Music Video Comparisons

Magazine Advert Analysis - Adele

Top 4 Pop Record Labels

Lady Gaga Magazine Advertisement

Lady Gaga Digipack Analysis

Director - Mark Romanek Essay

Mark Romanek - Jay z ’99 problems’

Mark Romanek directed many music videos, however I decided to analysis "99 Problems" by Jay Z. This music video was the third single released by American rapper Jay-Z in 2004 from The Black Album. Throughout the song Jay-Z tells a story about dealing with a racist cop who wants to illegally search his car, dealing with rap critics, and dealing with an aggressor. This music video received 4 wins for: Best Rap Video; Best direction – Mark Romanek; Best editing – Robert Duffy and Best Cinematograph – Joaquin Baca-Asay and 2 nominations for video of the year and best male video. Throughout this analysis I will be referring to the representation issues and also referring to Andrew Goodwin’s writing (‘Dancing in the distraction factory’ Routledge 1992) 6 point analysis theory.

As demonstrated in this music video, relating to Goodwin’s 6 point analysis, the artist, Jay Z, is seen in the majority of the video. In the song, Ja z also says his own name within his lyrics which is another way to promote his song and once again relates to Goodwin’s 6 point analysis. Mark Romanek cleverly uses the phrase ‘Bitch’ as a marker, as on the line “99problems but the bitch ain’t one” he shows a different girl. Here Mark Romanek is using the representation of the female sex. These female women are dancing in a sexual manner which may suggest that Mark Romanek thinks most women are like this, hence why he has represented women in this manner.

Editing within this music video is very effective as the amount of different cuts that are taken give the impression that Mark Romanek has a unique and distinguished way of filming his videos. Throughout the video the camera is always moving even which makes the cuts look very neat and tidy, being director Mark Romanek uses this extremely well and even in still frames the camera is moving very slightly, however someone not looking for this feature wouldn’t be able to spot this technique.

Throughout the music video, Mark Romanek uses slow motion which lets the audience see what is going on and understand the story behind the video. As well as creating the atmospheric mood of mystery and a hidden message behind the lyrics. The lyrics suggest that there are a few problems, but is this in life or just made up, who knows? The music video shows that he is hiding something illegal in the boot of his car, this with the graphical match of the police and the sirens, creates a story for the audience. Another technique used by Mark Romanek is the fish eye effect. By having the technique of the fish eye, Mark Romanek has suggested that Jay Z has a very strange, mysterious and distorted life style, he is running from the police which confirm our suspicions about the mystery in his life. Another use for the fish eye technique is that he is trying to hide what is going on in the music video just like he is trying to hide what is going on in his life. Mark Romanek also decided to make the music video black and white.

To conclude, Mark Romanek uses very unique representations and techniques to create this music video. They are all very effective techniques and they keep the audience engaged.

Inspiration for album cover

This is The Beatles' album cover, which was quite inspirational and gave me many ideas. The whole album cover is animation, which is the concept I hope to engage into our product too. This helps to give the '60's' and old fashioned look I hope we achieve. 

Even though the frame is very content with different animated objects, the four band members have been  made evident by being placed at the top of the hill. It is very colourful and eye-catchy - very much what we would like to do!

Some Audience Feedback

We decided to carry out some audience research to see what and how others were perceiving it.

These are the two covers we have come up with. Now with the opinion of the audience we will finalise which cover to go with.  We asked 20 individuals which cover they felt most represented our genre, artist and song and the result we received was:

30 percent of the people I asked said black and a large 70 percent preferred the yellow one. This will aid us in the decision of deciding which cover to finalise.

After concluding that the yellow cover will be the one we will work further on to improve, we then interviewed our target audience. During the making of our digipak, we felt it was important to get audience feedback in order to improve our final product, ensure it is appealing to our target market and also to make it as real as possible. We set out 5 questions to ask our target audience and concluded the following results/answers.

Here are the questions I asked and the answers I received:

Do you like the positioning of the text and image? Do they complement each other?

Most of the audience responded with yes the positioning is good. Most people really liked the creativity of it and the bright colour. However they said that the background was a little simple.

So we thought we should add some further stars or designs in the background and make it slightly busier.

Are the sizes/font of the text easy to read?

Majority answered Yes the sizes are fine. Everyone really liked the font and thought it represented the original artists well.

After gathering this information we decided to keep text the way it was.

What stand out on the cover/the unique selling point to you?

I found out that what most appealed to the audience was the use of the colour yellow as it was bright and bold and making statement which reflects the meaning of the song. This is exactly what we wanted and were happy that the audience realised the significance of this colour.

Another comment they made was that they liked the fact that there was not a main image of the artists on the cover as this is something they would expect from a band like ‘scouting for girls’.

A further USP appealing to the audience was the title of the song being written within the main image of the sunglasses (This was one of our personal favourites too).

Does the cover represent the indie/pop genre?

All the people asked answered Yes as they felt that we kept the fun element throughout it with the bright and bold colours which represented the pop element but also kept it very “indie” as there was no picture of the artists on the cover and this is a very common concept amongst that genre.

Any suggestions?

There were no specific suggestions made but to maybe trial and error with the position of the text and image. Everyone was actually excited to see our final piece along with the whole digipack.

Overall we are all pleased with what we have created and with further alterations hopefully it will end up like we had imagined.

Now that we have gathered this information we can apply it to not just our cover but the whole digipack and be sure that we are targeting our chosen target market. 

Back Cover

Album Cover Inspiration

This if one of our original examples of a typical boy band. We didn't pick this for the colours or the background layout but simply for the way the band was presented on the pane. Looking at the positioning of each member, looking at their facial expressions and their body positions. Although we chose not to copy any of these attributes, we did still use the idea of advertising the band on the front pane. 

Album Cover Inspiration

This album cover reminds me of the idea of fun and games, reflected in the idea of the pictures of the running man and the aeroplane. The aeroplane makes me thing of holidays which has the stereotype of sun and fun on the beach. The reason for using this as inspiration is the small image of the band in black, in the top, centre of the pane. This is because we had the idea of putting something like this in the top corner of our album cover. 

Rough Cut Number 3

We only have one more filming session to go!! All we need now is everything on the judges. We have added in text where we need to add the judges footage so that when it comes to editing, it makes it a lot easier for us to see where we need to place the footage. This helps decrease our editing time and hopefully gets us finished with a final product. 

Album Cover Inspiration

This is an album cover. This is similar to the way in which we want our Scouting For Girls album cover to look. It has bright pastel colours that grab the audience's attention. It also has the band shown on the front which again is similar to what we want for our cover. The only difference is that we would like the band in the top corner of our cover because although we want to advertise the band members we want the album name to stand out more. All slide of our album are going to be bright colours that stand out and this album cover inspired us to think of that idea. 

Album Cover Analysis - Bruno Mars

Album Cover Progression

We could not decide which one we preferred out of the two glasses in the first image. We decided we liked the font of the top one and the colour of the bottom one. So, we combined the preferences into one and as a result we produced the one in the bottom image.

Album Cover Analysis - The Saturdays

I have chosen to analyse the album cover of the British girl band, The Saturdays. They are a pop band with a target audience of young girls from the ages of roughly 13-23. They are signed to Polydor Records and this is their 4^th studio album, which was released at the end of 2011. The audience of this band will most likely buy this album for pleasure and escapism. It is a fun, dance music album with larger than life topics. The lyrical content of this album is carefree and creates a surrealistic world of no worries. This is what one would expect from a pop girl-band.

Final back cover

Album Cover Progression

Back cover ideas

These are some of the different colour/style options we designed for the back cover.