album art cover

our task was to do an indie band, girl band and individual artist photo shoot, this one is the indie band cover. indie band photos have all the band members in the picture, they are all leaned back and chilled looking and don't tend to look at the camera and instead look away. Here i done a black and white version as well as a color version.

Theories of Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin key features of a music video

Andrew Goodwin in 'dancing in the distraction factory' 1992 has identified the following features of music videos.


















Goodwin maintains music videos demonstrates genre characteristics for example stage performance in a heavy metal video. Most heavy metal music videos feature the group on stage often in a concert.



In the past the artists had long hair, wore leather and the stage often had a lot of dry ice.
the next one is girl/boy bands, in their music videos they usually are doing a dance routine in unison.
For example New Kids On The Block and their music videos  mostly consist of dance routines.



There is a relationship between visuals and songs.


Illustrate- Music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of the lyrics and the genre. This is the most common.

Amplify- This is where images of the music video do not contradict to the lyrics of  but add additional meanings that the song doesn't intend to do.

Ignore- This is where the meaning of a song is completely ignored

The demands of a record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist. The artit may develop motifs that recur across their work for example  

In The Wanted's music video 'Walks like Rihanna' they make multiple references to classic music videos of older boy bands including N Sync and Take That. The video does tend to portray woman in a sexual way and almost objectifies them as some of the camera shots are close ups of certain body parts of the woman which is also where men are most likely to look on a woman. 

Walks like Rhianna; The Wanted

• Strung up like puppets to parody N-SYNCs famous 'Bye Bye' Video
• Parody to Backstreet Boys wearing White suits like they did in their 'I want it that way'
• They also parody Take Thats 'Back for good' Music videos in big coats in the rain infront of a car. 

There is often a reference to the notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes etc)

Goodwin says that music videos should have coherent repeatability. Narrative and performence work hand in hand which makes it easier for the audience to watch over and over without losing interest.
He refers to the artist as both the narrator and participant. He says it helps to increase the authenticity.
Lip sync and other mimed actions remain the heart of the music video as it is important to make sure the audience believes it is real.  

Elton John evaluation

I think that this exercise was a good attempt, the boys could have opened their mouths wider to make it really look as if they were singing the lyrics which then would have made it easier to edit to the lyrics as they would have easily matched better.

As it was the first time I used premier pro in a while, it took me a bit of time to get used to how it worked but once I figured it all out I was able to get on with the editing process. I enjoyed editing the lip sync exercise because I was able to learn cool techniques to make it easier and quicker to edit.

Overall, this was a good attempt of editing to the beat and in future I know what has to be done to make my video even better.

Elton john exercise

Branding of the spice girls and Katy Perry

During the mid 90s a family management team had the idea of producing a girl band that would be able to compete with all the boy bands that dominated the scene in the mid 90s to the late 90s. February 1994 an ad was made to look for girls to be part of this new girl band saying "WANTED: R.U 18-23 with the ability to sing/dance? R.U streetwise, outgoing, ambitious and dedicated?


The girls outfits were carefully picked for their first live appearance on American television;

• Victoria- She was sophisticated and wore a silky fitted black dress
• Emma- She was the youngest of the group and wore a baby pink dress
• Mel B- She was fierce and wore leopard print trousers
• Geri- She wore hot pants a top and bra
• Mel C- She was sporty and wore her favourite Liverpool top and tracksuit bottoms.

Selling the spice girls

• The spice girls were sold as a group of friends.
• They were a carefully selected group of strangers after a lot of auditions that had taken place.
• They had continuous merchandise and sponsorship deals and were involved in pepsi ads, Polaroid ads and Barbie style spice girl dolls.
• Everything about the spice girls (scary spice, baby spice, sporty spice) were controlled by men. Geri Halliwell. 
• Ginger spice almost didn't make it into the group as she looked a lot older than the other girls. In her audition when she was asked how old she was, she said "I'm as old as you want me to be. I'll be 10 with big boobs if you want."

Each spice girl was different which meant that they could reach a wider scale of audiences as different people will like a different spice.

Katy Perry's target audience is young girls aged 14-17. In order to appeal to this group, Katy Perry has to take on the role of being an ideal older sister and friend to her target audience. She has to be an idealised version of them. Her songs and videos have to reflect many fears and anxieties that the young girls may have. When Katy Perry appears 'sexy' it has to be in a non threatening way.



Interestingly, her brand suffered when she got married to Russell Brand who was a massive womaniser. due to this her videos became a lot more sexual and knowing which may result in threatening young girls. 

Following a messy divorce from Russell Brand, Katy needed to use her music videos to apologise and be able to explain to her fans and state to them that she was still the same person she was before she met him. The second part of this blog post will analyse key music videos and track the journey of Katy Perry.

wide awake is the video Katy made after her divorce with Russell Brand. During her time being with him her image changed resulting in her audience turning against her, she made this video to apologise to her audience and to tell them she is still the same person she was before she was with Russell Brand.