MEDIA THEORY: RICHARD DYER'S POP STARS

Last week we learned about a theorist named Richard Dyer, whose ideas are somewhot similar to Theodore Adornono's idea of a mega culture industry, but attibuted to individuals rather than a whole market.

Dyer states that a "Pop Star" and "Pop performer" are in fact two different meanings. A pop star is characterised by a meteoric rise whether by a positive or negative means and is world known for short period of time but will ultiamtley be shleved and have no legacy. A pop performer is simply a performer of a popular art form that has a lasting impact on musical or artistic culture.

A pop star has become primarily about the image and is in all essences a brand. this can be attributed to their management and they will do almost anything to promote their "brand". For example we read about all kinds of sordid love affairs and negative behaviour in the sun and heat magazine, however it draws attention away from music to focus soley on the star. A good example of a pop star would be Miley Cyrus who has recieved considerable amounts of media attention latley. Making a drastic change from an innocent Disney child star to the next Lindsay Lohan, has gained her considerable attention which has been primarily negative especially in light of her sexual MTV performance. However this does work  in accordance with Dyers theory - that any publicity is good publicity and Cyrus has revieced A LOT of publicity making her successful in the eyes of her contractors.

Dyer did also propose that a true Pop performer will have a significant impact on the world and will do so even after they have left the limelight.
Freddie Mercury is a prime example. His flamboyant and outlandish behaviour became  an iconic part of his image while at the same time he is recognised as one of the greatest Rock singers of the 20th century. This has ensured that the music he recorded with Queen will be remembered for many years to come. This is already evident, e.g. the song Bohemian Rhapsody is still considered one of the great rock songs and many people still know the lyrics almost 40 years after its release. Freddie Mercury died an icon and in accordance with Dyers star theory this is how he will remain for years to come.




Bibliography

• Richard Dyer Stars (1980)

MUSIC TELEVISION CHANNELS

These are some of the main channels that solely show music videos during their airplay. These are the the channels that I watch in my own time. I have also chosen them because they bear some relevance in genre (or did) to my song choice. 

MTV

MTV is an american owned company and one of the most succesful and groundbreaking music television channels. MTV was initially intended as a music only TV channel intended to show all the latest trends and popular genres (as a result the content it has showed has varied drastically over the years) however it has also branched out into reality television in order to reach a wider audience.

MTV shows what is currently in the top charts. This means it has seen  a huge variety of acts over the years, from Guns N' Roses in the mid 80's to Jay Z in recent times. They also own a number of children's channels like nickelodeon. MTV is an american owned Company however it does have a european stationed branch and in fact a majority of its views and income is primarily european. It also now hosts reality shows like "the only way is essex no longer restricting itself to showing solely music videos.


KERRANG

Kerrang is a television station owned by Box Television and is in connection with the popular Kerrang magazine. All of its programme content is music videos, the majority of which is open scheduled, for text requests from their playlist.
The TV station's playlist is mainly nu metal and pop punk, although there are exceptions eg. Tenacious D, Beastie Boys and Bloodhound Gang. Rap artist Eminem has also many of his videos played on Kerrang, which has caused controversy among long-time fans as Rap is generally not popular amongst the fans of the genre.

SCUZZ TV

SCUZZ is a British music television channel owned by CSC Media Group. It launched on 17 April 2003 and has gone on to be the highest-rated rock TV station on UK satellite. The channel plays a broad range of rock and all its subgenres. The daytime tends to play more pop-punk (similar to Kerrang) as well as classic rock and heavy metal. During the evening the channel becomes predominately based around much heavier music ranging from traditional heavy metal, hard rock and punk to deathcore, death metal, black metal etc. which no other music channel currently plays. The music Generally becomes more underground and heavier as the night goes on.

Bibliography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerrang!_TV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuzz

CONSTRUCTION: CALIFORNICATION - INITIAL TREATMENT

The genre of our music video is  rock from a mainstream American band which is known for its…
Our video opens with the band picking up instruments and beginning to play. There are 4 band members: guitarist, bassist, drummer and singer.
There will be shots of the band playing all through the song cut in with quick editing.
There will be a narrative treatment that loosely illustrates the lyrics.
The story of the video will be a girl (Ellie) crossing through different environments in a dream-like world reflecting the dream-like state of Hollywood. In this we intend to convey the preferred reading of the text as an exposé or satire on Hollywood values.
Amongst the scenes are Hawaiian shirts, cocktails, overweight americans etc.
As she goes through these different scenarios, various obstacles will arise to block her path and they will have some connection to the lyrics e.g “pay your surgeon very well”.  Someone in white with a scalpel will attempt to perform an operation on her.
She will transition through the various locations and at the end she will wake up in front of the tv watching a Hollywood blockbuster (this will be chosen to be something particularly trashy to reflect the plasticity and fake-ness of Hollywood) like Legally Blonde.

RESEARCH: SHOT COUNT ANALYSIS

SHOT COUNTS

Track: “I want to break free”

Artist: Queen

Director: Dave Mallet

Release Date: 4 May 1984

Length of video: 4 minutes 28 seconds

Number of shots in 30 second segment: 11 shots

Average length of shot: 4 seconds

Shot number	Shot type	Shot length	Shot description
1	Still shot	4 seconds	We see a still shot of the roofs and chimneys of a large number of council houses in an urban area.
2	Close up	4 seconds	A close up is seen of an alarm clock billowing steam.
3	Close up	3 seconds	Brian may pulls the duvet away from his head and he is seen to be wearing a woman’s hair net.
4	Panning	2 seconds	The original still shot of roofs begins to pan steadily to the right gradually zooming in as it does.
5	Close up	3 seconds	Brian mays hand is seen fumbling to turn off the alarm clock
6	panning	2 seconds	The panning shot continues to pan and proceeds to end its pan focusing in on a single window of the house where the video takes place.
7	Wide angle	3 seconds	Brian may is seen getting out of bed, it is revealed he is wearing a woman’s nightie
8	Close up	3 seconds	A close up of him pulling fluffy pink slippers is seen
9	Close up/ panning	4 seconds	The video cuts to another room of the house focusing towards the ground. From the side of the screen a vacuum cleaner is pushed through and as it moves back and forth the camera moves steadily upwards
10	Wide angle	5 seconds	On the note of the guitar chord, Freddie mercury is seen pushing the vacuum. As he enters the main room he is seen to be dressed totally as a woman.
11	Close up	2 seconds	A close up of john deacon dressed like an elderly, conservative grandmother reading a magazine.

RESEARCH: MEDIA THEORY - THEODORE ADORNO

Today we examined the media theorist Theodore Adorno.

Adorno's theory is very relevant to  our groups song choice and the message behind it. Adorno states that all culture is in fact an industry, that has been set up by larger corporations as a carefully calculated investment, rather than human creativity flowing into our world by its own accord. This culture extends to art, literature, music and film and it is designed to keep the human population calm and contained by giving our minds easy and unchallenged food for thought, rather than new things that challenge our way of thinking and would have us think outside the box. This industry keep us occupied and sedated while the  corporations behind it, are able to do what they wish without resistance.

This theory ties in strongly with the lyrics of californication, stating that what we think we know to be artistic and creative is actually just one huge, fake, corporate product designed to keep us engaged and prevent us from progressing as people so that more money can be made out of us.

It is easy to see, especially in today's media world, why someone would think this way. With a steady stream of very bland and image obsessed pop stars who have mass appeal (especially with younger audiences) and a relatively short shelf life and have the purpose to simply make money rather than challenging the film or music world with groundbreaking new material.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Adorno, Theodor W. (1991), The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture, Routledge, London.

RESEARCH: MUSIC VIDEO PLANNING - FINAL SONG CHOICE

Today my group and I decided the song we would sue for our music video would be Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

We explored a great number of videos over the past few weeks but came to the conclusion that this song would be the best choice because we all like it and the song allows for a great amount of creativity adn we have several ideas that we want to experiment with already.

The song itself speaks about the lies and falsehoods made by Hollywood, although the lyrics themselves are often darkly poetic and can be difficult to understand the meaning often shines through when read.


"Pay your surgeon very well
To break the spell of aging"

This line refers to the expensive use of plastic surgery to keep up an image that you couldn't naturally hold like many celebrities do.

"Little girls from Sweden
Dream of silver screen quotations"

This line refers to the aspiration of being famous.

Many of the lyrics are fashioned in this way and speak of the plasticity and fake-ness of the reality of fame. The Chili Peppers are a band that was formed and based in Hollywood so it is clear they would have first hand knowledge of what California is actually like.

RESEARCH: MUSIC VIDEO CODES AND CONVENTIONS

please click here to view my presentation of the codes and conventions of a music video

RESEARCH: ARTIST LABEL ANALYIS

Please click HERE 

to view my slideshare on music video producers and some examples of their work.

RESEARCH: MEDIA THEORY - LAURA MULVEY

Today in media we began by looking at some examples of theory that we would come across in our exam. We looked primarily at how the placement of people (particularly according to gender) would affect how they might appear in media. E.g. are women primarily viewed as simply sexual objects or have the progressed?

We examined theorists Laura Mulvey and her Gaze Theory which states that film has been called an instrument of the male gaze as it produces representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view. 
This concept comes from the article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist. Mulvey's theory was published in 1975 and is one of the most widely cited and notable articles in the whole of contemporary film theory. She declared her intention to make political use of Freudian psychoanalytic theory in a study of cinematic spectatorship. Mulvey argues that there are various features of the cinema viewing conditions that facilitate for the viewer, like the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with the ideal image and ego seen on the screen. She also states that in a patriarchal society the pleasure in looking has been split between both active male and passive female. 

This is reflected in the dominant forms of cinema. For example, narrative films in Hollywood not only typically focusses on a male protagonist but also assume a male spectator. In traditional, hollywood, cinematic films, men are presented as active, controlling subjects that treat women as passive objects. Women are treated as passive objects of desire for men. These types of films place women in relation to "the controlling male gaze" presenting them as objects of desire and as 'spectacle'for men to look at. Men do the looking, and women are there to be looked at. 

After this lesson in theory we began to plan for our music videos. While we are still trying to think of a suitable video to make we came up with a number of songs that could be viable candidates.

• Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
• Misfits - Scream
• Aerosmith - Walk this way
• My Chemical Romance - Black parade

THE BRITISH MUSIC EXPERIENCE

At the end of the school year I went to the 02 British music experience. As a an obsessive musician this was a huge learning experience for me as I was able to see first hand the transition in music from the 50's to modern day.

At the start of the tour we were taken to a talk on music through the ages and then did a quiz on afterwards (which my team won). The talk was very interesting because it showed us how close music could be to society, e.g. in the 70's the political and economical unrest gave rise to the anarchic genre of Punk, which was dedicated to fighting against authority or "the man" as it was known.

We also saw where teenage independence
and culture came from as they began to break away from their parents norms and started forming their own identities.

After the tour we were able to go around and see the different exhibitions of the different time periods and we could record our favorite articles or items on a digital card.

My personal favorites ran through the 70's to the late 80's at the time of punk and hard rock as well as the more new wave music such as Pink Floyd.

Another great part of the interactivity of the tour was that there was a mini studio which allowed you to play instruments through a computer and learn songs from each era. This was a lot of fun and me and my friends spent about an hour just playing along to Elvis and The Ramones.

It was a real experience to see how music had evolved over the course of time and what influenced those changes and transitions, sometimes to extremes.

V&A DAVID BOWIE EXHIBITION

Last year I went with my cousin to see the David Bowie experience at the V&A. This was not only very beneficial to me as a media student as it allowed me to experience a small piece of hugely influential musical history and also as a huge David Bowie fan, it gave me an insight into his methods of song writing, his outlandish style and strange way of life.

One of the best things at the exhibition were the numerous costumes and stage sets that had been donated from Bowie's personal collection. It was very interesting to see how much thought and work went into each individual spandex jumpsuit or jacket and it was clear as to why Bowie became so influential especially in the more sexual aspects of rock. This was very interesting not only from a design aspect but also because many of the designs were so surreal and odd it was fascinating to see how far some artists were willing to go to express themselves.

As a fan of David Bowie I was delighted to be able to see several of the actual instruments he used and even a pair of boots he wore for the very last show of Ziggy Stardust he ever did!

Another very important aspect of the exhibition was being able to see the production videos of writing albums and making music videos. This gave me an insight into how a professional music video was conceived and later constructed and there were many exclusive interviews with Bowie were he would discuss were his concepts and ideas came from, e.g. the idea behind the "is there life on mars?" video came from a desire to be simplistic but perfectionist, using cutting edge camera techniques to create a cutting edge if simple video.

My favourite aspect of the tour came at the end where we were shown the last song of the last ever tour performed by Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on a huge Imax projection screen. This was a monumental moment in music history and being able to see it as it happened first hand was an amazing experience.

The exhibition gave me a very deep insight into the world of a successful musician, how they worked, lived and breathed music. I am sure it will be very helpful to me when it comes to making my own video.

 

A2 PROJECT: MY MUSIC VIDEO

Over the course of this year I will research, plan and create a new music video for a song.

This blog will be my means of cataloging and recording my progress and any setbacks I experience or ideas I may have as well as acting as a journal for the recording and production of the final product.

PLANNING: STORY-BOARDING

My story board for the music video. Click play or click here > Californication - Story board