Richard Dyer's Star Theory and its Role in Toxic City

Shot List

Here's the final shot list for my Music Video!

Storyboard

Target Audience

target audience by Ellis Broadhead

Initial CD Cover Ideas

For my main task, I have to not only create a music video, but a CD Cover and a Website. Here's my initial idea for the CD Cover:

Fitting with my music video, the background is going to be bright, sunny, and set in nature. Being the band's icon, I'm going to be the main focal point of the piece, holding two flames. I have yet to decide which elements will be drawn and which will be real, but the cover is likely to involve both.

One Page Pitch (Video)

Here's the final One Page Pitch video, with all animation done by me.

One Page Pitch (Written)

After much deliberation, the song I've chosen is Agnes - Glass Animals. 



I sat and listened to it on repeat for a long while, before jotting down my initial ideas onto a piece of paper.

I then used this sheet of ideas to compose my One Page Pitch for my music video:

Textual Analysis - Giant Peach

This is a textual analysis of the music video to Giant Peach - Wolf Alice, in which I analysed how camera angles, editing, mise-en-scene and sound were used within the video.



Link to Prezi

Artist Shots

We were tasked to take a series of photos of our band/artist in a particular style. Here are the photos and finished album covers:

The Serious Artist:

The 'Sultry/Smouldering' One:

The Tortured Artist:

The 'I'll Smash Your Face In' One:

The 'Icon/Object' One:

Album Recreation

To help us gain a better understanding of how iconic album covers are created, we were tasked to recreate an album on the list of the Rolling Stones' 100 Greatest Album Covers.

( https://www.discogs.com/lists/Rolling-Stones-100-Greatest-Album-Covers/25102 )

From this list, we chose to recreate Patti Smith's iconic 'Horses' album cover. Here's Patti Smith's cover:

And here's our album cover:

Website

In order to practice for the website we'd have to create next year, we were tasked with making a website for our fictional band. Here's the link to our finished website:

Toxic City Website

1 Minute Music Video

Here's our finished 1 Minute Music Video:

             

Textual Analysis 'Happy'

            

Arguably one of the most iconic music videos of the 21st century so far is Pharrell Williams' 'Happy'. It was originally billed as the world's first 24 hour music video, with a website being launched at the same time called 24 Hours of Happy, in which visiting the website at a certain time would generate a different scene of the video for an audience to enjoy.

                       

The actual concept of the music video is simple, just like the song. It features various people dancing around LA, with some celebrity cameos. It was directed by the French Production team 'We Are From LA', and shot using a steadicam. The 24 Hour version of the video was aired at the Buenos Aires Film Festival, and it went on to win 'Best Music Video' and 'Best Pop Solo Performance' at the Grammy Awards.

                     

The most interesting part of this music video is the fact that media exchange was actually encouraged, rather than being contested by the record label for copyright. As a result, all sorts of parodies and tributes sprung up online, most of which were extremely professional and got a lot of views in their own right. Interestingly, this fits completely in with David Gauntlett's Media 2.0 theory. Media 2.0 is all about an audience being creative and perceptive, and having much more of an active participation with the media they consume. It understands that the internet allows a collaborative approach to creativity, which is clearly shown in the amount of people who created their own 'Happy' videos. Here are a few examples:

            
            

However, using Stuart Hall's Reception Theory, there are three potential ways for an audience to perceive media. The audience can receive the intended view of the media, can take a neutral view (sees both elements from the intended view and the opposite), and can take the complete opposite view to what was intended. Unfortunately, when a group of students from Iran posted their own version of the video- 'Happy we are from Tehran'- the reception was less than positive.

           

Because the video involved several students of mixed gender dancing together, with the women unveiled, the Iranian Government immediately found that the video was setting a bad example. Six students in the video were eventually sentenced to a year in prison and 91 lashes, whereas others were sentenced to six months in prison. 

Therefore, although this video was intended to spread joy and happiness throughout, there is always a chance that people may take the opposite meaning intended by media, and there could be severe consequences.

Marketing Images

When an artist is popular, the marketing tends to increase in public, whereas formerly it may have been solely on the internet. Here are some examples of public marketing:

For our website and social media pages, we decided to mirror some of this marketing, and used Photoshop to create these two pieces of marketing for our band, Toxic City:

Social Media

To encourage an authentic feel to our band, we've created three social media pages we plan to update over the course of our project on three popular social media sites. Here are the links:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Website Pictures

For the website and social media accounts for Toxic City, we need pictures of our band, as well as pictures promoting the T-Shirts we printed. Here are the favourite pictures, which have been edited to be used:

Shirts

To promote our band and wear in music videos, we decided to get three shirts printed. These help to encourage an authentic feel to our fictional band.

Here are the designs we used and the finished shirts:

Location Shots (1 Minute Music Video)

Here are pictures we took from shooting our 1 Minute Music Video:

CD Cover

To practice for next year too, we had to create an album cover and back for our band. Here's our completed album cover and back:

Storyboard

Here is our completed storyboard for the 'Magazine' music video: