The floor manager is in charge of it all in terms of shooting when there is multiple people shooting at a time.
He shouts “standby” “roll cameras” and then “play back” and the camera operators shout back “standing by” then “camera rolling”.
The play back person presses the button for playback to then play the music after the floor manager saying “playback”.
For the track shots, you sit on the seat like a bicycle, as someone pushes it like a trolley.
Overall you start off with a wide shot, then a middle shot then a close up of the person in the shot.
When using a green screen, you can add any background to the footage, which can be useful if you are on a low budget and can't go to the actual location you want to, however you need to make sure you don't wear any green while in front of the green screen, as well as you need to make sure the green screen is evenly lit all over.
- binary opposition - Levi Strauss - because the grenade is shaped as a heart, contrast of love and violence
- throw a grenade of love
- the white and black act as a contrast between light and dark, however the splash of red indicated blood and violence as well as making this colour stand out a lot more
- their name is in lower case, draws attention to the name of the album
Fearless - Taylor Swift
- hair looks like a lion's mane, very matching to the title, as well as portrays her curled hair
- quite flirtatious look, male gaze - Laura Mulvi - can see and accentuates jawline and her shoulders
- colour palette quite the same, simple and pure, almost glowing
- her name is written in her hand writing, almost like her signature, showing it is from her and written by her
Overall:
- 4-6 'panes'
- Spine
- Colour palette similar to video/social media
- Branding of star persona
Front Cover:
- image of singer/band on front
- name of singer/band
- name of album
- parental advisory sticker if explicit
- info about any bonus material included eg extra tracks, behind the scenes, music videos, etc.
Inside Front Cover:
- other image/background
- possibly any of the following:
- thanks
- credits for crew involved
- message to fans
- lyrics to a song
- info about artist
Spine:
- name of singer
- name of album
- record label logo
Inside back cover:
- other image/background
- space for disk to be inserted
Back Cover:
- other image
- track listing
- barcode
- record label info
- copyright information
Key points:
- the music videos are for a song on the album, not the whole album
- there is a connection, but its not a direct takeaway
- music doesn't start until 0:07, sound of wind blowing during silence of music
- nighttime, however a spooky nighttime because of wind and dark clouds with slight blue tint, adding cold atmosphere
- camera flying through CGI buildings, dark atmosphere, dark clouds in the sky, representative of singer's dark feelings, reflects mood of song
- city sounds faint during music, sound of police sirens
- camera flies closer to a window of a run down apartment building that is open with the curtains flapping in the wind, shows which and what type of house the person we're focusing on lives in
- camera goes into window and goes still, wide shot of bedroom and a woman asleep in the bed
- cuts to the same woman asleep and falling from a building, the tone of colour of film is very dark and has hints of blue, making it look cold/death like, matching to the name of the song
- different angles of woman sleeping in bed again, dutch angles, makes it uncomfortable/sense of danger
- by cross cutting between the falling and the bed it shows the woman is possibly dreaming, there is an apparent theory that if we have a dream where we're falling and falling it's because our body thinks we are dying and when we wake up before hitting the ground our body thinks we are dead so wakes us up to make sure
- woman keeps struggling during her sleep, showing discomfort, same as when someone has a nightmare, is evidently scared
- the cuts get shorter between the two scenes, matching the build up of instruments and sound of the song
- after the lyrics "back home" the camera flies back out of the room and does a wide establishing shot of building, but we can see other people in the windows, and then the camera quickly zooms into another window of a band
- we see the band of the song playing in the room on beat of chorus starting
- woman opens her eyes, matching the lyrics "wake me up inside"
- woman walks towards window, almost ghost like and as if she is dead or sleepwalking
- cutting between the two scenes, the band playing and the woman, the woman sings the woman's lines in the song, showing she is the main singer of the band and song
- band is wearing black dark clothes, woman is wearing a white silk night dress with white curtains, which would usually be shown as purity, but this could be resembling ghosts and death because the curtains look ghostly while flapping in the wind
- camera does swirling motions when focusing on the woman in the room
- every time between the verses and choruses and bridge there is the sound of wind
- woman starts walking at edge of building, with wide angles and one below angle shot while she walks around corner of building confidently, almost dreamily but while looking sad but smiling, her hair and dress are flowing in the wind, making her seem like a supernatural being, separate from the world as she walks past other people's windows
- walks past a window of a colourful party, contrasts to theme of song and atmosphere of music video, emphasises the darkness of song and how separate this woman is, reflects conflict and isolation in her head
- people at party are wearing creepy masks however, which adds and brings back the spooky nature of the video
- could represent the masks people wear and the fake smiles people have to put on for other people while feeling awful inside, shown further when one of the people takes off the mask and shows running mascara down their face
- band shown only during the chorus when they actually sing in the song, not shown as part of the storyline or meaning, but we see them aggressively playing the music
- we see her walk past a window from inside the room, her figure is faint and glowing slightly with a white rim around her, shows she is possibly a ghost, reflecting and visually showing the song title and lyrics of chorus
- camera does moving dutch angles when showing the band and her as she walks and climbs up building
- she is climbing up to the room that the band are playing in
- she stays outside the room on the edge of the building, but leans against the different windows, does this very elegantly, very ghost like, the band cannot see her, matching lyrics "frozen inside without your touch, without your love", possibly showing she is separate and being kept from love
- she stays outside the room for a while during the bridge, with close ups of her face and the odd wide shot so we can see the band in the windows
- shot from inside room, as is we are looking through window to her and see reflection of member of the band looking at her sadly as she looks inside lovingly and longingly
- she falls as he starts singing after opening the window and is going to get her
- he looks very annoyed with himself, almost reflecting lyrics "all of this time, I can't believe I couldn't see, kept in the dark but you were there in front of me", showing he didn't see her in the window as did no-one else as she walked past
- he is lead singer of the guy band, with her being lead singer of whole band
- he drops her and screams/chants "I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside", showing anger of him dropping her, music dies out once she reaches the bottom, showing she has died too
- camera follows her from below her as she falls to ground, we don't see her reach the bottom, but there is then a wide shot of him sitting on edge of building, he goes back inside the room with the band, all of them looking sad
- sound of wind and sirens play again at the end showing life is carrying on as normal for everyone else
We looked at the first videos of a few artists for this workshop, who are now big solo artists and bands, so we could see how their first music videos were created to show their image and portray their style and brand of artist to the world, and compare it to how they have changed today.
Lady Gaga - Just Dance:
the label is clearly trying to give the vibe of a party, with Lady Gaga bringing it back to life, with the light of the camera being made to look like a flash, usually used to record in a party, making the music video exhibit a realistic look, showing lady gaga is loud and adventurous.
Katy Perry - I kissed a girl:
This is showing Katy Perry as sexy and fun loving. There is also a lot of male gaze by proxy - male gaze for women, to show them this is why what men look for. There is also some irony of the fact she has kissed a girl in the lyrics, so could also be the stereotype of men sexualising lesbian relationships to draw in that audience so her music gets listened to more. Beaty lighting, soft, pinks, lens-flares, all very girly.
Arctic Monkeys - I bet you look good on the dance floor:
This video is very simple with just the band playing, almost like it's live even though it probably isn't, also you can see the other cameras in shot. They are trying to make the point that they’re just about the music and for the audience to only listen to the music, instead of wearing extravagant clothes with big sets, which is also shown by the lead of the band saying "don't get the hype". Cheap to make and unique in its own way because they aren’t even trying to compete, and is still interesting to watch despite the minimal attributes.
We looked at AC DC and one of their photos. We Looked at how to take pictures that fit our aesthetic for the artist we are going to music.
When thinking of metal you think skull on t shirt, leather jacket, chains, however this band has one of the artists in a schoolboy outfit and the photo is bad quality, which makes them look like grunge, slightly different to all the other heavy metal bands.
We then looked at one of Ariana Grande’s photo album covers.
This one was very posed, elegant, aimed more at girls in that respect, black and white very neat and clean, sat in an elegant position which is not a natural sitting position, which shows quite easy to listen music, pop. What you’ve got to try to do is show a bit of a story, try to portray the song or artists’ journey.
We then looked at the famous beatle picture of them crossing abbey road, outside abbey road studios, in London. This shows where they’re based, from Britain. They’re dressed in different colours and dressed in suits, however Paul McCartney is not wearing shoes and socks, which shows he is dead, done by photoshop because he died during the making of the album, and all walking in the same position.
Stories really help sell artists, if there is a backstory it can become huge. Masks/covering their faces can be really powerful because people want to know what they look like and who they are, it gives the artists more streams and people listen to them more. To get a good picture of someone you need to have them standing/sitting/posing in uncomfortable pictures to make them stand out from others.
Looking at Harry styles’ golden album cover, there is a hand bottom left corner, this add mystery, gets conspiracy theories going, adding mystery to your cover helps
- Discrimination of people of colour, specifically black people
- Images of shooting, shooting the choir and the guy at the beginning
- Cars on fire
- Corruption of America
- Protests and police violence
- Money and religion seem to be themes
- Youth and youth culture, children dancing
- Gives the sense that it is all one shot, the cuts are all hidden, not many obvious cuts
- In usual music videos you have pace cutting, cutting the footage to the beat of the music, which does not happen here
- Hand-written, lower case, impersonal like a letter, title card of the title of the song “this is America” reminds us of American teen movies
- Background of title card of black and writing is white, which could be significant
- Very American dream style, which is very much a white privilege concept
- Starts off in a warehouse, quite urban and plain, mysterious and has multiple uses, quite dirty, working class usually uses them
- Red chair and guitar lone on the set
- Handheld footage and we track movement towards the chair with the focus on man walking to the chair
- Quite gospel style of music at the start, calm atmosphere
- Wearing civil war trousers, no top, showing his skin colour, very formal trousers
- Guitarist now has bag over his head, makes him look like a hostage, main guy is holding a gun and shoots him in the head, resembles shooters/terrorists
- Reference to Jim Crow when he dances over and his style of dancing
- On the gun shot the music changes, gives the corruption vibe when wiping gun with red cloth, could resemble violence, death, blood, but also republican because of the colour red
- Some of his dancing makes him look almost zombie like
- Wide tracking shot following his movements as he moves
- Goes back to Gospel style music, shots of everyone praying then he comes in with a machine gun, referencing a church massacre in Cholsten, 10 were shot 9 died, so there were 10 in this shot dancing and then shot at, was done by a white supremacist so a racist issue in 2015
- Very smiley with him and the dancers, seems quite fake, but behind them there seems to be riots and danger and violence
- When he starts talking about his cellphone, it pans up to a shot of 4 kids all still on their phones, referencing this asocial world
- In background there is a man dressed in all black on a white horse next to a police car, referencing the KKK
- Silence when he raises his hands in a gun and zooms into a close up, as he lights a cigarette and walks out of the shot
- Pans up to him walking over to the car, the guy playing the guitar at the start is back with the hostage bag still over his head, scissor is sitting on a car as the camera moves backwards to get a wide shot, reference to other artists
- He gets up and dances on the cars, which could reference the police pulling over black people quite a lot and was violent towards them
- Running through the dark corridor and the only thing you can see are the whites of his eyes, references the time a black man was running from white supremacists and the only thing you could see was the whites of his eyes
An A&R executive is somebody who would go out and find new talent and works with them and help them to become successful recording and performing artists.
Michael Alago:
- Executive for Geffen records (1980s)
- Worked with the The Misfits, Cyndi Lauper, and the Metallica
- He would go out to bars and nightclubs in New York + watch put for any new bands and new music
- White zombie was one of them
- His eye just went back and forth to them onstage, he didn’t like the songs but thought they had image, signed in 1991
- They had made some records from Geffen Records
- One of their records stalled at 180,000 units, but MTV played their songs and then it goes up to 1,000,000 and above units, and gets them the coverage they needed
That is a situation where somebody in a record label signs artists who’s music isn’t that great, but their look and brand it interesting and unique/incredible
Chart metric:
Places like chart metric sees the trend of how artists are doing and where they are going.
The idea with Commodities is you buy them when they’re not worth very much, and you sell them when the value peaks. A&R executives use these tools to find artist and acts which are already on an upward trend. Numbers don’t tell you how talented an artist is, an independent band can only do so much out there.
You’ve got to look at your artists and find out what it is about them that makes then stand out to make them separate from the crowd, see what’s special about them as people and match the music to that.
You can just use any music/something really popular, but you’ve got to think as the examiner and as an AR executive, find that thing that nobody else has picked up on yet.
Band camp and richer unsigned:
- They can find a seriously varying quality of music that has not hit it’s audience yet for some reason
- It's great to find unknown music that has not been found by other people yet
A campaign is a series of advertisements using various marketing tools that share the same message and ideas to promote a business or event to a target audience.
Defining a campaign:
- a coordinated series of actions/elements aimed at achieving a shared, defined set of goals
Both Warner bros and host use a range of activities and media to build awareness and demand for their films and time these to build up anticipation int he run up to the opening weekend
Many different ways to create a marketing campaign: trailers, social media, interviews, BTS photos, competitions/giveaways, TV spots, billboards, synergies with toys/costumes/accessory manufacturers, sponsorship with food/drink and other brands, premieres, awards, critic reviews, etc.
Integrated campaign message: Dove Soap campaign
How we can apply that to music promotion campaigns?:
- music videos, other video content, album artwork, tours, live appearances such as at festivals or on radio and TV shows, social media, interviews with websites, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, posters
- shared/defined set of goals the record label or artist them-self are investing money into the campaign in an attempt to build demand for the products and services it sells. This typically includes recorded music, tour tickets and merchandise. the label also raises revenue through streams and plays of music on YouTube and radio stations as well as licensing the music for use in TV shows, films, video games and magazines
Bella Thorne started off in Disney Channel's TV show "Shake it off" and as one of Disney's first artists at the age of 13. But later in life, after 3-4 years of being signed to Disney, went onto a different path in both music and acting career. She signed onto a record label, Hollywood Records. She then left and decided to create her own record label "Filthy fangs", announced at Coachella in April 2018, which was partnered with Epic/Sony.
She started by singing the theme tune of the shake it up show, and therefore started with music and singing in 2010. She also then starred as a dancer in the show builds her image as a triple threat, showing she has the stamina to both sing and be a dancer all the same.
She is also a singer and songwriter for quite a few songs and a few artists, but some things in her life has caused her to have a few controversies with the public and even with her fans. Some recent controversial activities have been starting her own OnlyFans site, earning over $1 million in the first 24 hours of joining, and that is only an example of the controversies Bella Thorne has been involved in.
Singles and albums she has released and been apart of:
- "watch me" - 2010 (reached 86 on US billboard charts, made with Zendaya, her co star on shake it up)
- "shake it up: break it down" - 2011 (an album created by Disney with Bella Thorne and Zendaya as the singers)
- "TTYLXOX" - 2012 (reached 97 on US billboard charts)
- "Shake it up: live 2 dance" - 2012 (another Disney album)
- "fashion is my kryptonite - 2012 (made with Zendaya)
- "Made in Japan" - 2012 (an album made by Disney with Zendaya)
- "Contagious love" - 2013 (made with Zendaya)
- "Shake it up: I love dance" - 2013 (another album made by Disney)
- "call it whatever" - 2013 (debut album, different genres, cancelled on 2014)
- "call it whatever" - 2014 (single from album, number 47 then eventually number 10 on billboard hot dance club)
- "Jersey" - 2014 (original EP)
- "Burn so bright" - 2018 (lead single for the movie "Midnight sun", along with others for the soundtrack)
- "What do you see now" - 2022 (her debut studio album)
- "GOAT" - 2018
- "Bitch I'm Bella Thorne" - 2018
- "Pussy mine"
- "Lonely" - 2020 (also included a music video for this song)
- "SFB" - 2020
- "Phantom" - 2021 (features Malina Moye)
- "Shake it" - 2021 (removed off of YouTube for "explicit content")
- "Up in flames" - 2021 (made with B3N, also made for the album "Time is up")
- "In You" - 2021 (made with Juicy J)
Some music videos:
Fashion is my kryptonite:
Bitch I'm Bella Thorne:
As you can see, in her later works Bella Thorne became more explicit with her music and this is also reflected in her music videos also, especially after leaving Disney after having found it "too restricting" because she wished she could be more true to herself and her wants and desires, and was able to find herself once leaving. Bella started her new style with the song "call it whatever" after wanting to move away from the auto tuned pop that she was being forced to perpetuate by Disney, and she wanted it to be her own choice of what she released.
Some more of her controversies include her leaking her own nudes after a hacker threatened to do so, which received great support and love from her co star Zendaya:
But there were also some very upset reactions from mothers of children who used to watch Disney and saw her as a role model, as well as many other women looking down on her. These controversies however put her back into the spotlight, after not having been very actively popular, except for acting in the thriller movie "the babysitter", in the past few years before this happened in 2021. Bella Thorne also completely changed her look by 2019, changing from her noticeable ginger hair to green ombre and full green, and sexualised herself more by this point, which seems to be what she has wanted to do all along, which did not receive much praise from some Disney fans.
- He is a writer who has written extensively about the role of stars in films, tv and music generally, any kind of star
- In order to get the relationship between music and the audiences, you need to understand the roles of the stars in media
What is a star?: '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' (paraphrased quote)
In other words, stars are an image, stars themselves as
people don't exist, everything is a created image,
it's created by the industry (record labels, companies)
Irrespective of the medium, Dyer theorised that stars have some key features in common:
- A star is an image created out of a range of materials (artwork, videos, live performances, interviews, media appearances, etc.), all carefully orchestrated
- Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings
Therefore:
Stars depend on a range of subsidiary media, such as TV, radio,
presenter shows, magazines, interviews, to construct an image for them
to be marketed to their target audiences to keep up
their appearances (many people are involved in one person if they
are massively popular)
Common values of music stardom:
- Youthfulness
- Rebellion
- Sexual magnetism
- An anti-authoritarian attitude
- Originality
- Creativity/talent
- Aggression/anger
- A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour
- Conspicuous consumption of sex, drugs and material goods
- Difference/individualism/confidence
- Success against the odds
According to Richard Dyer, the "star image" is incoherent (incomplete) and' open", Dyer says this is based upon two key paradoxes
PARADOX 1 - Star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer (eg. wearing expensive, money clothes looking unearthly and god/goddess like vs. their usual day to day clothes/in their day to day life)
PARADOX 2 - The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer (eg. being at stage door with their fans, signing things, fan meet and greets vs. not actually being friends with them, being far away from the person in concert, but still seeing them up close and feeling so close to them)
The STAR IMAGE
- Incoherence ensures audiences to continually watch more to 'complete' this image of them, so they feel they know more or to 'make sense of' the image
- Performance always seems to promise the completion of the image, but is unsatisfying, such as people meeting their heroes and not getting their full image
- Therefore fans will go out of their way to try and get that satisfaction by going to more meet and greets and seeing more concerts of theirs
