Mood board planning

In this lesson me and Laxmi started looking at images that we could use for our mood board we both gathered about 10 images each and put them onto Microsoft Word so that we could then print them off later for when we start to construct the mood board.

Me and Laxmi also spoke about the other things in which we could include on our mood board such as the background, writing and any other things such as words describing the artist. 

The second start

After two weeks I have changed group from Sam and Christian doing a indie rock band to now the group with Laxmi, Hayley and Megan doing a pop artist this is a massive change as in the genre because they both have a completely different feel due to the different conventions and looks.











We started by discussing what the group already had such as the artist name and a slight style for her, we then discussed the song which was T-shirt by Shontelle and I said that I didn't feel it was the best song to help us create a good music video. To this point the rest of the group all agreed  to change the song after a 20 minute period of searching for a new song we came across the song Battlefield by Jordan Sparks, we discussed it and felt that the lyrics could really help us when creating a music video and she is still a female pop artist.

From this we started developing ideas to what our music video could be about and the contents of it. We then started to think up the main narrative for our video which is to have a ballet dancer as a little girl lots of different shots of her doing ballet the idea then progresses into her dancing to get away from the battlefield of which is her home, this is because of her parents are fighting and arguing at home. Dancing feels as if its her only escape and when she does dance she can be free. In our video we will show her growing up and dancing to help herself feel special. We have discussed a few things within the group and also feel the video should be shot in mostly black and white and if not all. We will be using a few different locations and will be trying to use a lot of fast cuts. From these ideas we hope we can create a music video which really captures lyrics from the song in the perfect way. 

The Start

So me, Chris and Sam are working together and we started discussing the genre of our music video and what sort of artists we wanted to be like. The first thing we decided was that we wanted to do an indie rock band this meant that we had to look at all the indie rock bands which we liked and though could use to choose the song we wanted.

Major vs The independent

Culture Industry in music videos -Adorno and Horkeimer

Adorno and Horkeimer are both philosophers from Frankfurt school who are most know for their work on the Culture Industry and their book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" which is also mostly about the cultural industry.

Within there book Adorno and Horkeimer argue that the culture industry exhibits an "assembly-live character which could be observed in the synthetic". What this basically means is that the culture is made through the culture industry and are created like mass created factory products on an assembly line. They are made in a certain way and the big corporations have a planned method of turning out its product.

They believe that products produced by the culture industry have standardized features within them all. And they believe there is nothing different or spontaneous about each individual one and that it has become a routine operation that can be done by anyone with the "specific formulae".

Adorno and Horkeimer both notice that most products released now days become standardized, relating to this Adorno has also said songs become more successful over time because of standards and because of carefully thought out sequences which frequently recur in songs like patterns. Which make the songs all similar in a certain way.  

Adorno and Horkheimer also believe the culture industry allows people to become "masses" and be easily manipulated by capitalist corporations and authoritarian governments. They believe that they have control over the cultural norm. Which in my opinion is true, this can be seen all around the world as from when a small trend come out it starts to become the cultural norm because everyone has to have it for example a new pair of Nike shoes or even the iphone this is all being backed and pushed further by the big capitalist corporations who stand to make money from the cultural trends of the world.

History of Music Videos

I started looking at the history of music videos to be able to gain more of an understanding then I already did. The definition of a music video is a short film integrating a song and imagery and is produced for promotional and/or artistic purposes. I feel by looking at the history of the music video I can find out what to include in the genre that I have chosen. While looking at and researching into music videos I will be able to take ideas and knowledge from them as a whole as through history they have help shape and change the music industry. Modern music videos are normally made for marketing purposes, and to promote the actual sale of the song, however music videos have featured throughout history for many different reasons such as just purely entertainment purposes.

Music videos first started to be made around about the 1920's but these music videos were very simple and basic because of the use of technology was far from advanced. They normally would just show a live or band performance of the song however they started to incorporate talkies and music videos by putting music videos in the short films, an example of this would be  Bessie Smith's song St. Louis Blues which features in a short film showing in this clip 6 minutes 58 seconds in. This was a good way of promoting a song as at this time lots of people were going to the cinemas to watch these styles of film.

This music video was from the 1960's, Bob Dylan's song Subterranean Homesick Blues this was something different in terms of music videos and maybe revolutionised them as a whole as it was one of the first music videos to do something different as a style of music video. The video it self was cards with the lyrics on and the cards would change along with song so that the lyrics on the cards would match the song being played, this was one of the first videos to include text within the song which was also why it was very different. This also followed Goodwin's theory about the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals of a music video.


It then wasn't until the mid 1970's that it started to change again like for example Queens, Bohemian Rhapsody also changed the face of music videos as it was one of the first music videos to contain any visual effects which was amazing for anyone watching it at this time it also changed the way people started to watch music videos because before everyone watched music videos in the cinema then after this video was released the industry thought of the idea to bring out TV channels just for music videos to be watched on.      


Music videos only got bigger as time progressed but this was down to lots of different factors but one major one is the start of the TV channel MTV which started in the 1980's and basically showed music videos all the time. This TV channel is still massive today and shows all the modern music as well as classics of all different genres.

Record Labels

On Wednesday in our double lesson we looked over a few things about music videos. One of the main things we went over and looked at was record labels.

"Record labels are media institutions and they are also commercial organisations"
To me this means that record labels are owned by the media of the world and tend to be all about money and how much they can gain through their artists.

We have researched into record labels and found out in which way they normally operate and this is what we found the Record Labels do:

-The first things they do is use talent scouts to find new artists which they can sign for there record labels they also help to develop the new artists.

-They then help with the management of the bands/artists to help find gigs and shows to do with them.

-They then help with the production, manufacture and distribution of records and albums which the band/artist releases.

-Also the marketing and promotion of the records and albums with things such as music videos of which the record labels fully fund.

-And then they also give the band/artist copyright protection, which stops people using any thing affiliated with them unless they are paid for.

There are two types of record labels there is Major which consists of the big four:
Sony BMG
Universal Music Group
EMI
Warner Music Group
These four major record labels own lots of other subsidiary record labels which are all funded by these four giants. At any one time these four can represent 75% of all music sold within a year.

The other type of record label which there is the minor or independent record labels, these are the much smaller record labels which work without the use of the big four funding them. These record labels tend to have more artists which are beginning their careers as they allow the artist much more freedom and control.  

Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Analysis

Andrew Goodwin wrote a book which was "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" this book consisted of Goodwin's theory on music videos, which was that most music videos followed a set of rules or codes and conventions so that the music video would work with the genre effectively.

1. The first rule is that music videos demonstrate typical genre characteristics for example rock songs normally consist of a stage performance, a boy band or girl band normally have a dance routine and then rap songs normally have lots of shots of women and nice cars.

2. The second rule is there normally is a relationship between lyrics and visuals, this is normally the basics for most music videos but generally is most consistent in indie rock bands as they normally have a narrative video which stays consistent to the song lyrics. However it is done in other genre's to just not as consistently.

3. The third rule is that there is a relationship between the music and the visuals. There are three different techniques or ways in which the visuals are used to promote the song; illustrate, disjuncture and amplify.

4. The fourth rule is that the demands of the record label will include the need of lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which gives the artist a visual style which then recurs across their work. A big example of this would be Lady Gaga because of the extravagant outfits she wears and then also Katy Perry who also wears quite extravagant clothing in her music videos.  

5. The fifth rule is that there is frequently reference to notion of looking such as images of screens within screens or telescopes and then also the voyeuristic treatment of the female body, which links in with Mulveys theory which is that women are there to be looked at.

6. The sixth and final rule is that there is quite often an intertextual reference this is when an idea is taken from a past movie, TV show or even another music video and is used again or even just changed a little bit. An example of this is Madonna's "Material Girl" which was intertextualised from "Gentleman Prefer Blondes".

   "Material Girl" - Madonna












"Gentleman Prefer Blondes"