Andrew Goodwin's Theory

'Music videos are just an extension of the lyrics'. Andrew Goodwin believes there are three different views on this. The first is that some music videos have absolutely no correlation to the lyrics of the song, for example Fatboy Slim's song 'Praise him'. The lyrics are about how far him and a girl have come and basically how he should respect and 'praise' her for what she does, however the lyrics do not tie in with what the music video is that they have created. It is just a load of random people dancing. Some artists may choose to do this to create publicity for their songs.

Then some music videos take what the lyrics are saying and interpret them into their own way such as Katy Perry's song part of me. In the music video she catches her boyfriend flirting with other girls and joins the army which suggests she's a fighter etc. This is a metaphorical interpretation of the song lyric because it is not literal and it is not of no correllation. Metaphorical interpretations usually include a mixture of performance and narrative shots.

However people also take the lyrics literally and everything the lyrics say the performer does. Also Taylor Swift's song 'Love Story' which I analysed previously. Everything the lyrics say relates to what is happening on screen and in the music video, another example of a song which does this is Cyndi Lauper's song 'Girls just want to have fun'.

Tattoo ideas

Hazards media from ewenschristie

Stuart Hall encoding/ decoding theory
There are three readings people can take when they watch music videos, these are dominated, negotiated and oppositional.

A dominant reading is where the person who is watching the music video fully agrees with the way that the producers want them to react to the film. Through editing and filming the producers make their video to portray a particular message to the audience that is watching it. Our intentions for our music video is that people will have a dominant reading and understand what is going on because the music video matches the lyrics.

A negotiated reading is when the audience understands where they are coming from but kind of disagree with it. They may not agree with it because of their own experiences, positions and interests.

Oppositional is where they understand the reading but do not agree with it. This may also be because of their own experiences of situations, however they believe the message the producers are trying to portray to their audience is bad.

Genre research

Christie ewens from ewenschristie

Location shoot

Location shoot from ewenschristie

Digipacks

This is Jessie J's digipack for her album 'Who you are'. The main album cover is a close up of her and she has lots of make-up on and her nails done, black is quite a strong bold colour, especially to wear as lipstick which suggests she's bold and confident and her full fringe and blunt cut bob suggests she's very edgy and trendy. Close up's are normally used to show someone's emotions and she is also wearing black which suggests darkness, perhaps dark secrets or past. Her name is written in gold which suggests she is a star and it also contrasts with the black so it really stands out who's album it is and reminds people of her name as she was a new pop artist when this album was released. On the back is also listed her songs so people are aware of what they are buying.

Digipacks

This is Cheryl Cole's album, Three Words. The songs are to do with love and include quite emotional lyrics because this is the album that was released after her split from Ashley Cole, so the songs aren't very dancy and upbeat. All of her album is in black and white because the mood of the album is meant to be depressed and sad. She is also hiding behind a black headwear accessorie, which looks like something that would be worn at a funeral, suggesting she's lost someone (Ashley Cole). Inside it includes the lyrics, so people could refer back to them if they don't know the words. Our song is about loosing someone so we could bear this in mind when it comes to us making our own digipack for Katy Perry to have a black and white theme.

Digipacks

This is Katy Perry's digipack for her album 'Teenage Dream', which includes the song I am going to be producing a music video for 'The one that got away'. Inside included her disks which were decorated in the style of her new album and songs, which is a sweets theme, tying in with her song 'California Girls'. The disc is also scented of cotton candy, which is a new and unique way of promoting her album. She is also led naked on pink candy floss which ties in with the theme again. This is the front cover on her entire album, which is her attempt of making the album appeal to men. The theme of sweets could suggest sweet and innocent but from her lack of clothing revealing outfits this could suggest otherwise. It is a very simple layout with photo's of herself in to reinforce that she is the performer and this is her album. On the back of the CD case it has her list of songs which are included on her album, so people know what songs of hers they will be buying. We do not have the facilities to make scented CD's however I will take into consideration the layout she has used when it comes to making my own digipack.

Male pop artists

Young heart throb Justin Bieber portrays himself as an ideal boyfriend and sings love songs to make young girls fall head over heels in love with him. He is young and current and has recently started trying to appeal to a slightly older audience. Before he appealed to girls between ten and eighteen. Now he's trying to make himself look older and maturer with a different hair cut which is more modern and even though his songs still appeal to ten year olds, his target audience has pushed slighty further to around 25. His songs used to include soppy lyrics with a slightly up tempo beat, he has now collaborated with the likes of Nicki Minaj who does quite up tempo songs and rapping and is starting to include drum 'n' bass in his more recent songs, therefore trying to appeal to a wider audience. In comparison to female pop artists there is no-one young that sings sad love songs and has a young fan base, which men are madly attracted to.

Pop boy bands such as One Direction do the same as Justin Bieber and aim to attract a young female fan base, although they probably attract a wider female fan base than Justin Bieber because there is more of them. For young male artists that are trying to get noticed this is a great way to get them into the industry, x-factor group Union J also try the same technique. This is a major difference between female and male pop artists.

Then you have Chris Brown and Usher who are very similar artists, who bath fall into the pop genre but are r'n'b artists. They attract an older target audience than Justin Bieber, from roughly 13-late 40's. Their songs are quite alike and their beats are both up tempo and current. Their songs include a range of narrative and performance shots, and there is normally a major dance scene in both of there music videos! Chris Brown and Usher have similar comparisons with some female pop artists, such as Beyonce, who always does dancing in her music videos.

However my group is made up of girls, so it makes more sense to base our song choice on a  female artist, so we made our questionnaire to find out people's information and opinions within the pop genre.

Voki, Target audience

Target audience

These are two old pictures of groups of students who are no longer at school. They are now 17 and 18 and would still be within the target audience range for Katy Perry. When these pictures were taken, they were probably 14 or 15 and would have also still been Katy Perry’s target audience. I know this because of the questionnaire I got people to fill out which showed that 12 plus liked Katy Perry up to roughly people in their middle fourties. Katy Perry’s songs are very fun and tend to be based at a slightly younger audience such as people in school still, such as ‘teenage dream’. From researching Katy Perry’s costumes I found out she is very fashionable so she would definitely target textiles students such as the first image.

Costume research

Costume research on Prezi

Camera Placement

While doing the lyric analysis we thought about editing that is going to be used and so what camera positions and angles and shot types we are going to be used. Along with the lyric analysis, I drew a birds’ eye view of some of the shots which required the camera to be moved into different positions and drew the places where the camera needed to be. Big production companies have the facilities to have loads of cameras set up and just click record, whereas we are provided with one camera so we have to take into consideration where the cameras need to be placed and our actor has to stay in the same place while we do this. So I thought by drawing it out and thinking through it, that it would make it a whole lot easier when it comes to filming.

Lyric analaysis

As a group we sat down and thought through what lyrics from the song would be narrative or performance, so that we knew what outfits and locations etc. when it came to filming. Our song choice worked out about half and half for the performance and narrative shots because our lyrics tell a story and the song is about reminiscing on what could have been so part of our filming is going to be of the past, linking back to narrative.

Katy Perry's website

Katy perry website from ewenschristie

Quesionnaire

Taylor Swift website

genre research on Prezi