Artist Profile

Name: Baylor Wilson

Age: 20

Hometown: Nashville, TN

''She’s fun, she’s friendly, and she means business. At only 20-years old, Baylor Wilson has spent the last two years working on music and honing in on her songwriting and guitar playing. She has written many new songs and is continuing to capture the “Baylor” sound that people will eventually begin to recognize. Her natural rasp and warmer tone sets her voice apart while her mature and catchy lyrics bring something different and unique to the table. The passion instilled in her is driving her to work with successful individuals in the industry that others may not get the opportunity to work with. Right now, she is continuing to write and play shows every chance she gets. “I understand that when one door closes, another one opens… All I have do is find the next door that’s waiting to be opened." '' - taken from our artists website, this is a brief description of her. (baylorwilson.com)

The genre of music covered by this artist country pop.

Rihanna - Shut Up and Drive (Laura Mulvey)

In the music video for ''shut up and drive''  Rihanna presents herself as purely an object of erotic desire. This may have a negative impact on the view of women in the music video industry, as people may presume this to be the standard, which does not help achieve equality in the industry. Despite being the focus of the video, Rihanna is unable to advance the plot, mainly because there isn't one, and the parts of her that men would find appealing are emphasized a lot in order to attract the male gaze. The video is choreographed in such a way that forces Rihanna to show herself off in a sexual way.

This video supports Laura Mulvey's ideas of female inferiority and objectifications within music videos.

Laura Mulvey is a feminist who wrote an essay expressing her concerns on how the media industry shapes societies views on women, more specifically, she expressed that part of the reason why todays society is patriarchal is because of the media industry.

Some of Laura Mulvey's key points, evidenced in Rihanna's video, are the following;

- Erotic desire

Laura Mulvey states that often there are characters in films and music videos that are present only as an object of erotic desire, these characters are almost always female, with very rare examples of them being male. An object of erotic desire can be identified through the use of specific and deliberate camera angles focusing on body parts males are expected to be attracted to, or even just generally very revealing clothing.

- Agency

Agency refers to freedom and acting in the way one desires to, as opposed to following a certain set of rules, being objectified. Laura Mulvey believes that in the typical Hollywood film, the main protagonist who is typically male always has agency, fulfilling an active role and advancing the plot forward, whereas the female characters typically take a more passive role, only having the power to observe and react to the plot advancements made by the other characters, thus meaning they do not have agency. There are very few famous examples of where female characters are given agency, these include The Hunger Games and the Alien series.

- The Male Gaze

Mulvey believed that the camera was the gaze of the male eye. This means that the events of the text are seen through the eyes of a male. This makes the male gaze active and explains why there is sometimes so much screen time focused on things that attract men. This includes women dressed and filmed in a way that objectifies them. This also means that the female gaze is passive, as they have no control but to view films and videos through the eyes of a male. The triple gaze theory suggests that there is a chain of three things when viewing any film, there's the audience, the camera and the spectator, together, they often objectify females, as argued by Mulvey.

Case study of Jamie Thraves

Jamie Thraves was a director that made short films at university. He used a short film called ''Calling Card'' to get himself into the game, it was nominated for awards and got attention from bigger companies. This got him attention from a bigger company that went by the name of Factory Films.

He began his career by shooting three low budget videos, each costing around five thousand pounds to film. 

The environment under which music video directors work is very cutthroat, typically record labels will look at two or three different video variants and the ones that are not selected do not get paid for their work. 

Thraves submitted variants for two music videos and both of his works were accepted 

the first video was for Radiohead's ''Just.''

They had a £100,000 budget

The video was filmed in three days 

This video is like a miniature film, showcasing Radiohead performing in a flat and a man laying on the pavement for no explicable reason. The story begins with a different man minding his own business eventually noticing the man laying on the floor, upon reaching him he tries to figure out why the man is there, but he does not get any answers. The only answer provided by the man laying on the floor to the first man and all the ones that approach him thereafter are that he wishes to be alone and that he cannot give any answers as this would have some kind of bigger impact than the characters initially realize. This keeps not only the characters within the world of the text interested, but the audience as well. This music video and story are very open ended which means that they can be interpreted in a number of ways based on who is watching. Additionally, it is worth noting that the music and the video are not related in any way which may confuse some audiences and distract them from trying to infer some kind of meaning from this unique music video.

The second video was Coldplay's ''The Scientist''

They had a £200,000

This video was also filmed in three days 

This video is also like a mini film, strongly emphasizing the fact that Jamie had or has dreams of eventually becoming a film director. The music video shows events in a reverse chronological order. This may be hard to follow for the audience at first, but eventually we learn of the tragic event that the character within the video had gone through. The car accident resulted in the death of the woman he was currently with and he was supposedly hospitalized or at least experiencing heavy personal emotional problems. In a way, the video shows the characters desire to be alone now that he has lost the one he was with. In a way, the lyrics agree with the video in certain cases though maybe not thoroughly, as the say ''lets go back to the start'' whilst the video is rewinding and going back to a time before the tragic event.

The most recent music video produced by Jamie Thraves was Japanese Popstars - Song for Lisa, it can be seen below.

The fourth and final example of a music video directed by Thraves is ''Death Cab For a Cutie -  I Will Follow You Into The Dark''

Just as with other works from Jamie Thraves, this video tells a story. This one focuses on religious symbolism, a strictly catholic lad notices a hole in the middle of his room after waking up, and eventually symbolism between heaven and hell is heavily implied. The size of the hole in the floor expands and the man falls in, he tries to climb back out but eventually finds himself in the hole anyway which means that he has accepted his fate. This video tries to explain the consequences of sinning as a catholic.

Currently the budget Jamie Thraves uses a budget of around £20,000 for each music video and takes a shooting time of around two days.

Thraves used music videos as a way to enter the film business, his work shows that he wants to be a film director, instead of a music video director, this is because each one of his music videos tells a story.

He has so far shot three features

1. The Low Down
2. The Cry of the Owl
3. Treacle Jr

Jamie Thraves' tip for interpreting his music videos is to use the lyrics, but not be too literal, attempt to interpret the emotional flow of the lyrics.

Planning Documents - Treatment

Treatment

Group Roles Cinematography: Danny Mise-en-scene: Matas Sound: Matas Editing: Danny

Title: Sticky Situation

Synopsis: - The video may begin without music, giving it a Jamie Thraves style movie feel as it gets established for the first few seconds, then we begin the singing and dancing preferably in a field or park, which is a typical location you would expect to find a girl singing a country song. It may turn into a solo performance, perhaps with a few friends as background people, we will adapt based on what is available. Given the time of year, it may start snowing or just generally being really cold, for which we will dress appropriately, which will make for a suitable video. If we find that conditions are too poor to film outside we may have shots in a studio or band room, with short cuts to the outside where required.

Key Genre Conventions: Lip synching, bright colours, lights, generally positive theme.

Chosen Track + Potential Tracks and Selection Process

Before arriving at our chosen track we went through some others but ran into problems. The first track we ever looked at was called Fences by the band SCAR. The trouble with this song was that it was difficult to distinguish the lyrics on certain verses and we would not want to misrepresent the band by lip syncing incorrectly, it would also reduce the quality of the video overall. We were even willing to work past these hurdles, but it also proved to be quite difficult to acquire the MP3 as a file for editing and lip syncing purposes so we had to look for another song.

We looked at another track by an unsigned band called The Colours. We were advised not to use this track because according to our teacher a lot of people have tried to use it already, so it would not be original or unique. Not only that, despite the fact that a lot of people have attempted to use this track, very few actually produce a successful music video.

Finally we arrived at the track Sticky Situation by Baylor Wilson and despite the fact that we do not have a girl in our class who can be the main singer, we will bring a friend in to help us. The track is suitable and it should be relatively easy to figure out what the lyrics are. We will try to find the highest quality MP3 file possible, but if worst comes to worst we can still rip the song from youtube, which will result in a slightly lower quality MP3 but shouldn't have an overly negative result on the video at the end. 

A music video for our chosen track already exists, we may use this video as a reference but we will not directly copy it.

Chosen Track - Baylor Wilson - Sticky Situation

Here is the original music video for ''Sticky Situation.'' We will use this track and make an original video.

Spice Girls - Creating a Brand

The following post will analyse how pop groups can be used to create brands. Examples of where this has been done before are Adele, Lady Gaga and The Spice Girls.

Pop videos help to:

Advertise
Illustrate the song
Appeal to a visual audience
Express an individuals emotions
Markets an image
Create a brand 


In the mid 1990's, a family management team set out to forge a girl group to compete with all the popular boy bands that dominated the pop music scene.

In February 1994 a magazine ad, by heart management was placed in ''the stage'' trade magazine.  The ad read ''R.U 18-23 with the ability to sing/dance, R.U streetwise, outgoing, ambitious and dedicated?'' this was the beginning of the creation of this new star girl group.

The clothes of the spice girls were all very carefully chosen. To the audience though it may look like they're just wearing whatever they wanted to wear and that very little thought went into it at all. 

Despite the fact that the spice girls were sold as just a group of friends messing around without any formal structure, creating music, they were actually a carefully chosen group of individuals, selected after hundreds of auditions. 

Once the Spice Girls brand had began gaining popularity, they had loads of sponsorship deals including Pepsi, Polaroid and even Spice Girl Barbie Dolls. 

It is important to note though that most of the things about the Spice Girls were controlled by their managers behind the scenes in corporations. 

One of the Spice Girls almost did not make it into the group because she looked a lot older than the others. When asked about her age she said ''I'm as old as you want me to be, ill be ten with big boobs if you want'' 

Artists and groups are often sold as a brand. Music and videos are presented as products of the brand and their main purpose is to encourage people to buy into the brand. Some artists tend to focus more on their image than the quality of the product that they produce. The Spice Girls are an example of this. At other times, the artists image has very little to do with the music they produce.