Marketing A Band - The Fleurbelles

Today we were given the task of promoting and marketing a band. We were put into pairs and were in charge of marketing the band 'The Fleurbelles'.

Below is an automated video version of the presentation we produced:

Low Angle Shot - Carol Vernallis

"Low angle shots are used more extensively in music videos, partly because they reproduce relations among the audience, performer and stage. Such shots confer authority upon performers and assert their sexual charisma, often crudely, by highlighting the erogenous areas/zones of performers. On the other hand high angle shots in music videos, as in film, give the viewer a sense of power and mobility."

To summarise a low angle shot gives the audience the impression they are watching a performance and constantly reminds them that what they are watching is a music video, where as a high angle shot gives the opposite effect. 

Dolly Shots - Carol Vernallis

"Most music videos make such extenstive use of the dolly that  a static shot seems anomalous (when it is still it seems out of place). The dolly shot keeps the video moving, it starts almost invariably as soon as the video begins, and only ceases towards the end. It provides a simple way for a music video to catch and sustain a song's momentum."

For example this can be seen in the music video Eminem - Love The Way You Lie (ft. Rihanna) in the scene where Eminem is in the open field

Examples of constant moving on an artist can be when the camera is:
- Hand Held
- On Dolly Tracks
- Falling Effect

Functions And Meanings Of Music In Editing - Carol Vernallis

"quick cutting on the beat"
- Every cut or edit in music video needs to be in sync with the music
- There is 'rhythmic basics clearly connected to the song

"edits in music videos come far more frequently than in film"
"Music video editing bears a far greater responsibility for many elements than does classic Hollywood film editing"
-  There are lots of very short, quick edits in music video. These build up a montage and often tell the story of the video (progress the narrative)

"the editing in music videos works hard to ensure that no single element (the narrative, the setting, the performance, the star, the lyrics, the song) gains the upper hand."
- When I begin to create my own music video I must focus on creating a balance between images and the song itself.
- The video cannot distract from the song but must also grab the audiences attention. 

Still Analysis - Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

Despite this still not being from a music video I felt it would be beneficial for me to analysis a still of a film, I chose this still from the movie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

This scene happens near the end of the movie. The movie is, for the most part, set in a school where a ‘mysterious piece of cheese’ has appeared on the playground and anybody who touches it gets ‘the cheese touch’.

In this frame we see a slight high, wide angle, long shot of a large group of children running towards the school while one boy, Greg, is standing alone to the left of the shot. By looking at this frame we are immediately attracted to Greg as he stands out from the rest of the school. He stands out because he is the largest person in the shot, as the other children are far away from the camera they look small compared to Greg, our eye is immediately attracted to him. We are also immediately attracted to what he is wearing, the bright orange t-shirt amongst the dull surrounding makes our eyes attracted to the him first, it looks as though the editors of the movie have increased the saturation on Greg’s t-shirt to force our attention to him. We can see that he is holding something; this may explain why the rest of the school is running away from him.

We assume the rest of school children are running away from him, as he is standing alone. We instantly assume that he is an outcast, a loner, somebody nobody wants to talk or be seen with. As you can see in this still we can only see the back of him, this may have been done to make the audience feel that they too do not want to be seen with him, if the camera shot was of a close up of Greg the audience may feel like they are one of his close friends or a close family member, however due to the frame being taken at a slight high angle and as a long shot, the audience feel like they too are running away from Greg.        

As we can only see the back of Greg, we are unaware of his expression, however we can see that his left arm is to his side, his feet are firmly on the ground, and he is making no attempt to catch up with the other children, we assume that Greg looks miserable and slightly annoyed by what has happened.

The light in this scene is not bright, nor dark. The lighting in this scene adds to the dull atmosphere, this atmosphere is a metaphor for the way Greg is feeling to the whole situation. 

The framing in this scene is loose. There is a lot of free space around the frame and in particularly between Greg and the other characters. This gives the illusion that all the free space was once taken up by children and suddenly all the children are bundled together towards the top of the frame leaving Greg alone. The fact that Greg has not moved towards the other children gives us the impression that this had happened very quickly or that Greg know longer cares and is used to being alone and isolated from the world.

Meeting

Today I spoke with Faye to ask her what she thought the next step should be. We have both done analysis' on several music videos so decided to do an analysis on something different; we decided to each analysis a film still of our chose to help use notice the different codes and conventions, camera techniques and editing tools which we could use or change in our own music videos. I decided to do an analysis of the film 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'.

Music Video Analysis - 2Pac - Ghetto Gospel

 

Music Video Analysis - Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)

 

Music Video Analysis - White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

 

Music Video Analysis - Michael Jackson - Thriller

 

Music Video Analysis - Eminem - Love The Way You Lie

 

Music Video Analysis - Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends

 

Music Video Analysis - Madonna - Like A Prayer

 

Music Video Analysis - Lady GaGa - Telephone

 

Important Termonology

Graphic Match - Edits between two images, with a match between both. Such as colour or shape

Match On Action - Using a series of edits where different people/objects are doing the same thing. For example a close up of person A's feet running cuts to a close up of person B's feet running.

180 Degree Rule - Ensure I do not disorientate the audience by breaking this rule - the audience should maintain a posistion between edits in terms of orientation.

30 Degree Rule - When you break the 30 degree rule it is called a jump cut - a sharp awkward edit that looks clumsy - The camera should move 30 degrees between edits to avoid this

Jump Cut - A sudden jump in the edits. For example a mid shot of a person sitting in a seat jumps to an close up of the same person standing up

Defocusing - A blur in the video. An interesting tehnique used to disorientate and draw the audiences attention to the technique being used

Intertextuality - Making reference to other media texts/techniques. For example in the music video Lady GaGa - Telephone, there is intertextuality with the movie Kill Bill

Illustration - Not always literal

Amplification - New layers of meaning added to the song

Disjuncture - Contradiction between lyrics and music

Researching An Artist - Lily Allen

Lily Allen, 25, is an English songwriter and artist. Her father is musician Keith Allen. She was mostly interested in glam rock and alternative when she began her music career. She dropped out of school, at the age of 15, and concentrated on producing music. Lily Allen finished recording, alone, several songs and then released them on her own MySpace page. Lily was recognised before she made a profile on MySpace. She was still at school and was overheard singing in the playground by Rachel Santesso who asked Lily to take up singing lessons at lunchtime in her office.

How she markets and promotes herself

·       She became well known by using MySpace and other viral on the internet. She set up an account where she uploaded some demos and parts of songs. Her view count rose past tens of thousands and got signed by ‘Regal Recordings’

·       Release demos and parts of songs to ‘tease’ her fans. Her song LDN was released as a 7” vinyl that was sold out almost instantly; they were being sold on for around out £40

·       Free downloads of parts of songs to let the fans ‘get a taste’ of what to expect, Lily also produced two mix tapes, both of which were very successful

·       Touring, she performed at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007 and 2008, she also toured America on a 14-city tour to promote her work. In 2009 she performed at Oxegen Festival, T-Mobile INmusic festival, Bestival Festival and Big Weekend Festival

·       Merchandise, badges etc. are available all over the internet both fan made and official.

·       Billbords and posters scattered around the country attracting people to her music, posters are on buses and on the undergrounds saying 'New Album Out Now'

·       Own website - http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/lily/

·       News feed to let her fans know exactly what she is doing, when the next concert is etc.

·       Interactive content on her website to make people interested in her work, such as ‘Remix your own Lily album’ and her own Lily Allen online game

·       She has signed up to Twitter, another easy way to inform and market herself with other people and her followers

·       Blog to keep people informed and add information about herself and career

·       Appearing on a TV show or hosting one. Lily Allen was the guest host on ‘The Sunday Night Project’ and also had her own chat show ‘Lily and Friends…’

How she uses the Internet to promote and market herself

Lily Allen has used the Internet dominantly to promote herself and her new material. One use of the Internet she has been using is social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter. She has been using MySpace as her own music promotion webpage - http://www.myspace.com/lily_allen and http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic. MySpace was the first website Lily uploaded her material to, as she heard it had been successful for other artists at that time. On her MySpace profile she wrote ‘Music became a lifeline to me.’ With in a few months of uploading some of her demos online she added to her profile ‘The online support I got for my music grew quickly, then the next thrill was hearing it on the radio.’ The songs on her MySpace webpage have been downloaded approximately 19 million times, she also had at the time approximately 500,000 friends and was the most popular music artist in 2008. This massive success was spoken of in an article in OMM, she also appeared on the magazines front cover story about two months later and since then has received several awards including the 2010 Brit Award for "British Female Solo Artist". Due to this mass music impact on Lily’s life she received countless amounts of abuse so decided to shutdown her MySpace page in September 2009 and stopped social networking altogether in December. After she finished with social networking she said "The days of me making money from recording music have been and gone as far as I'm concerned" and her spokesman said, “She is not quitting pop music. She is not thinking about her next album right now because she is still in the middle of promoting her current record”. Lily then went to Twitter to keep in contact with her many fans. On 2 February 2010 Lily made several tweets to her Twitter account. Her first read, "hello, I'm back".

One other way Lily Allen has used the Internet, is her setting up her own website - http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/lily/, her website keeps fans informed on her life, shows tour dates and has a section where you are able to purchase ‘Goodies’. On this website she can promote her music and videos which have been created recently, and add quick links to purchase her new albums and play interactive games and music. Her website is designed to be fun, informative and user friendly. There are other sites dedicated to Lily Allen such as http://oh-lily.com/wp/, a fan made website for all things Lily Allen.