I felt it was necessary to research album art, it will be very helpful due to gaining a greater understanding of what styles are used and messages which are expressed by modern and past era artists, helping to know what kind of art we will show on our album this will ensure once we complete our music videos that there will be an album with art representing either the artist or what they specifically wish to express, some examples of this are shown below.
<- Adele-Adele 21.
Bob Marley & The Wailers, Uprising. ->
<- Jay z ft
Linkin Park. In relation
to one song but a cover has been made for that song.
Christina
Aguilera, Bi-on-ic. ->
This is the
4th studio album Bionic.
<- T.I. Paper Trail.
Paper Trail theme for T.I.'s post-prison comeback, building an
incredibly intricate portrait collage out of scrap paper and money.
Trey Songz, Passion, pain & pleasure. ->
<- Labrinth, Electronic Earth. Close up and in a pair of aviator style sunglasses
with a futuristic skyline complete with an alien ship in the reflection.
Schoolly, Schoolly D. Content to just self-produce
and run his own label. ->
<- Lil Wayne
Tha Carter 3.
One of the
many series of 'Tha Carter' He mainly poses and features a little kid.
Since 2005 Rihanna's image has changed due to mostly her audience need, interests and for their satisfaction. I also believe an event in her personal life has averted her star image.
Rihanna's first music video single "Pon de Replay" in her debut alum called "Music of the Sun".
In this album her star image was illustrated as a pure complete innocent, good girl. Her
music was categorized as reggae due to her Caribbean backgrounds. Rihanna's
image within the music videos in "Music of the Sun" is seen as a very pure and innocent girl who was very recently discovered. Her main iconography at this moment
was her natural beauty, innocence and her background played a huge part in her image. She
was seen as a role model to young girls as she was a teenager whose dreams had
recently come to life and was seen as an inspiration to young teenagers, that is is possibile to do what Rihanna has done.
In 2007, Rihanna's image has entirely changed in her attitude out of music and in relation to her album "Good girl gone bad", suggestions of this change are hinted in the tittle of her album. She has changed mainly within the industry by becoming edgy, mischievous and outspoken. Visual change, towards her image was, that she cut her hair very short and dyed it all black. Slowly with the start from this album and this year, her work started heading towards a different genre, producing more dance, hip hop sounds instead of the reggae sounds.
Rihanna's take on her change, as explained by her was that she felt, every album puts you into a different mood, which then requires change, it then has an effect on the music.
The change once again is een particualry in her song "umbrella", where her new image is properly introduced and shown to the world.
Another signifant factor towards her change, the inicdent she had with her ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, when she was badly beaten up. Rihanna claimed that the expereince was for good and for abused womne to speak out or leave their partners. This whole incident made her whole look of being bad go down, portraying her as a victim, making her look vulnerable and innocent, this led to a lot of people becoming very supportive torwards her.
Since that incident, she has changed her image once more, semming more matured, a bit more playful, visually her hair is the biggest change dying it bright red, she seemsto be driven towards powerful ballards. Her current transformaiton is a mixture of features from her previous albums/images. It is now a new, original mix of Rihanna, being her self, something we as audience can relate to. She is defiantely know seen ad a inspiring fashion icon, becoming a massive trend setter, for clothes and hairstlyes.
In conclusion Rihanna has changed her star image greatly over the time period of her career, starting as an innocent reen quenn, later on bein edgy, releious-following envents of her personal life and finally to her hair colour being red, although this has been a major hit upon people. Her fan base and to whom her star image is represented at has expanded over time in her career, just as a her image has changed. Her constant changing image has helped her to stay relevant in the ever cahnngin music industry.
Gil has always been into music and especially hip hop and rap. He started as a DJ and then took his passion further, to study Film at the New York University, his thesis was what got him the attention nationally. He had directed a music video and being successful enough to be featured on MTV and BET channels.
His music videos are orginal, authentic and have a creative edge, this is due to his life xperiences and exposure to many sub-cultures, in an interview he had said ' I'm about telling stories... music videos are mini-movies to me.' He has shot over 100 videos expanding market from, latin, popo and the European market. Catering for massive, succesful artists including; John Legend, Usher, Timbeland, Diddy, Akon, Nelly, R Kelly, 50 Cent, Natasha Bedengfields, Lil wayne, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Common ,Three 6 Mafialastly DJ Khaled and many, many more.
Gil green has been named, the 'Top Music Video Director' in the Source;s power 30 edition furthermore he has bene nominated 'Director Of The Year' for 2008, 2009 and 2010. He won 2008 MTV video Music Award for Best Hip Hop video for his direction in Lil Wayne's-Lollipop video.
In terms Gil Green and Dj Khaled, i feel both fall into category for me where i admire and really like the two as people and Director/Artists. The two have worked together on numerous occasions, below is a screenshot of some of the videos the have worked together on. I think that both have a similar vision and is the reason for so many succesful directed videos by Gil Green and songs by the DJ Khaled.
Gil still continues to expand his directing talents into various meduims. Some of his recent expansion work, has directed the 2010 opening introduction for teh Miami Heat, it featured Dwanyne Wafe, LeBron James and Chris Bosh. The next is his directing and filming a Pepsi commercial and music video for the 2010 World Cup, featuring famous football stars; Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres.
You can see that wether it be videos or commercials, Gil's creative palette expands through several visual meduims. Gil's near future ambition is to go towards feature films. He says 'My goal as a film maker is for the viewer to see it once and think about it twice.'
Mr.
Phillips- Goodwin’s Theory-Wiz Khalifa I roll up
Due
to our current idea for our music video to be a rap video, I felt that it would
be useful to also research a rap video but in relation to Goodwin’s Theory.
Wiz Khalifa is seen as an up and coming hip
hop rapper, therefore I felt it was a good idea to study his music video "Roll
Up".
The key features Andrew has said to be in the video are all used in the current
example by Wiz, the features include: to demonstrate genre characteristics,
show a relationship between lyrics and visuals; illustrating, amplifying and
contradicting, next is the demands of the label such as close-ups, then
frequently refer to notions of looking and voyeurism and lastly intertextual
relations.
The
costume designs for Khalifa and the other characters fit in very well with the
artist wearing baggy jeans, baseball jacket and a massive gold chain throughout
the video. Other costumes used were tank tops and flat peaked caps which we
have already found out suit the genre, rap, hip-hop. When the artist is rapping
in one particular location there was a big graffiti wall in the background
which many viewers can automatically associate with this genre and because of
this frequent use we could easily fit this into our video or something to
combine street and rich. We also saw close ups of the rapper which we are
always going to seen in a rap video and this also adheres to the part of
Goodwin's theory that the record label make sure the artist is the biggest part
in the video with there being a lot of close-up’s. Also there are many shots of
other main characters including the girl he can be said to referring the song
to, however we were always sent back to Khalifa which we expected as he is the
artist and the centre of attention.
When it came to the relationship between the lyrics and visuals, Khalifa
definitely amplified the main lyric "I Roll Up" with a storyline
shown of him attending in different places to this girl - perhaps his
girlfriend and also the editing of shots and the movement of his hand are shown
to be rolling up adding emphasis to this, during the chorus there was the very
effective camera technique which looked like it continued to roll up and down
referring to the lyrics well. It would roll up into the sun and come back down
- each time it came down the artist would be in the centre of the frame. I
found this was a very effective addition to the video and it certainly
amplified the lyrics of the song. This could be something we bring into our video;
this makes the video flow a lot better, as it doesn't jump from one shot to
another, and instead moves easily from one location into another, making it
look very professional and is very effective.
The relationships between the music and the visuals aren’t that illustrative or
amplifying in my opinion, there were often many establishing shots, such as
shots of sun, palm trees, the beach and basketball courts. The song is fairly
relaxed so slow pan shots and slow motion shots seemed to set the mood of the
chilled out song well. This was the same with editing, that the editing was in
conjunction with the beat of the song and not fast and crazy editing but
relaxed.
In terms of voyeurism in the video, there is a brief moment that can be
described to be in the video, with the girl the artist is talking about and to.
The main girl in the video is shown, with her features shown at in some point
of the video, haven chosen a girl who is curvaceous and directing it to the
viewers attention although this is not as much for the viewer but saying that
the artist gets beautiful girls like that, lips and eyes and face are signified
mostly, wearing clothing which is revealing and is also expressed slightly by
the friends of the girl as well.
