Theorists

Magazine Adverts

what are magaine adverts and why are they used?
Magazine adverts is a form of advertisment used to broadcast news of a topic. In this case the magazine adverts are used to attract a certain audience to a new artist or albumn. If a person has a passion for music, they may have a subscrition to NME magazine. This helps send out news of the newly released product.

Photography Task

Picture 1

 Negative VS Positive

The use of negative space in this photo is very affective as it surrouds the positive space in darkness.
The darkness represents the negativity(bad) of the photo and the bright light used shows the positivity (good) shining through.
To take this photograph we used a very slow shutter spead, and I asked Racheol to dance around with the lights, which allowed to to capture the light in mid wave.

Picture 2

I like the use of light within this photo because it really shows how goodness is powering through and lighting up your way.
The positive and negative space are very nicely balanced against each other.
This photo works nicely with the rule of thrid. If Rachel was placed in the centre of this photo, it may have had an awkward affect. However, the slightness to the right, with the hand held light held towards the right give a nice affect which compliments the eye.

Picture 3

I LOVE how the light turned out in this picture. By bringing the light in an upwards direction on a slow sutter spead, we were able to come out with this picture. It shows the light being dragged upwards and creating this sort of wave affect. I like this because it plays with the idea of our theme 'Positive VS Negative' as an idea of the goodness being dragged through the darknessm trying to shine through. Also this picture uses the rule of postivre and negative space really well, showing very clear what the focus of the picture is. 

Picture 4

Picture 5

 Picture 4 & 5 use the rule of frame really nicely. Effortlessly we were able to frame out positive space (Rachel) through the use of on site hand held lights. Especially Picture 5 where you can clearly see how she is being framed. The camera captured these pictures seconds apart, and gave two very different ambience's. The first almost created a mist around the postive space. It blurs out the negative space and created an un focused almost angelic affect. Picture 5 I think fits our theme more as you can clearly see the difference between the positive and negative aspects as the negative space becomes much more clear to the viewer.  One light we used had an orange filter over, and the other was white. This helped to create two different contrasts between the top and bottom of the screen, helping to frame the positive space of the picture.

 The use of lighting within these photos suggest the positivity is over powering. The darkness can not really be seen as there is a white angelic overall affect.

Research Into Genre- Pop

Pop music is popular tracks which gain lots of publication and gain the most hits, often reach the charts. Artists within this genre of music are typicall signed to a major record label belonging to a conglomerate. Because of this, the artists usually have no/ limited controll over their image, songs and music videos.
Within a 'pop song' they typically have a repeated chorus, with a catchy rythm and is easy to rememebr. Duration of these songs typically lasts 2-3 minutes.

Conventions
Pop music songs/videos usually are about love, breakups, sex, or partying. All of these help to target their audience of teenagers and makes it relateble. Teenagers listen to pop music bevause they relate on a personal level and listehn to the charts. Production teams work to create an image for the artists which would reach out to this specific target audience.
Artists makeup is always flawless and airbrushed. Their clothes are always of the latest fashion and make a statement. Fans like to follow in their faviourte singers footsteps, due to this the famous individuals have to create an image which is extraordinary yet ordinary.

Use of peformance

 Pop music videos heavily created around the use of peformance. The artists will be singing whilst also peforming the narrative for example. The main focus is the artist. They will use lots of close up's of them singing to show this.

 This image shows Rhianna and Dj Khaled peformaing infront of the camera. In this close up we can also see the fashion statements they are portraying and their peformance quality. All of this really shows the way the peformance draws in the viewer.



Pop can also have different formats.

• Artpop
• Electro Pop
• Dream Pop
• Experimnetal Pop

An example of an artists like this is Grimes. An artist like Grimes does not really stick to the stereotypical conventions of 'Pop Music'. As an individual artists like herself, she does things her own way and have a quirk to them. This form of pop music I enjoy.




The artist 'SALES' I enjoy alot. She produces 'Pop Music' however is does not really have the same 'sound' as other usualy pop music aritst. Her songs follow the same conventions of a catchy chorus and melody's but personally I dont get the same type of vibe listening to her music than chart music.
Unfortunately I cant find any music videos of SALES to compare to other vidoes.


What I have learnt 
I dont think I want to do a stereotypical 'pop song' as I dont really like the music. However the alternative Pop music I do find interesting, and think I could create an interesting music vidoe of it with a meaningfull narative.

Resaerch Into Genre- indie/ Alternative Rock

When simply searching 'Indie Rock' into the search engine I got the 16 top songs that resemble this genre of music.
Indie Rock is a form of alterntaive Rock which originated in the 1980's. The term was originally used to describe the independent record labels. The genre is basically being associated as 'less mainstreme' than other artists. In simpler terms- not in the charts. New and upcoming bands like to label themselfs as 'indie rock',  due to the specific sound of less harsh than the usual Rock. It uses lighter strings and unharsh sounds.

Mjor bands include: Artic Monkeys, Pulp, Oasis, Radiohead, Blur, The Killers, The Kooks, MGMT, The White Stripes and The Smiths.

There has been quite a large change in the industry. Less people are buying album sales of CD's, however there was a 53% increase of vinly sales. The 'less mainstreme' way of music is now becoming more and more popular with fans.

Below are two music videos which show the stereotypical conventions of a Indie Rock narrative. Everything from the Mise-en-scene to the editing style shows a very edgy atmosphere and demonstrates their alternative side.



My Chemical Romance is an Alternative Rock band. There music is very alterntaive and experimental. I dont think you could find a similarity of theirs within another band. There music can vary vastly from heavy rock to softer sounds.

 
Conventions of Indie Rock Music Videos 
Music videos showing songs produced by an Indie/ Alternative Rock typically have a twist. There costume will be parculiar, the location of filming would be unexpected and the narrative will have a quirky story.Within these music videos, the bands peformance is always key. There stage presence and attitude reflects their music, and we see this through their confidence to produce something beautifully different. The later affcets used cinematography create an affect that resembles a short film rarther than a music video.


Sterotypically, indipendent rock bands are not signed to major conglomerates. For this reason they have more controll over the music they produce and videos which come along with it. Their music vidoes then look much more independent and to fit the image they are aiming for. 

What I have learnt from this
 I like the idea of creating a short film narrative rather than making it more about the member of the band and their peformance. The quirkiness of these vidoes and the ideas behind them really inspire me. I want to find an interesting location to shoot my music video.

Research into marketing package

 The Beatles released the legendary album of Sgt. Pepper on the 26th of may 1967. Their 8th album was a relase of their creativity and new found ways of making music. It spent 27 weeks at the top of the Uk album chart. The album was lauded by the vast majority of critics for its innovations in music production, songwriting and graphic design

 Their digipak is very out there. It has bright crazy colours draws in the listener and attracks people straight away, not that they had to 'promote' this album much. The music they created in this album is timeless, and their marketing reflects that.


The album cover shows several dozens of famous people who have impacted something. This shows that this band were so including, they and their music would make you feel so inviting. The design of this album was so abstract to other previously relased albums, with its vibrant colours and innotive songs. This is because The Beatles released an entire album that would represent a performance by the fictional Sgt. Pepper band. Their alter ego bang would allow them to experiment more and push the boundaries with their music.
If you look at The Beatles old album covers you can clearly see the contrast. They were previously very neautral earthy colours. This new and exciting album is shown with bright, standing out colours which is very experminetal; just like their music.

These are a couple of posters which were released along with the Sgt. Pepper album. As you can see the memeber are wearing their iconic outfits shown on the album and represented their alter ego band memebers.
The theme runnning along with these photos again is very experimental and bright.
The second poster shows a collaberation of crazy pictures and colours, showing the madness of this album.






With an album iconic as this they would have been a mass amiunt of publication of their new music.
I found a couple of articles publishing their new album. The first picture was updating fans of what music would be on the album as they were writing it. This showed how they wanted to keep their fans updated with their music.

 This article states how amaizng it is and writes about the music within the album. Because Sgt. Pepper came out in 1967 there was no colour within newspapers, for this reason they are not able to demonstrate the colourfullness of the album and the amount they have experimented.




50 years later....
I can find more articles and fan art created now, 50 years later. This shows the impact this album made on the world.  The BBC crated a documentry about the album, with unseen clips of the band recording and how they made the music. We were able to have an insight to what inspired the memebers and how they made their music, in ways never used before.


The song ' A Day In The Life' of the album Sgt. Pepper had a music video created for it.
This music video was able to show an insight to fans all over the world about ' a day in the life' of the band. There use of flashing colours and lights show's the artisic side of the song. However most clips show the band recoring with an orchestra... which play a very large part within this song. We see home videos of the memebers as children and living their normal life. Once the orchestra take over, the video takes a turn for the weird. Memebers of the orchestra wear fake large noese and glasses, we also see images of a crow flying through a green sky. This video clearly shows the experimental side of the album, and how the Sgt. Pepper band were able to become weird, beautiful and abstract.

brainstorming ideas

Today I spent some time watching music videos and gaining thoughts and ideas. At first I seemed to struggle feeling what direction I was going in; as all the videos I was watching were all big budget music videos.

I began just listening to music instead, to see if that would give me inspiration. I found a song called Chinese New Year - SALES. I fell in love with the song and immediately began thinking of ideas which I could use for my music video.