Audience Feedback on Digital Package and Album Poster

For my Audience feedback on my digital package and album poster we 

Album Promotional magazine advert First Draft

This is our inital first draft of our magazine advert for the album. "The Resistance".

Album Promotional Poster Analysis - Katy Perry

This is the album promotional poster for the artist, ‘Katy Perry’s’ new album, “One of the Boys”. The layout of this promotional poster is particularly interesting as it follows a semi circular motion. This is more commonly know as the golden ratio theory whereby the layout of the advert is integral. The audience especially if the audience member is a male, will follow this motion of looking at the advert. As theorised by Laura Mulvey and her work on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, she stated that the media is produced with the intention of being looked at through the eyes of a male. This advert is no exception to Laura’s theory. The male starts off by gazing at the main image framed to the left of Katy Perry, and then looks at the artists name which is colourful and eye-catching bubble writing, then the next biggest text is “I Kissed A Girl”. This semi circular structure of the promotional poster creates the sexualisation and appeal to a male audience. However on the flipside the poster can have a completely different audience of young girls. This can be linked with the uses and gratification theory, an audience theory which states that the audience is not passive to the media, and depending on their background, culture and ethnicity use the media text which is presented to them in different ways. It suggests that audiences proactively search for media which will be relevant and useful for themselves on a personal level. The media which they choose to absorb will fulfil their specific and personal gratifications. For example if we use the theory to analyse this particular advert it suggests that different audiences will use the advertising promotion in different ways and have different uses to fulfil their different gratifications. For example a teenage male which typically use this media text purely for his sexual pleasure, whereas a 12 year old girl may see this advert typically for the references to childhood for example the paddling pool or the lollypop.

The background of an idealistic garden scene with a paddling pool is representative of childhood and innocence. This can be linked with the theorist, Stuart Hall, with his theory on media texts, encoding and decoding. He states that an institution encodes texts which certain meanings and ‘codes’ which are embedded into the media text are then decoded by an audience. However depending on their background and other factors this decoding may be different the individual. A young girl may see the female image of Katy Perry as someone to aspire to be and to be a role model in their lives whereas a teenage boy may see the image of Katy Perry as a passive sexual desire.

The advert also has an underlying theme of a fairy tale to link in with its audience with a younger audience. For example in the advert the picture of Katy Perry is similar to a 1950’s housewife stereotypical image for example in the “Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer” advert is a recent advert which incorporates a stereotypical housewife. This is similar to the image of Katy Perry which uses an intertexual reference which has a similar demeanour, stance and posture all-encompassing the idea of bringing back the old to advertise the new. 

First Idea for Album Poster

Today I designed the first idea for the Album Poster. For this I used the fireworks software and incorporated a number of different images to compose a album poster. 

Muse Reseach

Muse are an English alternative rock band from Devon, formed in 1994. The four piece rock band consists of school friends Matthew Bellamy (lead vocals, guitars, piano, keyboards, keytar), Christopher Wolstenholme (bass, backing vocals, keyboards, guitars, harmonica) and Domonic Howard (drums, percussion, synthesizers, sampling, harmtar). After the release of their 2006 album Black Holes and Revelations, keyboardist and percussionist Morgan Nicholls has performed live with the band. Muse are known for their energetic and extravagant live performances and their fusion of many music genres, including space rock,progressive rock,alternative rock,heavy metal, classical music and electronica.

Muse have released five studio albums:

Showbiz (1999)

Origin of Commentary (2001)

Absolution (2003)

Black Holes and Revelations (2006)

The Resistance (2009)

The band's fifth studio album The Resistance was released in September 2009. It is the first Muse album to have been produced by the band itself. The album was engineered by Adrian Bushby and mixed by Mark Stent. On its release, it topped the album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number 3 on the Billboard 200.  Muse's fifth album, The Resistance is centered on the symphonic rock genres. Although it is sonically softer than its predecessors, it still contains the heavy compositions for which Muse has become known. The album is heavily influenced by classical music as well as rock acts such as Queen and U2. Queen's guitarist Brain May has praised Muse's work, calling the band "extraordinary musicians" who "let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist.

Analysis of Other Muse Music Videos

In our analysis into the Muse's other music video we found that a common theme within most of the music video's is the recurrence of multiple shots of the band playing their musical instruments. In the official music video for their song, 'Uprising' the band is featured on the back of a truck playing . Also in the music video for another of their songs, 'Starlight', there are multiple shots of the band playing onto of a large ship. Finally in another music video for the song, 'Time is Running Out', similar to the Starlight, features the band playing in a conference room, on top of a table. This a theme which runs through most of Muse's music video's and which in our music video, we have incorporated some shots of a band. Below are some screen shots of Muse's music video's demonstrating the repetition of the shots of the band playing their musical instruments. This is to make our music video more realistic for the Muse's band and to make it authentic. Finally the shots which are used of the band are varied and show a variety of different angles and shots which vary every time the band appear in the music video's. In our own music video for the song, 'Uprising' when we feature shots of the band, we have kept with the same idea of Muse's music video by using a variety of different shots and angles of the band. Also in many music video's including the official 'Uprising' music video they feature moments of lip synchronisation with the lead singer. In our own music video we have incorporated lip synchronisation with the lead singer to create links with Muse's own styles and theme's. The analysis of Muse's official music video's has helped us to create our own as we able to keep with the same principles and theme's which make Muse unique but we were able to incorporate our own idea's and blend them both together.

 

This is a screen from Muse's 'Uprising' music video

demonstrating a shot of the band.

This is another screen from Muse's 'Time is Running

Out' music video demonstrating again, a shot of the

band.

Theory research

Antonio Gramsci theorised hegemony, which shows the media encouraging people to consent status through powerful structures. Antonio was a Marxist social philosopher who lived in Italy. Because he was a Marxist he also theorised that societies must transform over time from economic systems to more liberating ones until society reaches state of communism.

The Marxist also believed that capitalism was an oppositional economic system due to the unequal distribution of wealth among few powerful people and he believed that eventually the masses would overthrow capitalism and move to less oppressive system. The system would overthrow economic systems.

According to his theory the public can’t maintain power from these systems alone. People would have to take control in order to keep the powerful people on top. Everyday behaviours keep society powerful such as being patriotic and celebrating the country’s pride and dedication. Gramsci also believed that the media had a key role in teaching people to do things in their everyday lives that support power towards society. People in the present would consider the media support through power structures such as society, capitalism and patriarchy.

Gramsci also created a counter hegemonic theory that it questioned traditional roles of characters and themes. His theories have become an important role of discipline and distribution around the world. This concept had contributed a valuable vocabulary for discussing the relationship between media and societal power.

Overall our group believes that the theory will work well with our music video because our ideas linked to contrast of power and dominance allowing a stronger and disciplined structure. This will also provide political views over the arguments of the lower and higher classes towards society and government.

Costumes

For our music video we chose the costumes for the different characters in order to highlight major stereotypes in our society so that the audience would be able to easily identify the characters. These stereotypes play a significant role in our storyline in our music video. It was vital that the audience would be able to identify these characters and what they stood for quickly. For our upper class character we chose stereotypical, upper class clothing in order to symbolise wealth and prosperity. The costume for the upper class character is as follows; shirt, black trousers and black shoes. This is stereotypical attire for a upper class person to wear and which in our music video highlighted that the character was upper class. The costume shows and demonstrates the characters sophistication and honour.

For the Lower class two characters, similar to the previous character, we chose stereotypical clothes which an audience could easily associate with the lower class culture. The lower class characters wore; A hooded sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. These are stereotypical clothes wore by the lower class. It highlights qualities of the lower class such as the hooded sweatshirt is know to be associated with thieves and anti social behavior as their identity is hidden. Finally the uniformity of having similar costumes for both lover class characters will create a connected identity for the lower class, like a collective consciousness to up rise and rebel against the upper classes. The stereotypical costumes of the characters also make it easier to make the link between our music video and the sociology theory, Marxism, created and founded by Karl Marx. This will have our music video solidly grounded in sociological links to create a larger meta narrative and deeper meaning.