Jamal Edwards - SBTV

After reading the biog of Jamal Edwards from The Guardian article I realised that the growth of technology and the internet's audience has made it possible for normal people to make a name for themselves.
Edwards expresses how he's a rebel and will film absolutely anywhere, with no permits; making his work a guerrilla operation. He started his YouTube channel in 2007 when he was just 16, wanting to expand grime and hip hop music, making it more accessible on the internet, as you cant really find grime on mainstream TV. This has shown that all you need is a camera and some drive and you can make a very successful business, I will take this into account when creating our artist, making sure to publicise on YouTube.
His business went from filming London rappers free styling on the street or in a car to filming Ellie Goulding, Nicki Minaj and Bruno Mars. He has just signed a deal with Sony RCA to create his own imprint within the label. Now with 50,000 subscribers and 39 million views on his channel, he is taken very seriously, and people admire his success and drive in this industry; even drawing the attention on Simon Cowell and Richard Branson!

Why Piracy is Perpetuating Plastic Pop

Reading this article by Helienne Lindvall I realised piracy is a key issue in the music industry, and is something we need to take into account when constructing our product next year.
The new dilemma of fans unwillingness to pay for music has destroyed creating a "rock'n'roll revolution" and has instead produced a continuous stream of assembly-line artists.

Lars Ulrich and his band Metallica sued the illegal music sharer Napster after discovering the vast amount of free downloads of their music. They experienced a massive public backlash for suing and lost a lot of fans and respect! However a few years later Ulrich seems to have 'come to terms' with downloading free music and describes it as 'awesome' as fans explain this is the only way they could find and discover bands they like.




Ever since this event artists have been scared to speak out about their objection to free downloading in fear of public abuse. However Lily Allen was prepared to, and gave a dig at older artists who had been very successful, saying it was easy for them to make money from the music industry. She argued that for young artists like her, would never get a chance to make a living out of music. After this attack, she was bombarded this hate from the public, even some death threats, forcing her to remove her website!



There has been a lot of concern for the future of young musicians from artists who thrived before the digital age of free downloading. If young musicians do not fit the stereotypical pop-star formulae that is the X-Factor mould, they will struggle to succeed in this harsh industry.
Massive Attack who have been active since 1987 expressed to the BBC how frightening it was to actually see the vast amount of downloads on unlicensed sites; most being 25,000 per site! They believe that that could destroy their whole profit and living, and in the future it will only get worse; eventually cheapening music.




Even Noel Gallagher expresses his frustration with the consumer who demands for their free music on the internet to download. He explains it cost him a quarter of a million pounds to make it, out of his own pocket as he's on his own record label. He believes this is why tours are becoming so long, artists are forced to drag it out even more just to gain profit as records get more expensive to make and less people buy them, his tour being a year and four months!

Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins believes that due to technology now offering the choice of people not paying for music, the music culture has been turned into a service culture. Artists are no longer appreciated as much and, he believes now they are forced to beg for attention and plead for their fans to buy their album. However Corgan stresses that it is not even the price that puts fan's off buying their music, the general person no longer believes in making that purchase, no matter the price. The type of artists have also changed into being ready made manufactured, commercial bands; Corgan believing that if he was to be manufactured they would chose someone else with straight teeth, better attitude and palatable music to a wider audience.


Taking all of this into account I believe we need to be very cautious when creating our product; being our artist, song and style of music video. I think the type of artist we will create will appeal to a wide variety of fans; not just being mainstream pop, but also other genres. I think they will still be suseptable to their music being illegally downloaded as this is now the case with almost all artists. I think the only way people are attracted to paying for music, is when they enjoy the whole album and will feel more inclined to invest in the whole package of songs. Therefore I will try to create an artist who is not just a one hit wonder, but will have a good selection of songs in an album that people are more attracted to buy.

Evaluation of lip syncing exercise

On Wednesday I spent a morning with my class practising lip synching in the studio. We used the song Get Lucky and split into three groups rotating jobs and scenes throughout the day.

First I used the scene with the tracking shot, this was the most complex scene as we had to plan when I actress would start walking and for us to track her and where she would stop at the other end. To make this consistent we taped the floor at the starting point for her and for the camera and then also the end point, we also decided what lyric she would move on and which she would stop on. I sat on the dolly recording the first few scenes which I really enjoyed as it gave me the opportunity to control what kind of shot I filmed, using wide shots, close ups and a panning shot of Anna's whole body starting at her feet. I then swapped and pushed the dolly, having to decide on an appropriate steady speed that I kept consistent when filming. This role also allowed me to direct Anna, telling her when to walk, dance, look up, etc. which I enjoyed as I was able to give clear direction without having to worry about my voice being in the shot as later we would mute our clips and put the original song clip over the top of our videos.

I then took control of playing the track for everyone, I had to make sure I stopped the track every time and then to press pause to make the CD wind down, waiting for the speed number to get to zero before I could play it again. The floor manager would call to all the groups 'Stand by' and everyone when ready would reply 'standing by', the manager would then call 'rolling' and when all cameras were recording everyone would say 'rolling'. Then the manager would tell me 'play back', I then had to call out 'play back in 3, 2, 1' and then press play for the music to begin, waiting for any sign of an emergency stop or the manager to say 'cut' before I stopped the music. I enjoyed this role as the floor manager and I communicated together in order to organise the shot for the teams to film.

I then had a go at lip synching with another girl on the third location which was a green screen. We had to mime and dance in front of the camera, following direction from the camera crew. We had a tendency to move towards the back of the screen not realising we were too far away, the person filming and director then told us to move forward as they could see on the screen we were too far away. We solved this problem by using tape to mark where we should stay. I found this job the most fun as we got to play around and occupy the screen, however it was also difficult to dance and continuously lip synch at the same time so we had to stay focused and concentrated. As the background was just a green screen, this location did not give us much to work with and therefore we had to make up what to do for each shot which was tiring and challenging. Whereas in the second location there was a sofa set in a living room which was easier to work with as you could use the sofa to sit on and hide behind, etc.

I found using the studio was good as it was very organised and ment that everyone could use all three different locations on set easily. It also ment that we only needed one stage manager and one person to play back the music for all three groups allowing more people to have a go at each job. We all worked very quickly in the studio and rotated locations after around six shots from each one. However it was also challenging using the studio as it was quite a confind space with so many people in it making it a bit load and chaotic. It was also very hot in the studio by the end which was unpleseant and distracting to work in.

The lighting for each location was good as we used artificial lighting which created a bright, profesional look to the shots. In the second location there was a red head over the light which created an atmosphere and looked really effective with the setting, creating a different mood to the other two. The location with the tracking shot and the green screen had white artificial lighting which looked really good.

In editing I worked with a partner and uploaded all the clips from every location to work with. We used Final Cut Pro and uploaded the original audio of the song, we then uploaded all of the clips matching up the lip synching with the original audio, making sure the mimers lips matched the song. We then cut up each clip and mixed different scenes together, making sure to varry the length of different scenes to keep it exciting and intresting.

Richard Dyer's theory of Star Theory

Keith Negus - synthetic and organic stars

Keith Negus theorised the ideology of creating and producing pop stars. There are two distinct ways of thinking about artists within the music industry. These ideologies shape the artist's image and determine the success of their career by the way they are marketed towards specific target audiences. Organic ideology of creating is an artist who is independent, talented and works writes their own songs. Whereas synthetic ideology of creating is the type of artist who is manufactures and controlled to create an image, not writing their own songs and target a commercial audience.

A synthetic artist I have researched into is Nicki Minaj

As an artist Minaj is a combination of music and image constructed for her target audience, creating a manufactured, fictional persona. According to Negus the artist's image is constructed by the record company and they will be given a short time to prove their success before other combinations will be tried out. Minaj signed with Young money and Cash money and has been a huge success since she was reconstructed to 'pop' music and became more mainstream. She has also collaborated with artists similar like Rhianna, Drake and Lil Wayne to widen their target audience and construct a life style between these artists.
The synthetic ideology of creativity says there is an emphasis given to single sales and promoting first albums as a lot of these artists tend to be one hit wonders where money and fame is channelled in to their songs to get it popular and then dropped. Minaj was treated like this at first however she has continued her success and become a very well known achieving artist, due also to her song-writing and unique image. She is defiantly aimed at a younger, less sophisticated audience who look up to her and aspire to be her.
Her profits are generated by immediate, short term strategies by her record label such as touring, selling products and her songs which quickly go out of date after being overplayed on all the pop radio stations.

An organic artist I have researched into is Adele
Adele is a more natural artist, she is more of a realistic portrayal of her true self; however obviously the Adele we see as an audience is constructed to an extent. She has been nurtured and enhanced by the record company, still keeping her as she is but tweaking curtain things to make her more glamorous and successful in order to appeal to a wider audience and create a celebrity aura. She was signed by XL Recordings aged 18 and straight away was a great success. She has been given time to evolve and progress through her career much like other organic artists; this is because the is given a lot of control over her career and has the ability to ride her success purely on her talent of being an vocally gifted, singer-songwriter, musician and multi-instrumentalist. Both her albums 19 and 21 have been a globally award winning success, emphasis has been given to album sales and the construction of a successful back catalogue creating the most success possible. Her target audience is very diverse, ranging from young audiences to much older, more sophisticated consumers.
Her profits are mainly generated by long term strategies helped by her record label, such as her global tour, very successful albums and promotions, for example her synergy with the newest James Bond, creating a song for the film called Skyfall.

Adele 21 Album Cover

Applying Propp and Todorov to Enrique Iglesias' Hero

Propp


Propp analysed folk tales and in each found the narrative contained a set of stock characters which are in every storyline; all having a narrative structure.
This consisted of 8 characters:

• the hero
• the princess
• the helper 
• the false hero
• the dispatcher
• the father
• the villain 
• the donor

I have applied his theory to the music video Hero by Enrique Iglesias, fitting the characters to his theory.


After watching the video it was very clear that Iglesias played the hero who was the main character, acting bravely and masculinely, this is also supported through the lyrics he sings to Love-Hewitt saying he can be her 'hero'. Jennifer Love-Hewitt played the princess who was the innocent, beautiful victim that Iglesias tries to save from the villains. These villains were played by the Mafia group in black suits with guns. However even though Iglesias plays the hero he does not in fact 'complete his quest' and therefore is not rewarded with the princess in the end as the villains win. I feel this video fits the theory however the differences in the storyline might be because it is a more realistic modern scenario and shows that not all fairy tales end happily with the hero succeeding.

Todorov


Todorov theorised there were five stages in media texts narratives, he believed the human mind needs narrative to make sense of things and we need to connect events and make interpretations based on these connections, looking for a beginning, middle and an end.

• The original equilibrium is the beginning where everything is as it should be showing normality. 
• Then an event will create disruption of this equilibrium.
• This disruption is then recognised. 
• There is then an attempt to repair and restore the damage of the disruption back to the original equilibrium. 
• And therefore creates a new equilibrium. 

I have tried to relate his theory also the music video Hero.

Normality is shown through the original equilibrium of Iglesias and Love-Hewitt being a happy couple. 

However we then start to see the Mafia gang waiting for the couple showing they will disrupt the equilibrium of the couple running away happily together. 

The recognition of the disruption is when the couple come outside and realise they are busted and are court; Love-Hewitt is taken by the boss of the evil gang. 

The attempt to repair the damage is where Iglesias tries to fight the boss to set the girl free and fight for her; however he fails and is beaten up. 

The new equilibrium shows Iglesias dying and Love-Hewitt being left alone.