Textual Analysis of a CD cover - Christian Falk - People Say

Part of our task this year is to create a CD design for our chosen artist which relates to the genre that he is under. Due to Tei Daratsa being a Faulk/Rock sort of singer we will be creating a CD cover within this genre.

On the right, we have chosen an artist that is also under this genre, Christian Falk. After this I am going to be analysing it to try and get a grip of the conventions of this type of CD case.

On the CD to the right they have used a very messy font, this would be to agree with the conventions. One of the conventions of which we found with this genre was that they like to keep things different, but as the same time simple. I think that they have achieved this with the font and size of the text. By using large font size they have taken up a lot of space on the CD and given the artists name off well, they have also gone with the conventions of this genre by trying tp be different and having the artists name chopped up onto two different lines, this applies to the conventions as most other artists would not approve of there name being split up, they would like it all upon one line and have it standing out.

Another different part of the CD cover which applies to the conventions os the background colour. By having a simple, light colour they have straight away applied it to the conventions of there genre. In the conventions of this genre, we have stated that the artists are always based in green environemtns like the woods, tress, and grass in the background. By having a light green background colour they have been able to give off that they are straight away going to have these types of songs on there. They have also made this background colour look like it is very uneven, once again inconsistent, going with the genres conventions. Everything within this CD cover has its own way of relating to the song, this is what we are going to have to do when we create our own CD.

In the bottom right hand corner there is a very unusual design which doesnt seem to have any relation to the album, this is a very simple design. This would also link to the conventions of the genre, as a lot of different parts of this genre are to do with simplicity. Artists from this genre like the only attributes to be there voice and the guitar. Therefore having an album cover as simple as this relates to it aswell.

From doing this I have been able to get an idea of what our album could look like. Once I looked through all of the components of this CD I realised that a lot of it is just simple. This made me very intrigued as to what all of the other artists in this genre would have their CD's designed as, so once I started looking through there was a very long pattern, a lof of simple images with guitars.

Institutional research

Saddle Creek records is a record label that introduces a lot of 'indie' and folk/rock artists into popular parts of the country, they base themselves in the UK and help newer artists become more well known, because our artist Tei Daratsa is a very new artist at the young age of 14 we believe that he would suit this record label and they could introduce him into the more well-known scene. 


My text in the ‘real world’ wouldn't exist on music channels on TV. The channels that most well-known songs are shown on are VIVA, 4Music, T4, MTV, Freshly Squeezed and E4. I think that it will not be shown on these channels as it isn't a song or video that I think I would see in the charts so it wouldn't be shown on chart shows on these channels.


The song is not mainstream, it is a new song that could be re released with a new video. I think that the music video will benefited the music industry as it gives the audience a chance to see a brand new artist, this could become a hit with the types of audience that are into this music as younger artists are seen as potential. 


The opportunities to have my music video shown online and other places other than TV are greatly increases in the modern day with more and more technology. Being able to have music videos shown online means that it is passed around more easily and shown world wide not just in the UK. Due to the increasing rise in social media, once a video becomes virally popular they are seen on a much larger scale than they used to, this is great for a new artist like Tei as it can lead to a lot of success for artists as seen in cases for Justin Bieber, Conor Maynard and many other artists.

Textual Analysis - Dream Catch Me - Newton Faulkner

In the music video of Dream Catch Me by Newton Faulkner he sets the music video in a dark room. The first thing you see is a close up of his face, this allows us to see the artist and who he is. This doesn't really allow us to see what he looks like or how he is to be portrayed throughout the video but it does allow us to see his facial expression. He looks as if he is a bit upset or maybe angry. From the pace of the cutting it seems as if he is upset.

In the second screenshot of which I have taken you see a medium shot of the artist, this shot introduces you to the artist and the background so it sort of sets the scene and the mood. As you can see in the background there are lots of doors and windows, this could be to symbolise him being in a dream world, this would go with the song title. It could also represent him wanting to escape this place of which he is in, whether its a place or a mood. You can see that he is a folk/rock artist due to the way in which he dresses (Ruffle coat, baggy jeans) and through the style in which he likes to show through his haircut and the different type of guitar playing.

In this third shot the sort of 'Damsel in distress' is shown. The damsel in distress is the girl of whom the main charater is looking for or missing. She is portrayed in a picture frame, this gives us the feeling that the singer misses the girl in the picture, he is also in the background in the shot, this makes it look as if he is chasing the women and wants her back to him. It also links back to the entire dreamy setting with the photoframes floating throughot the room.

In the fourth shot it gives another look at the style of which the artist likes to portray, he is wearing a pair of worn out all-stars, with the laces being done with a baggy loop hanging down. This will give off the impression of that he is a sort of indie artist. You can also see on the floor more images of a girl that is of a younger age, this could represent his love for this girl that was gone when they met at a younger age. This could mean that she has either left him or maybe died. This would explain the images of the girl being at a younger age. The final thing of which i can talk about in this shot is the carpet, it looks like a worn out carpet. This could slook as if it was representing his mood, being  worn out or almost 'done'.

 

In this image it shows the women of which he seems to be looking for, she is put infront of lights in the background. This would be to show her importance to the artist. She is also put into very glamerous and sheek clothing, this would also make her seem like an important part of the music video. She is seen with her eyes closed aswell, this could be to add to the representation of her sleeping and being in the dream aswell.

This shot gives off the dreaming aspect even more and shows off the dream aspect. All of the picture frames that  are in the shot seem to be losing pictures of the girl. This could represent him losing her for good. He is sat directly in the centre of the shot as it is zooming out from him, this could be the women leaving him behind. In the background of the shot the dark clouds are embracing the artist as if his time is getting worse and worse.

In this final shot the women is at a long shot, looking over her shoulder back at the camera. Im guessing that the camera is to symbolise the artist and she is looking back at us. She is made look like an important part of the shot by being in the centre and have a long dress which makes her look important aswell. The frames are also following her away, this represents her taking all of her things away  and leaving him all alone.

From doing this I have learnt a lot about the structure of a music video, with the introduction of the artist being throughout the introduction. After this the background story starts to kick in. We believe that this music video is structured well and we would go with this sort of video aswell. We have a difference to this as we will be using a different actor in our film than our artist.

Tei Daratsa playing his songs

After we had decided to go with our local artist, Tei Daratsa we thought it would be a good idea to take a look at his work, this is why we have created a video of him singing his own song and another song which is a cover of Ed Sheerans 'Give Me Love' song. We thought this would be a good idea as it would give us an idea of what the song goes like and how we could start planning the music video to the song.

From this piece of work I have learnt that he is a very confident performer. It also gave us a bold idea of what the videos going to look like. Now we have found out a few of the lyrics we can start planning props to use and think of clips which we can create when in the making of the music video. 

History and Development

In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and others to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child" Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illistrated song, the first step toward music video. This was the beginning of the musi video history.

In 1902 the phonoscene era began- The phonoscene was a forerunner of sound film. It combined a chronophone sound recording with a chronograph film shot with actors lip-synching to the sound recording. The recording and film were synchronized by a mechanism patented by Leon Gaumont in 1902. The first phonoscènes were presented by Gaumont in 1902 in France. This allowed artists to now lipsink to a song and then show there songs.

In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. A talkie was a short film which had music over the top, this is where the start of Music videos began. It meant that people could start to make things that relate to the song and play them at the same time.

One of the first people who created a music video was Bessie Smith, she was a very soulful  singer. This was created in 1929 so the lipsinking had not come into this section of the music video yet. In the video it contains the singer herself, this is also because the use of actors and actresses in music videos had not been thought of yet. Simply because it was new to the face of the planet.

Another form of early music video is called a promotional video, this was created in the early 1940's it was called a visual jukebox. This would usually be a band on stage, many of these were made and usually for jazz music. Once these were up and going many different sections of film wanted to do it, such as comedians, torch singers and dancers.

In 1981, MTV went on air, this was the first ever channel which was based solely on music, hence the name Music Television.

This channel went on to revolutionize the music industry and became an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels. They all have there own different channels on which relate to the culture of the country.

In the early days of MTV it was used for basic videos of short music with background images. As people could see this had potential people started to invest money into it and then people started to make cutting-edge videos. In the 1980s, MTV was instrumental in promoting the careers of performers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and Duran Duran, whose videos played in heavy rotation.

For the last two decades of the 20th century, the music industry rotated along the axis of MTV. The company represented a direct line into the hearts and minds of music consumers around the world, and their main form of expression was music video. This was when the music videos really became popular, and have ever since.

When MTV launched in August 1981 and blasted “Video Killed the Radio Star” through American households, it represented the ambitions of a company who wanted to significantly influence popular culture. It succeeded in a big way, earning millions of pounds. It remains a critical part of the music industry by leveraging music videos to help flesh out the image of acts as diverse as Michael Jackson and Green Day, Guns n’ Roses and 2Pac.

It was the digital revolution in the late 90s that really put the pressure on the entire music industry as it was. Music videos, which primarily served as an advertisement for record sales, feared losing their pillars of support as the big labels worried about declining CD sales as a result of availability of music online, for free.


Technological developmentsOver the past 5 or 6 years, it is fair to say that technology has increased greatly, this has had a massive effect on the music industry. I believe that the advance in technology has effected the music industry in a very positive way. It has allowed artist to increase the standard of not only the music itself but also the music video.

Not only has it allowed the standard to increase it also has made new places for artist to publish their music. For example, Youtube,
Youtube has become one of the biggest online sites for where people view music from.
Many artist are found on Youtube, for example, Conor Maynard has become a world wide star and it was all down to youtube.

Recordings of the song

Due to the bad quality of the footage in the videos of which we captured we created a voice recording which picked up his voice more than the guitar, we hit a snag when trying to do this as the voice recordings wouldnt transfer onto a blogger post. To do this we would have to create a background for the recording and put it into a video format this way we were able to change it into a youtube folder and put it onto this post. We did this to get a better insight into the song and so we can hear the lyris clearly. 




From listening to the audio clips we believe that the song thats created by Tei would be a better option, this is because of the lyrics that are included in the song. As you can hear, some of the lines of which he uses are to do with 'coming back to me' and as if its to do with a relationship, these types of music videos are always easier to make because of the conventions being the same for a lot of them. The other song which is a cover from Ed Sheeran was our other option when approaching Tei, we opted out of choosing this song due to the difficulty of creating a music video to it. Plus there have also been many different covers created, therefore by doing our music video to an original song there wont be a sense of competition as such.

Case Study - Tzvetan Todorov

Tzveran Todorov - Narrative Theory

- Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher.

- He was born in 1939 

I did this as I thought that It would be good to find out the different types of media and the different ways in which theorists see it. By looking at how different people thought a media text should be shown I thought that we could mix them all in to create a better product.

Tzvetan Todorov created a theory called the narrative theory, he believed that a story should have a beginning being normal a disruption where all the action takes place and then an end where there is a new normality.

What are the key points of his ‘narrative theory’?

The way that stories and characters are seen in media texts

5 keys ideas…                                                                           

1.    Equilibrium – Normal life/balance

2.    Disruption – Normality is disrupted

3.    Realisation – Characters accept disruption

4.    Reparation – Fixing the disruption

5.    New equilibrium – balance, but different  

Example – Spiderman                           

1. Equilibrium - Normal student, geek, works hard to try and get the girl of his dreams. 

2. Disruption - He is bitten by a spider, gets many attributes a normal human wouldn't.Then he has to fight someone evil. 

3. Realisation - When he gets used to the fact that he is a human spider.

4. Reparation - Stops the evil person from killing everyone and becomes used to the fact hes going to be spiderman from now on.

5 - Carries on with normal life as Spiderman.                                

Why is this important in studying media?

This is important to my course as I can see whether there are many other music videos that have used this theory and see whether they have worked out well. I believe that more of the music videos that have a background story have this sort of narrative besides the ones that end on a sad note.

How can you apply his theory to your research/project?

I can apply this to my research by looking at some example of music videos with his theory and seeing if I want to make I similar one or not. Most of the music videos we looked at were very interesting and kept you intrigued all the way through, this is what we'd like to do to our audience.

I think that after looking at a lot of videos that have this sort of storyline we decided to use it. In our music video we are thinking about having a couple that are together a lot and have a lot of fun, this would be the equillibrium after this they would be taken away from each other, maybe due to a problem at home with there family, therefore being disrupted and then they will end up back together somehow and this would be the new equilibrium. This is clearly a very basic version of the music video but it does replicate his theory.