Music Videos: Music language: Prep

 PREP Explain how music videos use media language to promote their artists. Refer to the pair of music videos you have studied from the list below in your answer.

Our music videos are Wheatus Teenage Dirtbag Avril Lavigne Sk8ter Boi

HOW TO ANSWER: Media language points to consider:

the prioritising of the star / the group; the privileging of the star / the groups in the frame

authenticating the star's performance / the band's performance to show their skills

the use of close ups; lip syncing to camera; eye contact with the audience

Music videos can use media language to promote their artists through many ways such as when they focus around one person for the video or a group of people who are all intertwined somehow such as in Wheatus's Teenage Dirtbag we mainly see the life of a boy who has been mistreated and bullied his entire life and we see the other main character, a popular cool girl who doesn't know he exists. Through out the video we see the roles change for the girl as she dumps the cool guy and she is now another teenage dirtbag with him. Everyone is then invited to a school dance or prom, he does not have anyone to go with so he ends up there alone on a table with some "nerdy" people who also could not find a date. As the night is continuing the band which has been practising throughout the video are playing up on stage and as they start to get onto the chorus "im just a teenage dirtbag baby..." she is shown in the shot walking up to him and she starts singing "and im just a teenage dirtbag baby, just like you". The two main characters then embrace as they are shown as now becoming a couple. Another example of a way that music videos can use media language to promote their artists is through the way that the main characters are always lip syncing everything that the person is singing about in the background. This is the case in Teenage dirtbag when the girl gets up for the first time and starts to sing. Finally, another way that music videos use media language to promote their artists is through eye contact with the audience, this can be shown in Sk8ter Girl by Avril Lavigne when she is always watching the camera as the she sings and it almost simulates being in an audience and having the singer stare at you while you are dancing. 

 

Music magazines: Media language

 QUESTION: How far do MOJO and RNR use different media language to create different connotations? (CONNOTATION meaning: an idea or quality that a word makes you think about in addition to its meaning.)

Answer on your blog. This is a high-value question and should take all lesson to answer. You can use the class blog search engine for more examples of how to analyse music magazines.

In your answer you should have 2 paragraphs:

• analyse the media language in MOJO and RNR magazine. 'Media language' includes the placement of the main image, the type of photography, lighting, colours, fonts, how busy or restrained the cover is, the layout (such as alignment to the margins), how serious or playful 
• make judgements and draw conclusions about how far the media language is used differently in both extracts to create different connotations. Are there similarities in both covers? What sorts of audiences are they targeting? You could think about MOJO's rock aesthetic of living loud and dangerously compared to RNR's folk, rock, blues vibe. 

The FOO Fighter is presented as a scary, angry person as he is reaching out grabbing the title with his fingers wrapped around it. He is also lit in a very complimentary way from above showing that he has no wrinkles or anything of the sort. The FOO FIGHTER is also shown as a bit crazy because of the font, this is a very out of the page font which almost leaps at you, it is also all in italics and capitals. His background is also more crazy than Christy Moore's, this is because his is showing him as the central point of focus and this is because of the explosion sort of thing behind him. On the other hand, Christy Moore is presented as a man who is calm and collected. He is also lit from the side which shows that he is embracing his old age and accepting the fact that he is getting older. Christy Moore's font is very calming and fits well with the rest of the calming, soothing background which is a nice whole colour. I believe that the red outline of the text shows that he is dangerous and crazy whereas the white of Christy Moore's shows that he is calm. For the covermount on Mojos magazine it is crazy and is a skeleton rocking out which shows how cool the magazine is and how crazy it is whereas on the other hand on the RnR magazine the covermount has a nice calm pun which will make the readers laugh when they buy the magazine. The pun is Un-Herd of which is a joke because there is a picture of a Zebra in the top right of the covermount which travel in herds. 

In conclusion, I believe that both extracts use a there space very similarly, this is shown by the fact that for both of them they have no space left on the covers and how they overlap everything with something more crammed into the cover. All of this but both also still have line which keeps it away from edge of the magazine. But on the other hand they I also conclude that they also do have a lot of opposites considering how one uses a colour scheme which is very dramatic and really screams "im dangerous" whereas on the other hand RnR uses a colour which is almost boring compared to MOJO. I conclude that in some aspects they use very similar techniques to captivate the reader most aspects of the magazines are very different and not at all similar.

• 

03/03/2022 notes

 Representation in music videos

Music video producers use representations to: convey the meaning of the song; promote the artist by representing the artist in a way that matches or changes their public image; and promote social messages that reflect well on the artist.

Representation in set videos

This includes:

• how the producers have chose to conduct a version of reality that represents events, social groups and ideas to fit their purposes
• how and why stereotypes have been used (e.g. to enable quick interpretation by audiences)
• which social groups are under-represented or misrepresented.
• the messages are values conveyed and issues addressed.