My video/digipack/website: themes and theories.

My entire coursework output this year (digipack, music video and webpage) are all set to connote how beauty (especially in the media) is overused and overrated. My song's lyrics, in my opinion, appear to be a critisism on beauty. The lyrics discuss how people hide behind beauty and how the fame and attention it brings lead to vanity (A great big superstar, Is what you think you are). The lyrics also suggest that beauty and fame are imperminent and that celebrities often fade into obscruity. (And soon you will be gone, And we will all move on, You never mattered anyhow, And you're not so pretty now). This idea of beauty being overrated and  imperminent and also the lyricist's opinion of fame fading away will be incoorperated into my video, by having a stereotypical, pop star style superstar trying to get attention only to find that everyone ignores her. This is also my way of challenging music video conventions and Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory, which suggests that women in films and music videos are there primarily to give men something to look at. My video incoorperates this by having the camera focus entirely on the girl but also challenges this by having the other character's in the video completly ignore her. This theme also goes through the rest of my corsework. For my digipack and webpage design I am going to use Photoshop to morph and distort black and white photgraphs of Famous Hollywood beauties fom Hollywood's Golden Age in order to make them into surreal, grotesque images. The only colour in all of my work (apart from Black, White and Grey) will be red, to show connotations of lust and sexuality, which links in well with the themes of the work.

Digipack photo ideas

For my digipack, I am planning on using photoshop to manipulate photographs of famous Hollywood beauty icons using a Black & White colour scheme with little dashes of red.

For the front of the digipack, I am going to photoshop a picture of Marilyn Monroe to distort her face. This matches the songs lyrics (You're not so pretty now) by using of photo of a famousley beautiful person and using Photoshop to morph thier face into a bizzare, Surrealist image.

This photo of Marilyn Monroe is ideal for my digipack cover as it already follows my colour scheme (black and white photo, red lipstick, an idea I am also using in my music video). I am manipulating a photo of Monroe because she is an icon and even after I've played around with the image on photoshop, it is still clear who it is in the photo. I am also going to put the band and album name at the top of the photo in bright red letters.





 For the rest of the digipack (apart from the back cover, which will be plain black with all text in red) I will continue this similer theme, using either pictures of just Monroe or photos of other famous/glamorous Hollywood actresses of that time (Audrey Hepburn, Elizibeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth ect).

My idea of using distorted versions on human faces is influenced mainly by British artsist Dave Mckean, who works mainly in comic books and album art and uses painting, drawing and photos to create bizzare images and strange looking faces, including the creepiest looking Joker I have ever seen.

Other photos that I could morph and use in the album art.

Possible Locations for my Video

• Theatre
• Drama Studio
• Octagon
• Ate Centre
• Hall
• My House
• Classroom

Record Producers

A record producers job is to oversee and manage the creation of a record from start to finish. The producer's role on a record can be compared to a director's role on a film. They work closeley with the song writers and performers to create and shape the piece of music as well as esablishing its mood and meaning. Today there are often two types of producer on records; executive producers (who manage the finaces, marketing and distribution- the "buisness side") and music producers (who oversse the albums production- the "creative side").

Notable producers include:

Rick Rubin:
American record producer now considered one of the most influential and famous producers in the music buisness. Rubin's records often feature a stripped down style, acheived using naked vocals and instrumentation with little or no audio effects. He also produces alot of records that bend/challenge genres (most notably, Run DMC's rap version of Areosmith's Walk this Way and Johnny Cash's  country ballad version of the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt). He has produced records in a wide range of genres, including Hip Hop (Jay-Z 99 Problems, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2) Metal (Slipknot's Vol 3 (The Subliminal Verses), Slayer's Reign in Blood) and even novelty/comedy (South Park's Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics).

Tim Sköld:
A Sweedish Musician and Producer. Whilst best known for his career as a musician (most notably as part of Marilyn Manson's band) he also co-produces most albums he works on. He produced all the albums of his band Shotgun Messiah as well as several solo albums under the name Skold, but is most famous for The Golden Age of Grotesque & Eat Me, Drink Me (which he co-produced with Marilyn Manson).




Atticus Ross:
English Composer, Producer and Musician best known for composing and producing work with Trent Reznor. Works include See You on the Other Side by Korn, Welcome Oblivion by How to Destroy Angels and (with Trent Rezor) the sountracks to the films The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo.

Rob Cavallo:
Producer and Chairman of Warner Bro's Records. Best known for producing albums for Green Day (Dookie, Nimrod, Warning, American Idiot & Bullet in a Bible) My Chemical Romance (The Black Parade & Danger Days) and Kid Rock's album Rock and Roll Jesus. He also produced the single Decode by the American Alternative rock group Paramore.

Butch Vig:
Produced Nirvana's album Nevermind, which revelutionised the Grunge genre. Former Drummer with the band Garbage, so his albums have good percussion and beats.

record company research

The record company is the behind the scenes force of the music industry, controlling the production, distribution and promotion of music.

One of the most mainstream and succssesful production companies is Warner music Group (based in New York). A division of mass media company Warner Bros, it was founded in the late fifties when one of Warner's contracted actors scored a hit record for Dot Records, owned by Warner's rival company Paramount. Scince it was founded, WMG has become one of the most successful music production companies in the world and curently has a net worth of $2.7 billion and owns a lot of more specific record companies.

One of Warner's divisions is Roadrunner Records, founded in 1980 in the Netherlands. At first, Roadrunner were responsible for exporting North American metal records to Europe. In 1986, they opened thier US headquarters in New York and have since opened up offices in the UK, Germany, Japan, France, Denmark, Austrailia and Canada. Roadrunner still focus primaraly on the various sub genres of Heavy Metal. Artists currently signed to them include: Slipknot, Stone Sour, Machene Head and Lamb of God.

 

One of the more independant labels is Century media, founded in 1988 by Robert Kampf in Dortmund, Germany. The label focus on worldwide, independant heavy metal acts, including Lacuna Coil, Suicide Silence and Arch Enemy.

 

 

Warp Records was formed in Sheffield in 1989 and produced pioneering British Electronic music. Thier most famous artist is Aphex Twin. They are now based in London

 

 

Webpages #2

Even when a band dosen't have an album out, thier website still have a job to sell merchandise. The Iron Maiden website has immediate links to the band's official merchandice store and the website for thier official beer. Also, at the top left of the page they also contain links to the band's Facbook, Youtube, Twitter and Google plus pages as well as a link to download the iPhone App. The rest of the page is full of news stories, tour dates and videos, all designed to sell the band and thier merchandice.

Analysis of a webpage #1

This is the homepage for the official website of the band Arctic Monkeys. It immediatley shows the band's name, album cover in bold with an immediate adverisement for the new album and a link to the band's store. The webpage uses selling the album as its prioraty, with everything else becomming secondary. There is also a small section for the music videos in the corner with a link to more music videos above it. This is to sell the band furthur, giving the audience a taste of thier look, style and music, persuading the audience to buy thier music (after all music videos are just adverts for a band/song). The very top contains links to the different sections of the website so that you can choose which part of the site you wish to visit first.  The point is obviously to sell the band's album and the website uses subtle and direct ways of advertising the product.

Website research

Many bands/artists official websites match the design of thier latest album. This is to show that they relate and make you want to buy the album. This is the official website of the American band Green Day, with all the news on the band plus places to buy albums and merchandise.

This matches the design of thier latest trilogy of albums Uno, Dos, Tre.

Sometimes, the website matches the video more than the album cover.

 Thirty Seconds to Mars' latest album Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams has a very simplistic album cover. So the website takes more from one of the videos.

 

The brightly coloured dust in the background is more like the video for Up In The Air, where characters in the video throw this dust/chalk around towards the end. The website does a fantastic job, before it takes you to the actual homepage, it shows a page with links to places to buy the album.

 



The Artic Monkey's have the exact same pattern on both the website and album cover and uses a simplistic design and only two colours, which is very effective.

 

For my website, I need to use a similer type of design to my digipack with links to various part of the website. I have to make everything connect in order to show the video, digipack and website as one big product.



Final digipack idea

For my final digipack idea I will use the same colour scheme as the one for my video (Black and White with little hints of Red). In order to connote the songs lyrics and title (You're Not So Pretty Now) I am going to take a photograph of someone famously beautiful (probably Marilyn Monroe) and use photoshop to stretch and distort her image and face, hopefully to created a surreal and strange looking digipack cover. This photoshop manipulation idea will be going on throughout the rest of the digipack also using old, black and white photo's digitally manipulated in order to create a range of bizzare but memorable pictures. All the text will be in red in big writing so that it stands out and furthur advertises the album and band. This colour scheme and bizzare design will also be the base for my website.

Idea's for my digipack

• Like my video and website, the digipack images will use only three colours: Black&White photo's with little bits of Red (for the text and maybe a little on the pictures too).
• I like the idea of using distorted images of people's faces to link with the songs lyrics (You're not so pretty now). To link this furthur, I could distort a picture of people generally thought of to be iconic and beautiful (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizibeth Taylor ect).
• Simplistic pattenrs and colours.
• Image that is memorable (and possible slightly disturbing)

Video idea focus group feedback

Furthur album art research

Often the album art, Promotional material and music video's share a common theme and/or style. This is often in relation to genre and lyrical content.

 

 The Album The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance is a concept album about death and the afterlife. It's two alternative album covers are in black and white with scrawled writing. The album covers could show life as light and death as dark. Also, the idea of a black parade contrasts something jolly and joyous with something depressing and bleak

This style is also used in several of the music videos from the album. The video for I Don't Love You represents relationships and death. The video goes with the colour scheme by not only being filmed in black and white but having everything designed in black and white to stand out more. Also the video for Welcome To The Black Parade use a similar style. Whilst this video is not actually shot in black and white, the way the make up and set design is used gives it that same look and feel. However the flowers around the float and several extra's wear red to connote love and life, contrasting the song's dark subject matter and matching it's faster tempo.

 

 

Often, artist will release concept albums, using a series of songs to tell a story. Alice Cooper's album Along Came a Spider is a concept album in wich the story is about a  serial killer known as Spider. "The police are baffled by the bodies of Spider's victims, which are cocooned in a silk web, and are each missing a leg. Spider's task is to collect eight legs in order to complete the construction of his own spider. However, things get complicated when he falls in love with his eighth victim." The story reflects in the album's cover and the promotional artwork for the album. Cooper also made a short film of the same to promote the album, which is basically three intervoven music video's stuck together. The film contains the songs Vengeance Is Mine (featuring Slash, who also appears in the film), (In Touch With)Your Femenin Side and Killed by Love. The film also matches the albums lyrics and plotline and is all connected to Cooper's character Spider.

 

 

Screenshot from segment two of the film, which is

like an interval from the serial killer story and features a

more traditional performance style.

 Screen shots from along came a spider segement 1
Vengeance is Mine

 
Screen shot from Along Came a Spider segment 3 Killed by Love. The film and album, like most of Cooper's work, is inspired by the horror film genre

Promotional photograph for the album, featuring Cooper in character as Spider. Again there is a heavy horror influence.

The full promotional music video/short film: