Christina Aguilera - The Voice Within

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWixUIMTjYc
This was one of the music videos we were going to perform for our final piece but there weren't much going on in the video it was just quite a boring video. It is called 'The Voice Within' by Christina Aguilera, and was released in 2003. This single is known for how simple it is, and the fact that it was filmed in black and white as a continuous camera shot. The genre characteristics of this music video is the stage performance of a continuous close up camera shot of christina's face and she doesn't dance at all it is a whole video of walking around lip syncing. Walking around and not running around madly and by wearing the dress she has on and not wearing baggy jeans shows that this video is of a 'pop' genre and not a 'rock' or 'emo' genre. This song shows a storyline in the lyrics 'To trust the voice within'. A young girl feels she has nobody to turn to so christina is singing her feelings and advice to this young girl. There isn't really much of a relationahip between the lyrics and visuals of this music video apart from the story of the song is about a 'Young girl being alone' and the visuals relates to this by Christina being alone on the video giving advice to others. The relationship between the music and the visuals of this music video are that this song is of a 'pop' genre and this is easily recognised by the performance of the singer and the brigt background although its recorded in black and white it still isn't terribly dark like a 'rock' video would be. There is nothing but close-up camera shots of Christina in the beginning part of the music video but as the video goes on the camera shots change from being close-up to medium close ups to distant camera shots. This is very effective because she puts more aggression into her singing as the song progress further and the camera shots change as the song progress and then ends with a close up. There is no reference to the notion of looking such as screens within screens or telescopes, this music video is very simple. There are intertextual references with the song 'Beautiful' also sang by Christina Aguilera as both music videos have the same close up camera views to begin with and both have the same genre and speed of music. Both music videos are very simple and not much to them to begin with but the song 'Beautiful' has more of a recording contrast of footage in it. This music video is very much narrative based as it tells a story of being alone which is shown in the video of Christina Aguilera being alone. Overall i think this video is very simple and wasn't a very good choice for us to perform as our final piece as there wouldn't have been much to record. It would have been me alone all the way through the video lip syncing and walking around which wouldn't have been as fun as the video we did which included lip syncing, dancing, change of backgrounds and was much more enjoyable.

Project 4 Music video analysis, Lady Gaga 'Just Dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrJvuUA7QkY
This music video is the final one i chose to perform. Lady Gaga 'Just Dance' is in the 'dance-pop' genre, it features Colby O'Donis, and had vocals by Akon and was produced by RedOne. This was released as the lead single in 2008, it has influences of R'n'B and in the lyrics it shows a storyline of being intoxicated at a house party. Lady Gaga says"Everyone is looking for a song that really speaks to the joy in our souls and in our hearts and having a good time. It's just one of those records. It feels really good, and when you listen to it, it makes you feel good inside." The genre characteristics of the dance routines, lip syncing and the overall stage performance makes this music video get easily catergorised into a particular genre (dance-pop). This is shown by the camera shot of Lady Gaga on each chorus of the song, it shows a close up of her face lip syncing with a bright white, simple background which singles this genre of the song out easily to be pop and not metal or others genres like that. In the chorus of the song when it says 'Just Dance', a clip of the dance routine is shown this also shows the relationship between the lyric and the visuals because when the lyrics says 'Just Dance it shows a dance routine. The relationship between the music and the visuals are amplifying, Lady Gaga ahows it is in the pop genre by the beat of the music also the costumes, routines and camera shots. There are close ups of the artist and star image motifs in each chorus. There are many performers in this music video but the camera shots only show main close ups on Lady Gaga when she is lip sycing or dancing. There is no references to the notion of looking such as screens within screens but there is reflected views in mirrors of the performers and camera shots of a camera. There are no intertextual references in this music video to any other tv programmes or films but there is intertextual references to her other music videos. They are all similar, with this 'Just Dance' music video and the 'Poker Face' video also by Lady Gaga both have similar dance routines and the same sort of camera shots showing the lip syncing. Overall this music video is performance based mainly on the dance routines and lip syncing and it is also narrative based by narrating its story throughout the music video of a house party and to 'Just Dance' and enjoy yourself. It shows other people house partying in the background which follows the narration of the video. I think this video is great and has a simple storyline that is the reason i chose this video to perform my own version of and i really enjoyed it.

Our Music Video

For my music video I did, ‘Just Dance’ sang by Lady Gaga. The reason why we chose this song is because I love to dance as I have been doing it since i was 6 years old so I thought it would be a good idea also the song was in the charts. The people who participated in the group were Sam Howes, Grant Greening and Lauren Cappuchio and me (Shelley Bridges). Sam just did the editing for us whilst me, Lauren and Grant were the performers. We did take it in turns to record on the Sony camcorder, which we all found fun as if we weren’t using that we were doing the lighting of the room. The lyrics in the song and the title of it ‘Just Dance’ made us come up with an idea of doing a dance routine to the song just as Lady Gaga had done in her music video also do clips of the lip syncing. We recorded this in the TV studio in the Norwich City College and changed the background a few times so it weren’t the same all the way through the video. We started off by me and Lauren getting recorded by Grant doing the clips together and just dancing with a black background and white costumes. Then we danced again together as a pair with a white background and black costumes. We then got recorded doing the routine on each of those backgrounds individually but this weren’t just once each, we repeated it lots as we wanted to make sure we were happy with our performance. Basically on the music video when it was edited by Sam of me and Lauren individually dancing, we were acting as ‘Lady Gaga’. In this music video of ours we had thought up many ideas that we couldn’t do such as; me getting out a really expensive looking nice car in a glittery costume and walking up the steps. The reason why we couldn’t do this as we wanted to was because we didn’t know whose car to use and it would have been a bit difficult so we thought of alternatives instead. The other idea’s we thought of was to begin the music by videoing a ‘Play’ button on a really old tape player but we couldn’t find an old enough tape player to carry. Basically our storyline was me and Lauren taking it in turns to be Lady Gaga, prancing around as she did on her music video and showing people you don’t care what they think. The idea was to build the confidence of ourselves up throughout the music video and show the audience our passion is to dance so ‘Just Dance’. We were all a bit nervous at first performing in front of each other but we soon overcome that. Grant was acting as ‘Akon’ on this video on the rapping part and we got the idea of his appearance from the music video ‘Acceptable in the 80’s’ by Calvin Harris. We took different camera shots like close ups, medium close ups and also changed the lighting on each piece of recording. When we started editing our music video we weren’t 100% sure we had all footage recorded, so we were going to do more recording but decided to do a rough edit of the footage we already had first to make sure. In the end we had just about enough material to produce the complete video. We were well organised as a group as we had done a lot of pre-production work when we printed all lyrics out and made a storyboard up to roughly follow also thought carefully about the contrasts of our costumes and the background scenes. By doing this music video it has gave us a taster of what the real famous pop singers and dancers have to go through. I personally think that our music video was a great success and very enjoyable. It was the most fun part of the GCSE media course.

Research of the ABC Wesite.

I did some research on the ABC website and I have found out that Q Magazine has the highest net circulation, selling 81,240 issues every month in the UK and R.O.I and 103,017 in total around the world, this is because of how long they have been around and how they have such a reputable magazine, although it’s Mojo that is selling the most magazines to other countries around the world, selling 44,897 copies of its issue every month, these two magazines are definitely one of the most popular magazines for people who seriously appreciate all genres of music.The magazine Rocksound is selling the least copies of its issues, selling 12,734 copies In the UK and R.O.I every month and 7,277 copies everywhere else in the world, though this is probably because it’s not as well known as Q and Mojo are, and they usually stick to only one genre of music which is rock.NME and Kerrang! Magazines are selling the least copies to other countries, NME only selling 3,562 and Kerrang! selling only 2,144 copies, probably because again they’re not aswell known, and have not been around as long as the other big magazines, also its featuring more specific genres of music, for example NME only represents one genre of music which is 'emo' or 'rock'.

MixMag music magazine.

This ‘mixmag’ music magazine has a very simple and easy to spot masthead which is placed on the top centre of the page in a bright white, large font. It is the largest font on the page which makes it even more eye catching also the background colour is bright sky blue which makes the bright white masthead stand out so it is the first thing people see when they look at it. The slogo of the magazine is 'The battle for the islands soul'. The background to this page is the colour of the nice blur sky on a hot summers day, this goes well with the picture of the main model on the page which is wearing a bikini with sunglasses and nice jewellery; in other words she is on the beach in the sun. This all connects well with the main sell of the magazine front cover which is ‘Ibiza 08’ all the images and surrounding text are all connected with the theme of the summer sun. Also other main sells are the list of content of the magazine down the right hand side of the page. In this magazine issue it represents ‘Herve’s Party bombs’ as a taster of what is inside the magazine such as; information and gossip of many different bands. The masthead font on each ‘mixmag’ issue always has identical font size, font genre and just varies on the colour of the title. The most popular colours of the masthead on each issue of ‘mixmag’ are white, orange and bright pink all depending on the connection between the colour and the main theme. By the font being the same on each issue and the position of the masthead is always the same, this makes it easier for the reader’s to spot the magazine on the shelf in the shops. The model of the magazine is very pretty, with flawless skin and a perfect figure. This makes young readers want to look like them which may cause the young teens to go anorexic. The picture of the model may also advertise the clothes bag and basically her fashion to make the target audience want to get the same. By the magazine having a plain and simple background this makes the image of the main leading model stand out to the readers. The structure of the magazine is layed out very clearly showing quite obviously that it is of a dance genre. This is shown by the clothes that the model is wearing and the layout of the front cover of the ‘mixmag’ magazine is smooth, bright and simple rather than dull and fully detailed. It seems to have a target audience of older teenagers to middle twenties. The image of the main model is only slightly overlapping the masthead which still makes this title very clear. The brightness of colour of the models lipstick which is in red makes her lips stand out showing that she is smiling this looks very effective.

Kerrang music magazine

On this front cover of the music magazine ‘Kerrang’ the masthead is brightly coloured which is unusual for a ‘Kerrang’ magazine as the masthead is normally in dull black or white. It is always in a large font with lines going through the font to break it up a bit to give it an appearance that looks similar to broken glass. This masthead is a little difficult to read because of the way it is placed on the page with the images over lapping the main heading. This could make it hard for the target audience to recognise the magazine whilst browsing through them all in a shop. Also readers may find it harder to spot this issue because of the brightly coloured font. The slogo is ‘Life is Loud’ on every ‘Kerrang’ magazine but because it is always placed at the top right hand corner of the page, it is covered completely up by the main images of the cover. The lead article and images are ‘starring Ozzy, Him, Velvet Revolver, The Used and My Chemical Romance’. This makes the readers want to open the magazine and read on about the bands/singers this magazine is starring. The main images shows that the magazine is of a ‘rock’ genre, this is represented by the clothes they are wearing, the make-up and accessories they have got on and the appearance of the magazine cover as a whole. The main sells are the band/singers I mentioned earlier on and it says in bold white writing ‘DOWNLOAD The Ultimate Guide!’ This is an eye catcher as this is placed in bold writing on the centre left side of the page; people will see this straight away after seeing the leading images. The background is not dull; it is simple and plain shaded in bright blue that looks like a nice blue sky on a summer’s day. This is a good contrast with the yellow masthead; it makes the leading images stand out more because the models are all wearing black. The main sell stands out very much by being in a bright red star shape with white writing saying ‘Win a signed slipknot guitar!’ in a big font size and in the colour white. This draws the attention from the readers straight to it because of both the colour and the font, also because they word ‘win’ is on the page. Ozzy is wearing several hard silver necklaces which give away the ‘rock’ genre even more, also the ring he has on and the pose he is standing in. The photographer has made sure all three main models of the page are all facing towards the camera with eyes looking in the camera lenses and all wearing clothes to meet the ‘rock’ genre of the magazine. I personally think that by placing the images behind the masthead this will make it clearer to recognise and read that is my opinion but every ‘Kerrang’ magazine cover has the same layout.

Bands Image and Genre

Representation is linked to bands and the genre of bands. The way a band is represented in media often decides which genre the band falls into in the music industry. Music magazines such as Kerrang represents bands like paramore, a day to remember and fall out boy. These bands have fallen into the genre “rock” and also “emo.” Kerrang represented these bands as having difficult lyrics, members who play their own instruments and have the occasional screaming in the song. The magazines and the media’s representation of these bands have increased the fans. Without the media the bands wouldn’t be as well known as they are today. The media bring bands to the surface so everybody hears them and gets to know the taste of their music along with there personal opinion of the genre they belong in. The way a band is represented by the media is also based on the image of the band. The way the band dresses, the make-up they wear and there overall image is assessed altogether towards the way that the bands image is represented. The image of a band such as the clothes they wear .e.g. skinny jeans are usually put into a genre such as ‘emo’ or ‘indie’ where as track suit bottoms are classed as ‘chavs’. Also the bands image represents the type of music they’re going to produce. Bands of each genre have a certain image to fit in with there own genre of music, such as singers in the rapping genre wear baggy track suit bottoms or baggy jeans with a t-shirt ten times bigger than their actual size.

Representation

Representation means to represent something; it can be either negative or positive and sometimes even both. In the case of the media industry, representation means the way the media reflects something. By studying magazines I believe the way a magazine is set out is a type of representation. In some areas in media the way something is represented is a critical point to the success of the product/person. This shows that representation is important in the media world. The media is thought to produce popularity so the way they represent something is always critical. If the media gives a poor representation of a product/person, the public are likely to listen and therefore not make there own judgements. The media have several different faces when it comes to representation. Some things can be represented in a joke and some things can be represented seriously. This depends on the type of thing they are representing.

Sugar magazine- Hilary Duff.

The masthead to Sugar is in pink, bold writing set in the centre of the top of the magazine front cover. This is a regular thing to do on magazines so the title of the magazine stands out to the target audience. The masthead is placed on top of the main close up image of the model. Some magazines place the title behind the image but placing it in front of the image makes it more eye catching and bold. The text is written in pink as it always is; this is what shows us the target audience for these magazines are teenager girls of any age between 12 to 19. Also another reason why the masthead is always written in the same font and colour is so the readers recognise the magazine and the colour is very bright so it catches the reader’s eye. The lead image of this sugar magazine is of Hilary Duff; it is a very clear and close up view. The image covers the majority of the page; this makes the front cover of the magazine stand out as Hilary is a very popular model, an American actress and a singer-songwriter. The photographer had positioned Hilary Duff in the centre of the page, slightly to the right side with her looking straight at the camera. Hilary Duff is smiling on the image which keeps the atmosphere of the magazine simple and positive. She is wearing a small diamond necklace which is made to stand out as the diamond is very sparkly in the camera. It brings more of a spark and a happier atmosphere to the cover of this magazine; this draws even more attention to the leading image. The background to the front page is bright white, which makes the rest of the colourful images and text surrounding the main image on the page even more eye catching. This is effective because if the background was too detailed the text and images which are meant to stand out would just blend in with this background detail. The attention from the readers would get drawn to the background rather than to the main image of Hilary Duff and the text around the image. The reader’s are able to see the main sell of what is inside the magazine straight away after seeing the lead image because it is in bold writing at the top left hand side of the page. The strap line is typed in a smaller, black font which is harder for the audience to read, this then makes the reader pick the magazine up to read on, this then leads the reader on to looking at other articles. The large font for the title ‘Sugar’ is mainly in pink and sometimes purple, this is good as their isn’t too much of a contrast in colour. It’s nearly always in the same font but just varies in font size on each issue. This makes the magazine stand out and is easily recognised when each new issue is released. The font for the text on the front page, which gives a taster of what is inside the magazine is in different sizes. This is good because it makes the main sells stand out on the page because of the bright colours and the sizes of the big fonts. Hilary Duff is dressed in a black top which is quite dull; this is very effective because this also makes the bright coloured texts stand out.

Music Magazine.

For this project, we were asked to study 3 different magazine covers and be able to spot out the stylistic features of each one such as; the masthead, slogo, and main sells etc. I am going to pick three different magazine front covers and analyse each one of them picking out the individual stylistic features. I was also asked to make my own magazine cover and i did so by using photoshop. This was quite simple as i just planned my cover out in draft labelling each stylistic feature and and then created it on the computer using that photoshop program. The image on the left is how my final music magazine turned out to be.

Research of different genre cd covers.

I researched different genres of cd covers to show me the different appearances for different genres. I will then produce a cd cover of my own choosing a pop genre, meaning i won't be using any 'scary' or 'dark' pictures or any font that makes my cd cover look like its a metal band or emo band.
Shayne Ward cd cover has a pop genre. This is shown by the basic and bright background that looks so simple. Also the font is shown as bold and clear which just gives an overall appearance of a pop genre cd cover.

Ne-Yo is a hip hop genre cd cover. This is shown by the 'rap-up' at the left bottom corner and the photo on the front of Ne-Yo facing away from a girl. Hip hop is mainly sang/rapped about a man losing his wife/girlfriend then wanting her back.

This is a metal genre cd cover. It is easily pointed out by the way it is layed out. It shows the picture as being night time which connects to the metal band of being 'dark' and 'scary'. The name of the band shows font that you would see on a horror film, and the picture is of a dark and scary forest.

Girls Aloud is another pop cd cover. This is also shown as having a simple, bright background with a basic font which is bold. Having a basic background makes the performers stand out more especially when they wear bright colours like they are.

This shows an emo genre cd cover. You can tell its an emo cd cover straight away by the picture of the girl laying backwards on the stairs and the boy sitting at thetop. Usually emo bands are shown being in love with a boyfriend and splitting up so the girl walks away and hurts herself or the male hurts the female. The colour is dull which is not exciting so it shows to be quite depressing.

Project 2, part 2

I decided to investigate how Girls Aloud use Myspace to market themselves and stay in contact with their fans. They market themselves by mainly having photos of their album covers and music videos that are uploaded. Viewers can listen to Girls Aloud tracks whilst viewing the rest of their page. It shows the latest releases of songs from them and how to order the singles/albums. It also has a few paragraphs ‘About Girls Aloud’ which explains about each of their album releases, it gives information on the dates of each of their tours and upcoming shows.
Girls Aloud stay in contact with their fans by accepting fans as friends on a friends list. Their page also allows fans to leave comments that Girls Aloud reply to. The fun things to explore on the page are, ‘Home, Browse, Find people, Forums, Music, Video, More and Girls Aloud.’ Each main option has a drop down list of further options to browse through. Myspace is a good internet page for famous Bands/ Musicians to promote themselves.

Brief for project two,

For Project Two I will investigate and research information about the Music Industry. I will study the impact of the new technologies on the music industry and the effect the new media technology has on music fans. I will also investigate the ways musicians can use the new music technology to promote themselves e.g. Itunes. I will do research on the internet to find images of different CD covers such as hip hop, rock and pop to show the differences between the appearance of the covers for each genre. I will then produce a CD cover of my own for a launch of a new band. I will take studio shots of the band I want to launch and produce the CD cover using Photoshop CS3.