Studying Pop Stars

In the 100 greatest singers of all time most of the artists on there you will never see again because they are dead and buried, but because they were such good artists their music carried on living and may have even become more successful. Unfortunately this is not the same for everyone and some artists die and their music dies with them. 
A good example of people dying but their music still living would be the ’27 Club’  who ‘lived fast and died young’. Their music has been adapted and continues to be bought by generations of fans. 

It is said that pop music is ‘of its time’ and it looses all meaning and value after a certain period has passed. While music remains rooted in the era of its creation it seems that some pop stars transform their context. 

While pop music constantly changes and is evolving into a variety of hybrid forms, pop stars keep common characteristics. Their songs may change but the singer/artist themselves stay the same.

They embody the same set of values:

• Youthfulness
• Rebellion
• Sexual Magnetism
• An anti-authoritarian attitude
• Originality
• Creativity/talent
• Aggression/anger
• A disregard for social values relation to drugs, sex and polite behaviour
• Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods
• Success against the odds 

“However the longer a star remains successful on the world stage, the more difficult it is  to continue to embody these values. Originality and creativity burn out.”

I think that this is going to be something very important to take away from the article when creating my own ideas while constructing my products this year. It is so important to be original and creative because at some point you wont be able to create the same stuff because it would have already ‘burnt out.’

“If you don’t quit, eventually popular culture moves on, and quits you.”

So I have learnt that no matter how famous you are or how good your music is, at some point the candle will have burnt at both ends and nothing will be left and the music industry will eventually quit you. I think that this also suggests that it is a very tough industry and business area to be in.

The Top 10 Of Dead Pop Heros 

(in rough order of demise)

1. Billie Holliday
2. Jimi Hendrix
3. Jim Morrison
4. Elvis Presley
5. Sid Vicious
6. Karen Carpenter
7. Kurt Cobain
8. TupacShakur
9. Michael Jackson
10. Amy Winehouse

These people all relate to James Deans “Live fast, die young, have a beautiful corpse” 

Dyers theory applied to pop stars

We read and understand song differently depending on who is singing the song. A song forms part of a pop stars ongoing narrative, eg with a break up album like 21 by Adele. When a pop star dies we start organising their life in to a three act narrative. Postmortem sales meann big business. A celebrity death creates headlines and often rekindles a fan interest. For example, Michael Jackson sold more songs in the week after his death then he had for years.





From reading this article I think that the best way for me to get a good reaction out of my own products is to focus on a song or an artist who may have died. I may get more interest because people may be sympathising with my ideas because of the death involved in it. 

‘Why Piracy is Perpetuating Plastic Pop’ By Helienne Lindvall

Artist have been weary about speaking out against piracy since the band Metallica experienced a 'massive public backlash’ for suing Napster. 

One of the few artists who dared to speak out and ‘voice their opinions’ was Lily Allen. She lashed out to a couple of older and successful artists after they declared their opposition to online copyright enforcement. She argued that it was easy for them to get on the freebie bandwagon as they’d already made money from the music industry, but most younger artists would never get the chance to even make a living from music. She then got targeted by thousands of people and she received abusive messages and even death threats which eventually caused her to shut down her website. 

Many artists who became famous before the ‘digital age’ have said that they find it frightening to see the amount of unlicensed downloading sites there are on the internet. 

“This is how I make my living. It can be 25,000 (per site). Multiply that by all the (unlicensed) sites in the world and that can be my whole profit gone.” 

This scared me when I read it. The internet is such a powerful thing that it has the ability to shut down companies and peoples careers with people input with just the click of a button ‘download’. 

Noel Gallagher spoke about the situation as well as Lily Allen although Noel was a lot more blunt about it. 

“The consumer says ‘Wheres my free music on the internet? Is this a free download?’ F**k Off! It cost me a quarter of a million pounds to make it, you’re not getting it for nothing. I want my quarter of a million back, thank you very much. Thats why we’re rock stars.” 

He also added that the reason why tours have become so long is because people need to have more shows to make up for the money they are loosing on the illegal downloading sites.

“Records dont get any cheaper to make, they get more expensive to make. I say this as an independent artist. I’m on my own record label. It isn’t backed by anybody else. I pay for it all. Everything.”

After reading Lilly Allen and Noel Gallagher’s side of the story i do think that it is really important that we do not illegal download anything of the internet. This is their job and how they make a living and people should not take that for granted just because they might have a lot of money. 

I think that when producing my own product I will think about the time and the effort that I have put into making it look good and sound good and then imagine people taking the Micky out of the work i have done and almost stealing it like they do when they download their music, then I will times this feeling by 10 and think about how the artists must feel. 

I chose a synthetic and an organic artist and took one of their album covers. I then annotated the images to explain what they may be suggesting in the picture and their album.
RIHANNA IS THE SYNTHETIC ARTIST AND BIRDIE IS THE ORGANIC ARTIST

Lip Syncing Video

Lip Synching exercise

On Thursday 20th June we had a block session in the morning of a lip synching course where we got into groups of 6 and we filmed part of a music video to the song 'GET LUCKY' by Daft Punk. There were different backgrounds for us to film in front of and it was an action packed activity where I learnt lots about the rolls that people need to play during a filming session.

The different backgrounds were

-a green screen, where we can place an image ( but you need to stand at least a metre away from the green screen to illuminate the shadows.)

-a paper Mache wall that looked like a cave setting, where we filmed using a dolly and a camera

-a bed sit (a set of a room with a sofa,walls and windows)

 
On the floor there were different rolls for people to play, there was
-the floor manager who made sure everything was in order and everyone was ready to film when the music started,
-there was the playback person who played and paused the music, -the camera man who kept zooming in, sharpening and focusing on image
-the people in the video acting and singing and
-the director of the music video who told people what to do in their group.
My group started on the green screen. Xenia and Alicia were on set doing the singing and dancing infront of the camera, Ivo was camera man, Liv Ellie and I were directing the video telling the girls what to do. This is where we learnt that you have to stand at least a metre infront of the screen.

We then moved onto the paper mache set up, we did tracking shots on a dolly. Whoever the camera man was on this set had to sit on the dolly, with the camera. When putting the tracks down you have to make sure the lines are straight on the floor otherwise the camera will go wiggly which could make the shot shake and out of focus.the Bed Sit was a very different set up. We had three people singing infront of the camera, two on the sofa and one standing behind the sofa. This gave us a variety of shots and things to cut to and from and we just filmed this with a tripod (the same as the green screen) we didnt use a dolly

Once we had filmed all the footage we took it upstairs to the editing sweet and sorted it all out. We edited using the software 'Final Cut Pro.'

1. We had to seperate the clips into folders with the different sets
2. Then we selected a clip and dragged it down to the time line
3. At the same time you drag the song down to the time line, and lock it so you cant accidently delete it
4. Then we deleted the clip and its backing noise from the shoot
5. Found the clip we wanted to start with and we lip synced it by the beginning 3 beats of the song. On the clip we liked we would mark it on exactly the 3rd beat on the sound track, then when we found the 3rd beat on the clip and clicked 'I' for In and dragged the clip down to the time line, then you check if they are on time. Once they are and you are happy with it,you delete the audio track from the clip.
6. Once we had done this with about 4 clips, we then started to edit it all together by clicking 'B' for blade to cut up the clip when we wanted to cut to a different clips and 'A' when we wanted the Arrows back to move the clips. With this you can move the clip back with the clip still being in sync with the music so it didn't too complicated!

The reason we did this activity was because we are making music videos soon, so we need to learn how to edit the footage with the music and the lips in synch-which by the way, is quite difficult!!

 

The Bearing poster

This is my poster that I have made for my opening title sequence 'The Bearing.'
It is eye catching and tells you a little bit about what the film could possibly be about and the mood of the film.

Timeline of a career artist- BEYONCE

Beyonce singing at the age of 8 where she began singing properly and professionally.
A picture of Beyonce and her dad who helped her career from an early age


Beyonce's first recorded song at age 10.




Beyonce was 15 years old when she was first put into Destinys child. They waited to have an album to realeased and so in the in the videos they looked older and more marketable.

Destiny's child grew bigger, sexier, and better. They realeased lots of albums and tracks one of their most successful tracks being 'Say My Name' which was one of my favourite songs when I was younger.



By the time Destinys child decided to split there were only three left in the group. They split up because all 3 of them wanted to pursue a solo career. 
Beyonce was in a relationship with Jay- (another artist) and when she split with the group one of her first solo songs kicked of with a duet with her boyfriend


Her first solo album was called 'Dangerously In Love.' One of her songs was called 'Baby Boy' and was a massive hit to hit of her solo career. Everything suddenly became very personal and sexy when she was ina relatinship with Jay - Z in her solo career. Her target audience was late teens and early 20's.



Beyonce's albums


Beyonce starred in a film called ‘Dream Girls’ with another singer Jennifer Hudson

Beyonce films video for her song ‘Countdown’ and they try and hide her rumoured baby bump by making her wear loose clothing

She then announces her pregnancy with husband Jay-Z and they have a baby girl called Blue Ivy

Beyonce releases a documentary about her pregnancy and the life style she led when she was pregnant

Beyonce puts career on hold for a while to spend time with her family and do what shes always wanted to do....be a mummy.