Textual Analysis of a Music Website

I have done this textual analysis of a Music Website as my and my partner intend to make our own homepage as part of our ancilliary tasks. It should give us ideas of what we can do with our creation but also make sure we don't leave any vital conventions out in the process of making our own.

The layout of this website poses many qualities including the way that technology and creativity is used. As Jack Johnson is a acoustic singer/song writer, I can assume that he wants to give a message across that he is creative and holds artistic qualities. The first sign of this is the background. The background is a rustic bookshelf with various different size compartments. Where the top of the bookshelf appears to be, there is a column of tabs in a quaint light blue. Above the tabs is the artists name and latest album using the bookshelf tone using a 3D affect. The most obvious layout quality is the use of images as links to various pages of the website. By hovering over the images you can see what each image represents. As you can see, my mouse was hovered over the 'community' image.

The bottom part of the homepage along with more hyperlinks has more tabs at the bottom. These are dedicated to social network sites and multimedia in many different forms. This will help publicize the artist and he will gain 'followers', 'friends' or subscribers. At the bottom it also have legislation including 'the rights' and policies of the website, the artist and the record company. It also displays who the website is made by.

Jack Johnson's website clearly shows the importance of tabs and organisation however it's layout is unconventional. The Script's website is far more conventional. Firstly it has the banner at the top which is artwork from the bands latest album. They also have other sections for multimedia and photos. Their is also a section for fans to comment and their are links to social networking sites towards the top of the page.

By going through this process it is clear to see what I must include on my website. The idea of tabs and organisation is very important. The website also needs to be very visual and using artwork from your other products is a good way of cross-advertising. The idea of linking social networking sites is a modern twist and we will look to include it. The main thing our website should show is band identity and we hope to use some of the ideas from above to help us with that.

Band Shoot - Tuesday 11th 2011

On Tuesday 11th 2011 me and Kerry began filming starting with our band shoot. We had three band members; a guitarist/vocalist, a drummer and a keyboardist. We felt this went well and look forward to start editing the footage. The next step is start planning and filming the narrative which will be wrapped around the band shots. In the meanwhile there are some pictures below to show our setting, characters and equipment.

Lead singer and drummer - wearing casual clothes; jeans, chinos, shirts and t-shirts, beanie hats etc. Gives the affect of real effective band members

Standard full drum kit. Common within genre - range of cymbals and toms.

Plain black microphone on common stand. No gimmicks; again convention of the genre of music.

This shows our use of cameras. In this particular moment we were concentrating on the shots for the drummer. This way we were able to get a range of shots.

The electro-acoustic guitar is another common theme within the genre. The edginess of the black guitar with the green lead gives an image for the band. The guitar make is a Takemine - a very popular brand of guitar.

This is our setting where we took the band shots. It's a big space with the ability to use various lighting and backgrounds.

 

 After filming our shots we realised that we had some which were good and some which were not so. We then spent some time going through them and writing down the shot number, the type of shot and the lighting effect. The ones which are '*' are ones which we felt worked particulary well. Our list is shown below:

Tzvetan Todorov

·        Philosopher

·        French/Bulgarian

·        Published 21 books

·        Visiting professor at Harvard and Yale etc.

Todorov suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium or status quo where any potentially opposing forces are in balance. This is disrupted by some event, setting in chain a series of events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored to the world of the fiction.

He believed that there are five stages to narrative structure.

1. A state of Equilibrium. (All as is if it should be)
2. A disruption to that order (by an event)
3. A recognition that the disorder has occured.
4. An attempt to repair the damage.
5. A return or restoration to start a NEW equilibrium. 
Tzvetan Todorov believes that characters and situations are transformed through narrative cycle.


Todorov's theory is a great example of how codes and conventions are essential to making a professional and creative narrative of which we will use in our music video. This will show us how to structure our narrative and how to create a story that is common to the audience.

However we do plan to oppose Todorov's theory as the equilibrium will not be re-established. Our main actor is to be a 'cool, fun' guy who has lots of friends. The equilibrium is then disturbed by an affair type scenario and then recognition of this (people beating up the character etc). However from here the video ends with an unhappy main character. This gives the audience the chance to decide whether he is forgiven by his friends or whether he is not.

The History of Music Videos .

The first ideology of a music video was created in 1894 when Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired a electrician to project still images behind them when they performed live. They did this using a magic lantern.


In 1926 with the introduction of sound film many musical short films were produced. This featured many bands, vocalists and dancers and used a lot are art-deco styles.


In 1964 'The Beatles' started to make short films. Whilst this may seem irrelevant to the music video it began the concept of using musicians on camera which producers thought created a good effect. The Beatles are used small promotional clips towards the end of their career. These were shot in colour.


Promotional clips began to grow with bands such as 'The Rolling Stones' and 'Pink Floyd' using them to promote their music.


Although these early stages started what would be a phenomonon it wasn't until 1974 where music television truly began. The Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds started to show music clips. This made music grow with the promotion of songs and artists and the popularity of this was huge. Russell Mulcahy was responsible for the footage shown on 'sounds' and his work encouraged him to become a work time director. Mulcahy then went on to produce his landmark video 'Video Killed the Radio Star" by 'The Buggles'.


After the music phenomenon hit the UK; popular music show 'Top of the Pops' started to show music videos in the late 70's. The promotional effect of this was huge. For example 'David Bowie' produced a number 1 hit after a eye-catching video for 'Ashes to Ashes' was created.


By 1981 music videos had gone mainstream with the introduction of U.S channel MTV. MTV also began the era of 24-hour music videos being broadcasted. MTV has been responsible for the growth of many artists including 'Michael Jackson' who's 'Thriller' video was a huge hit with his fans the general public.


Nowadays satellite and digital television have a host of music video channels. These include 'Smash Hits', 'Kerrang' and 'Kiss'. These channels are all created to show their individual genre's of songs. For example Kerrang show rock and heavy metal music. However these channels are competed against. For example 'Scuzz' has challanged Kerrang on the heavy metal scene. These channels are also under threat from the web. Music Video websites such as 'Vevo' are predicted to even sink the likes of 'MTV' in years to come; a channel which has been going strong for 20 years with little competitors.


The next step could be to make music videos in 3D are use other technological advances such as charging to subscribe to websites such as 'Vevo' or use social network sites to boost artist's work. We've already seen the likes of 'youtube' showing adverts before their music videos as they now linked with Vevo. This could set a trend on how youtube are making their videos less accessible and potentially charging customers in the future.

'The iconic MTV logo'

By learning about the history of music videos it's clear to see how they are formed starting from the basics. It's always a good idea to start with basic and make it more advanced in the latter which is a good lesson to take away from this research. Learning about the background from which music videos originated will help keep to a high standard and I can use conventions from various era's possibly using the latest technology of online videos. This could be added in the primilimary tasks also.

Audience Research Planning and Preparation

For our audience research we have created a questionnaire for pupils at Tavistock College to answer about professional music videos. We will then compile the results and analyse them.

To the left is an example of a finished questionnaire.


The questionnaire is scripted below: 


1) Which video did you prefer overall and why?


2) Which video do you think provided the best narrative/told the best story?                                                  


3) If you could rank the videos in an order from 1-5, with 1 being the best, and 5 being the worst, how would you place them?


- List two features you liked abou the video you rated as number 1

- List two features you did not like about the video you rated as number 5

4) Which video do you feel best matched the lyrics of the song it was allocated to? And why?



We then analysed our  information and turned it into statistics. We then presented this in a pie chart. An example is shown below.

Now with our information analysed, we wanted to clearly present this using technological features. Therefore we decided to make a video. We then went out with the video camera to catch some shots that we needed for the finishing touches. This included shots of the school where the research took place to give imagery of how the research was put together. We also used quick edits of our questionnaire respondants to give that sense of them endulging the videos before answering the questionnaire. We then used our pie charts to present the information. I feel this order is structured and shows our process of thought. We also decided to use narration over the top of the video. Below is a picture of our script from which we read from.

The finished video can be seen in another post :)

Album Cover Textual Analysis

I am doing a textual Analysis of a CD digipak as me and my group partner have decided to create one as an ancilliary task. The album is by the artist 'Eminem' who has sold multiple records and albums and has a distinctive style.

FRONT COVER

BACK COVER + SIDE

INSET + INLAY

COMPACT DISC

I think one of the main things I learnt from doing this task was how much repetition you can use. You should pick a theme and stick to it. Your artist needs to be recognisable and logo's and familar writing styles are common trends. I also learnt how I can use other parts of the digipak, such as the inlay, to tell a story and give the consumer a taster of what's to come on the album. Other features I may now use from doing this analysis is to use less tracks on the album as we're represented as a new and up and coming band. I also like the idea of putting the tracks inside of a shape or image of some sort. It also reminded to add thing such as barcodes and copyright issues.

Analysis of Song Lyrics

To gain a greater understanding of the song for my music video I have analysed the song lyrics for 'If I had a Heart'. This should give me a clearer picture of what context I should involve in my video and may inspire ideas. Below I have picked out pivotal lines from the song which sum up the context and identify the story.


"Someone had to pay for this with love"

- This implies that someone (from thus relationship) would have to feel bad or be punished by using the emotion of love. Maybe by making one person feel like their small mistakes are now the ones that ended their relationship.


"So forget the lies"


- This shows how the singer maybe wants to start fresh and forget things that have gone wrong. He goes on to say that "he told them out of spite". This highlights a mistake made in the relationship and he now wants to rectify it.


"Despite everything, I guess you're right"


- This line shows how the singer has conceded to his partner that she was right and that he made the mistakes. Later in the song he swaps the work 'guess' for 'know'. This shows how throughout the song he is more convinced that his partner was right.


"If I had a heart, I would have let you go"


- In this line he goes even furthur to concede that he doesn't have a heart and if he did have one he should have let his partner go for the good of that person.


"Was good to you"


- Not willing to concede that he had done everything wrong, he adds a short line of 'was good to you'.


"And you can't hold it all together, just to give it all away"


- He now goes on to explain how she should maybe give him another chance. If she can 'hold it together' then can salvage the best parts of their relationship.