Conventions of a music video
Music Industry
Before we can begin making our project, and start our own music video we need to understand this media form, what it consists of, examine the edits and identify the key conventions.
As a whole, through my research, I have gathered that the music industry consists of many different companies which may be global or independent, and the companies would earn their money by a way of selling music but also by selling the image of an artist. In general within a record label, there would be many people operating in different sectors to make and sell the music, however the artist would be a major selling point as they are the one that compose and perform the music. Also in todays digital world, music is so often download for free that the industry are turning much more to star construction and celebrity culture to make money.
As a whole, through my research, I have gathered that the music industry consists of many different companies which may be global or independent, and the companies would earn their money by a way of selling music but also by selling the image of an artist. In general within a record label, there would be many people operating in different sectors to make and sell the music, however the artist would be a major selling point as they are the one that compose and perform the music. Also in todays digital world, music is so often download for free that the industry are turning much more to star construction and celebrity culture to make money.
What is a music video and the purpose of it
The artist and/or their record label company make a music video. It is a construction of a short video clip, which is made for music of the artist. There are many reasons why music videos are created they promote, bring an extension on the income, extension of outlets (such as direct DVD, CD sales, music channels, downloads) and also to synergy for films, games, TV programmes. Recently the main purpose of making it would be for promotion.
Types of promotion
Advertising - The music video can be used for advertising the song it self. Music video’s started off playing on MTV channel where the video was seen by their audiences, this had attracted them onto the song and may had lead them to buying the CD.
Illustrate the song - The song would be given visuals therefore the audience would be able to see what visuals the artist or record label had chosen to put with the song.
Tells a story - To some of the audiences the music video may tell a story, maybe of the artist, as the individual would be able to see what is happening.
Expresses an Individuals emotion - Some may feel as though it expresses their own emotions as they may have experienced something in life and feel relatable to the music video.
Appeals to a visual audience - Audiences may prefer watching rather than listening to the song, therefore they would be more entertained by watching the music video. Sometimes individuals just prefer watching the music video and not listening to the song, which is what it would normally be used as.
Markets an Image - Music video may also be used on the artist, as it builds a name for the star, as it allows the audience to get an insight on how the artist looks and how they act.
What this means for me and our task: From this research I have identified that in our tasks we will need to place a strong focus on the image construction of our artist as the persona and image of the artist is clearly an key feature of this industry and form.
Andrew Goodwin's Theory
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| Andrew Goodwin |
Andrew Goodwin examined music videos as a form and developed a theory about the conventions of music videos. In this he states that there are 6 aspects to a music video:
- Lyrics and Visuals- Presenting a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
- Music and Visuals - Presenting a relationship between the music and the visuals
- Genre Conventions - Presenting a relationship between the genre and the visuals, for example having a convention such as a location which matches the genre.
- Frequent Looking - Having the Artist look frequently to the audience/camera or to another aspect of Mise En Scene such as another actor/actress
- Artist Promotion - Selling the artist, on how the record label or the artist wants to be seen. For example an artist may want to be presented as a heart throb and this may be done through presenting aspects which represent this.
- Intertextuality - This means to have one media text referencing to another media text.
What this means for me and our task: I am going to explore these conventions and try to identify them when I examine my own real media examples in my research, If I find that they are present across all music videos then I will need to consider how I implement these features in our own planning. At first hand I feel that many of them seem very accurate, just from many own knowledge of music videos and I think it will interesting to do a deeper analyse of music videos and track how accurate his theory is.
Conventions of Chosen Genre
Define Genre
We have decided that our genre will be Pop. Therefore we need to identify the conventions fo this genre. The name 'POP' originally comes from the word 'popular', this means that the selected genre is the most popular one. The genre is very diverse and often borrows elements from other styles. POP music usually consists of a basic format, which is the chorus-verse structure. Its a genre that has a great deal of hybridity- mix within in and is always developing and changing.Reason for decision
Being one of the most popular genre's is one of the key reasons why we have chosen the genre, it would mean that there would be a very wide range of pop audiences. Also it's diversity and the fact that there is so much hybridity in this genre greatly influenced our decision. It would allow is to be more creative and borrow aspects or ideas from other genres too.Its also one that our group is all familiar with and enjoy listening to ourselves so we believe that we would be able to work with it in an enjoyable and more successful way as we can relate to it.
This is a short video edit of pictures showing the generic conventions that we identified within the pop genre.
Because our chosen song is Pop/ Romance we wanted to focus particularly on this string of Pop. There are a number of photos in this video showing what we feel are conventions of a POP romance song. In order to complete this task we looked at POP music videos in order to gain an understanding of the conventions.
What this means for me and our task: From this research we were able to denitrify the conventions that we are going to apply to the music video that we will be creating. In addition to this we edited the pictures to the beat of the music as a practice of editing (Andrew Goodwin's theory of video matching the music). This has been useful s it has shown us how quick the editing will need to be and opened our eyes ot the completely of this task. we will need a lot of shots and the edit is going to take a long time.
Constructed Artist
As well as picking the song, the artist had to be chosen and constructed. We identified early on in our research into the industry that the construction of our artist will be one of the key feature of the video and a very important aspect in terms of the success of the product. We have put together photos of existing artists and stated what characteristics of them we would want to recreate for our artist.
What this means for me and our task: We have completed this in order to show what are intentions are of our own artist. This will be a clear aspect fo our planning and the ideas we have drawn form this will directly influence the casting decision we make.
What this means for me and our task: We have completed this in order to show what are intentions are of our own artist. This will be a clear aspect fo our planning and the ideas we have drawn form this will directly influence the casting decision we make.
In conclusion to this video, we intend on finding an artist that is, a young, white, attractive male artist, which has a smart casual look to them and this is because we want the voice to match our artist, and it is what we have all intended on going for. We see our artist to be a heart throb that usually teenage girls would lust over.
Star Profile - First Artist that we cast
This is Teddy Walker. He was our initial chosen actor to play our artist.
CHANGES: Unfortunately Teddy had a busy timetable and was unable to fully commit to the project. In addition we had doubts about his confidnece as in early shoots he was a bit shy and struggled to learn the lyrcis and perform to camera. So half way through we found ourselves without an artits. We decided to refocus our constructed idea and at this point we had carried out further research and really liked Olly Murs look and style. We felt that it directly fitted with our music style.
We recast and after many failed auditions I decided that at this stage I would be the actor! I also do drama and feel that I can confidently carry off the role. Also it means we don't have to rely on anyone else as I will obviously fully commit to the project. Although my ethnicity is not the same as those we found in our research, we felt that through costume and style we could conform to the start construction we had identified.
Star Profile - New Artist
Print Task Research (Digi-Pak)
A Digi-Pak is the packaging of the CD album. It
would consist of the front cover, back cover and the two inside panels.
I will be analysing how existing Digi-Paks have
been creating.
Print Task Research (Magazine Adverts)
A magazine advert would be used to
advertise the album, on a magazine and they would provide little information of
it.
Aimee and Rahat's Print Task Research
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What we will do with this research :
By collaborating all of our digi-pack research we realised that consistency is present across a number of different artists, not just the ones we looked at individually. From looking at two different digi-packs for Olly Murs, we found that artists maintain their star image across a number of different albums/releases. This meant that we knew that the star image for our artist had to be very strong and evident in our digi-pack.
We also saw that the colour scheme was continued throughout, making sure that the same colour scheme is kept throughout, this may be done to make it all recognizable as being related to one product so we would need to think about keeping the same colour scheme throughout in our print tasks.
The images would also mostly consist of the artist themselves rather than anything else, this is to ensure that the artist is being promoted than anything else, and for the audience to recognise who the product belongs to, which could be the selling point as the artist is what is sold to the audience mostly. From our research we plan to sell our artist and this would be done having our artist presented majorly throughout the print tasks, probably using a range of creative shots.
Further Research into music video
Aimee and Rahat's Music Video Research
Music Video research (taylor & bridgit) from aimwatson
As well as this, the male artists of the POP genre all have a similar smart/casual look which consists of bright colours (not dull or unsophisticated costume). So we will focus clearly on costume when we style our artist.
We also noticed that Andrew Goodwin's theory, particularly the lyrics and visual theory, apply throughout the videos we have analysed, and will therefore be a key feature that is taken into consideration when constructing our music video.
Finally, we realised that the mood in most POP videos are happy and cheery, which is highlighted through mise en scene, as well as the song its self. As a result of this research, we will aim to conform to these conventions of the pop genre (and of music videos generally) and will apply these to our music videos.
What we will do with this research :
By collaborating our research, we noticed similarities within the research we have individually carried out. We discussed these and drew out the similarities we came across. These include the common choices of locations within pop music videos; often parks, streets and cafes are chosen for locations. We plan to use similar locations in our video.As well as this, the male artists of the POP genre all have a similar smart/casual look which consists of bright colours (not dull or unsophisticated costume). So we will focus clearly on costume when we style our artist.
We also noticed that Andrew Goodwin's theory, particularly the lyrics and visual theory, apply throughout the videos we have analysed, and will therefore be a key feature that is taken into consideration when constructing our music video.
Finally, we realised that the mood in most POP videos are happy and cheery, which is highlighted through mise en scene, as well as the song its self. As a result of this research, we will aim to conform to these conventions of the pop genre (and of music videos generally) and will apply these to our music videos.
Costume Inspirations
There are several mainstream POP artists that we came across and looked into. They had a range of outfits that we found interesting and wanted our artist and female character to be wearing costume which is similar to those. For the male artist, commonly we wanted him to have a smart casual look, which made him look sophisticated, for example, with shirts, hats and chinos. The artist's girlfriend would potentially have smart trousers, jackets, skirts and dresses. Below there are a few images of costumes we wanted our cast to wear similar clothing to.
