The reason for making an album cover is to promote the artist and to gain income from the selling of the album cover, the album needs to reflect the genre of the artist and attract there select audience, promote star image. This is also done to market the artist,
Within the video she is imitating Slash from guns and roses, and she is wearing clothing like how he wore it, and so this is an example of intertextuality. She is saying in the lyrics that she is a rockstar and so she plays on the famous performer Slash and dresses up like him to further amplify her rockstar image to the audience. When watching the music video, Rihanna is playing a guitar and is playing on a stage, with a band as backup, this is one of Goodwins theories, where you have a performance in a music video. Rihanna also objectifies her self within the video, by sitting on the floor naked and painted black, this is not like an ordinary performance video, as most performance videos just have the star singing into a microphone and or playing an instrument.
Throughout the music video we see many close ups of Rihanna, the main body part that gets the most close ups was here lips, this can be satisfying for the male gaze as she projects her lips in a sexual manner furthermore her body is fragmented, so in the music video her lips her eyes and her mid section are all fragmented during the music video. There is numerous parts of the music video where iconography is there, such as the rockstar guitar and how she plays it, she places it like how Slash played it in a very famous music video, and so by this pose and how she dressed she is further amplifying her rockstar image.
This music video is stereotypical to the fact that most rockstars wear black and have there music based around dark, and her dark makeup and the black and white effect really portray the rockstar image once again. disjuncture has not occurred, but she has points in the video where disjuncture does occur, where she says "F**k the law" and that lyric has no relation to the music video performance.
Laura Mulvey has a theory that there are male and female gazes, so in this particular music video, she would say that Rihanna has attracted the male gaze, but I contest this theory because some female viewers will admire Rihanna for her music video and will gain the gaze of the female viewers, not just the male viewers, in my opinion there shouldn't be sexest gazes but just a sexual gaze.
During the video we encounter a lot of illustration, this is where the lyrics match the visuals, throughout the music video she mentions she's a "rockstar" and she is dressed up at Slash so this shows that illustration occurred.
In the music video there is not a balance between narrative and performance, the entire music video is a performance video and is shown when Rihanna is playing the guitar and singing. also the music of the music video match the same as the cuts, so for example Rihanna may play the guitar and then as soon as she hits the guitar the shot changes to her naked covered in paint, and its a jump cut, from one scene to the other, there are not many smooth transitions throughout the music video this is because of the genre of the music video is very rock and roll and you generally associate rock and roll with chaos and anarchy and so the editing will reflect that, and so will have jump cuts and very aggressive editing, and will not use any slow transition fades.
During the music video we come across many close ups and extreme close ups of Rihanna when she is dancing or showing off her skin and is wearing less clothing. The camera movements are in time with the musicm so when the base drops or there is a heavy beat the camera may sway from side to side or may zoom in and out very quickly.
There is a master shot, this is where Rihanna is on a stage singing with her band in the background and this is used continuously throughout the music video, its a long shot of her generally but sometimes the camera movd upwards so it gave an aerial view of her and the band.
This is the template I will be using to map out my digipack, as you can see it has the measurements needed to construct my own digipak.
Here is a previous Digipack used by previous students, this is an excellent digipack because of the creativity of the pack, and the great images used. The genre of the album is very indie and romantic and this is illustrated by the red rose and the graceful images in the album cover. The front cover shows a tree overlaid with an image behind it and the font is elegant and simple, just like the album overall. on the back of the cover we have the bare code and the record label. Also the colour scheme is consistent, on the outer panels they are an aqua blue with some white text on it, then in the inner panels there is a continues image of a rose in a the woods or somewhere like that, plus on the inside cover there is some faint text which tells you about the songs included in the album.
This is in my opinion is not as a creative or as good as the previous digipack, as you can see the back panel of the digipack is just a collage of there photo shoot, which is not as good looking as the rose image on the previous cover, this is a a typical boy band album cover, and they have all the stars on the front, this is because the audience care a lot about the looks of the starts and so need to show them on the front of the album cover. This album also has a barcode on the back of the album, and also contains the number of songs within the album, and the song names are also placed on the back of the cover.
1) How would you describe the target audience for this kind of music? Is there a core and secondary audience?
I would describe that the target audience for this kind of music would be, basically teenagers and maybe slightly older, people in there early twenties could appreciate the song lyrics and the artwork that goes with the song. Our core audience is young people, as I said (17-23) and some of the people within this age range have some type of relation to the song and its visuals, such as drug taking, which has become an ever more increasing trend in young people.
2) How would you describe the tastes and attitudes of the target audience? What other do are they like to consume?
I would describe my audience to be very much transparent as in they will change to whatever the trend is at that time. Which is a good thing for our music video, because this means we can kind of mould our audience to like the music video. Our audience will like the mainstream type of music, such as Drake and Rihanna, and so people would appeal to this type of music genre.
3) Outline there media consumption profile?
The target audience would consume many different types of of media, ranging from Radio to TV. The target audience would consume modern magazines, such as OK magazine and magazines that reveal celebrity life and in trend fashion. The radio stations that our audience may listen to are KissFM and CapitalFM and so on, these radio stations play very much mainstream music, and our audience likes the mainstream type of music. The type of TV shows that people watch are mainly TV dramas like Hollyoaks, Eastenders, Misfts and Skins, these are just to name a few.
4) What function does this kind of music serve to the audience (Uses and Gratification's Theory)?
In our music video there is sexual stimulation, this is shown when we have a dance pole and our female actress sexualy walks around the pole in her revealing clothing, this would cause gaze, mainly for the male gaze because we have an attractive woman. It also causes relaxation, this is because the song used is very mellow and therapeutic and causes the audience to relax, and when you associate drugs with a song you think of a slow song that has a low key, which this one is.
I have made an album cover for our star, this is just to see what people think of it, a few more will be made so I can see which one our target audience will like the most.
Republic Records is a Universal Music Group (UMG) record label, originally founded as Cheese Factory Records. After Motown Records was separated from Universal Motown Records which caused theUniversal Motown Republic Group to be shutdown, the label was temporarily reincarnated as Universal Republic Records, until it was re-activated a year later.
The label focuses on mainstream and urban music,for example from artists including: Kelly Rowland, Austin Mahone, Nelly, Lil Wayne, Drake, Busta Rhymes, Amy Winehouse estate,Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Jessie J and The Weeknd. Successful country artists include Taylor Swift and Florida Georgia Line.
Since Universal Republic Records' shutdown, Republic Records has been a stand-alone label under UMG and is one of the group's premier labels, with Interscope Records and Island Records.
The label's main offices are located in New York City, New York, United States, other offices are located at the Interscope Geffen A&M building in Santa Monica, California, U.S..
According to Mediabase, Republic Records was 2012's top charting U.S. label.
Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) is 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. Diverging from other media effect theories that question "what do media do to people?", UGT focuses on "what do people do with media?"
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.
UGT has a heuristic value today because it gives communication scholars a "perspective through which a number of ideas and theories about media choice, consumption, and even impact can be viewed."
For my music video we tried to aim our music video at the young audience so ages between 16 and above, depending on what they enjoy, because our music video involves drugs and sexual scenes and so some of the viewers may not like watching it but, the younger audience may have more interest in the music video, this is because the younger generation are more exposed to the drugs and sex than ever before and so by making a video involving these aspects, people will enjoy the music video more, plus our music video has got a mysterious story line and so people will need to concentrate and analyse the video to understand the music video fully.
The reason I decided to do a music video like this one is because, people my age or above may have a better understanding in the concept of the music videos narrative, this is because people are age have an intrest in drugs and sex, because we hear a lot about it in school and from the media and so people will want to find out more. Our music video is a way of showing the youth of today how bad drugs can be, we this illustrate this by showing the main star overdosing from drugs, and maybe this message we are trying to portray from the music video will make people think twice before taking illegal drugs.
This shot is a very simple shot yet a very beautiful and effective shot, its all about the the lighting in this shot, because as you can see there is a bright light shinning from behind her which defines her body and her hair and gives off a really nice lens flare as well when she is out of the way of the light slightly. And this is also another video edited to be black and white.
Here is another beautiful shot of what looks like to be either a sunrise or sunset, and this is in color unlike most of the other parts of the video, and this catches the viewers attention because they are used to a black and white picture but now they changed this shot to be in color and it gains the attention and keeps the audience interested in the music video.
Water is used a lot these days from what I have watched recently its starting to become a convention within music videos, and its a very effective shot of an Arial view of her laying on top of the water and looking up at the camera emotionless, again this would look great if we could try and replicate it in our own music video. In some way this shot also gains the male gaze as she is wearing a see through dress and may cause her to be viewed as an object of desire
In The Nationals music video they have a lot of there scenes in a swimming pool which was a good way of drawing the attention of the audience, and we want to replicate this in out video by filming underwater.
In music videos you do have a fair few that now have just a black and white video, which in my opinion is an artistic view point at a music video, because you don't have vibrant colors to attract the viewers attention, you have to have a strong performance and a creative music video and The National have done a very good job in doing this.
There is a section of the music video where they have a spud gun and are shooting fruit of a tree stump, and they use slow motion when doing this as seen by the screen shot. We want to include some slow motion shots in our music video and we will take note on how its done by watching this music video as an example.
This occurs often in music videos, this is so the viewers know that she is the main start in the music video. And she is centralised in the shot to show her dominance in the shot. In our music video we will try and implement the star factor and centralise it round two main characters.
In this shot she has gained the male gaze with her sexual faces and dancing, which attracts the audience to the music video. We want to replicate this in our music video with another female actress.
Here in this shot we have Charlie and the lighting used is very effective and we want to use the same type of lightning in our music video and how they have used it in this one really show off her body and creates a sexy look for her.
This shot is a very simple shot yet a very beautiful and effective shot, its all about the the lighting in this shot, because as you can see there is a bright light shinning from behind her which defines her body and her hair and gives off a really nice lens flare as well when she is out of the way of the light slightly. And this is also another video edited to be black and white.
Water is used a lot these days from what I have watched recently its starting to become a convention within music videos, and its a very effective shot of an Arial view of her laying on top of the water and looking up at the camera emotionless, again this would look great if we could try and replicate it in our own music video. In some way this shot also gains the male gaze as she is wearing a see through dress and may cause her to be viewed as an object of desire
In The Nationals music video they have a lot of there scenes in a swimming pool which was a good way of drawing the attention of the audience, and we want to replicate this in out video by filming underwater.
This occurs often in music videos, this is so the viewers know that she is the main start in the music video. And she is centralised in the shot to show her dominance in the shot. In our music video we will try and implement the star factor and centralise it round two main characters.
