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.

Completed audience feedback.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNCN2WQ

Above is the link to our surveymonkey Survey, this is what we sent out to large amounts of people in order to gain anonymous feedback about our video in order to improve.

Below is our Rough cuts audience feedback;

This is what we used in order to improve our Music video and ensure that it was as good as it could possibly be.

Below is our final Music Videos Audience feedback.

This is what we used to reflect on our progress and made sure we made the best possible video. We were very proud to find that the original errors were resolved.

Evaluation question 4

Describe the technologies you used throughout the project, discuss both digital and non-digital technologies.

Throughout the second year of our course, we have used various technologies to produce our work, some examples of these are;

• Digital camera
• The filming camera
• Tripods
• Phones

Editing software

• Premier Pro
• Photoshop

Online tools such as 

• Blogger
• Popplet
• Prezi
• Survey Monkey

Firstly, I will be discussing the Physical tools we used in order to document our progress throughout the year.

The first tool we used was a recording camera. This was the most fundamental piece we've used throughout this year and the last. We used this primarily this  year to film our Music video, and our audience feedback. This was an effective tool as we couldn't have possibly done the work without it. The camera is incredibly easy to use, and because of that, we were never limited on what we could do, the camera was easily adaptable to do what we needed and thus we were able to create anything we could imagine. 

The tripod was essential in creating a high quality music video, by attaching the camera to the tripod we were effectively removing any shaking and thus creating a more fluid and higher quality piece. This is incredibly easy to use as the camera can screw into an attachment that goes on the top of the tripod (As seen in the image)

The digital camera played a smaller but no less important task in our Media journey, By documenting each of the moves we made, we were able to create an effective time line whilst boosting the effectiveness of our blog posts. The digital camera was essential in creating our storyboards and animatic.







Software used.

We were able to manipulate our captured footage and pictures in order to produce our final package of Videos, Magazine adverts and Digipak.

Below you can see an image of our music video being edited in Adobe Premier Pro. This software came with both positives and negatives. The positive side of the software was that once we acquainted ourselves with the software, there was a wide glut of tools available to use. However there was a steep learning curve with the software which meant we had to spend a lot of time getting used to the tools and the features available.

In conclusion Premier Pro was an extremely effective piece of software and I believe my ability with it has increased substantially.

The next piece of software I will speak about is Photoshop. Below you can see our digipak being created in Photoshop.

Photoshop was very similar to Premier Pro, coming with a wide array of tools that can be used in numerous different ways to accomplish whatever you want. However similarly to Premier Pro, we had to first learn how to use the program effectively. By the end of the year we were quite adept at using Photoshop and this can be seen in our Digipak creation.

The final set of tools that we used were found online in the form of websites.

The first, and most important is Blogger.

We used this website to document our work as it is an effective tool that allowed us to easily create a portfolio.

The second website we used was Popplet, we used this primarily for one of our Evaluation questions as it allows us to easily and efficiently display our information.

As you can see above, the use of Popplet is very efficient and allows us to quickly and easily display the answer for our question.

The next website we used was Prezi.

Prezi is a website that allows you to quickly and easily create presentations that are much more pleasant to look at over programs such as Powerpoint, or block text. This was an effective tool as it allows us to explore the different branches of technology and find unique fitting ways of making our answers.

The final website I'll be covering is Survey Monkey.

Survey monkey is an extremely useful website as it allows you to gather information on your work from numerous individuals anonymously, which means that their answers are more likely to be true and what they believe, meaning your data is much more accurate. It also means you can spread the questions much faster than individually interviewing people, meaning you can gather more data faster.

Evaluation question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our first piece of audience feedback came from our Rough Cut video, wherein we had people watch the video, and then tell us their thoughts.

Here is our rough cut music video;

This initial feedback allowed us to learn how much room our video had to grow, it enabled us to take on board what people thought, in order to adapt and improve our work. Some of the suggestions we received were; Improve our location list, improve the steadiness of the camera, improve the background used in the majority of shots. As a result of this feedback we were able to go out and film more locations, angles, and improve on previous angles to increase the overall quality of the music video and get it to a point where we were happy with it. The limited number of locations visited was apparent after watching and listening to the feedback given, and it was a major downside to our video. We also learned that the narrative of our video was quite vague at this point and was not coherently explained.

We conducted further experiments such as a survey, using survey monkey which can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNCN2WQ

The questions we asked were;

• Did you enjoy our music video?

The answers were between yes/no with a 90% approval rating.

• Why?

Some of the comments we received were; 

The Misé-en-scene was very well done,

The lip syncing was well done and thus made it believable,

artist was upbeat which made it more engaging

• What do you think we did successfully?

The variety of camera angles used,

The use of the locations,

Choice of artist

• How could we improve?

A wider range of locations

Greater use of the camera

• What was your favourite part of our music video?

The majority of people enjoyed the use of the train station.

• What is your impression of our artist

She fits the song very well

Very good artist

• how effective do you think our video has been in branding our artist?

Quite effective, a strong use of the artist in comparison to the song.

• why?

Because the artist has a unique style that reminds you of the song.

After the final music video was created, we went and created a new audience feedback, in order to see if we had corrected our errors, and to see if our audience preferred our new video. 

The key elements that we were previously criticized for did not come up this time which was an improvement, thanks to this new research we were able to conclude that our video was in fact of better quality.

We then created a magazine advert which we then asked for feedback on.

We asked for feedback on key features which would help improve the Advert, such as location of text, picture placement, colour scheme and font.

Our digipak was largely uninfluenced by feedback, and instead was created based on our opinion with what would fit the video best. However we did ask for some feedback once it was completed, just to ensure that we had not gone wrong, the feedback we received was largely positive.

The feedback we received was that we had;

Effective use of images

Effective design however simple.

Memorable

aids in the telling of the story and expanding the narrative.

In conclusion we made full use of our audience feedback to ensure  that our creations were as good as we could possibly get them, ensuring that we took on board all criticisms and attempting to fix any flaws. overall this meant that we were able to create a well balanced product that received a lot of praise.

Evaluation question 2

This is the answer to my evaluation question 2, answered on Popplet.

Alex Southam

While working for Agile films, Southam was describe as being "An exciting new talent working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation" From this he was able to teach himself and has continued to show signs of being incredibly inventive and very creative through  the continuation of promo's for a range of companies such as "walkman" and individuals such as "lianne La Havas"

In his earlier career, Alex wanted to do most of his work as an individual, described as a "One man band" He would use a setup and film every piece of camera work himself. He was also organizing the lighting in any way that he liked, and then edited the footage himself. He was determined to create videos to his idea of perfection and wanted to take full credit for his videos. Recently Southam has become increasingly popular, having to employ a director of photography to keep up with the demand and to help him with his camera and lighting work. Southam was a fan of using his own style in the creation of music videos. He enjoyed coming up with new ideas and disliked the idea of using commercials as he believes it restricts the artist and doesn't allow them to be as fluid as they would need to be. This is why he tends to use Vimeo to show his videos, over something like YouTube.

Example one of his work.

His main video was for the song "Tessellate" By Alt-J. This video had a budget of £10,000. He was able to film all of the scenes in a single day, whilst also maintaining a huge cast. The video doesn't necessarily contain a storyline as most of the people are standing around doing nothing. In regards to Goodwin's theory, there are several closeups of the cast. This would probably be a demand from the record label, Mulvey would probably argue that women are being objectified due to the majority of women wearing tight clothing.

 Example Two.

Another of his more famous videos is "Lost & Not Found" by Chase & Status. The budget for this piece was £50,000 and was based in L.A California. It was filmed with a Steadicam and at 36 FPS rather than the average 24. This was then slowed down in the editing process. The video used only three shots, this shows that there was very little editing that went into the video, This was intentional as an attempt at going back to the 90's VHS look. In regards to Goodwin's theory, there are several of the cast in this video, and no mention can be made towards Mulvey as women are not displayed in the sense of erotic desire.

Evaluation question 1

This is my answer to Evaluation question 1 completed on Prezi.

Our Survey.

Using the tools provided to us, we have created a survey using 'Surveymonkey.org' in order to ask a widespread number of people about our music video. The link can be found ; https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNCN2WQ

What is a digipak?

Traditionally a digipak will consist of six card stocks that are joined together, one containing a plastic case holding a CD/DVD, depending on your purchase. When media is sold in digipak, it typically will be special edition or premium, rather than the normal CD that you would buy.

Most digipaks follow a standard criteria upon creation, opening them would probably lead you to find;

Photographs- These are littered on most pages, usually one will be a close up whilst the others follow a more medium range shot of the artist and a range of creative ideas that represent the artist

Track list- Typically shown on the back of the digipak, this will be a track list of all the songs on the CD and also lists to the consumer in which order the songs will be played.

Barcode and record company logo - These are a way of advertisement for the company. If the consumer enjoys what they are listening to, they will be able to easily pass on the information and recommend the album/artist to a friend.

Information about the artist- A digipak tends to contain extra content over the original CD which tends to be information about the members of the band/the singer.It will also tend to list the other people that assisted in the bands success.

A unique design on the inside of the digipak will often be seen, typically the theme and colours will match the music in some way.

This is a very well made Digipak design, featuring on the album "Humans after all" By DJ duo, Daft punk. The digipak has a simplified background with purple and yellow features which represents a circuit board, this is easily related to their tectonic style of music






The album name contradicts the design however, The name "Human after all" has little to do with the theme of computers and technology.
The back cover is almost completely black, with purple lines coming from the barcode acting as bullet points, this is quite a rare. The inside of the digipak contains the lyrics for two of the songs, so as much as the Digipak contains some unique points, it also follows the original conventions quite well.

The next example that I will discuss is the Green day's Digipak "American Idiot." The bands name stands out against the background as it is a complete contrast to the colour. Despite being incredibly basic, the affect of the cover is extreme, showing clearly everything that the band wishes the consumer to see. This idea is incredibly conventional considering the genre of music. Most of the songs found within the album have extreme political motivation. One example is that the american government has an expectation that the American people will tear their hearts out and fight for America, which is why they have chosen heart shaped grenades.



The back of the Digipak is extremely standard, as it includes a list of the songs whilst also containing a parental advisory disclaimer. There is also a large barcode presented and the colour scheme remains very linear. There is an image of a grenade pin, however no grenade. This implies that should no change come about, the American Government will eventually destroy the American people.

The disc also continues with the linear colour scheme, The track list can be seen on the disk which shows the order of the song, there is also an insert on the left which contains links to each songs lyrics. The consumer can also read about each of the band members.

Audience Feedback

Magazine Advert

Our finished Video

Our first editing update

We began our first editing video as shown below. We decided that we should have a train scene to begin our video before the music begins to set the scene and inform the audience that the performer is moving on with her life.

Our Digipak

Narrative

Narrative Theory

The narrative theory is the way in which stories are organised and how the audience will see them. Since the idea developed, a number of elements have arisen that affect the way in which the structure is organised.

Key Elements of Narrative

• Time - The element, time, is how much time the storyline covers within the film. it is not a representation of how long the actual film is on for however. The biggest example of how this element is used is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as this film transpires roughly 50,000 years.
• Closure - The closure element of narrative is the way in which a film ends, and whether the films problems are all resolved, however once a film ends without closure, it brings up the opportunity for sequels, whilst also giving the audience a mental stimulant of trying to answer it themselves. The best example could be the Avenger's films, as they constantly lead into new sequels.
• Enigma - This is the element of the narrative that refers to the problems of the characters, and what they have to face. Every film has enigmas as there would quite simply be no story without any enigmas.

Linear and Non-Linear Narratives

All media texts are either linear or non-linear. Linear means that the story is observed in chronological order whereas the Non-linear version tends to be riddled with flashbacks, storyline changes and constant zoning. Most Hollywood films tend to stick with the simplified Linear style, as it best suits their audience.

Tzvetas Todorov Theory

Todorov was from Bulgaria and his theory was in the way that he sees media texts, he says that most films and music videos have a specific structure to it. He says that there are four stages to this structure;

Equilibrium- This is always at the start  of the text, Everything is shown as happy and normal, the ideal setup.

Disruption- This is when the Equilibrium is destroyed, usually by something drastic or tragic happening to the main character.

Resolution- This is when the main character solves the problems raised by the film and all the obstacles have been dealt with.

New Equilibrium- This is similar to the old equilibrium but never tends to be the same, the characters try to return to as normal a life as possible.


Applying the Theory

The equilibrium can be seen clearly within the film The Outlaw Josey Wales as we see Clint Eastwood living with his family in a very rural and happy aspect, The disruption comes when he hears sounds of horses running and finds his house burning down, his wife taken away. The Resolution comes when Clint gets revenge on the people who murdered his son and stole his wife, and the New Equilibrium comes as Clint tries to live his life as normal as possible with his wife. However it will never be the same as the original due to the loss of his son and the events that took place.

Roland Barthes Theory

Barthes theory is described that all media texts are bundles of meanings. He believes that you can read them from completely different perspectives and different people can assume different things from the same texts, his theory is consistent of 3 parts.

Open- An open text is described as having no specific end, many people can think different things about and and form their own consensus. A good example would be in The Dark Knight Rises wherein Batman dies, or so we believe. Alfred sees Bruce Wayne in a cafe and We are left to wonder whether Batman truly died.

Closed- This is when the text has only one real meaning and the audience is not free to form their own ideas, this can be seen in most Hollywood films as they are very specific on their films endings.

Polysemic- A polysemic text is when a media text has different people taking different meanings and ideas from the text. This is dependent on how they view the text. An example would be Scarface, as there are many meanings within this film and the violence is shown to be acceptable.

Barthes often refers to these Threads as being narrative codes and that the most significant of these are the Enigma, Different audiences are able to take what they want from the text and the Enigma code is normally shown in the disruption phase of Todorovs Theory.

Vladimir Propp's Theory

Propp is known for majorly for the way he can analyse characters within old folk stories. He is able to link them in away most people cannot... He established a link between old folk stories and hollywood films, having 8 main types of characters

1. Hero
2.Villain
3.Donor
4.Helper
5. Father Figure
6. Dispatcher
7. Princess
8. False hero

Applying this to films such as James Bond we can see clear links such as;

1.James Bond
2.Le Chiffre
3. Q
4.The woman that will always appear.
5. Q
6. M
7. Who he falls for
8.An inside man that we see working with bond at the start

Syd Fields Theory

Fields theory is that the narrative is always organised in three act structures, He believes that all films follow this specific theory.

1.Setup- In this first act, seen within the first 30ish minutes of the film, we learn about the main characters and how the film is setting up for the story to come. This is known as the Equilibrium within Todorovs theory.

2.Confrontation- In this act we can usually see through most of the film. The main character will try his/her bed best to solve any problems within the film and overcome any obstacles in their way. This is the midpoint in the act and shows the devastation for the main character.

3. Climax- This act we can usually see in the last quarter of the film as the main character will resolve its struggle with the villain and one will come out victorious, mostly the good guy. We are then able to see the aftermath of their problems and how they resolve them.

Strauss

Strauss' theory is based on the structure of narratives being dependent on binary opposites.

Mood board