Textual Analysis

Lady Gaga - Just Dance

Lady Gaga's video just dance features many of the house party theme. Can't upload the video here as it's not allowed, but it also features the plastic cups that suggests alcohol use for a good time. It also features crowded shots, representing the chaotic fun nature of house parties. The usual making a mess and trashing the place is also apparent, like when Lady Gaga pours champagne/ alcohol all over the room. Loud music and distorted camera angles are used to show partying hard. We may use the idea of canted angles and speakers as well. Toward the end of the video, the video manipulates time by speeding it up creating distortion. We may also use the manipulation of time, as it slowing it down, like in the adidas advert made it look quite cool. We have looked at video directors that manipulate time and this is something we are looking to link in with our work.

Textual Analysis for BEP I got a feeling

Here are some the key features in the house party for this music video-

-Getting ready for the party first
-Arriving at the party
-Paper cups
-Hot pants
-Slow motion used as an effect
-Wigs and partly fancy dress
-Dancing
-Jumping on furniture
-Sunglasses on inside
-Glow paint
-UV lighting
-Glow sticks
-Piling on sofas
-Writing and drawing
-Laying on grass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_2rrxONlLo

Textual Analysis of Keisha - Tik Tok

Keisha- Tik Tok

Here are some of the key features of a house party found in this music video-

-Waking up in bath
-Shocking parents
-House a mess
-Hotpants-- links to pixie lottd image
-Glitter
-Bright lights
-Dancing crowds
-Paper cups
-Sunglasses inside
-People slumped out accross sofas
-Finishes where it begins- at house morning after, main artist in bathtub.

Some of these really fit in well with our ideas for our 'Here we go again' video. Such as; Waking up at the start of the video after a party and then reliving it, ending the video back at the start with the main artist waking back up, the hotpants used fit in well with Pixie Lotts image, in fact most of the list will be part of our music video somewhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=910ZFGkhuQ0

Textual Analysis of Adidas House Party Advert

Adidias Advert- House Party

Adidas launched this video to promote their products. The video is very useful and there are aspects of it which we think we will recreate. It's a good example of partying hard in a house and having fun, which we want to portray in our video. The use of celebrites such as Katy Perry and David Beckham helps to promote their brand, linking to the cult of celebrity, and make it look a cool place to be. We won't be able to do this in our video, but can use the clothing and mise on scene ideas that are in the advert.

The 'painting on the wall' aspect that is present in this advert was something we are already interested in doing, but had a problem working out how we could do it. This advert may have solved this, as they paint on peices of paper that are stuck onto a wall rather than paint directly onto the wall, which we might do insetad. We also wanted to use the idea of something smashing in our video, which is used in the advert too. This is also linked to the partying hard attitude and the idea that anything can happen. We want to show a bit alcohol use in our video as part of the 'house party' theme, and the plastic cups in this advert might be a way of doing that, as it's not directly implying that they are drinking a lot. The dancing, singing and having a laugh ideas shown in the advert are all things we want to convey in our video.

Textual Analysis of Skins Series 1 House Party

Skins season 1- House party.

This is another example of the house party been used in media. Here are some of the key elements shown in this clip-

• Jumping on beds
• Crouded houses
• Smashing household objects
• People laying in different places i.e. bathtubs
• Fast movement
• People slumped over eachother
• Writing on objects e.g; walls and mirrors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4RQZVKABLk

Textual Analysis

House Party Theme

We have decided to locate our video in a house for a house party theme instead of originally setting it in a club. This will be easier to recreate but also more fitting with Pixie Lott's image and her fans. Recently house parties have been frequently used in videos and adverts to relate to a younger audience. The house party theme is increasingly popular today for younger people and has featured in a wide range of media. We have been analysing Lady Gaga, an advert for Adidas, Black Eyed Peas, Keisha and a well known teen tv drama Skins. See above blogs.

Ancillary Task - CD cover

Brief

As part of the music video package, there was the option to do a DVD or CD cover for our chosen artist. Our group has decided to do a CD cover for the artist as well as a webpage. I'm overseeing the CD aspect so to start I have researched and will blog a few female artist CD cover designs such as Beyonce, Cheryl Cole and Pixie Lott who generally fit our target audience of young females. By doing this it could create a picture of what we as a group should aim for.

Beyonce

First thing that is quite obviously notable is the way Beyonce poses to directly interact with the audience by making eye contact. This is fundamental as it is the artist who is the huge selling point and whos image must be shown. The way Beyonce is shown to be looking at the consumer could be used to give the audience the perception of identifying with their favourite artist and at the same time clearly meets the demands of the record label. This I found to also be extremely common amongst female artists, a lot of face-on shots that show most, if not all of the artists face.

As are the conventions of a album/artist CD cover, the name of the shown artist is always written on the front cover, as well as the name of the album. If only a single then the artists name and the name of the track. These were featured on all of the artists I have looked at and pretty much any i've known.

Something that was common in both Beyonce and Cheryl Cole's Album covers was the (implied) naked shot of the artist. This is quite frequently used in terms of a female artist, and shows the 'sex sells' idea. It could perhaps link to Laura Mulvey's idea of the male gaze, and Beyonce being seen as an object of desire. We may not look into doing a similar technique but will bear it in mind when it comes to choice of clothing and appearance.

The back of the album also in most cases features the artist, again linking to the selling point that is the artist. Though I found that a full body shot was often apparent rather than just a head and shoulders shot.

What I have especially taken from both the back of Pixie's album cover and Beyonce's was the aspect of modeling and how it has been integrated into the composition of the artist when printed. Beyonce's striking pose on the back of her album as well as on previous covers on is a good tool that is able to show off her confident personality and something that we need to consider when recreating our own version. Pixie's posing suggests her fun, girly nature which we need to portray.

Obviously the tracks featured are always printed on the back.

so far...

so we've spent the last couple of lessons doing our story board. Its quite detailed so its taking a while but we're thinking of doing a short annimation of it and hopefully it will be up here soon.

Costume Ideas Continued

We decided to have some of our party goers wearing carnival/Venetian masks throughout the video to add to the disorientation of being drunk or hung over. We thought it would look good for people to occasionally see a masked person. It would make them want to watch the video again to make sure that they had seen what they thought they had seen.





We also want to keep Pixie's look, so we are going to have hot pants and a party top for our main girl to wear.

Focus Group Analysis

This is the focus group we held. We chose a few songs and artists which were either similar to our video or we like the directors ideas and played the song through once (without imagery) to gage what they thought the video should be like, and then once through (with the imagery) to see what they liked and didn't like.
Are audience are all female between 16-18, as this is our peer group and target audience.

They liked the idea of a narrative based video where the artist appeared natural and relaxed. The enjoyed the simplicity of the Boy and Girls video and suggested a carnival theme for our video after hearing the opening of the song. However, with no carnivals being available to us very easily we decided to use the carnival masks in the video, (also because some of the audience liked the "Pixie" masks in the Boys and Girls video).

Florence and the Machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwqE2X55Wg

This video, which unfourtunately we can't embed, is really good for the canaval theme. The wide shot followed by tracking shots at the begginning sets the scene of the 'morning after', whilst close ups create a feeling of confusion and disorientation which is the look we were thinking of using for the beginning of our music video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpLXQorSQe8

This video is also good for our idea of having lots of people and then just her.

Carnival mise-en-scene research

After conducting our focus group, we found that after hearing our song choice many of the group found that it made them think of a carnival or fair ground theme. Therefore we are looking at possibly dressing some of the cast in carnival themed dress.

A good example of what we were thinking of is in the David Bowie film 'Labyrinth', but more carnival less goblin.

The masquerade theme would fit well with the opening sound that sounds like a fair ground / carnival. However we feel that it would be difficult to set it at a fair ground because of our other idea of having our main character dancing in a club. So by having a masquerade theme in the video it fits both ways. There's more of the carnival example in the video below which is also from Labyrinth.

Casting

Loads of People - For party scenes. Waking up with loads of poeple in her bedroom lying around in carnaval dress.
Girls - girls night out
Two friends to get ready with - leave her on the dance floor so shes the 'only one on the dance floor' = narrative.

Costumes

Dance party outfits - Sparkly stuff
- Hot pants (to keep in sync with Pixie's image)
- Leather jackets (")
- Quwerky clothing
PJ's - for waking up
Carnaval dress - taken from audience research
High heels - for the party scenes

Location Suggestions

Bed room - for waking up at the begginning of the song. Will probably one of our own bedrooms.
Bury St Edmunds - this is mostly the area availiable to us but Lizzy can drive so we may think about shooting in the surrouding areas.
Clubs - we really wanted an authentic dance floor but we still need to organise this.
Fairground - this was taking from our audience research that will be posted today or tomorrow. but legistically this will be difficult to do so we were thinking that we would represent the carnaval theme through costumes instead.
Brick Wall - to keep in sync with Pixie Lott's image.