Music Video Analysis and Star Image

RICHARD DYER

Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film , TV and music. Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common :
- A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed(as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films (music)).
- Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings.

STars depend ipon a range of subsidiary media - magazines, TV, radio, the internet - in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences.
The star image is made up of a range of meanings which are attractive to the target audiences.
Fundamentally the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and open. Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes.

PARADOX 1.

The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer.

PARADOX 2

The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer. ( never meet them, audience are continuously trying to fit the pieces together but never can, because paradoxal, feel you know them, being with them).

1Analysing the cover of "The Doors"

The Genre of this CD cover is Rock and we see a poster of them four on a wall and in front of it a strong man dancing, a kid, act/gymnastics and a man playing the trumpet. This suggests a kock genre, the 4 men on the poster could suggest a boy band but the other elements of the picture suggests otherwise.

The font on the cover is quite unique and is their trademark font, suggesting the already have an established audience.

The target audience is between the age of 18 and 50 males. The unique and quirky lures in the arty, music fans, educated. Not featuring themselves on their front cover suggests that the music is more important than their image, suggesting talent and quality music.

Through their cover , the band chose to represent themselves as quirky, individual and rocky.


Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse's cover very simple and more RnB and Soul.

The font is bold and big centered. Other than the cover from "The Doors", she is in the center and wants to draw the attention on her.

The target audience is 16+ mainstream. She looks very innocent, which we all know is not the reality. She hides her tattoo's. Sitting down on a cover could signify rebellion.

SHe represents herself very serious, rebellious. She also shows herself as a soul singer and not following the "sex sells" trend.

Evaluation of Pop Promo Prelim

1. We often used basic shots like close ups, medium shots or wide shots. We used single close ups on the main singer to show her importance. The wide shot we used right at the beginning to show the whole band to the audience. We used medium shots and close ups to look at the two other singers and the instruments. At the end of our sequence you can hear a little guitar solo and therefore we took an extreme close up of the guitars and edited the sound to the movement. We then came up with the idea to take extreme close ups of the lips, which didn't really work, because we had problems with the singer moving too much and it was hard to synchronize sound and visual.

2. I think during the video shoot we all did a bit of everything, which I think is good, because we could be a director, a camera man and someone on the sound system. Mostly I enjoyed the part of the director, because I could decide which shots to take next and I had a overview of everything. I think I did a lot of editing in our group, which I really enjoyed. It was hard to synchronize the sound to the picture. We all decided, which shot to put in next and which shots we don't want to keep.

3. I think our team worked really well together. Already when we made our storyboard and timeline, each of us brought ideas and we all listened to each other and then tried to work on a solution. When we then shot our video and edited it we were well organized because each of us could enjoy every role.

4. I would say that our storyboard is pretty similar to the overall result. We didn't have much time to get all our shots done, because we were 4 groups and we each had 30 minutes. The only thing, which didn't work out, was our idea with the lips. There is a bit in the song were we wanted to shoot all of the singers lips and in the editing process, in a way, put them all together. A screen full of lips. We started to film the lips of the main singer and stopped after that, because it just didn't work out. She was moving a lot, and we couldn't use any special effects in the video, so it wouldn't look as we wanted it to.

4. My editing skills developed a lot from the last one to this one. First of all, this time I did a lot more myself and I now know how to operate the program without asking every two minutes. The next thing is that it was a lot harder to edit this one. As I said, you need to synchronize sound to the picture, which at times was difficult, because sometimes the main singer was singing with the music, but the two others weren't. It the end of our sequence you can hear a little guitar solo and therefore we took an extreme close up of the guitars and edited the sound to the movement. First we thought we had to edit a lot so our shots were really short and didn't made any sense with the sound. When we then watched it we saw that you couldn't leave it like that and so we made our shots longer and tried to adapt it to the sound. At one point you can hear the drums really clear and loun and so we took a shot of the drummer.

Pop Promo Prelim