Digipak Analysis: Gerald Clayton, two-shade

This is a digipak for Gerald Clayton, who is jazz pianist and his genre is mainstream jazz. This digipak shows the album front cover, the back cover, the inside booklet and the cd.
 The album is called two-shade and this is represented in different ways. For example the lettering “two-shade” is in two- different shades of orange, but also the images are in black and white with a sepia tint which compliments the orange font. For the lettering there are only three colours, and the reason for the white is to make it stand out and make it clearer to read. The images fade out into black and this gives it a mysterious appearance which is slightly entropic as you would expect a digipak for a jazz artist/band to have brighter colours, and an overall a happier appearance. The mysterious or saddening appearance could be an insight into what the music genre is for this particular album or it could be completely irrelevant.
 The tracks are featured on the back of the album which is redundant for any music genres, s is the inside booklet with its “many thanks” pages. This album doesn’t just contain one artist it also features a drummer and a bass player, but these musicians do not feature on the front cover but are featured on pages inside the booklet.
Throughout the digipak capital letters aren’t used in any of the main text, not even for the artists name, this could link to the image on the cover as if the music is very emotional as if the artist doesn’t feel important or is going through a stage of depression where he doesn’t feel his name or album deserve capital letters, or it could simply be a design feature, as maybe the capital letters didn’t look good or fit in with the layout design of the digipak.

Advertisement Analysis: Flo Rida

This is an advert for a magazine, advertising Flo Rida’s new album. The image is very minimalist and basic, but shows the artist, wearing expensive looking accessories, which is characteristic of the rap/hip hop genre. The font on the advert is quite chunky and has rough edges, which could symbolise how Flo Rida feels about himself or his background. The F in the font also morphs into a gun on one side this also backs up the stereotype of gang culture. The album is called ‘roots’ and has a chunky font but with swirly ends, which represent the roots of a tree, it also has dots in between the letters, which symbolises that the word stands for something. In the background of the image there is also a tree and some wildlife, which has a blurry effect so that the concept isn’t so obvious or take away from the image of the rapper. The white font is used so that it stands out against the complicated background and is also a focal point of the image along with the white of the rappers t-shirt. In the corner of the image is an Atlantic logo which is the record label that has signed Flo Rida, they have subtly used a bright white against a shadowy part on his t-shirt, which makes the logo clear but doesn’t make it take over the design. There is nothing entropic about this advertisement, everything is very genre specific, and how you would expect a rap/hip hop advertisement to be like.

Goodwins Theory Analysis: Moves like Jagger

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Paramore Advertisement Analysis

This advert is half a page in Kerrang! Magazine. The advert is a very simple black and white photograph of to angle ornaments on a wall. The text is very simple, using thin white lettering and also a calligraphy type font this could represent purity and innocence, which is shown in the angels. After some research the back of the album cover has a photograph of a wall in the lead singers house, with lots of frames, and the angels that feature in the advert are shown in the booklet inside the digipak and were a gift from someone, and they mean a lot to her. 

The advert doesn’t contain the band or any instruments, which shows the fame of the band. The angle also could be said to juxtapose the name of the single, which is ‘ignorance’. I think that the advert is only half a page as there is not that much to advertise, as it is only a single, and also there isn’t that much going on in the image, which means half a page is substantial enough. 

The image is taken using natural light, which means there are no shadows, which continues to connote the innocence of the photograph. Included on the advert is the bands website, and a brief description of what you can find there, which is another way of getting more fans. As a whole the advert looks more like an advert for an emotional genre, although the band does slow and meaningful songs the overall genre is pop rock, and the advert doesn’t really convey this.

 The angels are very redundant and they are shown in the way that people would normally portray or expect angels to look; the entropic part is that they are sat in a wall, and they wouldn’t usually be there. The audience for this band and genre would be teenagers of both genders. 

Music Video Analysis: Paramore, Misery Business

This video by Paramore is very performance based, although there is a storyline is doesn’t necessary link to the song name or lyrics. The performance-based side to this video is very redundant for the pop rock genre, but a slightly entropic point to this video is that the singer (Hayley Williams) switches at the end of the video, to take part in the story-line.

Looking at the performance in the video there are many camera angles, including a lot of close ups of the lead singer, which is probably a demand of the record label. The variation of shots include, high and low angle, extreme close ups, establishing shots that show the whole band and close ups of other band members and instruments. The editing is done to the beat of the music, switching shot types fast and often, but throughout the video the same shot types are repeated. Editing effects are used, such as the video flashing to and from black and white, and a blurring effect to make the video seem fast paced.

The story that is edited in amongst the performance is about a girl at high school, who thinks she is really popular and as if she runs the school, a girl that everyone is afraid of. The story shows the popular girl walking through the corridors doing mean things to other students at the school, for example cutting a girls plait off and pushing a boy with a broken arm into the wall. The entropic part of the video takes place at the end, when Hayley Williams turns up in the school corridor and comes face to face with the popular girl, she then wipes off her makeup and ruins her clothes and leaves her looking a right mess. While all of this is happening the song is still being played in the background. The high school is a typically American school which makes it very redundant, as is the fact that there is a popular girl. 

Music Video Analysis: Redundancy and Entropy

Redundancy is a word used to describe something you would expect. Whether it fits a certain genre or whether they are normal everyday things. For example a photograph of a normal cat.







Entropy is the unexpected. Things that catch your eye because they are weird or represented in a different way. For example a cat amongst some meerkats, its something you would be surprised if you saw and wouldn't see very often.
Lady Gaga ft Beyonce-Telephone

For this music video I will be analyzing the redundant and entropic features of the video.


Redundancy:
At the beginning of the video you can immediatly tell that the setting is at a prison, this is shown by the dark and depressing colours, and the barbed wire that surrounds the buildings.

A quite normal thing in prison is also for the women to be quite butch, and as this print screen shows women doing weights, it seems like a pretty normal scene for a prison

For this pop genre of music a dance routine is pretty standard. As shown in the video dance routines are a big part of it, along with the tight and revealing clothing. This part of the video is also very performance based, another characteristic of the pop genre.

In the second part of the video there is a setting in an American diner, this scene is very typical of America, and what you would imagine if you were to go there.

Entropy:

 

In the opening scenes of the video there is typography that introduces the video, this has a film style effect as if they are the credits of a film. This is also reflected in the abnormally long video time of nearly 10 minutes. Along with this there isnt any music for a long time.

At the start of the video when you first see Lady Gaga, she is arm in arm with two prison guards, the outfits that these guards are wearing are very unexpected, they are very sexy and revealing, and this is the same with the prisoners.

Carrying on the theme of the unconventional prisoners, a lot of them have expensive and branded outfits and accesories, they also have mobile phones and are wearing a lot of glamour makeup. This screen shot here is also an example of ironic product placement, a mid shot that is shown for too long to be proper product placement.

Throughout the video the location drastically switches which is another abnormal thing to be in a music video. From a prison it changes to a car journey featuring Beyonce, then onto an american diner and a kitchen.

 

Music Video Analysis: Bruno Mars, The Lazy song

This video is very much a performance based video, featuring Bruno Mars surrounded by backing dancers dressed up as monkeys. The idea is that the monkeys are Bruno Mars’ friends or 'home boys' and they are hanging out at his house, ignoring all of their responsibilities.




The video has a webcam/homemade recording effect and there is no editing due to this. The one shot is a constant mid shot, showing a boys bedroom in the background. The pop genre is shown by a dance routine and the artist performance. The dance moves match the beat of the music and instruments are shown throughout and this reflects the pop genre.


The video represents the male gender as lazy, although the setting (male bedroom) isn’t at all messy and the monkeys try to represent that the boys are cheeky. The audience of mainstream pop is aimed at youth 16-24 and is mainly teenage girls and this is represented by the artist always being in the shot. 

The institution is Atlantic and Elektra and this is a mainstream record label. The mainstream institute is not really reflected in the music video as the home video style makes it seem cheap to make, although it probably cost a lot to hire the backing dancers and this means the video does not reflect the money spent. It is also one unbroken camera shot.
 As far as redundancy and entropy are concerned, everything is how you would expect it to be, except  for the monkeys, which aren't often featured in music videos.

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Hello!

So this is my first blog post, 
This year for my A2 Media Studies course I will be making a music video.
I will be in a group of 4 people and we have decided on the band 
All about flux and the song "party all summer"
And this is the the email we sent to the band over YouTube in order to gain permission: