Spice Girls - Creating a brand

This post will discuss how Pop grounds can be used to create specific brands. This has been done before for artists such as Adele and Lady GaGa.

Pop videos help to;

Illustrate the song
appeal to the visual audience
Create a brand
Market the image
Advertise
Express an individuals emotions.

In the mid 90's a family management team decided that they wanted to create a girl group that could compete with the variety of boy bands at the time. In 94 A magazine ad was played that asked for girls aged 18-23 t hat could sing and dance, this was the beginning of the girl group, the spice girls.

The spice girls was designed to a 'T', down to their clothing being specifically chosen to appeal to certain aspects.

Despite the fact that the spice girls were originally labeled as a group of friends that wanted to have fun, they were actually carefully chosen and designed to create the ideal group. Once the spice girls had begun to gain popularity, they were quickly flooded with sponsorship deals including Pepsi, Polaroid and their own brand of Barbie Dolls.
It is important to remember that the Spice girls were controlled by their manager and didn't really have much of a say in what they did.
When creating the group, one member almost didn't make the cut as she looked too old, however she persuaded the manager to give her a go as she stated she'd be "Ten with big boobs if you want"

Artists and groups are usually sold as a brand, and their music videos are presented as products of their brand, their main purpose is to encourage people to spend their money on the brand. Most artists focus more on their image, whereas with the Spice Girls have very little to do with their music they produce.

Emil Nava

Nava began his career as a runner within a film studio. This is someone who takes care of the smaller jobs that need to be done such as tidying the set and areas before filming. While he did this he was promoted to assistant director for a specific music video. He later signed up with Academy which is often regarded as one of the largest production companies there is within the music industry. Recently his work is done with the company Pulse, after working Freelance for OB management. This is where his involvement with the creation of music videos took hold most, rather than the small time jobs.

The first video that Nava created was "Our house is Dadless"

 Working on a small budget of only £20,000 and no more than four days. Nava decided that a small video that took use of local scenery  and the local people in an effective way . There was a ten day period of production before filming started which meant that the project was much simpler and easier to do. This shows that Nava's ability to plan and put out his work is incredibly good.

The next video that I will discuss is one of Nava's most famous pieces. Picking up the pieces by Paloma Faith. This song was made under Sony's banner. This budget was slightly harder, at £80,000. This shows as you can see that the quality is significantly higher and they were able to pick much more suitable locations.


Another of one of his more well known videos is You need me, I Don't need you by Ed sheeran. This was done under ATlantic records. The budget was between the two previous at £35,000.


The final video that I am going to talk about is Do it like a Dude by Jessie J. This was made under Island. The budget for this was £25,000. The mise-en-scene works well with the video to give it's idea. The main area looks very brash and unclean. This video is a much more realistic reflection of what people do.

Star Theory - Britney spears

Richard Dyer's theory, the star theory, suggests that all or most stars are merely corporate constructs. This means that all of their hard work, brand and promotion is done for them to create a specific image to attract a specific target audience. This is mostly done via films and music videos.

Dyer also says that people prefer artists that show true emotions and create a clear image through their work. This image is much more preferable than a fake persona created by corporations.

Another of Dyers claims is that artists often set a variety of trends in regards to clothing, hairstyle and incredibly enthusiastic fans often copy these styles. This makes it incredibly easy to sell merchandise publicised by the artist.

Artists may also choose to share certain beliefs that allow them to appeal to their audience. Fans find it enjoyable to look into the personal life of artists and they use the internet to do this. Artists often use mediums such as social media to share their personal feelings.

The main artist that I will focus on in this post is Britney Spears, Spears initially emerged through the music industry which was a very odd phenomenon as the music industry at the time was mostly male dominated. The lack of females within the industry caused a huge flock of people to pay attention to spears. Spears quickly became an iconic role model for teenage girls at the time because the amount of female role models was very low. Spears was categorised in the side of the media that is controlled, she was told what to wear, and as such her fans were also wearing barbie like clothing. Her dance routines were often simplistic, allowing her fans to learn them and dance along, creating a bond.

The first video that I will look at is spears "Hit be baby one more time" As it relates well with Mulvey's theory of the female image and how men see women in music. Spears now starts wearing provocative clothing, and suggestive dance moves.


Another of Spears videos that is good to speak about is "Hold it against me" As this video shows how Spears has developed as she's aged. The video shows Spears being fed up with the image that was given to her, the room she performs in is surrounded by screens showing her past performances and music video's, which means the video is about her past, showing that she wants people to see her in a new light.

Model of the media.

The media today follows a model that includes a strong relationship between the audience and the text, considering how the audience consumes it and the institutions that produce it. 

Examples of texts include music videos, TV programmes, magazines websites, computer games.

The key pieces of information regarding the text that institutions focalise on is what kind of texts audiences are consuming, why they're preferring this and what is attracting them to that specific type of text. They are also interested as to where they consume it, whether that be their computers, tablets or phones. The institutions are also quite interested as to where consumers consume, as in their room, at home, cinema etc.

Some examples of institutions are companies such as MGN, Fox, BBC, Google, Sky etc.

The relationship between the institutions and the audiences is very important one and must be understood, this is because there is always a financial transaction and the audience always has to pay in some way. 

Illegal downloads are also rising in popularity which means that the institution has to adapt, rather than having live performances as promotions to the albums, they now use them as their main source of income.

Above is a visual representation of the relationship between Audience, institution, and the text.

Constructing the magazine advert.

In order to construct our magazine advert, we used Photoshop again, and for consistency used the same images as our digipak to ensure a link.

Alongside this, we used a different font to make our artist name stand out, whilst also correctly signifying that we had a new album coming out.

We then added a five star review to add some authenticity to our product for the website.

Constructing our digipak.

In order to create our digipak, we used the program Photoshop, this is because it is easier to manipulate six different images and then combine them into one package, we wanted the front and back of the digipak to have a nice flow to it. Our idea to do this was to use a tree as the spine, whilst half of it could be seen on the front cover, and the other half on the back.

We made sure to leave at least a centimetre in the middle of the spine, this was to allow room and keep everything in it's correct proportional size, and everything would appear the same as the physical product.

The text we went with was downloaded from the website "Dafont" The reasoning for this choice was the fluidity that came with the text, and how well it fit with out tree theme.

The inside panel of the digipak had the same image as the front and back cover, this was to keep with the fluid flow of the design. This side contains information about the artist whilst providing information about the music, and the rights to the songs.

 The inside of the digipak required images from our music video, we chose images that best fit the idea of the breakup, and used Photoshops tools to enable us to make the pictures properly fit with the whole theme we had going on.

Our final task was to put all of the images together, and insert a CD holder to show where the disk would go, this final piece showed how the digipak would look completely opened up

Filming day 2

On the second day we went to film the narrative for our video. These scenes were of Kendall on her own, with the male performer taking his leave. These scenes referenced real industry videos. One of the scenes has a real match with the Blank Space video. The scene mentioned is the scene where you see the couple have carved their initials into a tree. However we filmed scenes of Kendall giving up hope on the relationship.