Analysing Synethetic & Organic Artists Album Covers

ORGANIC ARTIST - Gabrielle Aplin

SYNTHETIC ARTIST - Jessi J

My Thriller Poster

This exercise was to enable us to experiment in photoshop and to teach us to learn photoshop skills independently. We went back to our AS thriller idea and created a poster incorporating all the necessary information.

Morning in the studio

On Thursday the 20th of June we did a lip sinking activity in the studio. The purpose of this was so we had some sort of basis of lip sinking and working in the studio before beginning on our pop videos in September.

We got into the studio and there were three work shop stations; a green screen, cave set and bed sit. The cave set used a tracking shot and spider dolly while the other sets used a standard tripod to get the still shots.

THE GREEN SCREEN:
 
Our group did the green screen first. We light up the green screen and set up the camera. It was very important to stand at least a meter in front of the green screen to eliminate shadows, the floor was marked with tap to make sure we abide by this rule.
The green screen allowed an image of background set to be edited onto it in post production. The green colour allows there to be the cleanest possible image.




THE CAVE SET (WORKING WITH THE SPIDER DOLLY):

This set was so that we could use the spider dolly and see how it worked. Also creating a smooth tracking shot. When doing this shot it found it was important to leave moving space in the direction of the moving person. We also found it was important to make sure the wire was straight so that the camera did not jult.  


BED SET:

This set consists of a sofa, some walls and a window to create a room kind of feeling. The camera was placed at a lower angle so that the sofa was in frame.

With all of these sets we were able to create something new every time. This made it interesting when we came to editing it together.


EDITING & LIP SINKING:

We then went up to the editing sweat and learnt how to sink the music in time with the footage we had recorded. First we put in the audio. Then choosing the clip we wanted to place this with we used the three beats to count in the begging to sink it up with the music. This made sure that peoples mouth were moving in time with the music. We then used the blade tool to cut and edit the footage other in time with the music. We did this in final cut pro. We did this activity quite quickly and ruffly as we already had the basis of using final cut pro from our thriller task in AS. This part of the task was to enable us to understand how to lip sink and sink the footage with the music to make it look convincingly. I learnt from this that there is no such think as bad lip sinking in the editing side of things just someone not lip sinking convincingly enough.

Beyonce's Career

Born on September 4th 1981, in Houstons, Texas. Her career started as a young child winner 'The Baby Jouner' In 1990 and performed at 'The Sammy Awards'. They then started an act called 'Girl time' in which Beyonces Dad became their managers. Not winning the contest 'Star Search' Beyonce formed a new group called 'Destiny's Child'.
 The group consisted of beyonce Knowles, La Toya Luckett, Kelly Rowland and La Tavia Roverson, all in their teens. The girls sang a range of variety's; mix of gospel, rhythm and blues, hip hop. After performing in the Houstons area, the group appeared on Star Search, a tv talent competition. They did not win the competition yet competed a contrast with Columbia Records.

Destiny's Child 'Say My Name'
 

This video runs through beyonces child hood and teen years. Showing how she develops as a child singer through to being part of the 'Girl Tyme' act and then preceding into the top hit group destiny's child.

In 2004, after launching a successful solo career with 'Dangerously in Love', Knowles won five Grammy Awards, tying a record for most wins by a female artist.
Her second solo effort, 'B'Day', was released in September 2006 to coincide with the singer's twenty-fifth birthday. In its first week, 'B'Day' sold more than 540,000 copies in the U.S.
In 2008, Beyonce launched her third solo album entitled 'I Am ... Sasha Fierce'.This meant the 29-year-old had become a record breaker by winning the most Grammy Awards of any female artist in one night.

               

Beyonce 2004

 

Beyonces song 'Crazy In Love' ft Jay Z (who is currently her husband and father to her child) one awards for the best contemporary album. It was the albums lead single."Crazy in Love" was Knowles' first number one single as a solo artist in the United States.   

Beyonces Crazy In Love, 2003

Beyonce then began to persew a second career as an actress along side her singing career. Her biggest films being Dream Girls and Pink Panther.

 

 

On April 4, 2008, Knowles married Jay-Z in New York City.In January 2012 Beyconce gave birth to her baby  Blue Ivy Carter. Hear we see Beyonce with a very different star image. Instead of seeing her as an 'untouchable' star on stage with a large 'sex appeal',images of her as a mother figure begin to be leaked into the media. This then links with Richard Dyers theory of a star being two different people and having two different images.

   

 

Finally. I found this video in which Incorporated the majority of her life. up until present day. The video shows everything in which I have gone through in this blog; starting with her group Destiny's Child to having her child with jay-z recently.

We Have Also Looked at Keith Negus & His Theory of Organic and Synthetic Ideologoy...

What We Have Done So Far...

 We have already discussed how music is a creativity where the industry comes and draws millions out of an artists. The pop video is a important synergetic campaign of an artists song and is just one strand of it. In our A2 course we are going to look at pop videos and eventually create our own and the beginning of the new academic year. We have looked at how there are different elements of a music video this being; performance, narrative, thematic and symbolic. The concept of stars and stardom and how the term 'star' refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience. 

The first theorist that we looked at was Richard Dyer. Richard Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, TV and music. He rised the argument that 'a star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed out of a range of materials' and that 'stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings'. This is looking at the idea of finding a gap in the market and creating an artist to fill this gap. 

He also says that 'The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer'

Example of this could be Robbie Williams. He is the sort of character you can see yourself going and having a drink with but on stage he is 'untouchable'.

'Guy Next Door'                   'Untouchable'



I looked at Beyonce and her star image. She has two different images; a star image and a wife and mother image. 

If you look at these images you get very different aspects of Beyonce. While she is quite clearly a mother and looks as though she is a good mother figure and wife she is also an extremely attractive women who performs and delivers on stage.

The star image is mean to keep the audience interested in the star and who they are.

START OF A2...

 We have now started A2 and have been introduced to the music industry side of media studies. I cant believe that a year has passed and we are now onto our second year of media studies. I feel this is going to be an interesting area to work with this year. Music is a very subjective area as everyone has different music taste. 
The whole focus of A2 is looking at the music industry and music videos as well as looking at different theorist and how there concepts have relate to music artists. 

My personal music taste is quite wide. While I am open to most music and listen to a range of music types I find myself mostly listening to artists like;
'Benjamin Francis Leftwich'
'Bastile'
'Passenger' 
'Gabrielle Aplin'

Some people would say that this is a fairly 'Alternative' music taste. While I find myself listening mainly to that sort of music I am also a fan of 'Example' and have seen him many times live and recently went to ASAP Rocky who is a rapper.

I would say that much of my music taste is more 'organic' artists. The 'organic' artist theory and concept I will no dough be talking about a grate deal in my upcoming log posts. 

This is a the music video to one of my favourite songs at the moment. 'Let her go, by Passenger'. Although I myself would consider him as more of an unknown artist recently he has become more well known and the song has started to be played more on the radio.