Commissioning Music Videos

Although the music business changes with alarming speed, one thing remains constant: The record label's responsibility isto its artist's music production and to the marketing and sales of the music. Each label seeks out recording artists they feel will appeal to a wide audience, which, in return, will allow the label to sell a lot of music. The label then negotiates a recording contract with the particular artist. The contract outlines the artist's responsbilities to the record company as well as the company's responsibility to the artist, such as royalties. The label specializes in helping their artists develop the highest possible sales potential through marketing the artists and their music via the Internet, radio play, and television video networks and shows, and then selling their music through a vast array of audio and visual distribution outlets, such as Internet and iTunes and ring tones.

The record label-artist relationship is co-dependant. The reason an artist signs with a record label is three-fold:

1 - Firstly, the label advances the artist money to pay for recording their music, aswell as for album artwork and marketing campaigns such as videos and commercials. It may also go towards basic living expenses. It has become increasingly prevalent for the label to negotiate deals that involve merchandising.

2 - Secondly, an artist will sign to label due to their vast array of contacts in the music industry, as well as their know how in the business arena. Labels develop and market artists and act as a mentor.

3 - Thirdly, the label's prestige is an important factor. Record companies are reliant on artists putting out their albums and artists rely on them too. Labels exist only to promote the artists vision as long as that vision conforms to the label's goal of achieving financial gain through music sales.

Record Company's Role in the Video Project

Although creating music videos is a team process, each record company operates differently. While every department within a label has a specific role in the process of creating the music, certain departments are more involved in the video process than others. Every record company has an Artist & Repertoire department where its executives seek out new talent and sign them to a contract to record exclusively for their label. In return, the artist receives the guidance and financial backing of the A&R team, in addition to sharing in the profits the artist makes for the label. Some of this allows the artist to write, produce and record their music. Some A&R people get involved in the video process and some do not; it depends on the persons, the relationships and the label.

Theories on Representation

Other media texts as well as music videos offer excellent material for analysing the processes of representation of gender, sexuality, race, nationality, culture and place and of messages and values relating to aspects of personal and political life, for example attitudes to war.



Voyeurism:



This idea comes from the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud which originally refers to the notion that erotic pleasure may be gained by looking at a sexual object. While watching a film, we are all voyeurs, it is argued, but film presents us with variety of pleasures and not necessarily all of them sexual.

Laura Mulvey (1975) suggested that because the filmmakers are predominantly male, the presence of women in film is often solely for the purposes of display. The purpose of this display is to facilitate a voyeuristic response in spectators which is mostly known as the ‘male gaze’, some may consider this to be quite a controlling gaze at the female on display who is passive and objectified.

This has been used in Duran Duran’s work. Goodwin argues that the female performer is frequently objectified in this fashion, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star. In male performance videos too, the voyeuristic treatment of the female body is often apparent, with the use of dancers as adornments to the male star ego.

The idea becomes more complex when we see the male body on display – the post-feminist ‘female gaze’ where women are no longer just objects of the look, but exercise some power by looking at men as sex objects too.

The idea of voyeurism is also frequently evident in music video through a system of screens within screens – characters shown watching performances of others on television via webcam, images on a video camera screen, on CCTV. The proliferation of such motif has reached a point where it has become almost an obsession in music promos.



Exhibitionism:



The more powerful independent artists of recent years, from Madonna on, have added to the complexity of the politic and gender/cultural debates, by being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control of, and inviting a sexualised gaze – opposite to voyeurism (exhibitionism).

All these areas, together with the notion of a ‘queer gaze’ pose interesting questions on the diversity of audience experiences of music video and the contradictory messages and values its representations it may evoke.





Star Construction



Useful inter-related notions are ‘star image’, ‘star vehicle’ and ‘star power’.

“A star is an image constructed from a range of materials” – Richard Dyer (1979)



For pop music, these materials include:

- The songs (their lyrical themes and musical structures/genres)
- The record covers (singles and albums and the image of the star they present)
- Media coverage (from interviews about career and private life through to tabloid gossip)
- Live performance (the image through the stage show)
- And arguably most significantly the music videos, which may draw upon the image presented in the other materials.



Star Image



How a star is perceived by the audience and the characteristics ascribed to him/her may be a combination of conscious construction by the media for which s/he works and of extra textual publicity in other media. The star is always constructed through a mixture of textual and extra textual factors and can only be controlled by the star and his/her employers up to a certain point, particularly in the age of celebrity when magazines and newspapers or ‘tabloid TV’ can take advantage of any weaknesses. The music promo also has a significant part to play in creating an image by creating an iconography.


Star Vehicle



A product constructed around the image of the star in order to promote that star, a music video is an obvious example. Each video may also draw upon its predecessor both in reinforcing the star’s existing image and in taking their image further, or even seek to subvert the image to create a new one. This is particularly necessary in the case of a lengthy career as a star age.



Star Power



This takes several forms:

- Economic power through earnings generated by the sale of associated product (cinema tickets, CD’s, etc)
- Artistic power (creative control of their own image and how it is used by/appears in the media)Ideological power in terms of their influence upon the audience, which may take the form of style or attitude.



By looking at an artist’s retrospective collection of music videos is a useful way to analyse the development of a star’s image. For example, 're-invention' to help maintain careers can be found in the work of Michael Jackson and George Michael.

Filming Problems

Today the team and I were scheduled to begin our filming. On the morning of the 28th of November we had all the props prepared and ready to start shooting for the scenes we were planning on doing this weekend. However, at the very last minute we were contacted by two members of the production team to find out that we were unable to begin shooting as two members were unable to attend due to emergencies and illnesses. We thought about continuing to film, but we realised that these were main characters that were not present, therefore making it rather difficult. Due to this, we rescheduled our shoot day to the 5th of December. This might prove quite a problem because this only enables us one last weekend to film before the deadline. We considered meeting after school for a few shoot days, but because we need the daylight, this also will prove a problem because by the time school finishes and we set up our scenes it would be near enough evening. Also, the production team and characters have other responsibilities to attend after school in the evenings, so that would be an extra issue.

Arranging Props - Lesson 27/11/09

In today's lesson, the group and I thought it would be a constructive idea to make a start on the organisation of props. We began by making a 'Saucy Single's Speed Dating' sign. This was a main feature we need as it will give the audience the sense of atmosphere we are trying to create. The colours of red and white help to give it a feel of romance however the provocative symbols such as the devil horns and hearts help to give a comical feel to it.

Finishing Our Storyboard

As today was our final lesson to finish our storyboards, we made much effort to complete them and we succeeded. We completed all drawings with annotations to match it. Each frame was annotated with/and Camera angles, Movements, Instructions, Transitions and lastly Lighting.


Here are the annotations we made:

Avril Lavigne in the Public Eye

Avril Lavigne is well known in the public eye, especially with the teenage generation. She has been on the front covers of numerous magazine covers as well as appearing in television programmes and interviews. She is usually represented as a punky/rocky type of teenage character which likes to have 'fun', which helps her to appeal to mainly the teenage generation of today. She is also represented as out going, somewhat childish in some aspects and generally aspiring to always carry on producing music.

Here are a few magazines which she has appeared on:

Here is also an example of Avril Lavigne being interviewed by a puppit. This would most likely be aimed at the younger teenage generation. This also portrays Avril Lavigne to be on the same wavelength as her audience to show that she can relate to them.

Sound and Vision in Pop/Rock

The relationship between sound and image evident in the use of song and underscore in film is also evident in pop videos. A great deal of research carried out on pop music reveals that pop is concerned with the issues brought up within the narrative. Alf Bjornberg argues that there are two structural aspects to popular music, narrative and epic, both of which are derived from Richard Middleton's studies of popular music, and his distinction between the two categories of musical syntax. In contrast to the narrative category, which privillages difference, there is what we can call an "epic mode, where the focus is on repetition and varied repetition; and inbetween comes a "lyrical" category".Bjornberg defines a narrative musical syntax as having "linear" properties, in which there is no repetition in the music so the music is continuously moving forward, while an epic syntax has "circular" properties which is most common in Pop music. He says "...Most popular music depends on repetition of some kind, be they musical riffs or hooks, chords, sequences arranged into sections such as verse and chorus or even vocal repetitions."The most common kinds of musical syntax evident in pop songs are therefore "epic" or "lyrical" structures, with musical "narrative" structure being much less common. This is the area where the sounds and visuals of pop music videos differ most greatly. General music videos may make great use of linear narratives, but pop music videos are just as likely to make use of a circular visual narrative.