RESEARCH: MORAL PANICS

According to The Guardian on 1st September, 2012:

BBFC reviews policy on music and factual videos :
 

- The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will this week close a three-month consultation that most observers believe will end a loophole which means DVDs with titles like 'The Bitch of Buchenwald' and 'Britain's Bloodiest Serial Killers' can claim exemption from being given age guidance by the British Board of Film Classification.

- As things stand, most sport, documentary and music videos can claim an exemption from classification. "The great majority of exempt video works are fine," said the BBFC's head of policy, David Austin. "They are not going to harm anyone, but there are a significant number of titles that are potentially harmful to children".

- Austin showed the Guardian examples of videos that have claimed exemption but would have been classified. They range in seriousness. One of the more shocking is a documentary about the American heavy metal band Slipknot "which, actually my son bought when he was 10 and I confiscated", said Austin. "He's waiting till he's older to get it back."

- A music video by the Norwegian black metal band Gorgoroth, which was rated X in Germany but is unrated in the UK, shows topless women being crucified with blood running down their breasts.

- Austin said: "Given concerns about knife crime in this country, that really is how to kill someone. If that came in for classification, we would not classify it – we would cut that."

Other potentially problematic DVDs include wildly violent cage fighting DVDs and ones that instruct in krav maga, the combat techniques developed by the Israeli army.

Examples-

• A performance by Rihanna on The X Factor in December 2011 attracted 4,500 complaints to Ofcom.
• I Like the Way She Do It (sexually explicit language)
  
• If I Can't (strong language)
• PIMP 50 Cent (offensive images of women)
• What's My Name Rihanna (body thrusting, striptease)
• Express Christina Aguilera (burlesque)

Moral panics are not only expressed through the increasing amount of explicit material shown in music videos but also the lyrics themselves that often express sexual references and unpleasent language such as swear words. Video games have also became more violent with young children being able to play games such as 'Grand theft auto' where the game focuses on a gangstar. This game often has violence, bad language and often encourages the player to carry out violent acts.


MUSIC AND STARS TODAY PUSH THE BOUNDARIES ON SEX AND VIOLENCE.

RESEARCH: STARDOM

Stardom has remained as a key factor to the success of commercial production, distribution and exhibition of films and music. It has also played a special role in the medium’s interaction with other parts of the media, so that stars have played a significant part in the coverage and marketing of the music generally.

They remain the industry’s primary marketing tool and are frequently a main reason for the audience’s attendance (In cinema) and sale (music records and concerts).

http://www.magneticmag.com/2012/07/do-you-have-aspirations-stardom-define-your-style-your-image-is-arguably-as-important-as-the-music-itself/:

'Any great pop star has a team of people—from graphic designers to stylists to publicists to the very producers that make their music—all working to keep the public’s view of their star consistent'.

That consistency is so vastly important that when it comes to getting famous, it’s arguably as important as the music itself. When people hear your name, it needs to evoke a single, deeply recognizable and unique feeling. That is your image, and it reminds your audience what they are missing by not listening to your music or seeing you live. It is abstract, and has equally important audio and visual components that cooperate to push one message, one theme.'

Deadmau5 is an artist first and foremost, and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks about his art or what they desire for him to do. Porter Robinson is an intellectual boy who respects the music scene and aspires to advance it. Deadmau5 desires to have a star image that stands out and rather than being an icon of manners and fashion, he tries to be individual and as a result he gains more interest and consumers are more likely to remember/recognise him. (Any publicity is good publicity). 

This is similar to advertising strategies  like Working Titles film 'shifty'. They tried to gain interest and attention throught a fake email to consumers claiming that their friend had been arrested during a drug deal and that their name has been mentioned. This caused much outrage and many complaints.  This was bad publicity but gained attention and therefore became good publicity.

The 'meta-narrative star image' of a musician or group of musicians is very often heavily represented through music video. The star image is sold to viewers, who watch the stars performing or larking around in videos. The stars can choose what sort of image they wish to sell through the narrative of a music video and portray themselves.

The aim of a music video is to promote an album; for this reason, almost all music videos contain the image of the star(s), the singer or band, to help promote the album. Because of this music videos often feature a wide variety of shots (especially close ups) on their singers, and give them a large percentage of the screen time within a music video.

RESEARCH: DIRECTORS LABEL

During lessons we studied different directors and their music videos' style. I created a Yudu presentation on this.

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1yvmt/DirectorsLabel/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fkarentsanga2media.blogspot.co.uk%2F

Karen and I looked at  music videos from famous music video directors. We created a Yudu in order to show our analysis and display information about the directors.

RESEARCH: TRENDS

Music today is often orientated to a young audience with the artists being teen idols. Young Stars such as Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepson and One Direction are central in the music industry. Infact Carly Rae Jepsens UK sucess is due to Justin Bieber. After winning an American talent show, Carly Rae Jepsen experience huge sucesss in the US but she was barely known within the UK.

A tweet from Justin Bieber praising her new song gained Carly UK interest and attention. As a result her single 'Call me maybe' became number one. This showing the true power of social media and illustrates the two step flow model and how a product can go viral quickly because of popular interest, or in this case celebrity endorsement.  In the United States, the track reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Pop Songs chart. The song is the first number one by a Canadian female artist on the Billboard Hot 100 chart since 2007's "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne. With worldwide sales of over 8.3 million copies it is the second best selling single of 2012. This showing what impact young stars and idols can have on the trends of today.

The promotion of pop music has greatly increased recently due to the rise in music television channels such as MTV and 4music. Pop music lyrics focus upon romance and having fun nowadays.

 'PSY - Gangnam Style' is a 2012 Korean pop single by the South Korean rapper PSY.

Released on July 15, 2012, it debuted at number one on the Gaon Chart and has been viewed over 260 million times by today September 24, 2012, it is also the most liked YouTube video to date.

POP music is popular today since the beats of the music often encourage dancing which is reflected in the upbeat and choreographed music videos.- The music videos often consist of fast paced editing, straight forward narrative and related situations and scenarios.

1950s- Rock and Roll
1960s- Swinging sixties - Motown primarily featuring African American artists
1970s- Rock Genre with bands such as Kiss
1980s- MTV generation
1990s- Hard Rock and Heavy Metal and birth of popular Alternative bands
2000's and 2010s- Synthesised dance and pop music slowly become the mainstream option

RESEARCH: STUDYING MUSIC VIDEOS Steve Archer (Media Magazine-February 2004) -PREZI

STUDYING MUSIC VIDEOS on Prezi

PLANNING: POSSIBLE SONG CHOICES:

GOOD LIFE-      ONE REPUBLIC

JASON MRAZ-      WORDPLAY

                                                 
                                                  ED SHEERAN-           LEGO HOUSE

NOAH AND THE WHALE-     5 YEARS TIME

FOSTER THE PEOPLE-      WASTE

After running through ideas on how to display and promote these songs, we have chosen to produce a music video for 'good life' by One Republic.



RESEARCH: MUSIC TV CHANNELS CONTINUED

Music television is a type of television programmes which focuses predominantly on playing music videos from bands or artists. Music Television programmes may also host their own charts.






Wikipedia:

MTV, originally an initialism of Music Television, is an American cable television channel based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981.The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs. Today, MTV primarily broadcasts a variety of reality and scripted television programs targeted at adolescents and young adults.

MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the U.S. and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have gone independent. MTV's influence on its audience, including issues related to censorship and social activism, has been a subject of debate for years.

MTV significantly influence popular culture and succeeded earning $7 million in advertising revenue in the first 18 months. It remained a critical part of the music industry by leveraging music videos to help the image of artists such as Michael Jackson, Guns n’ Roses and 2Pac.

RESEARCH: MUSIC TV CHANNELS

'Catch the biggest tracks of the week on UKHOT40

Tune in as we count down the biggest tracks of the week on UKHOT40. Find out which of your favourite artists are closing in on the top spot! Could it be Rihanna riding high? Or perhaps Bruno Mars will be victorious? Or will it be a surprise from Ed Sheeran or Ke$ha?
Tune in and watch the hottest music videos on the hottest chart!'

Wikipedia:


Greatest Hits TV is a British satellite TV music channel owned by UltimateHits Limited.

Lava logo

The channel launched on 29 March 2010 on Sky channel 378 as Lava. Lava specialised in the Indie and rock music genres. Lava's remit was to provide a platform for young rock, pop punk and indie musicians, and features young unsigned music acts from around the United Kingdom. Lava was a sister channel of Channel AKA, which was also owned by Mushroom TV, and replaced Rockworld TV which operated on Sky Channel 378 and closed at 7.00am on 29 March 2010. Both the Lava and Channel AKA formats allowed viewers to decide on the station's playlist through the use of a voting system which enables viewers to watch the videos they want to see.

On 26 April 2011, Lava was rebranded as Greatest Hits TV at 23.45pm.Lava continues on Greatest Hits TV as overnight programming block, called Lava Showcase, between 3.00am and 8.00am.
On 22 June 2012, Mushroom TV entered liquidation. Ofcom's television broadcast licensing update for May 2012, indicates that Greatest Hits TV was sold to UltimateHits Limited.

RESEARCH: ANALYSING A MUSIC VIDEO

I watched this music video today and analysed its Codes and Conventions .

Style of the video: animation, comic, abstract , making the band member appear to be like cartoon characters

Camera angles and shots: establishing shot - show the whole 2-D scene
Close up - show the band members
Zooming into individual band member
Zooming out to the whole band or whole scene
Low angle to show the member is standing on something high up
High angle to create a sense of falling  , etc

Editing: Computer generated images

Mise-en-scene:
The music video has made use of bright and warm colours like red, orange and yellow. It also focuses on the band members and there isn't much of a story line involved.
They made use of very simple props like umbrellas, tea cups and a swing to help create this comic like music video.

RESEARCH: CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF MUSIC VIDEO

Style of video
- Performance: Band/ artist playing
- Narrative: Included story
- Mixture: Both performance and narrative based
- Cameo: Band/ artist features in the narrative but doesn't perform eg. Foo Fighters
- Animation: Digitally (flash)/ Stop-frame
- Abstract:

Camera- variety of shots depending on the style.
A lot of close ups ( esp in performance music videos) - perhaps ECU of lips, guitar strings being strummed.
- Crane shots
- Low- angles
- Long shots and Extreme long shots
- Pans/ tilts- move from different performers.
- Tracking

Editing and Sound- There are many different editing techniques used in music videos. Music videos usually feature jump cutting. Footage is usually edited too match the music.
- Split screen
- Computer generated images
- Diagetic sound
- Non- diagetic sound
- Change in the levels of sound

Mise-en-scene- can cary greatly depending on the genre of music and the type of music video.
- Props- performance, equipment and band merchandise.
- Costume- certain outfits.
- Location- concert halls, venues, street.
- Facial expressions.

RESEARCH: DIGIPACKS

Definition: Digipacks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipacks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Digipacks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic "digipack" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

Digipacks are very important when promoting a product such as a CD as it allows an artist/music company to creatively and engage their customers/listeners through aesthetically pleasing imagery.

Digipacks have pros and cons:

They look nice, and many bands and labels like to use them for aesthetic reasons. 

The three section digipack sleeves opens up more design options because there is more room. However, they're more expensive than traditional liner notes and jewel cases.

Digipacks don't crack like jewel cases do, but they will rip and eventually the paper begins to peel apart and separate.

The trays in digipacks break much more often then in jewel cases. There's not as much protection since the outer portion of made of paper, so the teeth that hold the CD in place crack and fall out easily.

When the teeth of the tray does break in a digipack, the CD falls out of the bottom of the digipack, because unlike jewel cases, there is nothing to hold it in.

Digipacks can be more environmentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper - however, they aren't always in fact made in this way.

RESEARCH: DIGI-PACK CONTINUED

What is a digipak

Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.

Since Digipaks were among the first alternatives to jewel cases to be used by major record companies, and because there is no other common name for Digipak-style packaging made by other companies, the term digipak or Digi-Pak is often used generically, even when the media holder is a hub or "Soft Spot" rather than a full plastic tray.

The digipak has an important role to play in establishing the artist as a recognisable brand and creating familiarity with its audience. This means that fans who own one album will subconsciously be drawn to an advert for a new album release.