She’s fun, she’s friendly, and she means business. At only 20-years old, Baylor Wilson has spent the last two years working on music and honing in on her songwriting and guitar playing. She has written many new songs and is continuing to capture the “Baylor” sound that people will eventually begin to recognize. Her natural rasp and warmer tone sets her voice apart while her mature and catchy lyrics bring something different and unique to the table. The passion instilled in her is driving her to work with successful individuals in the industry that others may not get the opportunity to work with. Right now, she is continuing to write and play shows every chance she gets. “I understand that when one door closes, another one opens… All I have do is find the next door that’s waiting to be opened." This is a direct quote from the "about" section on her website (Baylorwilson.com)
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist that is known for her essay "the visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema" She is also known for her view on films and the modern cinema, saying how when watching films, she noticed that modern cinema reflects society as patriarchal.
One theory that Mulvey has is that men and women are viewed within films very differently. Her view is that she believed in most films men are the dominant figure, whereas women are usually seen as "Damsels in distress" She says that men tend to have agency within films, which means that they are the only ones to have the ability to move the film forward. Within Hollywood, this is in fact very true.
Within the world of most Hollywood films, women are seen as the object of desire. There are two roles they could follow; An object of erotic desire for characters, and an object of erotic desire for audiences.
This can be argued well within the first Transformers movie. Megan Fox's role in one particular scene shows her leaving over a car, in quite a sexual manner.
The Gaze
The Gaze is Mulvey's idea of how men view Women in music videos. This means that the camera films the storyline from the males point of view. The idea is that women are objects of erotic desire , this is evident when considering the male gaze as it is something that most males would prefer to see. The male character tends to always direct his gaze towards the Female character, almost leading the audience to do the same. The male gaze is generally reserved to as Active, whilst the female gaze is a passive one. The audience of a film or music video is forced to identify with the male character. There are three levels of cinematic gaze, the first is the male gaze. The second is when the camera shows us what a male character is looking at, mostly the female character and the third gaze is when the audience is looking through the camera and what the male character is looking at.
Using Mulvey's theory in a music video.
If we use Mulvey's theory for this video ,we can see that it is extremely true as Rihanna presents herself and the other women in the video. The Mise-en-scene shows supports this idea as Rihanna is wearing skin tight clothing and there isn't much of it. This agrees with the idea of The Male Gaze as it is much more attractive to the male eye seeing Rihanna in skin tight clothing over other forms of clothing. The women and Rihanna use their bodies by bending over cars to appeal to the men. All women in this video are objects of erotic desire. The audience is made to agree with the male gaze.
Katy Perry's audience tends to be young girls around the age of 14-17, this causes her videos to seem to be like she is an older sister to them, or a close friend. Some of her videos such as Last Friday Night and Fireworks appeal to the anxieties of younger girls, due to this she has become someone that young women can admire and idolize, being sexy whilst non-threatening.
Her music videos also demonstrates genre characteristics, as in a stage performance for a metal band, with Katy Perry its more like a girl group, shown in California Gurls when she is dancing around with girls, it is also shown in Hot N Cold.
There is also sometimes intertexual references within her videos, such as Wide Awake referring back to Firework and California Girls.
Waking Up in Vegas shows Katy as being adventurous and going out of her comfort zone. It presents her as a small girl in a big world being taken over by the bright lights in Vegas. She is shown with her boyfriend, played by Joel David Moore, and between them they do not have a lot of money.
They begin to win lots of money through gambling but eventually they lose it all and end up in an argument and nothing to show for their wins in Vegas. There are celebrity appearances such as Penn and Teller (a magician duo) and Daniel Negeanu (a professional poker player). This shows Katy appealing to her target audience as everybody would be dazzled by the attractive bright lights of Vegas but ultimately she shows that it's a bad idea to gamble your money.
Teenage Dream is set on the beach in Santa Barbara, California which is Katy Perry's hometown. This already reflects her private life because she is showing her audience that she is proud of where she has come from and wants to celebrate it. The product placement of the Zero Boys t-shirts further represent Katy's person life as she shows how California appreciate music and how fashion is prominent there. In this music video she wears a lot less make up than Last Friday Night for example which shows her in a more natural state further appealing to her target audience. The message of the video is that you can have fun on a beach with your closest friends if that's what you want to do and that she appreciates 'teenage dreams' as they mean a lot more to her than most people.
For the most part of Perry's Part of Me video it is set at UMSC Camp Pendleton in California where we see her take part in a rigorous combat course. She only used real Marines in the video to portray real courage and strength rather than using actors and actresses. This shows the audience her personal life as she is showing her strength and dedication to improving herself through the mental and physical strength that the Marines have to use when training and then when fighting. We see her with short hair (which she cuts in the video) flattening her chest, removing her jewellery and wears more 'masculine' clothing which shows her stripping away all of the femininity that she usually shows her audience with her pink dresses and colourful hair and makeup. The reason for becoming a warrior ready for combat is because she had broken up with her boyfriend due to him cheating on her and flirting with another woman in his office, she then sees an advert that says "All women are created equal, then some become Marines" which spurred her desire to train. This shows her addressing her target audience as it allows young girls to understand that they do not have to go into careers that are considered 'girly' just because they are female. Even the title of the song shows how much of a personal song and video it is to her as she has a documentary film about her personal life with the same title.
Wide Awake is full of references to Perry's personal life as well as previous songs and videos. For example, at the beginning of the video it has Perry shooting a decent for her California Gurls video. It then goes into 'Wide Awake' and shows her eating a strawberry which is the Album art for her first album 'One of the Boys.' With all of these references it shows Perry's connection with all of her music in the past as well as her development into newer music. There is a part where she is being haunted through a mirror by paparazzi that follow her in her personal life. However she shatters the glass in the mirror and the shards turn into butterflies which appeals to her target audience as it shows how even with people intruding on her life she can still defeat them and be happier with the symbol of freedom happiness with the butterflies in the same way that any of her fans can combat any problems they have and become free. She shows a lot about her personal life as she punches the Prince that comes to her riding a unicorn, this could be her ex-husband Russell Brand who cheated on her and the prince has his fingers crossed behind his back showing a sign of untrustworthiness. The video ends with Perry going on stage singing Teenage Dream.
The first location we are planning to use is
Kings Cross Train Station. The narrative of the video is non linear as it
starts at a train station after our artist has experienced a bad break up. We
think that Kings Cross Station is an iconic station as it has been used in
media before such as in Harry Potter. However, using such a busy train
station could cause problems on the day so if it is too busy then we will use
a smaller and less busy train station such as Becontree.
Access to
location via: To Kings Cross Station
Health and
Safety Issues to note: We need to make
sure that the roads are safe and we do not block anybody's path when filming.
Also we need to make sure that the weather is appropriate.
Potential
Filming Problems :
·Camera battery dying
·Wind
·Rain or snow
·Due to us not actually being able to
restrict an area for filming, there is a chance that our location may have
people already there.
The second location we are
planning to use is the dance studio at Eastbrook. We felt that this would be
a perfect location to film the amplified part of our music video as it is a
wide bright open space. This is the location where we will film the artist singing
into a microphone which will be amplified during the chorus.
The music video beings with possibly a fade in, or a start that doesn't actually involve music and follows a more "movie" feel, from there we have our main singer ideally in a field or park, a situation that we would see a young girl singing a country song. Our vision then follows her possibly solo, possibly with a few friends as if at a picnic. There is a possible chance it may snow or look cold, where we can adapt it by giving her winter clothes. However if the weather is too bad for us to have it outside as it wouldn't look right, we can mix it up by having some time within a studio that flashes to the outside.
Looking for a song followed the same process as choosing an artist, we first wanted to think of what would be the easiest to use, and then what would be the most realistic. Thus we browsed her available songs and decided that Sticky Situation was the song that best suited our needs for the Music Video. The song has enough changes to warrant quick cuts, changes in style and speed to allow us to vary up how we film it, and also does not follow a strict style for the video, meaning that we can get creative and not be a copy of the original.
Whilst watching the video we noticed minor things that we could then use whilst making the video, such as throwing food around, actually getting sticky and thus we decided this was ideal. Out of her other tracks we thought that this one was the best fitting for us and what we needed so therefore, our song became Sticky Situation.
In the process of looking for an artist, we first considered what kind of genre we wanted to go into. Initially we thought of a rocky type band, enabling us to use a range of instruments and people to vary up what goes on in our video, however after coming up short ended on bands that were actually good enough to use we decided to back to the drawing board. using Unsigned.com we looked through the country section, coming up empty handed we changed to spotify, this is where we discovered Baylor Wilson, She is a young girl roughly our age from the United States who sings country. This was ideal as I know someone who is almost her double, after further research we discovered she had a youtube channel with her songs uploaded to them.
This was Ideal as we were then able to communicate with her ( or attempt to at least) and easily access the songs. using a youtube converter to get them and being able to replay them easily for lyrics. This mean that Baylor was an ideal candidate due to the ease of using her music.
The purpose of a promotional music video is to promote brand names that have products placed within them.
This gives the product Publicity whilst increasing sales. Due to the branding and sponsorship the artist also gains a larger audience due to publicity. The audience is also introduced to the artist raising awareness of them.
Beats by Dre is a very large brand placing itself within videos, examples such as;
The product placement in the above video's is extremely clear, usually taking up the entire screen.
Synergy.
A music video is only one brand of multimedia and not the only way promotion is done, other methods are;
Radio
Television
Print Media
Film
Films are often used in synergy to music, being the largest synergiser. Music that is made in synergy to a film often contains clips from the film, or is shot on the same location, Adele sky fall was made for the recent James Bond movie, being entirely from the movie and not actually containing her.
Another example is wet wet wet love is all around me.
This is because it was used in "four weddings and a funeral" the music video contains scenes from both the band and from the movie, synergising them very closely. The single was released before the film came out but it didn't quite reach instant success off the bat. It was not very well received until the film was released which caused the sales to skyrocket tremendously. After the films release the song remained at number one for 15 consecutive weeks. Thanks to this brilliant use of synergy, this song remains the second song to remain at the top of the chart for the longest time.
This was only beaten by Bryan Adam's everything I do-
This song remained number one for 16 weeks, beating wet wet wet by a week. Everything I do featured in the Robin hood movie, a widely successful movie that made a widely successful song.
