Thursday, 17 July 2014

Hit Me Baby One More Time - Bchs A2 Media



Evaluation:

From the start I think that our group worked really well together as, we got everything done quickly and to a good standard. For example it only took us one lesson to plan out what we had to do in each shot, how long it was for, and the costume for the whole re-make. The plan that we made was really helpful because, we got each shot that we had to do, and by the side we showed where it would take place, costume, which is in the shot and how long for. This meant that we could be very prepared for when it actually came down to filming and we had to get everything sorted. However if we had to re-due this again I would like the planning to be even more specific, so we would have the action of what we were doing in there, because from using the plan when we were filming it was hard to see what action what we were doing, as we had to keep watching the video over and over again to see what the dance move was or what was she doing.

The filming of the video went quite well I think because, we got all the shots that we needed to do in a good timely manner. It was easy to find the right location, because our school has a link where we could work and be away from the lessons so that we didn’t disturb anyone. We all knew what we had to bring in for costume, so we all brought in the right outfit that we had to wear for the first day of shooting, but as it went on we didn’t always wear the same close as it was hard to keep wearing them. So if we had to do it again I would like everyone to have the same outfit throughout as it would make the video look more professional and more like the actual video. Another hard part for filming was doing the same action as they did in the video, all the people that were in the video aren’t dancers (which shows a lot) which means that we had to take what they were doing and make it very basic so that we could do it, but it took us a lot of takes before we actually got it right. So if we had to do it again then I would of liked to of known the dance before we started filming so them we could go straight into it without trying to figure out what was next. The main thing that slowed us down was setting up, because we had to get changed, then set up the camera which took a while, which stopped us filming for the whole hour. This means that I would have liked then to of got to lesson early so that we could set up earlier, so then we would have had most of the hour to film and get most of it done. Everyone got involved with the filming and taking part because, everyone in the group was in some shot, making the video better as it wasn’t just one person all the time.

The editing of the footage was quite frustrating because, it was really hard to get the lip syncing in time with the music, and trying to get the dance moves in time was really hard as well. Again we all took part in the editing as well, which meant that we all had some say in how we wanted it to look.

From this task it has showed me how much planning that I am going to have to do for my music video to make sure that I can make it look like the genre where it belongs. Also when filming my video the lip syncing has to be really in time when we are filming so then it can be easily linked up when editing it. The editing has showed me how quick the shots have to be, or otherwise the audience will get bored. However it has got me really excited to start planning and preparing for my video that we will be creating.     

Friday, 11 July 2014

Theories

Andrew Goodwin’s
There are 5 key aspects of music videos that we the audience should look out for which are:
Thought beats- seeing the sound
§  First step- to look at the music video itself. We must take into account the structure of the song for e.g. chorus/ verses
§  Secondly- the voice of the song. The artist voice is extremely unique and can form identification or trademarks that work well with the star image. Roland Barthes theory of the Grain of voice can be related to this. He sees the singing voice as an expressive instrument and therefore able to make associations of its own.
§  Thirdly- Goodwin also points out the artist mode of address. Songs can be seen as stories and the artist the storyteller, making the music video a two communication device, them telling us a story and us listening.
 Narrative and performance
§  Most songs fail to give us the complete narrative
§  We only tend to get a gist of the meaning of the song and then tend to make up our own idea of what is being told. Goodwin explains that music videos should ignore common narrative. It is important in their role of advertising. Music video should coherent repeatability. Narrative and performance work hand in hand it makes it easier for the audience to watch over and over without losing interests.  The artist acting as both narrator and participant helps to increase the authenticity, however the lip sync and other mimed actions remains the heart of the music videos. The audience need to believe this is real.
§  It helps to make the song look more realistic and also giving the audience a special connecting and good understanding of the song. For example Katy Perry ROAR, she is the main actor in the song an also the singer and it helps the video by making the song and video look more realistic and this also help to engage the audience.

 The star image
§  The star image is another vital aspect of music videos. Meta narrative which is a big story that describes the development of the star over time,  it has an important part to play in the music video production process.
§  This helps to promote the artist/stars image in public and also helps to promote the video while creating a public reputation for the artist.
 Relation of visuals to song
§  There are three ways in which music videos work to promote a song.
§  Illustrate- music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyric and genre, this is the most common. This explains the meaning of lyrics to their song and the genre.
§  Amplify- this is similar to repeatability. Meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly sown through the video and drummed into our vision.
§  Disjuncture- this is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored
§  He believed that a music video can promote a song by though the way it analysis the lyrics. This is shown in many music videos when a character does exactly what the song says. For example when the song says JUMP JUMP JUMP and on the video there are characters/actors actually jumping.
Technical aspects of music video
§  Technical aspects hold the music video together through use of camera work, movement, angle, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and special effects.
§  Speed, camera movement, editing, cutting and post production are all forms of use of camera.
§  Lighting the colour help set the moods and emphasise key moments of the song for dramatic effect.
§  Mise-en-scene, the setting of music videos is vital, it needs to look authentic to attain professionalism.

§  Beats, music videos use cuts to go with the beat or rhythm making the video more entertaining. This is very useful as they can help to create effective cuts that go with the rhythm of the song to make the music video look more entertaining. 



Laura Mulvey’s
The male gaze 1975
She believes that in television audiences have to “view” characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.
This is the concept of the gaze is one that deals with how people an audience views the people presented.
For feminists it can be thought of in  3 ways:
1.       How men look at women
2.       How women look at themselves
3.       How women look at each other
Features:
·         The camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and an event which occurs to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events. Relegates woman to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.
Also some theorists also have noticed the sexualising of the female body even in situations where females sexiness has nothing to do with product being advertise
Criticisms:
·         Some women enjoy being looked at, for example beauty pageants
·         The gaze can also be directed toward members of the same gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or in clothing.
Marjorie Ferguson (1980) categorised facial expressions for women:
·         Chocolate box

·         Invitational

·         Super-smiler

·         Romantic
·         Sexual
While Trevor Millum (1975) categorised facial expressions for men:
·         Carefree

·         Practical
·         Seductive

·         Comic

·         Catalogue 


The Uses and Gratification Model
An approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication
This communication theory is positivistic in its approach, based in the socio-psychological communication tradition, and focuses on communication at the mass media scale. The driving question of UGT is: Why do people use media and what do they use them for? UGT discusses how users deliberately choose media that will satisfy given needs and allow one to enhance knowledge, relaxation, social interactions/companionship, diversion, or escape
It assumes that audience members are not passive consumers of media. Rather, the audience has power over their media consumption and assumes an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. Unlike other theoretical perspectives, UGT holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their desires and needs to achieve gratification. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification
Research has shown that media taken in for entertainment purposes (i.e., movies, songs, television, etc.) have a wide range of uses and emotional gratifications, and that these are not mutually exclusive but can overlap with each other.
·         Mood management: This is the most prominently cited emotional gratification of media use. People prefer to maintain a state of intermediate arousal; this is a pleasant medium. When in a bad mood, bored, or over-aroused, people will seek media as regulation for or distraction from their mood.
·         Affective disposition: Affective disposition theory states that people enjoy "rooting for" characters depicted as good and moral. Users experience gratification when good things happen to characters with "good" morals and also when bad things happen to "evil" or "bad" characters.
·         Excitation transfer: This use and gratification for media posits that people like to feel worried for characters we perceive as "good," and this is even more gratifying if that character gets "rewarded" in some way in the end.
·         Sensation seeking: This use and gratification can be understood when considering excitement as its own reward.
·         Modes of reception: "Emotional involvement correlates with other modes of reception, especially with diegetic involvement (getting absorbed in the fictional world), socio-involvement (identifying with characters), and ego-involvelment (relating the film to one's own life). ...Emotional involvement can be helpful for the pursuit of a broader variety of goals in the reception process. ... It can be concluded that the experience of emotions can be functional in a number of other ways than just regulating emotions in terms of affective valence and arousal."
·         Intrinsic motivation: If the user experiences a challenge to his or her media-related skills, but not to the point of being frustrated or overwhelmed, then the gratification is a reward in a feeling of competence that inspires the user to continue using the media in question.[40]
·         Mood adjustment: Users are gratified by using media to adjust their mood to whatever is currently happening. For instance, once already provoked by an aggressor and promised a chance to retaliate, males were found to prefer bad news over good news in that emotionally charged moment.
·         Gender socialization of emotions: This use is gratified by the idea that women enjoy feeling other-directed sadness (empathy, sympathy, and pity) because our culture values and validates women’s feeling these; similarly, teenage couples like to watch scary movies so the male feels protective and the female feels vulnerable.
·         Relationship functions of entertainment: According to this particular branch of use and gratification, we use entertainment to apply lessons to or escape from our real-life relationships.
·         Parasocial relationships: Consumers of entertainment media sometimes use it to gratify a need for social connection by becoming very attached to characters seen in entertainment media, such as characters in a TV show or newscasters.
·         Vicarious experiences: A related use and gratification for entertainment media is the idea of living through the characters portrayed and imagining ourselves in their lives by adopting the characters' perspectives.
·         Downward social comparison: This use and gratification holds that we enjoy taking in media that portrays people similar or worse off than ourselves
·         Eudaimonic motivation: Media consumers also turn to entertainment media to search for deeper meanings, insights, purpose for life, finding beauty, raising morale, experience strong emotions, and understand how others think and feel.


Hyperdermic Needle Model

This is a model of communications suggests that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The model is rooted in 1930s behaviourism. This theory is not based on empirical findings from research but rather assumptions of the time about human nature. People were assumed to be uniformly controlled by their biologically based instincts. This theory is also known as the Magic Bullet this assumes that the media's message is a bullet fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's "head" (Berger 1995). This suggests that the media injects its message straight into the passive audience, and then the audience is directly affected by the message. This suggests a powerful and direct flow of information from the sender to the receiver.

 It suggests that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message, because of the limited communication tools and the studies of the media’s effect on the masses at the time. There is no escape from the effect of the message in this model. People are seen as passive and end up thinking what they are told because there is no other source of information.

Factors which contribute:

Speedy increase of popular media

Industries Persuasion by advertising or public opinion

Impact of motion pictures on children (The Payne Fund)

Hitler’s monopolization of the mass media in world war two.  
 


 

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

What Music Means To Me

Music videos have changed drastically over time and are now unrecognisable from their historical counterparts

A music video is a short film combined with a song, which would promote and market the artist’s song. Only in the 1980s did music videos become popular as this was when MTV based their format around this medium. In 1981 the first ever music video that they played was The Buggles’ Video killed a radio star. However music videos have been going before the 80s as, it is said that the first ever proper music video was in 1975 by Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody. Artists have been making more money from their music video due to YouTube, where the company records can upload their video for free to a potential millions. The most viewed music video on YouTube is PSY Gangnam style with 2,011,015,956 views. Since the 1980s music videos have changed drastically, due to the recent update with technology this means that the director and artists have been able to make their ideas come to life more as they now have the technology, for example CGI. In recent times music videos have become increasingly popular, as now they are seen to be part of the artists product and not just the advertising/ promoting the song, this is shown as now it has become popular to release a lyric video before the music video comes out, to help promote the video, which means that the audience have more ways of watching and listening to their music. This can be seen as recent music videos have drastically changed over time that if you compare them to prior videos that they are unrecognisable.

The first music video that I looked at was Like a Virgin by Madonna that came out in 1984. The genre of the song is Dance-Pop, which was normal for the 80s as that was the type of music that was main stream. It became her first number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video was directed by Mary Lambert. It was set in Venice (Italy) and in New York. It was nominated for Best Choreography at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards. The video features Madonna wearing outrageous clothes, which were her look, while she danced in a gondola through canals. Throughout the video there are various shots of Madonna singing with a lion, and her lover is a lion, which makes the video very unusual and unique. For the time period that Madonna came around, she was seen to be original and crazy due to the clothes that she wore and her attitude. All her old music videos the audience gets the sense of her attitude and the fact that she was different from every other artist. This song was seen to be very controversial as the people at the time thought it was very inappropriate that she was singing “like a virgin touched for the very first time” this then gave her that image or quite edgy which is then shown again in Papa Don’t Preach.  

This can be linked to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of the five key aspects of a music video as her videos include the ideas of the beats and music, narrative and performance, star image, relation of visuals, and technical aspects of the video.   If we then compare it with a more recent music video for example, Lady Gaga’s Edge of glory which came out in 2011 which is also Dance-Pop. This was directed by herself and the Haus of Gaga (which is just her production team). This video features Lady Gaga dancing in minimal clothing in a street. Both artists were very “out there” for their time and both feature the basics of the five key aspects of a music video. For example the stars image is seen throw out, and both are performances.
This shows that music videos have not changed that drastically as they still have the same concept, for example a lot of them have chorography and back up dancers. The only thing that is different is the artist’s ideas of how they did it as it will be their identification and how society has progressed for it to be up to date.

From society progressing and music videos keeping up, it will mean that there will be videos that will be unrecognisable to older videos. For example Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze has become more acceptable now to an extreme level then to what it was before. For example Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, which was released in March 2013, with a genre of R&B/Disco/Soul.  It was directed by Diane Martel. The music video entails the Robin Thicke singing with girls dancing around him in minimal clothing. This shows that as a society we see this to be acceptable and entertaining as it has 319,022,464 views on YouTube, and has been in the charts for over ten weeks.  This video makes women look as objects, as they are dancing round the men and the camera work focuses on the curves, and it makes them look like a possession by the way that T.I is brushing her hair, and the way that Robin Thicke is whispering in their ear, which suggests that this video is very geared towards sex. If you then link this back to the lyrics of the song the video fits perfectly as he is singing taking advantage of a girl even when she says no. When the audience heard the song they kicked a fuss about the lyrics of the song and how inappropriate it is, yet they did not mention how bad the video is as well, suggesting that people have now come to accept this.

If you then compare this to, Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer in 1985. The genre is Pop Rock and directed by Terence Donovan. This was considered as one of the most iconic music video for the Era. The video features Robert Palmer performing with abstract bands, which are a group of pale skinned models with heavy makeup, dark hair and acting very seductive. This video was considered as very provocative and sexual. This included a lot of male gaze as the models look very robotic, while the camera focused on parts of the body that are desirable to the male audience.  Linking it back to the lyrics of the song it does fit together, however the video is not as bad as lyrics as it talks about sex. The different levels of sexuality between these too videos are crazy considering that there is only thirty years between the societies to develop to consider that this is ok. This is where the effect theory comes in, as it shows how media can affect society and how society affects the media, making it acceptable that all ages can be exposed to videos like Blurred Lines, making it the norm. Also the Hyperdermic Syringe Model is often linked to the idea that the media inject messages into the audience who are seen as passive. These two videos support this model as it suggests if the media create images/messages that were seen as inappropriate then the audience who are passive will be used to it and it would now become normal, which means that society has been affected by the media as they have now progressed to something different. As a result supports the statement that music videos have become unrecognisable.

Lastly the Uses & Gratifications show that the types of genres need to satisfy certain needs, as if they do not then how will the audience know what is going on, and understand what genre of music it is. As a result it means that music videos can be closely linked together through genre.  A genre which is very distinctive is rock. For example old music videos like AC/DC Back In Black which came out in 1981, this video was a very basic performance with just a couple of lights. Then if you compare it to Guns N Roses Paradise City which came out in 1987, this was still a performance but at an area. Here you can see how they have progressed as Guns N Roses had more to their video like it being edited in black and white and they had extra shots of the crowd who they played to which made the video look more rock, because you saw the fashion they were wearing and how they were dancing.  From the space of six years you can see how the videos have progressed to meet the needs but they are not unrecognisable. If you then look at more recent videos like Sleeping With Sirens If You Can’t Hang, which came out 2011. This again is a performance based, but it just has more to it for example the water on the instruments to make it look cool and the camera is better quality than in the previous videos. Then a video from Don Bronco which came out in 2013, is exactly the same as the previous three but just modernised as this video has different types of lighting and better quality sound. This shows that music videos have not changed so much that they are unrecognisable, they just have developed to make them better and to meet the wants/needs of their audience.

Overall in my opinion I disagree with the male gaze theory, as women look at men in the same way as men look women, it’s just that women who want to expose their body on music videos are open to it, as they believe it comes from their artistic side to want the song actually means to them. For example Miley Cyrus with Wrecking Ball, the audience believe that it was ridiculous and they did not get the video, but to Miley Cyrus it showed how she felt at the time, and what the song means to her, by the fact when she broke up with her boyfriend that she was “stripped naked”.  I agree with Andrew Goodwin’s theory as I do think that most music videos all are based around the same basic concepts but just different stories and inspirations. For a music video to be successful and understandable to the target audience they will need to include, the music itself- where they study the lyric and what it is to the artist, narrative and performance- where they decide if it will be a story or performance, most recent music videos are performances where they have different shots of them singing, while previous videos there were more stories for example A-Ha Take me on, where it is a story about people who jump into a comic, however there have been more narrative music videos in the genre of Electro and Drum ’n’ Base, as they need to make the video more interesting. This could show that music videos have not changed drastically as there are still videos that can be related to older videos. The Star image- this is the artist identification and if they do not get this right then their audience would not remember them, which could lead to the video being unsuccessful. Technical aspects- is important to all videos as it is what holds the video together and if the editing isn’t at a high level them the video may not be a hit as their audience will not like it, as it does not look professional.  Relation of visuals- without illustration and amplify then the video may not make sense to the viewer.
I agree with the Effect Theory as people are affecting by the media of a mass communication level, as videos can be watched all around the world where they can influence people to dress or act in a way.  Lastly I agree with the Use & Gratifications, as if they did not please their target audience then it would not promote the song and might not make money, therefore, they need to make them happy but it also depends on the artist and directors views. 

To conclude I think that music videos have not changed drastically over time and now are unrecognisable from their historical counterparts, because I think it depends on what the artist wants to do as it is them trying to get what they want across to their audience, and their impression. Some of their ideas could have been inspiration from previous videos which they have developed into their own, showing that there are hints of old music videos, for example Blink 182 put their own spin on The Backstreet Boys I Want It That Way. As music videos have become increasingly popular it means that they need to compete and make their video different and memorable as possible as it can have an impression on their chosen audience.  This means that there may not be hints of historical counterparts as they need to be different and unrecognisable to stand out. Also from society developing with new technology and new ideas, it means that the artist video can be as extravagant as possible, making them different.