This is our practise piece from July. We hope in order for our final piece to be successful, our narrative will be far stronger and has more clarity. To improve our final piece, we intend to include:
Varied shots
Stabs of narrative where appropriate
Performance shots
Following Goodwin's conventions
Following the culture code
Improved Mise-en-scene
Consistent organisation
Improved lighting/ camera work
Increased skill on Adobe Premier Pro
However, things we feel we did well in the practise piece were:
Attempts at narrative
Mise-en-scene: Lip ring, different hair colour, school isolation
Adobe Premier pro effects: colour to black and white
If we continue with these, plus increase skill in the above list, we feel our piece will reach our intention and be successful.
Our next textual analysis will be on Stooshe - Black Heart.
The mise-en-scene of the piece follows the hitherto cultural code, the protagonists are dressed similarly to show their unity, and we see many 'vintage' props around them, such as podium staging and vintage camera -also integrating with the retro cinematography.
There are several shots of the female in red sporting a romance with one of the actors in the video, suggesting a narrative romance is taking place, but we see his diverted glances at another girl in the cast... which we can interpret the song is directed at him and his 'black heart'.
The choreography for the piece, instils the era and style we aspire to have, with rhythmic, synchronized movements from all participants. We also noticed the types of movements along with the singing, e.g., movements with microphone stands, are similar to those utilised by 'The Supremes'.
There is various focus on the three protagonists, but is namely often focused on the one singing a verse, which all three partake in. We see stabs of the narrative consistently, in keeping with our chosen style, whilst still sporting a vintage flare.
Upon the climax of the song, the girl in red (who is blatantly being taken for a fool by the boy at the beginning) is central to the shot, allowing viewers to see her disappointed/hurt reaction to her partner 'playing away from home' -Then the girls sport their feminine attitudes, integrating with The Marvellettes glamorous style and desire to be respected, showing the boy with the 'black heart' that nobody takes them for a fool.
To conclude, we have chosen to take this video as inspiration for our piece and use conventions vis-à-vis Andrew Goodwin, lyrics fitting visuals/ narrative to create our interpretation of a vintage song, and promote it to a contemporary audience. We hope by doing this, we'll be successful in constructing a 'retro' style piece and make our target audience (16-20) aware of the different phases/ representations of women, in a vintage setting, but with females they're familiar with and of similar age.
A pertinent debate that must be addressed in our research would be how the representation of womendiffers throughout the decades, seeing the 1960s as a 'watershed' for the music industry.
Black people had only lived in Britain in large amounts since the 50s, and before Tamla Motown it was forbidden for Black artists to be distributed in such a frontally way the music industry provided. Women were often seen in 'girl groups' -namely one lead singer with 2-3 backing singers. In comparison to how women are represented in controversial, contemporary videos such as Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' with the models scantily dressed, provocatively dancing; the 60s and eras before represented women as glamorous, with floor length dresses, showing significantly decreased décolletage. Women in the 60s enabled their selves to be attractive, without the debate of having to take their attire off in order to do so.
Taking The Marvellettes or The Supremes as examples, the women were seen dress-clad from generations before theirs, to show their traditionalist views and desire to be respected instead of sheer lust.
In keeping with this style of video, our piece will include elements of 'class' in which we can see in Please Mr. Postman. Our actors will be dressed in knee-floor length attire, with modest choreography to suggest through our research, we admire the 60s female style and drive to be respected as opposed to a contemporary scenario, in which women are often forced to be scantily dressed to provoke sales.
We finally finished our storyboard for our chosen video, 'The Marvellettes Please Mr. Postman'. We carefully planned the shots, camera angles and Mise-en-scene desired in order to capture the era of the song. We have integrated performance shots along with stabs of narrative which will enable the audience to follow the plot we're depicting- this will bring a more modern twist on an older song.
To prepare for construction of our Promotion DigiPak for Please Mr Postman, we researched retro DigiPaks from an earlier period of 1930-40, before The Marvellettes were established.
Bobby Hackett
Adele: 21
We looked at Bobby Hackett firstly, noticing that his album cover was incredibly minimalist, with dull, unattractive colours to show the period Bobby was produced was an un-established time for the music industry, a sort of 'make do' period. However, this is influential on todays music as artists crave the 'vintage', 'retro' look: with contemporary artists such as Duffy and Adele making minimalist appearances on their album covers.
In keeping with our sixties' style, we began to look at DigiPaks from the same period as The Marvellettes. The Beatles were our main choice, as their influences is still a pertinent force on todays music industry: The Beatles have defied 'Star Theory', breaking the boundaries of conformity. Comparing The Beatles to Bobby Hackett's album, they both have the minimalist approach, yet The Beatles defy this by adding slight comedy of a different cover as they appear on it, sparking the album covers we recognise today, in which promote the artist.
Vintage 'Parlophone'
Finally, comparing The Beatles to a more contemporary 'Boyband', One Direction, we see that these influences from The Beatles are still prevalent in their cover for their recent album 'Midnight Memories', which displays brighter colours in order to attract the younger audiences targeted at. The cover also establishes the band so the cover is easily identifiable, with the same fonts being used throughout the covers as a motif, and also for identity purposes.
We carefully seleceted the actors for our music video, from pervious experience we required someone reliable, willing, confident and accustomed to acting.
Zaylie
Sophie
Daniella
Isobel
We selected these girls to in keep with our contemporary audiences, but all four have been previously trained in acting, theatre and music so they were fitting to what we required.
We decided to analyse the music video for The Marvellettes 'Please Mr Postman' as this is the song that we have chosen to do our music video on. When analyzing the video, I found that all the shots are performance based and there is no narrative included. This is relevant to the genre of music which is Motown and also the time period the video was shot in. The video was shot in the early 60's which is the reason why it is performance based. Technology at the time would of been basic, therefore special effects etc. wouldn't of been used. The video is also shot in black and white, again showing the era and how basic the technology would of been. In the video we get close ups of the lead singer 'Gladys Horton'. It was typical of that time period to have a band with one main singer and a few backing singers.The lyrics are suggesting that a woman is awaiting to here from her partner who is away at war. She is begging the postman to give her a letter from her boyfriend/husband which is again relevant to the time period as letters would of been the only means of communication. The music and the visuals match as it is a performance based video however in order to modernize the video/song, we have decided to include narrative as well as performance in our story-boarding. There is a strong focus on the artist 'The Marvellettes' and the song as that would of been what sold the record. This contrasts to artists today who are mostly created by management teams to sell records and appeal to their target audience.
"Motown is an American record company founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959, the United States. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music by achieving a crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its soul-based subsidiaries were the most successful proponents of what came to be known as "The Motown Sound", a style of soul music with a distinct pop influence. Gordy originally set up two nominally-separate labels (Tamla Records and Motown Records) in 1959. The two labels featured the same writers, producers and artists, and they were both formally incorporated together as Motown Record Corporation (commonly referred to simply as "Motown") on April 14, 1960. " -Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown
Berry Gordy, Jr.
Motown still has large influences contemporarily, with signed artists such as The Marvellettes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, both still invading the charts to this day. However, 'Motown' may stereotypically be viewed as a 'Black label', which is proven wrong through singers Dusty Springfield and Amy Winehouse; White artists taking influence from the Motown genre, singing songs seemingly written for Black artists and through their costume choices, integrate fully with the Motown conventions. 'Vintage' style is often adopted by younger generations, through sixties 'swing' dresses, prominent collars and furious back-combed hair, appearance is still as overtly important to today's generation as it was during the times of 'The Marvellettes'.
The target audience of a media product need to quickly understand what is happening. This can be achieved by having a clear narrative. These are a few ways in which narratives can function:
OPEN- This is where questions remain unanswered and the audience are left wondering what will happen next.
CLOSED- This is where all questions are answered and the audience fully knows what is happening/happened.
LINEAR- The narrative is in order.
NON-LINEAR/FRACTURED- This is where the narrative in out of order e.g. a trailer for a film or use of flashbacks.
SINGLE STRANDED- Only one storyline in the media text/product
MULTI-STRANDED- This is where there are several storylines in an overall narrative for example soap operas.
ROLAND BARTHES Barthes came up with the theory that we use 5 different narrative codes when analysing media products.
1) Action code 2) Mystery code/Enigma Code 3) The Semic Code 4) The Cultural Code5) Code of Oppositions
In our music video, we plan to use 'The cultural code' in order to make the audience aware of the time period of the artist/single. We are going to make this obvious to the audience by the characters in our video being dressed in typical 60's fashion and also by using props which would of featured in that era.
We began looking at the distribution/ promotion of up-and-coming artists, how they and their management promote them and enable them to become established artists.
"Beginning in the mid to late 1960s, Motown Records artists and many other soul artists began to write about not only the growing civil rights movement but poverty, war, and numerous issues affecting the black community. In 1964, one of Sam Cooke's last songs was released, the civil rights anthem "A Change Is Gonna Come". " -Wikipedia.
As we're focusing on the Motown 'soul' period, this information was crucial as The Marvelettes were a fully Black-American girl group. This was contextual goldust, as during the sixties, there were many discriminations against black artists being televised and they were often disregarded; we've decided to contrast this entirely using four White-British girls singing soul music which traditionally is just unheard of. By doing this, we've put a modernistic twist on an older song, using our own theories integrating the video with war and poverty in the narrative. Researching the sixties is a huge contributing factor to the success and verisimilitude of our music video, without the extensive research the videos would not incorporate with the deeper meanings the song upholds, and audiences would not be able to see the subtle links between Motown style and our modern ideas.
