Ancillary Task Inspiration

Although a lot of the CD's I've seen use a close up on the front, I think I'm going to choose a mid shot photo instead, which is quite similar to the 'Teenage Dream' album by Katy Perry. However, instead of using pale colours like the background on her cover, I am going to stick to the convention of using a plain background like Rihanna uses on her 'Good Girl Gone Bad' album. Katy Perry uses a colour theme of pink and blue for her writing which is something I may include too, and I am also going to use a similar, girly font.

Filming

We'd originally planned to start filming this week but the person we wanted to film hasn't been in for a while so we're going to have to find somebody else very quickly so we can start filming! I'm worried that this might put us behind schedule and we won't be able to produce a video as good of quality as we'd originally planned!

Initial Video Ideas

Andrew Goodwin suggested that music videos are 'just an extension of the lyrics.' For our music video, we want our narrative scenes to reflect what is being sang as I think it's pretty difficult not to! The lyrics and music include a range of emotions, from being kind of impatient and annoyed, upset and angry to eventually feeling happy and fun again, and we would like to portray these emotions in our video. We've decided to use quite simple settings, for example, inside a house, in & around the school, in fields, in shops. Not only will this be easy to do, it also reflects the areas that our target audience spend a lot of time in which will make the video more relatable. We will be putting most of the focus onto one character who will be in all of the performance and narrative shots, and we may include a few friends and some other background characters to make it seem more realistic. I think a performance scene where the lead character is singing on stage will work well as its seen in quite a few pop music videos and is a good way of entertaining the audience. Mis en scene will be based on our target audience, for example, if we film a scene in a bedroom, then we will make sure that cosmetics and girly things are on show. I also think it's important to use a range of different shots to express different emotions, if there is part of the song where the lyrics or music is quite vulnerable or sad, then a high angled shot will be useful for making the main character look quite small.

Lyrical Analysis

Susan decided to analyse the lyrics of the song we have chosen to produce a video for, we felt that this was important as it would enable us to come up with a relevant narrative storyline which reflects what is being sang. The lyrical analysis is here.

Album Promo Posters

As part of our ancillary task, we have to create a poster for our song. Using panicposters.com I looked at some posters that have been used for other artist's singles. As the song we have picked is in the pop genre, I clicked on the pop category of the website so I could look at similar artist's work. One that stood out for me was the promo poster for Lily Allen's single, Littlest Things.

The poster is split into two sections, the bigger section is a picture of Lily Allen dressed in quite a 50's style outfit but with cartoon tall buildings behind her which is quite modern. At the bottom of the picture of her is a box with the title of the song in it, again in quite 50's style writing which is quite tall and thin. The logo she uses on her album is in the top corner of the picture which just says her name in quite bold writing, which stands out even though its quite small. The bottom section of the poster is probably half the size of the other part but contains a lot more writing and information. Again, the title of the song is used again in the same font, but this time much bigger. Below is the release date of the single, which the actual day is red compared to the majority of black writing on the rest of the page. Again, this stands out on the page but also fits in with the colour scheme of the poster. Underneath this is a short message about how you can preorder the single using your mobile phone, this is wrote in white writing with a red background which is different from the rest of the poster, the red background also indicates to the reader that its important to read. Underneath the border, right at the bottom of the poster, is the record label logo which is in quite big, bold writing which again stands out.

Again, Susan analysed work by Lily Allen and Lady Gaga, to see the poster analysis, click here.

Codes and conventions of a pop album cover

From what I have seen, album covers don't really tend to use a very busy background, which gives more focus for the artist on the front cover. Both Katy Perry's and Rihanna's albums seem to use quite a feminine colour scheme, although they are very different to one another. The covers tend to give a vague idea about what music to expect on the album, but generally I think they mainly reflect the artist's personality. Rihanna and Lady Gaga's albums both use a close up on the front cover, whilst Katy Perry's album includes a close up inside the CD. I think this indicates that close ups of artists are quite a big convention of a pop album cover.
For my ancillary task, I think that one of the most important aspects will be using a feminine colour scheme throughout. I will use a close up shot for one of the inserts, but I'd like to do something different for the front cover so will possibly use a mid or full length shot.

Rihanna - Loud Album Cover

Unlike the Katy Perry album cover I analysed, Rihanna's cover for her album Loud uses a close up of her face rather than showing her whole body. In fact, the album cover is completely of her face and only part of her hair & shoulder is visible. She has her eyes closed which limits the interaction with the audience but gives a sense of mystery which intrigues the audience to find out more as nothing is revealed. Her face is quite plain, with minimal make up used and dark eyelashes, but her lips and hair are both very bright red which indicates some degree of sexiness, which correlates with many of her songs. Although some aspects of traditional representations view women as sexual objects, which to a certain extent is shown by this album cover, the way that Rihanna's face dominates the whole cover shows a more modern representation of females too.



The back of the cover, in contrast with the front, has used much softer colours making Rihanna seem a lot more vulnerable and soft than she does on the front. The angelic image will appeal to young girls in our target audience as its very feminine and pretty but still has an edge with the use of the red tint and the red writing. The writing used is fairly plain and simple, just using capital letters for each song and keeps to one side of the cd, leaving space for another picture of Rihanna.

The inside of the cd uses a picture similar to the one on the front cover, but its a bit softer, as the colours aren't as bright. Again, an extreme close up of Rihanna's face is used but this time one of her eyes are open whilst the other is hidden under her hair. This gives off the impression that she's quite mysterious like on the front cover, but also gives a bit more interaction between her and the audience. Her lips aren't red in this photo, making her seem more innocent than on the front cover, but she is holding a red rose close to her mouth which again indicates sexiness, but also femininity at the same time.

Overall, I think that the pictures used in Rihanna's cd case really give the audience an idea about her and her music. I think the Loud cd gives the impression that her music, and Rihanna herself, is quite sexy but feminine and powerful at the same time. Rihanna's fan base probably is a bit older than Katy Perry's but probably is largely female dominated, but I think this cd case has helped as I think that we should reflect the type of music and meanings behind the songs when we produce our ancillary task.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream Album Cover

Using www.allcdcovers.com, I was able to analyse the album over, the track listing on the back cover and the cd insert of different cd's. This is the original CD cover for Katy Perry's most recent album.

The colours in the background are very soft, for example the pastel pink cloud/candyfloss that Katy Perry is pictured lying on, and the pale blue sky. The main focus is on Katy herself, who is right in the centre of the picture. Another reason she stands out is because her dark hair contrasts with the paler colours. There are two titles on the cover, one is just her name in shiny pink and blue writing and the other is the name of the album, "Teenage Dream" which is in white and pink stripy writing, made to look like candy canes. The CD cover is very similar to the video of the first single released from the album, "California Girls". In the video, she is seen sitting on clouds and waking around with big sweets everywhere, for example walking gummy bears. The writing on the cover reflects the sweet theme whilst the picture of Katy is taken from the exact same setting as the video. This style also reflects her personal image which is kind of 1950s, for example, dresses with bold colours and pictures of fruit on them.



This is the back cover of the cd which shows all the songs on the album. The same picture from the front cover is used on the back, but without the picture of Katy Perry on the front, just the list of songs. Again, like the front cover, pink and blue writing is used and the letter 'O' in different words has been replaced with round shaped white & pink sweets. The pale colour scheme and use of sweets used throughout the cd case indicates that Katy Perry is quite feminine and would appeal to young, 'girly' females, as we found in our target audience.



Finally, I looked at the picture inside the cd case and on first impressions it looks very different to the front & back covers. It looks formal and quite royal with the way her hair has been styled and the crown and jewellery that she is wearing, which contrasts with the fun images that I looked at before. However, when you look closer at the picture you can see that the crown and jewellery is actually made up from sweets which again follow the theme from the front and back covers. This picture really conveys a humorous side of Katy Perry which is often seen in her personal life from the media, which I think enables the audience to relate with her & her music.

To see Susan's analysis of Lily Allen's and Lady Gaga's album covers, click here.

Codes and conventions of a pop music video

From analyzing music videos of other artists, its clear to see there are a few similarities between them. The females in the video show a very modern representation of women, for example, in the video for 'Hot n Cold', and the video for 'Tik Tok', both Katy Perry and Kesha are very powerful, independent and confident looking. This is very different to the traditional representation of women as its usually the men who have the power. Both videos are filmed on very sunny days, and the lighting is bright too so the videos look very colourful and vibrant, giving quite a happy feel. There are very few scenes, if any scenes at all in both the videos where only narrative is used. Both videos seem to combine the narrative & performance scenes so the artists are singing throughout the storyline. One difference is that while both videos seem to reflect the meaning of the lyrics (Andrew Goodwin) only Katy Perry's video uses the theory of equilibrium (Todorov).
Both videos use a lot of close ups, especially of the artist when they are singing which shows emotion.

I think in our video, we will use some conventions but won't stick completely to what we have seen. For example, I think we should do some filming on a sunny day, as we want our video to look quite happy. On the other hand, we are going to use some narrative scenes where no performance is used at all.

Performance vs Narrative

As mentioned in my previous post, Jamie T separates narrative and performance shots in his video for If You Got The Money. To show this, I decided to screenshot every shot that is shown in the first 40 seconds of the music video and put them onto Power Point. I placed each shot onto a different slide, and made two different presentations, one showing the original order of shots as seen in the video, and the other separating the performance shots from narrative shots.

Original Order of Shots

Jamie t – if you got the money original shots

View more presentations from stacypringle.

These are the shots in the order they would've been filmed in.

Jamie t if you got the money ordered shots

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Jamie T - If You Got The Money

Jamie T fits into the indie/alternative genre which also includes bands like The Maccabees and Bombay Bicycle Club. I decided to look at his music video to see how it differs from the other videos I've looked at from the pop genre and found that there was a split between performance and narrative shots. In the Katy Perry and Kesha videos I looked at, the narrative shots were combined with performance so this If You Got The Money was very different. Jamie T's video is fairly simple, using only three settings for the narrative shots and one for the performance shots. The video uses quite a few close ups that are slowed down as the song first starts which not only fits in with the slower paced start to the song, but also introduces the different characters of the video to the audience. Most of the narrative shots throughout the video are close ups or mid shots, they show different guys dancing badly which uses mid shots, whilst the girls' reactions are shown by using close ups. All of the shots have been put into slow motion whilst the performance shots aren't in slow motion, making them appear much more faster. Close ups are used again for the performance shots, but more extreme close ups are used especially for musical objects like the microphone, symbals and guitar. The lighting is a lot darker than the other videos I looked at, both the narrative and performance shots have been filmed in a club, with narrative on the dark dancefloor and the performance on the stage which uses red lighting.

Kesha - Tik Tok

Kesha was listed as one of the most similar artists to Katy Perry on the last.fm website, so I decided to analyse the video for her song "Tik Tok" and compare it to "Hot n Cold". Like Katy Perry's video, the narrative and performance parts of the video were linked in together, but Kesha's video used a much more basic storyline. The video was pretty much about going out, having fun and partying, there wasn't really a straightforward beginning and ending. Similarly, the video for "Tik Tok" also used very bright colours, and the outdoor scenes were sunny once again. However, this video used black and white editing in some parts, for example on extreme close ups of objects and body parts. Both of the songs are upbeat, so the colours and weather almost reflect the feeling of the music. One very noticeable comparison between the two videos, is that both main characters were seen riding bikes. This could perhaps be seen as a deviation from tradition female representation, as physical activity and sport are stereotypically more associated with males.
The shots are mainly made up of close ups, mostly of Kesha's face but sometimes focusing on other objects. In parts, the video completely follows Andrew Goodwin's theory about videos being an extension of the lyrics, for example when the line "I'm talking pedicure on our toes, toes" is sang, a close up of her feet is shown, and at the end of the video, when the line "Now the party don't start til' I walk in" is sang, she is shown walking through a door into a room full of people. The camera is quite shaky which goes along with the lyrics of the song, as its about partying which gives a slightly jumpy effect to the video. Some of the cuts between shots are quite jittery which again goes with the theme of the lyrics but also matches the music of the song.

Similar Artists and Music Videos

I thought it would be a good idea to look at other music videos by other female pop artists to see if they used the same conventions in their music videos. I done this by using last.fm, a music website which uses social networking to recommend different songs and artists. By using this website, I was able to find other artists who are similar to Katy Perry, which were ordered by highest similarity to lowest similarity.

Katy Perry - Hot n Cold (Music Video)

To see what conventions were used, I decided to analyse the original Katy Perry video to help us decide if we should use the same for our video. The video combines narrative with performance all the way through, and follows the theme of the lyrics. Four or five different settings are used throughout, the first starts in a church which is very stereotypical 'girly' and fairytale. The next scenes however are very different from traditional representations of females. Katy Perry is seen in the video riding a bike and chasing after a male character, and the scenes at the end of the video use very urban settings and costumes. Although the costumes change throughout the video, each one uses very bright colours. The lighting is also very bright and the outdoor scenes all have sunny weather.
At the beginning of the video, when the church setting is used, a lot of over the shoulder shots are used between Katy Perry and her love interest to show where the words are coming from and who they're aimed at. A mixture of close ups and mid shots are used throughout the video, the mid shots are mainly for showing Katy and the guy, as they are the two main characters in the story. Some extreme close ups are used particularly on clothing, for example in the stage scene, there is a big emphasis on Katy's sunglasses and belt.

Susan analysed one of Lily Allen's videos, to see her analysis please click here :)!

Copyright

As we are using another artist's song, we had to follow copyright rules and ask for permission to use their track.