instead of the overall look. This may have been done because it takes more time for people to look at the individual parts of the picture and it makes your eye stay focused on the album for longer, which might be an incentive for people to buy the album. Although bright, the colours are basic and earthy which represents Kate Nash's music. The colours on the back of the digipak are just two which shows that they are making us concentrate on the cover mainly. The back cover uses the same shade of blue as the sky on the main cover which is a hint that relates the two pages together.
The text is in white (on a blue background) , which is the same for the front of the cover and it makes the words, as well as the daisies stand out as they are white as well. What is smart about what they did was that they placed the title of the album and the name of the artist at the top and the daisies at the bottom, which are the same colour. They create a synchrony and work as a frame, showing that the main things in the picture are between the daisies at the bottom and the text at the top.
Here is another digipak cover which I found and I think is similar to Kate Nash's 'Made of Bricks' album cover.
I think this image relates to Kate Nash's image because it uses natural colours and the person in the image is quite far from the camera, although not as far as Kate is.
The font on the front and back cover of the digipak are the same and they are very simplistic. This matches the simple image on the front cover. The font looks handwritten which adds to the simple nature of the album and makes it look more exciting, as if the artist has actually scribbled the names of the songs down. There is 'Kate Nash' and the album written on the sides of the digipak.
Florence and The Machine's digipak is made up of a few main colours - black, white, purple and a variety of neutral colours like beige and brown. These colours play a key part of the digipak as they create an image for the artists. The use of neutral colours shows the audience that they are not trying to be fancy, or sell the album relying on fancy attractive packaging. This is very typical for indie pop artists as they don't tend to dress up too much or rely on fancy packaging , which is what I've seen in most of the digipaks and adverts I've looked at so far. The colours represent the artists' personality and show calmness and peace. Florence and the Machine often use a similar colour palette which makes their products easy to spot and stand out from others. Fans of their music will know what to look for when they go to buy their album and will expect a certain style of the overall package. The background of all sides of the digipak is black and the writing is in white which makes it stand out and add to the simple image of the digipak.
The fonts that have been used in this digipak are simple but well chosen. There is a variety of fonts which shows that they are quite artistic and exciting. There are different fonts for the title of the album and the name of the artist. The font at the top looks handwritten and more loose where the name of the album at the bottom is a bit more structured and 'in place'. 'Florence + the Machine' is placed at the top of the CD cover, whereas the title of the album is at the bottom. This has done because people look for artist's name and then for the album title when they want to buy a product and this way it is easier to spot what artist the album belongs to. The different fonts make up for the lack of colours in the writing, which prevents it from looking dull as they are picked well to suit the artist's personality and appearance.
The title of the album - 'Between Two Lungs' is quite unusual and makes the audience more excited to hear it. The title isvery simply but effectively related to some of the images used in the album digipak which are quite literally pictures of lungs. This has a nice effect on the overall look of the digipak as it shows a simplistic but smart idea and suggests that the songs will be straightforward but meaningful.
All of the pages of the digipak are have a white line going around the edges of the images and text. This creates a nice frame which surrounds the main parts of the page and helps the eye concentrate on the middle of the page where most of the information is given. This effect puts the pages together and creates a clear structure of the pages.
What I noticed about the images was that the artist isn't looking at the camera, as if she is trying to prevent 'eye-contact' with the readers. This could be because the artist prefers people to concentrate on the whole page instead of just on her face and it makes her personality look more mysterious and hidden to the audience, which attracts their attention.
The advert is very similar to the digipak as it uses the same picture, fonts and colours as the digipak. This is nearly always the case with CD adverts as they are there to show the audience what the album will look like and what kind of image they can look for when the album is out. This has been done with a purpose to promote their album and relate to it, as it wouldn't make much sense if an album advert was promoting an album that looked different.
There are some key elements that differentiate the advert from the digipak such as the date when the album comes out and a in this case more detail from the picture (the flower on her right handside, which you can't see well on the digipak cover). This draws attention because it gives important information about the album and sometimes it says where you can purchase the album from. The purpose of album adverts is increase awareness about the up-coming album and it is especially aimed at the artist's existing audience who are likely to be very interested in any new product coming out from that artist.
The album advert has the same features as the digipak cover - the frame, the picture, the fonts and the colours are the same, however the digipak contains more information such as song titles, images of the artist and the company which is producing it. All of this is done in order to create customer satisfaction or in other words to make the fan feel like the album was worth buying, not just for the music but for the additional content too. In comparison to that, what the advert tries to do is to get people to buy it when it comes out.
This is an additional video advert of the album which I found on YouTube about the upcoming album:
In this video the performer is sometimes talking to the camera. This is called direct mode of address, as the audience feels like the artist is closer, creating a feeling that she is talking directly to them. This shortens the distance between the audience and the artist, which is a common thing performers do.
The rest of the video is narrative based, which is indirect to the audience as the audience can only watch but there is no sense of involvement in it.
Lily Allen's appearance in the video reflects her personality. It creates an image of a normal girl, that wears simple, yet fashionable clothes, and wears make up. She doesn't look like she is wearing too much make up which shows that she is trying to show off her personality as a normal girl, rather than relying on too much make up like a pop star normally would.
Similar to this, Kate Nash likes to wear just enough make up to make her look fresher and highlight the best parts about her face, instead of wearing too much for a dramatic effect. When making our music video we will consider this detail and get our artist to wear as little make up as possible. This way she will fit into the music genre conventions.
The video has a clear beginning story and end, which makes it easy to understand. It shows different emotions and stages that the main character is going through. In the beginning she is very upset as her boyfriend has left her for another girl. This could relate to a female teenage audience because there are many girls out there that are in this situation. This also tells us that the audience for her music is teenage girls.
Another stage that she goes through is when she starts wanting to get revenge on her ex boyfriend for leaving her and getting somebody to trash his room. This shows us another side of her personality, as she doesn't look quite so innocent now as she did in the beginning. This makes the audience feel more sympathetic towards the guy, and perhaps think that there was a good reason for him to end the relationship.
At the end of the video she is happy with herself because she has got him back for cheating on her. She thinks that becuase she has gotten her revenge she can move on with her life and never look back. The video shows that by using a track shot which shows us walking down the street, smiling and looking around, flirting with her eyes.
In this video called 'Kiss That Grrrl', Kate Nash's appearance is unlike any of the videos I have seen so far. I think Kate has gone out of her way in this video to make herself look more attractive and appealing to the audience. Her hair is significantly shorter than it is in 'Pumpkin Soup' and she has a full fringe which makes her look young and carefree. Her costume is very flashy and sparkly as she tries to get into the role of a burlesque dancer, and also the fact that she is on stage, potentially performing in front of an audience (although you can't see whether there is an audience or not) adds to that effect. When choosing her outfit she was heavily influenced by the fact that she is 'performing' on stage and perhaps wanted to wear something more provocative.
In the other parts of the video, that is filmed in a different location, Kate is wearing a flowery top and she looks her usual self - romantic, happy and smiling. This is a nice contrast between her 'on stage' appearance where she looks less natural. This shot shows what the character looks like every day 'behind the scene' where she doesn't have to try hard and look all dressed up.
There are two locations in this video, and we can definitely see one of them a lot more often that the other one. The first one is the stage where she performs with two male performers and the other one is a field where she is sat next to one of the male characters we've seen already, cuddling somebody in a tiger costume. There are shots of the last location throughout the whole video but the main focus on it at the end.
The video doesn't have a storyline, as it is more performance rather than a narrative. When the characters are on stage they are mainly performing to an invisible audience, rather than acting
The first video I decided to talk about is by Kate Nash and it's called 'Pumpkin Soup'. I chose this video because I thought it gave me a pretty good representation of Kate Nash's music style. Looking at videos like this one will give me a good understanding of what features I should include in my video to make sure it looks up to standard
Snapshots from 'Do-Wah-Doo', 'Mouthwash' and 'Pumpkin Soup'.
The genre of this song is Indie Pop and this is Kate Nash's typical music genre. The video is set in this fantasy world made up by the main characters which are Kate Nash starring as 'girl' and Wesley Goode starring as 'boy'. The simple 'names' given to the characters suggests that they represent a young teenage couple and this will be a story about love.
In the beginning of the video they 'meet up' on a huge red telephone where you can see the boy looking at the girl and talking to her, looking very excited to see her. The girl, on the other hand, seems like she is day dreaming and not thinking about him at all. This shows that the boy cares about her, but perhaps she doesn't feel the same way about him. The colours used in the video are very pure and simple: pink, green, baby blue, white, orange, etc. This adds to the picture as it shows that when two people are in love everything around them seems wonderful and the colours represent that. The colours are all quite girly which shows that the female character is more dominant in the video.
In this video the characters are dressed to suit the setting. Their costumes are in the colours of the surroundings so they don't really pop out even though they are quite bright. In the first shot of the video you can see the girl wearing a light blue knee length dress with wide straps and a white ruffled shirt underneath. The clothes that she wears are day-to-day ones and she looks like she isn't trying too hard, another typical feature of this music genre. This would be unusual for a genre such as pop, which helps differentiate the two music genre. In pop music the artists normally look pampered and extremely well-presented, typically wearing a lot of make-up. In that same shot the boy wears dark jeans and a light blue shirt, which is a similar colour to the female character's dress. His tie is red, and it pops out from his outfit. It also matches the red buttons on the girls dress and it makes them look like they have a connection.
In the next shot we can see the girl holding a huge white daisy. Her outfit is in similar colours to her previous one, consisted of a simple red t-shirt tucked in blue high-waisted jeans. Simple outfits are typical for the indie pop music genre and the bright poppy colours are typical for this particular artist.
Towards the middle of the song (1:28) we can see both of the characters standing next to each other. The guy's cardigan is in the same colour as Kate's top which shows that they have similar tastes or that he takes into account his opinion when it comes to clothing. This is a cute idea which makes the video look like a fairy tale.
The style of the video is unrealistic and it looks like a fantasy/fairy tale. The setting is made up of cardboard trees, costumes of cats, balloons and unrealistically big objects (telephone, toys, daisy). It gives the impression that the character is in wonderland, quite like 'Alice in Wonderland', as nothing around her is real. Again, this represents that when two people are in love they only see the good things happening to them, and think that everything is perfect around them. The song is quite light hearted and upbeat and the video is created to match the tempo. The lyrics are simple, which adds to the cheerfullness that the song brings to the audience.
The video has a narrative story which means that the characters act all the way through.Kate Nash and Wesley Goode performed well as actors, although their characters stayed the same from the beginning to the end of the video. I think the story line would have been a lot more interesting if there were more emotion and feelings, especially towards the end of the video. This would help the audience sympathise to one character or another and make the video outstanding.
I thought about what I wanted to do for my group project this year and I decided that I wanted to do something more challenging and unfamiliar for me. Last year I had an idea for a pop music magazine, which I thought turned out well and now I would like to work on a genre like heavy metal or rock. I know this could be difficult and it would require a lot more research and attention but I think it could work well for a music video as these songs tend to be more dynamic and aren't usually slow (ballads). I thought we could do a 'Kings of Leon' video that we would set and film outside of town, somewhere in the country. The setting would play a key part of the storyline as it could show isolation and loneliness, which could reflect on the character's feelings and thoughts.
Another idea that I had was to do a Lady Gaga video, as we could develop some great ideas as a group for a video of hers. As Lady Gaga is an artist that is so different in every new video, this gives us no restrictions on what we could do. Another thing is that Lady Gaga is a very extravagant artist, so the difficulty might be to find props and costumes that would suit her style, as well as a great story line and set. I think if we decided to go with this one, we would have to think of loads of different ideas and decide which ones would be best for the video, and also consider whether we could afford to go with this artist or not.
These are the ideas that I am going to propose to my group in class, and I am hoping that we will all together come to a reasonable conclusion for a band/artist and a song.
In this presentation I have talked about a typical music magazine and the kind of things it should include. I have used my knowledge from last year that I gained whilie I was producing a magazine of my own, as well as the research that I have done since the start of this year to put together what I think a typical magazine should include:
On this slide I have explained what a 'promotional package' is all about and given some examples of it from different music genres. A promotional package for an album is important because it makes the audience aware of the product that is about to come out and gives a 'sneak-peek' preview of the mood of the album. In that sense it has the same purpose as a movie trailer that aims to attract potential viewers.
Another thing I have talked about is the meaning of digipak. Digipak have advantages and disadvantages and I have listed both examples of both of these.
This slide shows all the things I could think of that should be included in any music video. It is important that all of these features are in the video as lacking one of them might mean that the video ends up looking unprofessional. I will make sure I keep all of these things in mind and come back to this presentation when we start planning our music video as we want it to look as skilled as possible and therefore it should include all of these characteristics.
In this last slide I have shown examples of three different music genre adverts in order to be able to see the differences between them. They all include things such as colour, fonts, pictures, layout, etc, however what they look like varies according to the music genre. For example, the pictures featured in the pop music adverts are pictures of two women who look confident and well-present, taking up most of the space on the page. You can see how this is different to metal, where pictures are lacking, or to rock where they are not quite as explicit.
My name is Ivelina Emilova and I am in my second year of college doing A levels in Business, Economics English & Lit as well as Media. I will soon start working on a music video project along with 2 or 3 other people from my class. Last year I created a pop magazine which was aimed at teenagers and young adults. This project helped me prepare for what I am doing this year as I have gained more knowledge and understanding of the music business. I also learned a lot about editing pictures on Photoshop and I think this will help me save time when we start editing our pictures for the album cover. Through this project I hope to learn more things about a new music genre that is not quite so familiar for me, for example rock or metal. This way the project could be more challenging and more exciting at the same time. The first thing we need to do when we find out what groups we will be working in, should be agreeing on a certain music genre and making sure everyone in the group likes it. There might have to be a compromise as perhaps not everyone will like the same type of music, but hopefully we will on agree on a certain type of music that appeals to us.
