CD Cover Analysis

Auteur Theory - Colin Tilley

Colin Tilley (born June 27, 1988 in Berkeley, California) is an award winning music video director for Riveting Entertainment who has written and directed music videos for notable RnB and hip hop artists including as Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Diddy and Justin Bieber among others. Tilley’s most frequent collaborator is Chris Brown, over the last two years the two have worked closely on numerous videos, he directed all the videos bar one for Chris Brown’s F.A.M.E album.

The following examples of Colin Tilley’s visual style feature many of the elements that have become typical for big budget RnB videos. Unlike music videos for other genres, particularly rock which seek authenticity, RnB and hip hop videos usually portray an enhanced, glamorized version of life. Tilley’s cinematic style comes to the fore in many of his videos, particularly Chris Brown’s Deuces (2010) and Jason Derulo’s It Girl (2011). The opening sequences of both videos are reminiscent of film trailers, the director, artist name and song title take the place of credits and there are rapid montages of the action.  The words ‘Collin Tilley Presents’ appear at the beginning of all his videos, indicating his own authorial importance and the cinematic nature of the whole production.

These rapid montages in the opening sequence have become Tilley’s trademark and are used to establish a sense of movement and the passage of time. Each shot within the montage features a beautiful female. Lara Malvey’s ‘Male Gaze Theory’ would identify that in terms of gender representation; these women are portrayed as sexual objects and are solely there for the gratification and titillation of men. This is evident in the camerawork, the camera is often positioned at a low angle so it is looking up at the women and focusing on their breasts and legs.

This is a genre convention that the majority of hip hop and RnB videos conform to or observe. However, Tilley takes a more artistic approach to the conventional nudity. He often uses black and white, another trademark of his, to create a more contemporary, subtle feel in comparison to typical hip hop videos which tend to feature overt sexuality.

Tilley has acknowledged the influence of his hometown, California, to the look of his work. His video for JLS’ She Makes Me Wanna best represents Californian ideals. The video is set on a golden beach, people are sunbathing, everyone’s partying and there are women in swimwear.

His visuals are famed for his use of lighting. Tilley frequently alternates from low key lighting to high key lighting to create striking effects. He frequently uses understated, dark locations such as basements as in Wiz Khalifa’s No Sleep (2011) and Lil Wayne’s John (2010) and then places light boxes in the background of the frame in order to illuminate the star and establish a powerful image. The use of these special effects gives the director total control over the video.

Chris Brown’s ‘Deuces’ from his Fan of a Fan mix tape was released in 2010 on Jive Records. The RnB ballad also features guest vocals from Tyga and Kevin McCall. There is a clear conceptual idea in the video which relates to the lyrics of the song. The lyrics discuss the end of a relationship after failed attempts to make it work, Chris Brown repeatedly sings ‘She makes me wanna say bye bye to her’

There is a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. The visuals feature a woman walking away, towards the camera, which is a visual representation of the person in the song walking away from the relationship.

Chris Brown is the main focus of the video, there are frequent close up shots of him. This conforms to Andrew Goodwin’s Six Point Analysis (Dancing In The Distraction Factory, 1986, Routledge) which states that the demands of the record label will result in the needs for lots of close ups of the artist. Although Chris Brown is already an established and respected artist, his record label may have demanded more close ups in order to reinforce his public image, Fan of a Fan was his first release of 2010, after his short break from music.

In terms of mise-en-scene, Deuces is set in a very urban and contemporary location. The video, which has been shot entirely in black and white, is set against the heavily graffiti’d backdrop of the Los Angeles River. The location is dark and gloomy, which is a characteristic feature of Tilley visuals, and the grey background starkly contrasts with Chris Brown’s all black clothing. This makes him stand out and identifies him as the focus of the video.  There are several sequences where Chris Brown is performing a contemporary dance routine; this is typical of the music genre, slick choreographies feature in many hip hop and RnB videos. In these scenes, Chris Brown is dancing in a tunnel and appears to be blacked out; the camera focuses on his shadow dancing. His expressive performance represents all the emotion portrayed in the lyrics.

The video is cut to the beat; the fast paced editing with frequent cuts matches the speed of the music. In sequences where Brown is dancing, cuts are even more frequent in order to display his energy.

In terms of gender representation, the men are represented as strong, independent and powerful. Low angle shots of them standing around a car portray them as intimidating and powerful.  In several shots, the male artists flip their fingers up in the air, which represents the title of the song, ‘Deuces’ and also has a sub conscious message, they are essentially flipping their fingers up to the woman they are singing about, who they have just broken up with. These visuals further amplify the song lyrics and the overall message of the song.

Sophia Bendo Media Evaluation - Question Four

"How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?"

Research

New media technologies were central during each stage of creating the media product. Web 2.0 technology was instrumental throughout the entire process. During the research stage, I relied heavily on the Internet search engine Google in order to explore different genres of music. It was essential that we chose an appropriate genre as this could potentially affect the narrative format and structure of the media product, for example if our genre had been Rock music, it would be appropriate to observe the established music video forms and conventions of this genre with a performance based video.  Our chosen genre was House music and we used the websites YouTube.com and Soundcloud.com in order to find songs we liked and videos which influenced and inspired our own media product.

Planning

​During the planning process we used Apple’s Final Cut Express for the pre production and pre visualisation of our media product. We used Final Cut to develop an animated storyboard of our script; using pictures we had taken with a Nikon D40 digital stills camera. These pictures were then edited to create a rough storyboard for our final product. YouTube and the website Blogger.com were also new media technologies that we used frequently during this stage, mainly to upload pictures of our work as it progressed. We also created a YouTube channel; this facilitated uploading videos such as our rough cut and storyboards.


We also created powerpoints in order to canvas our key ideas to classmates and gain their feedback. Moodboards, storyboards, visual timelines were instrumental in helping us to visualise our ideas and get a rough idea of what the video would look like. Without these visual aids we would have struggled when filming.

Construction

In the construction stage, we used a Sanyo HD camera and tripod with pan and tilt controls to shoot our media product. The filming process was relatively stress free as we had been very organised with our shot lists, props and location. However, we found that we didn’t have enough footage so we had to complete an extra day of filming. Also, we planned to create a montage of still images in our video. This was difficult as the first time; the pictures did not save on the school’s camera and the second time, they were out of focus and shaky so we had to use QuickTime converter to convert them into high quality, still images.

FinalCut Express was also used to edit the media product. It was mostly a straight forward process, however it took some research and the help of YouTube tutorials to learn how to create effects such as split screens, adding in subtitles, slow motion and colour desaturation. 

We also used GarageBand to edit the song, it was too long and required cutting. This was stressful as we needed to edit the song smoothly and get the timing of the cuts spot on otherwise the song would jump, this was particularly important as several key scenes in the video are edited directly in synch to the music, if the timings were not correct then this would affect the pace of the music video.

In order to create the magazine advert and Digipak, I used Adobe Photoshop. Initially, I struggled with this as I was not familliar with the software and I didn't understand how the layers worked. However, once I familiarised myself with how it worked, I was able to use Photoshop confidently and produce an effective magazine advert and Digipak.

Evaluation


In conjunction with the evaluation on this blog, I have also created an interactive multimedia website using Wix.

Please visit my multimedia evaluation at Wix.Com

http://www.wix.com/sophiaelbendo/mymediaevaluation

 

 

Sophia Bendo Media Evaluation - Question Three

"What have you learned from your audience feedback?"

In order to best represent our target audience, we created a fictitious audience member named Dave. We then used his fictional demographics and pyschographics in order to create a video which would appeal to our target audience. Our fictional audience member Dave is a 22 year old male from London who enjoys clubbing, these demographics are typical of the House genre audience. 

Therefore in order to appeal to this target audience, the main protagonist in our music video is an attractive young female and close up shots of her face and body are frequent. This adheres to Andrew Goodwin's Six Point Analysis Theory (Dancing In The Distraction Factory, Routledge, 1992), we have deliberately used an attractive female in order to increase the video's attractiveness to male audiences. 

We also conducted research using the Broadcasters Audience Research Board website, www.barb.co.uk in order to find out which music channels are currently available and which channels would be most appropriate platforms to display our music video.

Our song choice, "Aspirin", is a classic house track so therefore the video would only feature on music channels, which play house music and other dance genres. This research enabled us to identify several music channels which would be appropriate platforms to display our media product. These channels were Clubland TV, which has an average daily reach of 142,000 viewers, 4Music with an average daily reach of 1,396,000 viewers and Viva which has an average daily reach of 1,555,000 viewers. Other channels which were suitable for our media product are Dance Nation which has an average daily reach of 86,000 viewers and MTV Dance with an average daily reach of 166,000 viewers. 

Viva is the most music popular channel on air with an average daily reach of 1,555,000 therefore if we were marketing the media product, in order to reach the widest possible audience it would be essential that the video was played on channels such as Viva. 

Our research helped us identify music channels which would not be appropriate for our media product, namely Scuzz and Channel AKA. This channels only cater to extremely niche genres of music such as hardcore rock and grime and therefore would not display our music video.

We also researched suitable platforms other than music channels which would be able to promote both the media product and the ancillary texts, the magazine advert and digipak. We have alreafdy established that House is a niche genre and therefore mainstream publications would not be appropriate, after taking this into the consideration as well as the hobbies and interests of our fictional audience member Dave, we realised that it would be best to research publications related to dance music, clubbing and DJ'ing.

Two suitable publications for this were Mixmag and DjMag. Mixmag is a British electronic dance music and clubbing magazine which claims to be "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine" In 2010 Mixmag had an audited circulation of approximately 21,250 copies.

DJ Mag is a British monthly magazine dedicated to Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and DJ's. It is a music-led publication containing club reviews, interviews and

features on DJ's. The magazine has a yearly circulation of around 12,321 copies.

We created fictional quotes from both magazines to use on our magazine advert, as shown below.

Initially we conducted a survey on our classmates, canvassing our key ideas for our media product. We asked 10 questions, these questions were:

1. Are you male or female?
2. What is your favourite genre of music?
3. Do you prefer songs with lyrics or instrumental tracks?
4. Are you familiar with the "House" genre?
5. If so, who is your favourite artist with this genre?
6. Do you think music videos are most effective when they are conceptual, narrative or performance based?
7. Are you familiar with the silent film genre?
8. In your opinion, would an entirely black and white video be effective?
9. Do you regularly watch music channels?
10. If so, which three do you watch most often?

We decided to quantify the results for the questions that we felt were most important in the form of bar graphs and pie charts.

As the female members in our class greatly outnumber the number of males, we expected the feedback to be very different. As expected, some of the male responses were very different to the female responses.



This was a very important question as despite having shortlisted possible songs, we hadn't completely decided which song to choose for our media product, we had a mixture of lyrical and instrumental songs so this question helped us guage the preferences of our peers. Interestingly, although songs with lyrics were the clear favourite in this survey, we decided to contradict this audience response and choose an instrumental songs. We weren't orginally sure if this was the best decision to make, however when we presented the rough cut of the media product to classmates, the positive comments about the song choice proved we had made the right choice.

This question was also highly important. In class we had watched several examples of conceptual, narrative and performanced based elements and all three styles appealed us. We chose to rule out a performance based video as unlike in a Rock music video where the band would be able to perform the song, artists in the house genre create their music electronically using computer or DJ software so essentially it cannot be 'performed' as effectively in a music video. Also, another convention of this genre is that artists rarely feature in their videos so again this restricted what we could do with a performance based video. The results of the survey shows that they felt narrative based videos were strongest so we used this response to our advantage and created a media product which is mainly narrative, there is a clear narrative pattern in that it follows a young girl as she tries to make her way home. However, there are also non-linear elements to the video, namely montages and split screens.

"Black and white went well, liked the story line"

"Video - great idea - needs tightening"

An entirely black and white was an idea we'd envisioned from the beginning but we weren't how audiences would react to it, the survey clarified this, our classmates felt that a black and white video would be effective. This was also evident in the feedback from the viewing of the rough cut

"I liked the fact that the video was shot in black and white - locations were good "

"Black and white went well, liked the story line"

"Like the black and white"

Audience feedback was also instrumental in our final design choices for the magazine advert and digipak. We showed classmates several of our design ideas and moodboards which we had used for inspiration.

The feedback we received from this was mainly positive,

"Like the pill idea for album cover, maybe also in black or white

"I like the underground sign for the album cover, but the writing as the same font as the actual underground sign

"Like the black and white, like the underground cover"

"Good covers, needs developing - ideas are there "

"Make sure you find good links between your video and album cover ie. Dont put aspirin in the cover just because its called Aspirin"

We used these criticisms and ideas to help us perfect our final designs for the magazine advert and digipak. As the black and white was so popular we stuck to this, this is a key element of our branding and the audience is able to recognise the aesthetic link between the media product and ancillary texts.

We moved away slightly from the underground sign idea, we still wanted to represent it but in a more subtle way so instead we used a picture of the station, with the underground sign, clearly visible.

Please visit my multimedia evaluation at Wix.Com

http://www.wix.com/sophiaelbendo/mymediaevaluation