Blog 14-Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was known as the king of pop once he started his single career. During the early stages of his life he was in a group called the Jackson 5. During his music videos Michael Jackson uses them to show more than just his dancing, but to tell a stories an address import issues. By adding these aspect for his music videos it allowed him to get a better reception from the audience. 

"Rock with You" was the first song he sang as an individual. The song was released in 1979 and it was all about him. There were many close up and shots of him dancing with his shiny costume. The video was almost a message to the world that he was doing his own thing and he was unique. In Michael Jackson's early days he was always more focused on the music and the way he sung. You can see that he is truly enjoying his music as he dances to the song.                                      

Thriller

In 1983 he put out undoubtedly one of the most famous music videos of all time called "Thriller". 

Budget: $500,000
Jackson didn't have to pay for the video because he made a deal with MTV and Showtime which covered the costs. Showtime got to air a one hour special with the 'making of' documentary and the 14-minute film before it was broadcasted anywhere else. 

The video was so imaginative and creative that it won Best Performance Video, Best Choreography and Viewers Choice at the first MTV Music Awards in 1984. The tape became the best selling and was able to sell 9 million units. Tapes were in high demand and the video was released a few weeks before Christmas so the video were able to make a staggering amount of sales.

Case study 3-Alex Southam

Alex Southam

Alex Southam also freelanced for OB Management. He trained as a lawyer at first but then decided to go on and head in anew direction and worked in the film industry. He started by making music videos to learn 'the trade'.  He has worked for Agile Films who describe him on their website as: „Alex Southam is an exciting new talent, working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation. Entirely self taught, his inventiveness and creativity have caught the eye with a series of diverse promos for the likes of the Walkmen, Alt+J and Lianne La Havas. Alex joined Agile in August 2012.‟ 

To begin with Southam undertook all the tasks on his videos such as : the camera, the lighting, editing and he now uses a director of photography. Southam likes the format of music videos as, 'you can try new techniques and can have real artistic freedom'. He is less keen on commercials as they allow 'much less freedom'. He uses Vimeo to showcase his videos -this is becoming  an increasingly important platform as it is considered to have 'higher status' than youtube.

Southam likes the format of music videos as,'you can try new techniques and can have real artistic freedom' He is less keen on commercials as they allow for 'much less freedom' He uses Vimeo to showcase his videos – this is becoming an increasingly important platform as it is considered to have 'higher status' than YouTube.

His breakthrough came with the video Tesselate for Alt J. This video had a budget of £10,000 and it took 1 day to shoot.

Album art exercise

This is my album art exercise we had to obtain a random band name,album title and a random background image. We then had to drop it onto photoshop and edit it on in the way we felt appropriate.

Music video rough draft

Here is our rough draft for our music video, main point to note is firstly it is evident that is was not finished. We received feedback from viewers, some positive and some negative. These were varying for we like how you set a playful mood throughout the whole video and the creative ideas used throughout such as using nature (the ducks at the start). Not to mention that they enjoyed the split-screens and they didn't feel that they were overused and the frame picture pauses were pretty nice. Downsides were of course that it wasn't finished, the lip syncing wasn't synced properly with the music itself and in the band room scenes you could she shadows. So altogether i feel that we are doing a pretty good job.

Information on the artist

Information about Owl City:

Owl city is an American electronic project that began in 2007, this project is one of many projects which have been set up by Adam young. This project mainly began getting popularity during 2009 with their six time platinum single "fireflies", the song fireflies was released within an album called "Ocean eyes". One of the songs within this album was debuted within Tim Burton film Alice in wonderland and another in legends of the guardians.

Their most recent album was titled "ultraviolet and the mobile orchestra" instead of releasing all of the songs as an album in one go he would instead release a steady flow of EP's as singles, the most recent one of these was released in June of 2015 and is titled "unbelievable", an animated music video was created for this and the song itself was performed with another artist known as Hanson.


Owl city's music is often described as indietronica or synth-pop and it is said that it belongs under the electronic music genre, Young has stated that he is most inspired by disco and European electronic music when it comes to producing his own. He also incorporates some of his Christian faith into his music as he is a vocal Christian. 

Timeline

AS

Research

Genre

Cinematography filming exercise

Thriller conventions

Mise en scene

Sound exercise

Unknown

Rope

Psycho

Studio idents

Modern thriller openings

North by northwest

Film theorists

Birds

How to film a thriller

Styles of editing

Past student media coursework  

Titles (thriller exercise)

Planning

Welcome

The briefing

Introducing our group

First and second production meeting

Initial ideas

Costumes and props

Location

Storyboard

Risk assessment

Animatic

Shot list

Third production meeting

Shooting schedule

Treatment

Construction

Ident

First day of filming

Editing

Making a title sequence

Screening

First draft evaluation

Audience feedback

Preliminary task

Finished thriller opening

Evaluation

Q.1

Q.2

Q.3

Q.4

Q.5

Q.6

Q.7

Katy Perry-Case study

Katy Perry is an american singer and in her music videos she reflects relatable anxieties that young girls have in order to appeal to them. Her target audience are girls from the ages of 14 - 18 and Perry is like an older sister/friend to them. She is someone that young girls can admire and want to be as she appears sexy, but not in a threatening way.

In 2008, American singer Katy Perry found relative fame due to a number of songs recently released, one of which being "Hot n Cold". This song and music video was one of the first examples of her appealing to her target audience of young girls starting to face insecurities in themselves. The video shows a wedding gone wrong, and while this may be nerve-wrecking and scary to some people, Katy Perry puts herself in a position of dominance over the 'groom'. Her aggression and power over the groom shows to the young girls watching that a woman can always stand up and fight in hardship. She also attracts a male audience in her appearance, as her outfit is designed to be sexually appealing to men in some scenes yet sensible enough to not intimidate women.




On top of this, her songs also reflected her real life problems, including her marriage and divorce against Russel Brand. Songs such as 'Firework' were created in order inspire people to feel better about their personality and interest. She uses examples in her video such as people who like magic or that are gay. She presents them to feel self conscious in their individuality, and by the end they embrace who they are and are able to come out feeling better. This is a lesson that Katy wanted to share with her audience, as once again the 14-19 year olds watching may be feeling self conscious and by telling them that their quirks and interest aren't something to be ashamed of the audience can feel morally boosted and supported that otherwise they may not have had..


In the "Wide Awake" video Katy Perry is expressing her feelings after she broke up Russel Brand after a two year marriage. It starts off with a scene from a previous video that she had made during her relationship. The song 'California gurls' expressed how happy it was to be in love this is evident as she is on 'cloud nine'.

However 'Wide awake' was about self reflection because at this point in time she had got a divorce from Russel Brand. In the beginning of the music video she amplifies her lyrics 'i was in the dark' and her costumes and make up is very dark almost satanic. This represents the time in her life where she had lost herself and was in a dark place because of her failed marriage.  

The lyrics tell her story of how being married wasn't the best thing that had happened to her. "Falling from cloud nine, Crashing from the high...I picked up every piece, And landed on my feet, I'm wide awake" These lyrics show that she hasn't been herself through the marriage, but now that it's over she has seen clearly how she has changed. She also had some graphics in the video that referenced to her "Firework" video. This shows that she is a new person and she doesn't have to pretend to be someone else.