Richard Dyer (Star Image)

Dyer belives that in order to understand the relationship between stars and stardom with the music industary we must first understand the role of music stars.

The star image is created by the record company to appel to their target audience. And they are shaped and molded in order to maximise this appel.

Dyers theories revolve around two main paradoxes or points, the first of these is that a star can be oridinary and extrodinary at the same time. An example of this could be Victoria Beckham ( Posh Spice ) she can seem ordinary as she is married has kids and does other normal everyday tasks. However she is also extrodinary as she has this whole other life of stardom and fame that everyday people can not imagin.
The second of these theories is that stars can be both present and absent at the same time. This means that as the target audience we can feel close to the stars via posters music videos and reading about them, we can find out everything about them and feel like we really know them, yet have never spoke to or even met them showing that we may feel that they are present in our lives when in reality they are absent.

Keith Negus. (Synthetic VS Organic)

Keith Negus' theories revolve around the idea of the difference between synthetic and organic bands or artists.

A synthetic band refers to a band that has been manufactured and molded by the record companies in order to be marketed towords their specific target audience. For example The Spice Girls are a synthetic group which have been specifically taylored to appeal to a young teen audience, this was done by the image that the band portrays (as a group of young trendy friends). They were also tailored to fit the largest target audience possible by presenting each member of the band in a different light for example there was a sport one, a posh one etc..... This allowed the band to appeal to the largest possible audience as there was a spice girl for each type or style of girl.

An organic band such as the Foo Fighters is less manufactured and appeals to a smaller target audience who perfer a less manufactured band that is more 'true to music' and the Foo Fighters are a band which fill this bracket in the way in which they play all of their own instruments rather than having an external band play for them suggesting they are more involved in their music so appeal more to those who are passionate about music and follow a band for their music rather than their image.

Pitch And Audience Feedback.

After discussing all of our ideas as a whole group we then split up and worked on one idea eahc in order to produce a pitch that we could give to the class in order to get an idea of the recpetion that our music videos would recive once they had been produced and edited.

The target audience for the video that I was pitching (99 Problems by Hugo) was an audience of late teens possibly 16+ and this made the audience feedback very effective as the test group that I was pitching my idea to was an audience that fitted my target audience criteria.

(This is an example of the target audience that we used to pitch our idea to as they were our desired target audience.)

Once my idea had been pitched the group was given a chance to give their feedback and ideas into the video in order to futher its progress. The main feedback areas were about the concept of the 'problems' and the main idea was that the problems should be in some way linked for example they could all be related to violence, domestic abuse or poverty for example. The reasons behind this was to make it more clear to the audience as if they were all unrelated and were just random 'problems'  then the video may not be quite as clear to the audience and may lack impact where as if all of the idea were focused towards one point or idea the video may have a more effective impact.

My Pitch.

This is a copy of the slideshow that was used during my pitch. The reasons for uploading the powerpoint in this manner was due to an error in slide share which prevented me from uploading the slide show as a whole and therefore had to save them as a 'jpg.' and then had to upload them as images rather than just a single slide show.

Primary Music Video Ideas.

We started off by being split different planning groups in order to converse over our own idividual ideas once discussed we went on to develop upon and plan our various ideas. The group that I was in came up with 3 different ideas for our music video. These were:

99 Problems by Hugo:

King Charles Love Lust.

And How to bulid a home by the Cinimatic Orchestra:

We went on to develop ideas for concepts and possible narratives and set for each video and then split into 3 in order to focus on one idea each to pitch.

Account Of Prelim Task.

We started the day by splitting into our three differnent groups, (one for each song segment) and finalised our plannig in terms of our shot list. We then went into the studio where we met the band and disscussed what it was that we wanted to do in the video.

My group was second to shoot so we watched the first group shoot and then once they were done we started to shoot whislt they started to edit their clip. There were 3 roles that we rotated around our group, these were; Camera man, Director, and Playback. We rotated around all of these different roles for each different shot type.

As we only had 35 minutes to shoot our sequance we stuck to our pre-determined shot list. Once all of our shots on our list had been shot we left the studio and went to edit our clip once editied our clip we went on to peice together all of the 3 clips inorder to form a single video.

What this taught me about shooting and editing a music video is that the shot types and setting are incredibly important. It also taught me that a timeline and storyboard is incredibly important as when shooting these videos we only have a very limited period of time in which to shoot and in order to achive the best quality of video these need to be done to a high level in order to achive a well shot video.
I also learnt that editing and timeing in editing are incredibly important. And that cutting on the beat are very important to give the video a smooth seemless feel.

So in conclusion I feel that this task of a prelim video was incredibly effective in teaching me how to shoot and successfully edit a music video.

Prelim Music video.

This is the entire video produced by 3 different groups all given 30 minutes to shoot and were then sent to edit and then once each individual section had been edited they were added together in order to produce the entire video.

Planning Our Prelim Task.

Once we had an idea of how this type of music video would be shot from looking at exarmples of similar well known bands we were split into three groups and all given segments of the same song to plan and shoot and edit and then combine them into the full song once they had been done.

The first thing that we did was to listen to the section of the song that we had been given and then went on to use a timeline to map when instruments came in and out of the song and when vocals were a dominant part.


(example of a music video timeline)

Once we had finished our time line we went on to storyboard our section of the video but sketching out the types of shots that we would be using in the video and this gave us an idea of what the video may look like and made the filming process much more efficient and fasted on the day as we onnly had a limited time in which to shoot our section of the video (about 30 minutes) and then we went on to editing it.


(example of a storyboard.)

Futher Research Of Prelim Video. (example videos)

One  of the videos that we looked at was 'In One Ear' by Cage The Elephant and it gave us the basic idea of how this genre of music video would be shot, and the types of shots that we should be using. We then looked at several other videos in order to futher our knowlage on the subject.

All of these are music videos of similar genre and helped to give us an idea of how this type of video would be shot and therfore the way in which to go about filming ours.

Research For Prelim Task.

For our Preliminary task we were given the task of shooting part of a music video for a band called 'Acres Of Life'.
We started off our planning by looking at the band that we had been given in order to obtain what genre of band they would be and therefore what tyhpe of music they would be playing,

 We found out that Acres of life are an alternative rock/punk band, via looking at there own webpages on mtspace and facebook etc. once we had established what type of band they were we went on to look at well knoiwn bands of a similar genre such as:

Cage The Elephant,



My Chemical Romance,



and The Artic Monkeys.




We then went on to look at several of their music videos to get an idea of the way in which these genre of music video would be shot and the shot types that would be used when shooting this type of music video, and came to the conclusion that we would be doing several close up shots and mid shots of instruments and of the vocalist so that we could easily cut between vocal and instrumental sections.

Music Video Analysis (Narrative) -Tenacious D Tribute

We can see that 'Tribute' by Tenacious D has a very strong narrative element as the vocal artist (Jack Black) is singing about an experience that he has had and we see this story unfolding as he is singing it and cut between the two diffrent scenes, this creates a video that is both objective and subjective as he is singing about what he has done as well as actually doing it.

The style in which this songh is sung sounds very simillar to a ballad or folk song (for the majority) and this helps once again to reniforce theis idea of a strong narrative as this style of singing or song writing has been used for many years in order to tell a story and so the audiencee will or may be aware that this is what this song is going to do.

Music Video Analysis (Star Image)-Foo Fighters - The Pretender

Star image was looked at in detail by Richard Dyer who said that the way in which a band presents itself is very important to the type of audience it attracts and theway in which a band acts, performs, and represents itself is very important in constructing this idea of a 'Star image'.

The band The Foo Fighters portrays a very clear example of a desired 'Star Image'. The Foo Fighters are an alternative American rock band famous for live performaces and an antiathoritarian nature. They play all of their own instruments and therefore appeal to an audience who do not like 'manufactured' record company built bands but perfer a band that is more 'organic' or 'true to music'.

The music video 'The Pretender' greatly enforces the prestablished Star Image of the Foo Fighters as the number one focus of the video is the band playing their own instruments and singing very little narrative occors. Throughout the vdeo there are many close ups of band members playing their various instruments and this helps to enforce this idea of the band being an organic non manufactured product.

There is also reference to the bands antiauthoritarian nature throughout the video as we can from the very start they are playing infrount of a large red background and red is often a colour assosiated with antiauthoritarian of anachistic behavior. We then get this idea renforced later on in the video when a line of riot police line up oppersite to the band which gives us the idea that the band are almost playing in a riot like manner. And even when the police charge at the band they keep playing and the red background explodes outward towards the police in a mist of red paint which once again reinforces the antiauthoriatian nature of the band.

A2-Media Studies Introduction

This year I will be Creating a Promation package for the releace of an album, this is to include:

1. A Promotional Video form the album.

2. An album cover or 'Digipack' CD/DVD package.

3. A magasine advertisement CD/DVD package.


This is example of an album digipack cover which we will be producing.