Feedback

Your response is sound and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of image and text with your blog.  The blog set for prep are incomplete.  I understand that you were absent for two days - please can you try and catch up soon.

You have a secure knowledge and understanding of who you want your artist to be signed to; perhaps you could link this further by stressing the advantages that your artist has signed to the particular record label. 

Your clearly identify your target audience and have profiled them, use VALS as well.  Good research into CD covers and you have a wide range of examples, and this would be developed further if you can link the real product to how it will influence your own designs.

Video Timeline

00.01 – 00.10 – Shots of flapper dancers

00.11 – 00.30 - tracking shot of main artist Dottie

00.31 – 00.35 – Shot of trumpet player

00.36 – 00.40 – White upper class dancer shots

00.41 – 00.43 – Shot of feet

00.44 – 00.50 – Zoetrope and stick

00.50 – 00.55 – Shot of White male dancer looped over each other

00.55 – 00.57 – Shot of working class dancer

00.58 – 00.59 – Trumpet player shot

01.00 – 01.05 – working class dancer shot with effects to loop

01.05 – 01.15 – tracking shot of Dottie

01.16 – 01.20 – Trumpet player clicking

01.21 – 01.30 – Close up of Dottie singing

01.31 – 01.36 - Varying distance shots of trumpet player

01.37 – 01.40 – silhouette of Dottie

01.41 – 01.46 – Effects on working class dancer

01.47 – 01.48 – Trumpet player in silhouette

01.48 – 01.59 – Zoetrope with hat

02.00 – 02.03 – close up of feet dancing

02.04 – 02.10 – Upper class man and Dottie dancing

02.11 – 02.14 – Silhouette of Dottie

02.15 – 02.19 – Close up of Dottie

02.19 – 02.21 – Close up of trumpet

02.22 – 02.29 – tracking shot of Dottie

Institutional Context of our Artist

1) Our artist is signed to a minor record company which is a subsidiary of a major company. This is the case because the genre of our music is not mainstream, therefore it wouldn't be signed to a major company as our record requires more of a niche market. However, it does have elements of popular/mainstream music culture with the dance style it includes therefore this is why it is signed to a subsidiary of a major company.

2) As our artist Renee is not signed to a major record company there are implications to it. These are that there is less money to produce high profiled music video's like those signed to major record companies such as Warner Bros, which in turn means that there is less publication of the video.  However, being a subsidiary of a major company means that there is much more distribution and more marketisation of Renee and the record than if they were an independent minor company.

Story Board

Digipak cover research

Before we are able to start designing our digipak cover, we have to carry out come research into similar genre covers to get insperation and a concept of how we want our cover to look. Obviously having the collaboration of the old and new we wanted to design a comtempory styled cover which also had authenticity to it. A good starting point into the research i felt was to look at the original cover of the song 'Why Don't You Do Right' by Lil Green:

This image of Lil Green conveys a classic blues artist, demonstrated though her dress sence, which consists of animal fur (typical of the period). I think this look is too 'old fashioned' for what we are looking for as naturally it contains no elements of a modern day society. I believe if we used a cover this traditional that the younger members of our target audience wouldn't be so attracted to it as they wouldn't recognise it was modern at all.                        

  
                                                                   

The next logical step in this research process is to look at a more contempory styled cover, perhaps of a techno genre. So i have looked at the conver of the song that we are actually going to be using for our own music video, Gramophondzie 'Do Right':

This cover from Gramophonedzie captures the modern and new well, conveyed through the colour of the walls and objects behinde the obviously 40's styled black and white woman standing in front of it. However, as a group i think we want to have a more of a traditional 20's style look with a small touch of modern rather than this obvious look. This cover, unlike the Lil Green one, may for the early thirty part of our target audience not work, as it look very young and perhaps they would think its for the younger generation. 

So after looking at these two in detail i think that we have to find a contrast between them when creating our cover. Below i have added in more pictures of album covers from atrists in the 20's, 30's and 40's and some from more modern techno albums:

20's, 30's and 40's:

 20's

                                            

  30's

40's

Modern techno covers:

                                                                                                                

Feedback

Excellent work through sustained blogging with all task’s completed in detail.  You make use of different blog tools and are able to link ideas to real media concepts.  I like the sense of branding that is developing with a distinct style.

Well done! You could add a couple of theorectical idea's from Negus on the MV or Dyer's argument about star image.

Screan Grabs and Video Ideas

These shots show the idea we want to do with our sillouettes and the old 20's style.

Lyrics to 'Why Don't You Do Right' by Gramophonedzie

You had plenty money, 1922
You let other women make a fool of you
Why don’t you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too

get out out out
get out oh he get out
get out out out oh
oh get out of
oh he get out
of here me too
right me here me too
get out me sitting me too
right me here me me
get out of here and get me some money too

get out out out
get out oh he get out
get out out out oh
oh get out of
oh he get out
of here me too
right me here me too
get out me sitting me too
sitting me here here
get out get out of here and get me some money too

You’re sitting down and wonderin’ what it’s all about
You ain’t got no money, they will put you out
Why don’t you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too

get out out out
get out oh he get out
get out out out oh
oh get out of
oh he get
of here me too
right me here me too
get out me sitting me too
right me here me me
get out get out of here and get me some money too

Initial music video ideas - Moodboard

Why Don't You Do Right - Original by Lil Green

Research into Artists in the 20's 30's and 40's

Peggy Lee: She was at her most famous in the 40's and her vesrion of the song 'Why Don't you do Right?', originaly performed by Lil Green in 1941, was released in 1943.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Lee

Al Jolson: By the 30's Al was one of the worlds most famous and higest paid entertainers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jolson

Louis Armstrong: Louis was at his most famous throughout the 20's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong

Proposal for a new popular music artist:

• The final decision of our song choice is Gramophonedzie's remix of Peggy Lee's classic song 'Why Don't You Do Right?' Our group decided that the original song is a very classy and sophisticated one which made us think about the type of image we want to create for our group as we combining the old with the new.  However, we like the idea of a sophisticated image, so when we were deciding upon the name we needed something fitting of this. I decided a French name could sound quite classy so we came up with Renee, which also seemed fitting to our 20's theme. 

• The genre of our music video, is definitely going to be old fashioned. However, i don't think we can specifically put it into any one group as we are combining the old and the new.

• I think that the target audience for this style of music can be very varied as we are taking a classic old record who people in their 60's would have listened to in their youth with something very young, appealing to children as young as 12. 

• The track that we are going to be producing is below: 

Initial Idea video treatment

After doing further research into the 'Singing in the rain' remix we decided collectively that perhaps the song was rather cliched as it has been made very popular by George Sampson who won Britain's Got Talent  in 2008. 

We then looked at different versions of the song such as the original and Jamie Cullum's version to see whether or not a different cover of it maybe more original. However, we found that the other versions that we found were all a bit slow for any sort of performance element to be included in them.

However, even though agreeing that 'Singing in the rain' was the wrong song for us we still wanted to follow the 1920's theme. So we did a bit more research on youtube, seeing if there were any songs that were of a similar genre. We looked at a few techno swing remix songs, however we felt that they were all a bit too fast and young to fit our style of music. Then i remembered a song that was recently remixed in 2010 from the original Peggy Lee song 'Why Don't you Do Right?' and decided that this was the perfect combination of our 20's styled theme and our modern day style that we wanted.

  

   Like our idea before we want to keep the whole piece in black and white, this we think will again reinforce the era of the video. However, we also had the idea of making the main woman's lips red, which demonstrates that she is the main protagonist and it also conveys the idea that she is the dominant character. 

As we have chosen quite a modern, dance type song we are aware we want to base it around old fashioned styled dancing. However, as the song switched from old to modern, we wanted to create a narrative which demonstrated the change in history from the 20's to today. We decided to take a very stereotypical image of a 20's scene and then transform it into modern day. Our idea for said scene would be two black men sinning shoes for the rich lady (our protagonist) and then as the music changes into a more up beat modern style they change their position my getting up and dancing etc. We would still have them dressed in 1920's styled apparel but the idea would be conveyed through the change in height and through the change in camera shot-perhaps looking up at them, putting them into hero status. 

Initial group ideas

After discussing our ideas that we had over the summer in our group i think we found a common theme occurring with the members of our group. We had all looked into an older style of music for example, Motown, soul, jazz ect. So after researching songs on youtube we decided that a good style we could follow would be 1920's style music which we felt had aspects of all the different types we had looked at individually. We then found the song 'Singing in the rain' but it was a remix by Mint Royale ft, Gene Kelly. This then lead us down a more interesting path of crossing old with the new.

This song is exactly the type that we want to use in our final music video. However, this one we may feel is a little too techno and too modern for us, but we still really like the song and so far we have come up with some really creative ideas. For example, we have now decided we want our 20's style video to look really chic, so we have decided that we want the whole video to be in black and white, which will capture the era much more effectively. We have also decided to use actual rain and to have a dance sequence using umbrella in the rain. We thought that these aspects would create a more realistic 20's atmosphere.  Thinking about mies en scene we want to have our dancers dressed in a 20's styled fashion eg, bowler hats, braces etc.

Initial ideas/treatment

Over the course of the summer i came up with many different ideas for music videos that perhaps i could follow for the final product. I looked at different types of artists such as Shakira and some foreign artists such as Ben L'Oncle Soul. However, one group that particularly caught my attention was MGMT with their song Electric Feel.

• MGMT are an alternative/rock band who are very much an organic group. 
• Their star image is based largely upon the music that they create, therefore they are ever so slightly hippy and alternative. 
• It appears as though they base their image on the street/ dirty 'just-got-out-of-bed' look, conveyed through their 'morning-hair' and baggy clothing which could be said resembles pyjamas! 
• MGMT's music video 'Electric Feel' demonstrates nicely the bands image and creates a clear message for the audience about how the band want to be portrayed. I portray the video to represent the band and that they want to be seen as maybe a slightly rebellious group as the video conveys a slight drug induced atmosphere. I also understand the band to have a 'one-with-nature' attitude about them judging form this video and others. 

After analysing the style of this video and the image that the band create for themselves i came up with an alternative video for this song. As the band are quite abstract i created quite and abstract idea as alternative video for this song.  The idea is to start out with the band playing their instruments on top of the world, this demonstrates the idea that they are an organic group and not synthetically created by a record label. I also used this image as it represent the idea that the band are one-with-nature. The video would start in black and white, demonstrating that the world is not as happy a place as it could be and then the idea would progress so that the lead singer, touches one person on the shoulder and from his tough comes light. The idea would progress so that it works as a chain, so every time someone passes the touch on they become lit, eventually creating a world that was full of life and happiness.  All throughout the song i also decided to cut back to the band on top of the world reinforcing the organic nature of them and how they care about the world. Although this idea in a sense seems a little 'cheesy' i think that it conforms to the bands image and the music they play and sends out a strong message which i think seems to be the one they want to convey.  

What is a Music Video?

1. 'Music video is not primarily a commodity form but a prootional one.' - Andrew Goodwin.
2.  Music videos act as marketing for other media products such as films. For example '8 Mile' with Eminem - 'loose yourself'  and  Harry Browne with Plan B- 'End Credits'  

3. Music videos are synergistic practices.

4. Music videos are a creative artifact of interest in itself.

5. Joe Saltzman said: ‘They now provide pictures for the songs in our heads . Goodbye, imagination…All kids have to o is to watch and listen, stare straight ahead. No need to think, to embellish, to create, to imagine. The electric fix is in.’  

A2 Blog comparison

In today’s lesson we began our course by reviewing last years A2’s blogs. This proved to be a useful exercise as I was able to understand what to do and what not to do during the blogging process in A2. I looked at two previous A2’s work and compared what they appeared to do well and not so well.

Leo:

Good:

• The blogs became very detailed as the year progressed.
• The creativity of the blogs made the posts stand out, for example, interviews with fellow students, scans of storyboard and call sheets.

Not so Good:

• At the beginning of the blogging process there were no posts completed, therefore this particular student may have fallen behind.

Felix Klinkhammer:

Good:

• There is a very good structure and good clarity throughout, making it easy to read.
• Like Leo, there are creative posts, including things like call sheets, and a permission letter for copyright etc.

Not so Good:

• Again, like Leo there appears to be a lack of detail at the beginning of the year and a lack of creativity.