Postmodernism.
A Background to: Modernism (the experimental phase).
Modernism believed in experimentation; it broke boundaries in the early 1900s to the 1950s that had already been set in a variety of art forms. TS Elliot, for instance, broke the conventions of poetry for the first time ever, at the same time that abstract art was developing and expanding - Tracy Emin for example, with her Unmade Bed image, as well at Stravinsky's music. Modernism was percieved as appealing to only the most elite (the most educated).
A Background to: Postmodernism (a theory by Leonard, consistantly modernising).
Postmodernism brings supposedly the end of originality. It involves sampling texts from different contexts and combining them in order to form new material - something original.
Postmodern material is often self-referential, as it wants the audience to be reminded of real life, and then become aware that it's engaged with a media text. The texts also use allusion to break any illusions of reality. In the early days of television and music production the aim was to make the text as realistic and lifelike as possible. Postmodernism, wanting to be different; tries to do the opposite to this. It used intertextuality regularly so draw in order to connect with certain audiences, rather than using an emotive connection from media to viewer.
Lady Gaga's 'Telephone'.
One incredibly influential present day example is Lady Gaga. The entire music video uses allusion to grab it's audience and keep them entertained.
There are:

• Graphics similar to that from Kill Bill.
• Graphics and editing genre-crossing, referencing film.
• Jump cuts are used as a reference to CCTV cameras.
• Self-referencing - Lady Gaga. "Told you she didn't have a dick".
• Product placement - again genre-crossing, this time with advertisements. Virgin and diet coke is used. The coca cola is infact self-referenicial as well, her fans will pick up on the fact that it's highlighting that Lady Gaga used to curl her hair with it as a child - strengthening the connection between media and audience.

Audience
The audience is perhaps the most important factor to consider when producing any media product, including music videos, as it is the audience that determines the video's success - or lack of.
There are two main parts to consider when focusing in on an audience to target: the demographics and the psychographics.
Demographics- basic information: age range, gender, occupation, income, married/single, living situation, etc.
Psychographics- what the interests/personality of the targeted audience are. ie. risk takers, conservative(don't take risks) trend setters, trend followers. What their image is and how it fits in with the product - the music video.

Audience Theory
In recent years a selection of theories have been devised in order to assist the media in understanding how the media itself works, so that producers can use the findings to their advantage, to unltimately dominate the media.

Hypodermic Needle Theory: this theory infers that the media is like a drug (ie needle). The audience are passive receptors - they do not think about what they're told, they just accept it. An example is in fact Adolf Hitler; he used the German media to influence his public against the Jewish. The audience take on the ideology of the media text - mass media, revealing that the media does in fact have significant power in influencing their chosen targeted audience.

Two step theory: the idea that media influences 'group leaders' or influential people within a given community is what the two step theory revolves around. In short; the media only influences certain people, which then "mexican waves" through to the rest of the public.

Uses and gratifications theory: this theory implies that the audience pick and choose which media texts they engage with. The audience have control and power; they have an 'active role' in making decisions based on their own psychographic profiles.

Effects debate: the Effects idea suggests that the media has a direct impact on the thoughts and behaviour/actions of the audience, for example when young children/adolescents have in the past watched horror films then attempted to imitate what they'd seen in reality. However, with no research having been undertaken, there is not evidence to develop the Effects debate, from a debate into a theory.

Encoding and decoding: this is also more of a debate than a theory. When a producer of a text uses codes to convey certain meanings but the audience decode them with a more oppositional reading, or with individual interpretations, who has more power? Who has more control - the media or the audience?

Reception theory: this theory opposes the Hypodermic Needle Theory. It believes that the audience is in fact actively involved, similarly to the Uses and Gratifications Theory, though it also insinuates that the audience constructs the meaning of the text. They ultimately create the meaning through the process of decoding - postmodernism.

Theorist: Roland Barthes: in his essay: The Death of the Author, supports the Reception Theory. He writes that the author does not control the meaning of the text; the audience does, and they can decode aspects in unintended and even oppositional ways.

Marketing
In order for us to expand our prior understandings of the details involved in marketing, we were set the brief to promote one of eight possible bands, invented by our media teacher, and; paired. I chose to work with Ashlie Bowes, to promote our chosen band: The Dynobots.
We were given a basic overview on what the group were about, and breifed that we needed to promote them to Frambois Records (a fictional record company), but it was only once we began planning our pitch that we realised how much work was involved. We thought about their:
iconic image
audience
genre
first album
influences
suitable venues, and
possible promotional strategies.
Then expanded each section, giving real, believable details.
We presented all of our work with a slideshow to visually aid our pitch, this was particularly good for unveiling their iconic image. We believe that we covered all the necessities and put forward a realistic and influential pitch.
THE DYNOBOTS

Group Meeting

In our own time our group got together with the intention of choosing a song for our music video. We discussed artists that we like and that could be suitable, and after a fairly long list we considered 3oh!3. We watched as many of their music videos as we could find to obtain a feel for their style, then began listening to their songs without videos. We knew that we wanted to choose one without a video so we wouldn't be subliminally influenced. We considered I'm Not Your Boyfriend Baby amongst others, but came to the conclusion that the song; Deja Vu had the strongest lyrics for a narrative, and had no expletive language unlike the majority of other tracks. We researched 3oh!3 (see the label 3oh!3) and discovered their iconic image which we now know we need to incorporate into the video.

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Yesterday we had another group meeting during class. We knew that it had been suggested that we try out a preliminary lip syncing task in order to get the hang of it, so that we have more of an insight into how it will work when it comes to doing it for real in our actual music video, as none of us have ever done it before. We should also learn the cans and can'ts of lip syncing which is useful to know before the planning stage.

As a group, we decided that we wanted something light, not very serious and with a change of tempo so that we could experiment properly. As Amy had originally wanted to do Dinosaur - Ke$ha we looked into that. It was fun, but after the second verse we'd all become sick of it and no longer wanted to work on it. After individually Youtubing songs (I looked at Beyonce, Eminem and Florence and the Machine) Amy came across the perfect track. It was fun, had a change in tempo and was quite 'tounge-in-cheek' which is ideal. It is Mono Mono from Madagascar 2.

We then spent the remainder of the lesson listening to the track, practicing miming to it, reading through the lyrics and compromising on where to make cuts and jotting our decisions down. It was very rough and we're not so bothered about costume or location as we're focusing solely on making the lip movements in sync with the track. So far we have worked very well as a group, although we do have very different opinions and ideas, we've all been talking it through until we agree or compromise.

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Today we got together again, although this time to focus on our main piece. We decided to plan a rough idea of what to do for the video. Initially we came to the conclusion that we would like:

• A narrative with the storyline linked to the lyrics, featuring the artist miming
• A plain, empty room solely for the artist
• Fast, varied cuts
• At least one section with sped up photographed stills

Next, knowing what we were setting out to achieve we listened to the song the whole way through, each mentally forming ideas of what we could do. The second time through we paused after each line and exchanged ideas. Most of the time they were actually quite similar, other times; one idea would outshine the others so we went with those, and a few times we disagreed so we kept talking until we reached a unanimous decision.

Some of Sophie's ideas stood out:

• Filming out of a car window at night, then speeding up the footage in order to create a blur of lights which should create a preferred reading of the main character travelling between locations.
• When the main character emerges from a females house after a one night stand, his clothes should be on back-to-front/inside out, etc for a comical effect.

Amy:

• Thought through the practicalities of our intended plan of having our main character jumping out of a second storey window.
• She also said that she could borrow some real police equipment and clothing from a policeman she knows for our 'officer officer' scene.

I:

• Suggested the idea of involving a seperate room for the artist, aside from the narrative in order to make the video more conventional and busy.
• Focused on the camera angles and movement in each frame.
• Organised the group during our discussion in order to make our ideas merge rather than clash.
• Am taking on the responsibility of gaining the use of a taxi for our 'cab driver cab driver' scene.
• I'm also looking into venues available for our useage that have a bar.

The rest of the planning stage was a combination of all of our ideas put together.

Oasis Album Artwork

Conventions

Oasis' first album - Definitely Maybe, adheres to many of the central conventions expected of album artwork.

• The band themselves are feature.
• The band name is positioned at the top left.
• The album's name is also situated at the top.

Codes

Every aspect of this album cover can be subconsciously decoded to reveal an insight into the personality and intentions of the band - this is evidence of a good album cover.

• Sanded down wooden floors, fire place, leather sofa, plants - all exposes sophistication and class. Serious band.
• Red wine glasses, BNH cigarettes and a lighter - in the foreground. These objects decoded suggest that the band do follow the band stereotype by drinking and smoking, however they go full out and do things properly. This reinforces the upper class tone to the album cover.
• There are however some more working class props merged in - framed photograph of a Manchester City player - this implies that Oasis originate from Manchester. They are proud of where they came from which is obvious from their feature in the artwork, and although the band are now situated in more upper class surroundings, they still remember their roots.
• The positioning of the artists - is also incredibly important. From this alone, the audience can tell that the man in the central foreground, the lead vocalist, Liam Gallegar, is the central focus of the band. He's lying on the floor. This could be to implant the impression that he is high on drugs, or that he is rebellious - a trend setter. He's lying on the floor simply because he can. He's the only band member not facing the television, suggesting that he's isolated himself from the group - a code for arrogance and originality. He is trying to be unique. The next most important to the band is Noel, the lead guitarist. He is sat up on the sofa, initially raising his status already and his body language is relaxed over a guitar. When decoded, the musicality focus of the band is highlighted and strengthened. The fact that Noel looks so relaxed and laid back implies that song writing comes naturally to him - exposing the high quality of their music. The other three band members are in the background. One is positioned slightly closer to the camera than the others, however he is sat lower down, whereas one is sat on a chair, the other standing up; equalising the three. It seems that these three are the least important and impressionable, in fact these artists did leave the band and become replaced which backs up the code.
• The fact that the band are watching television - enforces a sense of realism. They seem like a family, emitting personality and spirit; which is essential for a band to make it on a large scale. Their potential audience and fans need to be able to connect with the band in order for them to be successful.
• Globe - can be decoded as the band's intentions - world domination, they're 'aiming big', worldwide, not just a small thing. The simple placement of a globe raises their own profile. The featuring of the globe has become iconic to Oasis' album artwork.
• Font: Oasis - has also become iconic. The bold black and white font can be decoded as simple, bubbly, serious, down to earth, low budget, sophisticated - which is what Oasis wanted to be perceived to be. There aren't any capital letters used, implying equality.
• Font: Definitely Maybe - the scribed font reveals more of a personal touch and exaggerates the band's input to their music, they write their own lyrics for example.
• The ideology of the album artwork is trying to get across the idea that although the band members are doing well and are much more well-off than they were, they're still the same people. They don't want to lose their original Mancunian fanbase.

Conventions
Oasis' third album: Be here now, differs greatly to previous albums. Most of the conventions are in fact broken.

• The band name is featured to the top-right of the cover - as opposed to the left, showing that they're a little bit different. The font used had already become iconic by this point, so it didn't need to follow the conventions.
• There is no title on the cover. This implies that they're arrogant - too big now for a title. The title itself: Be Here Now, is imperitive; it's strong and demanding, overpowering, reinforcing the idea of arrogance.
• The band are once again featured however; following a convention of album covers. Thisis unlikely to be for the purpose of being conventional, but in fact for the pure fact that they want to be on the cover of their album: implying arrogance and self-obsession; which is more likely.

Codes

• There is a mansion towards the background, enforcing sophistication, and the dispersion of expensive items, eg. classic car, motorbike, moped - Vespa, Roles Royce, etc, suggests that they do in fact have more money than they can be sensible with. However, this isn't of course the preferred reading, the preferred reading would be that they are rebellious, unique individuals, and they have made it in the music industry successfully.
• There is a clock featured, though it has no hands. This portrays the idea that time no longer controls them. They're independent and manage their own time now: they're free - and the fact that they are outdoors with wide open green space and a blue sky, confirms that decoding freedom is correct. The clock may also be missing it's hand in a way that can be decoded as: time has stopped - it is their moment. This enforces their importance.
• There is a calender on the cover, displaying: August 21st - which is when the album was released. It's not neccessary, and unique. Oasis can do what they want now.
• The guitarist appears to be playing an extremely large key, once again reinforcing the idea that they are in control, in power, and of course unique.
• The greenhouse shows that they have much more money than ever before, they can spend it on really unneccessary modern items, but the abicus adds a touch of 'old school'. The director could have placed it there in order to keep the link between the band's original Mancunian fans and the band strengthened. The guitar, television and globe also add to the connection between the first album and the current one.
• The car in the pool presents their recklessness and rebellion - they don't care about or appreciate their money. They use it to pull big stunts, like this one, for publicity.
• The grammar phone subtley implies that Oasis want their fans to believe that they're going to be classics, like the grammar phone. They're going to go down in history.
• The telescope on the globe could be decoded as Oasis have to look through a telescope to see the rest of the world - they're so far above everyone else, they're 'out of this world'. All of this boosts their status just from people looking at the cover. The globe is also iconic to their album covers.

Original Music Videos
Some music videos have dared to break away from a formulaic approach, and have in fact succeeded by doing so. They have done this by: surprising or even shocking the audience, then using striking imagery to engage the audience and keep them transfixed.
Some good examples for their time are:

• White Stripes - 7 Nation Army
• Radiohead - Fade Out (Street Spirit)
• Rascal Flats - What Hurts The Most

How Music Video Differs From Film And Television Drama
Conventional films use a smooth series of clear long shots, midshots and close ups in a way that is balanced spacially. eg. Longshot - the character will be dwarfed by his/her surroundings; Midshot - the character and setting are equally proportioned and with; Close ups - the subject dominates the space. The cinematography used in conventional films always enforce realism, they never cut at awkwards points - eg. the camera will never cut at an elbow or a knee - it ruins the convergence of the piece.
Music videos break all of this. They break the conventions of film and the rules of cinematography in the boldest ways possible in order to stand out as being a music video and nothing else.

Ghetto Gospel - 2pac

Brief List of Conventions Used:

• Point of view shot, sirens, helicopters
• Conventional image and costume - baseball cap, hood up
• Establishing shot, urban
• Defocussing effect
• Hand held camera, realism
• Montage to build a character's profile - no dialogue
• No artist featured (Tupac is dead, Elton John not featured)
• Drugs
• Time continuem - starts and ends in the same place/time
• Temporal leaps - jumps around in time
• Graphic match - face to sun
• Pathetic fallacy - rain, dark
• Fade to black
• Series of establishing shots - church juxtaposes city
• Intimite camera work
• Serious issues addressed - poverty, gangs, drug abuse, death, religion peer pressure, crime

Group Meetings
On Thursday 21st October we found out who are other group members are and decided to have our first ever group meeting there and then. We discussed our individual intentions to combine ideas and reach mutual decisions for a rough direction of what we intend to aim for. We unanimously decided on three major aspects in the end.
1. We don't want a slow song, We want to be able to use fast, short cuts so we consequently need an upbeat track to accomodate this.
2. We don't want anything too serious. Facing real life issues for instance is too heavy we feel for our first ever music video, besides, we want to have fun and experiment with this project.
3. We'd really like to construct a conventional music video, as conventions we believe are definitely there for a reason.
None of us were biased to any particular genre, we all have a variety of tastes in different types of music, so we agreed to go away over half term and each come back with a couple of song ideas each that follow our previous conclusions: fast, fun and relitively conventional.
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Over the half term I looked at a wide range of videos and felt strongly about Nickelback's - Burn It To The Ground. I even started to draw up a plan for the introductory series of shots.
When I presented this to Amy and Sophie and explained what I had come up with over half term, neither of them felt connected to the song I had chosen, so the idea was rejected however it has still given me a small insight into how time consuming and detailed the planning process will have to be.

Nickelback - Burn It to the Ground Intro Plan

We also decided that we'd like our music video to have a narrative as well as a "live" performance and lip syncing, as we believe that all the most successful music videos are set up in this way and we personally find them more engaging and to watch as they manage to hold our attention. It also gives us a chance to learn new skills rather than focusing on purely a narrative, for instance.
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Today we had our second group meeting - Thursday 4th Novemeber - where we bounced song ideas off of eachother. I shared the idea of Eminem songs: Spacebound and So Bad, though neither were found to be appropriate for what we're looking for. Sophie suggested a perfect track however the lyrics were in German, which, as none of us speak German we decided would be too difficult and time consuming to learn to lip sync. Not to mention we'd have to translate the lyrics to work out what the song is about before we could even begin to think of a storyline for a narrative. Amy put forward a couple of Calvin Harris songs which although good, were far too famous already for us to focus on without being influenced by the original videos.
We also created our group blog - http://emma-amy-sophie.blogspot.com/ - where we all worked together to decide on our details. Amy and myself then wrote our first post together on the day's progress whilst Sophie looked up more possible songs. Amy then helped Sophie whilst I created our blog's graphology. It took three attempts to get it in a way that all three of us were content with, but the end result stuck. I also added a link list to make it easier for us to navigate to our individual pages as well as our school's media blogs.
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Not Afraid - Eminem

Brief List of Conventions Used:

• Sings (raps) into camera lens
• Artist featured
• Iconic costume
• Angry facial expressions and body language - suits genre
• Zooms in and out
• Intertextuality
• Urban surroundings
• Camera wobbles - disorientating
• Returns to first setting at the end

Telephone - Lady Gaga & Beyonce

Brief List of Conventions Used:

• Intertextuality - Thelma and Louise and Kill Bill
• Narrative - though not main focus, main focus is on effects
• Establishing shot - prison
• Low angle shot - makes prison fence appear more domineering, unescapable
• Font - 70s graphics - old style, yellow and pink, feminine, strong and bold, 'girl power'
• High angle shot - CCTV narrative
• Tittilation - lesbian erotic
• Iconic costume - old fashioned prisoner costume
• Point of view shots
• Breaks 30 degree rule
• Temporal spurts
• Realistic mise-en-scene - juxtaposes ellaborate costumes
• Phallic symbols (represents male genitalia)
• Breaks 180 degree rule
• Product placement
• Unrealistic camera work - visual trickery
• Close up emotion - more obvious moods displayed - there's no dialogue like in films
• Intimate/erotic camera work - high angle-cleavage, low angle-crotch
• Sense of performance
• Dancing
• Stills - fast jump cuts, like photographs
• Split screen
• Narrative characters join artists

In order to accumulate the best ideas of conventions to follow for my music video, I decided to analyse two more dated music videos and see which conventions are not used and the impact this has when watching the videos from the twenty-first century's perspective.

Stay - Shakespear's Sister

Breif List of Conventions Used:

• Never static, constant panning
• Looks into camera lens
• Slower cuts
• Two locations, though mostly in one
• Builds up speed with temporal flow
• Both narratives join
• Features artists
• Realistic
• Fades to black to end

Ironic - Alanis Morissette

Breif List of Conventions Used:

• Realistic
• Fast cuts (at beginning)
• Temporal relationship
• Diegetic sounds (cars)

From analysing the conventions used in this video the popular ones that are missing are apparent. It is clear to see why certain conventions have been introduced since the production of  Stay and Ironic. Using this, I must think to:

• Not make my music video so realistic that it becomes boring or too similar to film production
• Vary the length of cuts and vary the pace, preferably keeping it much faster then Stay or Ironic
• Use a variety of locations - focusing solely or mainly on one becomes boring and too realistic
• Make sure that each character is clearly defined to avoid confusion - the characters in Ironic's narrative are all very similar looking, this is best avoided

Toxicity - System of a Down
Brief List of Conventions:

• Features the band
• Performance on stage
• Breaks 180 degree rule
• In sync
• Black and white theme
• High angle shot of drums
• Never static, constant dolly use
• Some defocusing
• Variety of settings
• Close ups on instruments and artists
• Focus on musicality
• Low angle shots from audience/crowd
• Iconic costumes
• Zooms in and out
• Note: no narrative

When You're Gone - Avril Lavigne

Brief List of Conventions Used:

• Fade in from black
• Multiple narratives
• Musicality focus (piano)
• Artist featured
• Short, quick cuts
• Serious issue addressed - army theme
• Extreme close-ups
• Intimate camera work
• Performing into the camera
• Realistic
• Grey, brown, green colour scheme (army)
• Emotive body language
• Emotive facial expressions
• Artist joins the narrative's location (forest)
• Camera within the video

Album Cover Art Research

Cover Art Must:

• Establish the genre of music, the identity of the artists and credibility of the artist and the album itself.
• Involve striking imagery as a persuasive device to draw the targeted audience in, and strong codes and conventions in order to communicate with the audience.

Cover art can either be innovative or conventional depending on the genre involved.

Conventions of Cover Art

• Artist's name
• Album name
• Popular featured song tracks
• Artist/band
• Striking image
• Explicit sticker
• Barcode

Historical Context

• Prior to the 1950s album covers consisted of: landscapes, or serious images. The covers were functional rather than creative.
• During the 1950's Pop Art (-popular culture and high art) was introduced to album covers, originally by The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, with Peter Blake as the artist.

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Album Cover Art Analysis

Codes Decoded:
Flowers in the foreground - hippy, spirit- peace and love, drugs, nature, beauty.
Drum - reinforces seriousness of their musicality. Circus font and styling- fun, performance, entertainment, vibrant.
Costume - Performers, striking(note colours)- juxtaposes the military jackets- undermines. New, less serious than any previous cover album. Shocking.
Facial expressions - serious. Serious about their music.
Location - includes: palm tree, blue sky - happy, free, summer of love, hope, exotic, different - new. The iconic images of other artists are below the blue sky - they appear to be on the island - all in their own league.
The band - are central and in the foreground. They are infront of a large range of the biggest iconic singers ever recorded, placing their status before theirs - trying to subtley raise the audience's opinions of their popularity and status in the music league.

Nirvana - Nevermind

Codes Decoded:
Money on a hook - society taught to set out to achieve and recieve money from a young age - the baby is following the money blindly(can't see properly under water) - suggesting that society aren't seeing things clearly.
Water - can move any direction in water, nothing in sight to stop the baby/society but the baby still swims towards the money - follwing like sheep. Corrupting baby - Nirvana corrupting us? Revealing the truth?
Baby - new album, fresh, innocence, unique, undiscovered, under-developed - like Nirvana. New.
Money+Baby - Ideological album cover - juxtaposition - innocence and corrupt American(dollar bill) society. Materialistic, money-driven, political statement- serious band, unnatural.
Font - now iconic - black, bold, underlined, capitals - all make it striking. Simple - not superficial, sophisticated, serious(about their music). Tall font - proud. Same size - equality in society.

Rage Against the Machine

Codes Decoded:
Lingustics - Rage Against" - protest. "The Machine" - society - protest against society. Rebellious. (also tried (and succeeded) to take over Simon Cowell's almost guaranteed number one spot).
Context - Man coated himself in petrol and set himself on fire in a busy American street in protest to the Vietnamise war. Died. - If pragmatics are understood - instant impact. If not, the imagery does this anyway.
Colours - black, grey and white - newspaper print - serious, shock, impact, importance, realism.
Title - bold, cut-out-paper effect - again strengthening the newspaper code.
Self-titled band - serious about these specific issues.
Band doesn't feature - breaks convention. Not interested in the personal publicity, purely that of the cause. Serious artist. Serious on musicality.