CD Digipacks

Digipacks are a type of CD packaging made out of heavy paper or cardboard material. Digipacks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that holds the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD - the plastic part is simply attached to the paper background.

Digipacks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic "digipack" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

I found a website that has the top 100 CD covers on (http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fedderedder/rolling_stones_100_greatest_album_covers) so I chose a few from the website that I liked the best to put on this blog:

This is CD cover for The Rolling Stones album called "Sticky Fingers" I really liked this design because I think that black and white with red writing works really well and makes it stand out. If the picture of the trousers was in colour then the red writing would be lost and hard to see, but the use of black and white makes it bold and eye catching. Black and white with red is also the idea that we have for our own music video which is another reason why I chose this digipack because it may give me inspiration for when I create my own.


This is another CD cover which I really liked of Joe Jackson. It's a very simple cover with a photograph and simple font writing in the top and bottom corner. The photography is very good in the way that the feet are central in the beam of light and it makes it interesting that they are facing diagnal rather that just straight forward or to the side. Again the CD cover is in black and white which I am going to do mine in so this can help me develop my own ideas.



This album cover for Arctic Monkeys "Favourite worst nightmare" is another one that caught my eye because it is in black and white but also mixes the use of cartoon and photography. The prominant colour that appears apart from the black and white is green. The green along with the large colourful circles create a retro type of feel to the album that may be reflected in some of the songs from the album. I also like the perspective of the photograph of the building and as it is not face on, it makes it more interesting and abstract or makes us feel like we are really in that position looking onto the building. From this album cover I can take the inspiration of black and white with one prominant colour on top of it.


This is the Kings of Leon album cover for "Youth and young manhood". I really like this design as it is simple but also really effective and stands out. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of the Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody" with the positioning of the heads. I thought this was a really clever idea as they have used a really well known concept and made it their own by having it more in cartoon form and also in black and white. From this CD cover it has given me the idea to maybe use intertextuality in my own digipack design.


I like this album cover by Muse as it different to the others that I have looked at in the sense that it is not black and white. It also uses a mosaic type of style which I really like and think is effective. There is a small person that is also featured in the cover and it makes it look disorientating and almost like a sci fi type of genre. The font that is used on this album cover is very simple and easy to read which is true to most of the alternative rock album covers I have looked at. This album cover has given me new things to think about with designing my own digipack as it means I do not have to follow the theme of black and white.

Storyboard

After we completed our storyboard for our music video we decided that to get a good idea of how it will look in time with the music, we took pictures of each frame and put them onto imovie and edited some of the shots together with our song over the top. After doing this we realised that some of our shots are far too long and will make our video seem boring and slow (especially the very opening shot) so we had some group discussions on how we can change it and add in more shots to chop it up and edited our paper version of our storyboard that we will take to our shooting sessions and help us get more interesting but structured shots.

This is our animated storyboard:

Planning our video

We have now been given our equipment to start filming our music video which includes a camera, tripod, gorilla tripod, chargers, leads, a battery, tapes and the flip camera. We have done alot of practice filming with our flip camera and now we have the chance to practice on the real camera. We are going to use the gorilla tripod for some of our close up shots from different angles.

For our video we are going to use a band from outside school that Molly knows as they will be reliable and they are also a few years older than us so it will look more professional than having a band our age looking young. The band have also been in another A level music video which means that they are used to the process and will be profesional about the filming. They are good performers and the genre of their music is punk/rock which will fit in well with our music genre and means they will have an ideal image for our band.

This is the A level video that they took part in before:

Framing and composition of shots

Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is a compositional rule in visual arts such as painting, photography and design. The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.

















Head room
Headroom refers to the distance between the top of the subject's head and the top of the frame, but the term is sometimes used instead of lead room, nose room or looking room to include the sense of space on both sides of the image. Headroom changes as the camera zooms in or out, and the camera must simultaneously tilt up or down to keep the center of interest approximately one-third of the way down from the top of the frame. The closer the subject, the less headroom needed. In extreme close-ups, the top of the head is out of the frame, but the concept of headroom still applies via the rule of thirds.
One of the most common mistakes that casual camera users make is to have too much headroom - too much space above the subject's head.

Questionnaire

We have made our questionnaire and started to hand it out to people to fill in to help us with our research and make our music video suitable for our audience.

These are our questions that we have asked and I will put the results up when we get them all in:

1. How old are you?
-14 [ ] 14-16 [ ] 17-20 [ ] 21-25 [ ] 25-30 [ ] 30+ [ ]

2. Are you male or female?
Male [ ] Female [ ]

3. How do you usually watch music videos?
TV [ ] Internet [ ] Download [ ] Other [ ]

4. What is your favourite genre?
Rock [ ] Pop [ ] Alternative [ ] Jazz [ ] RnB [ ] Heavy metal [ ] Classical [ ] Other [ ]

5. How often do you watch music videos?
Never [ ] Everyday [ ] Every week [ ] Every few weeks [ ] Rarely [ ]

6. Do you prefer funny or serious music videos?
Funny [ ] Serious [ ]

7. Do you prefer music videos that are reaistic or non realistic?
Realistic [ ] Non realistic [ ]

8. What are your expectations of rock music videos?

9. How do you interpret the lyrics "She's such a charmer"?

10. What music channel would you expect to see a Kings of Leon music video on?

11. What colours do you think represent the rock genre? and why?

I think that we have a wide variety of questions that will help us gain an understanding of what people want from a music video and what will work and we also used a mix of open and closed questions throughout the questionnaire.

Lip Syncing

We also used the flip cameras to practice lip syncing that we will be using in our music video. Charlotte from our group is going to be the girl that features in our video as the obsessed fan as we thought it would be easy to use someone in our group as we know they will be reliable and know the sort of results we want from our video. We are also already using people from outside the group to be our band in the video so we thought it would be nice to also have someone from the group in it too.

For the parts of the song where charlotte will be lip syncing it will mainly be extreme close ups of her mouth which makes it even more important to be perfect. We practised and put it in black and white because that's what our video is going to be shot in, however when we do the real thing, we will have Charlotte's lips bright red with lipstick to stand out as seductive and feminine.

Although this practice video is not perfect, we have learnt how to do it and hopefully when we do it for our real video we will have more experience so we can make it perfect.

Stage composition

Last week our group decided to use our flip cameras to try out the stage composition for our band in our school hall on the stage. We weren't sure if the school stage would be too big and look wrong for our video so we tried it out and by putting it in black and white decided that it may look quite good. We also said that if we cover the back and sides of the stage with big black coverings that Molly has at her church, we will be able to make the stage look suitable. We decided though that rather than trying to create a proper performance and having to find an audience to fill the hall which could look terrible and fake, we will make out the band are just at a casual practice. We gave eachother roles from the band and postitioned ourselves on stage to see what it looked like. Sarah was lead singer, Charlotte was bass, Molly was guitar and I was drums and this is what it looked like:

Questionnaire

We are creating a questionnaire as a group to gain audience feedback about music videos. This will help us to gain more ideas for our own music video because it will give us an understanding of the audience we are aiming our video at and what their expectations are.

The questions we will ask people will help us find out:
Who are our audience?
Where are they?
How do they access music videos?
What are their expectations of a music video from our rock genre?
What do they want in a music video?

We will ask a variety a qualitative and quantitative questions to gain a more detailed and personal response.
We will have to think about how we will distribute the questionnaire? whether it is face to face or on the internet on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Andrew Goodwin's analysis of music videos

When we were at the workshop at RichMix, Pete Fraser told us about Andrew Goodwin's theory in his book called "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" (Routledge 1992).
He has 6 points which he believes need to be included in a music video to make it successful:

1. They must demonstrate genre conventions - e.g stage performance for rock bands and a dance routine for girl bands

2. There must be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals - to illustrate or amplify the lyrics

3. There must be a relationship between the music and the visuals - to illustrate or amplify the music, e.g use the beat of the song

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs that run which recur across their work - their own recognisable creative style

5. There must be frequent reference to looking and the notion of looking - e.g screens within screens or voyeuristic treatment of the female body

6. There is often intertexual reference - to films, programmes or other music videos

We will consider these points when completing our storyboard for our own video and have already had an idea on how to include voyerism. We thought we could have the lead singer of our band walking into the obsessed fans' house and seeing lots of pictures of himself up around her room and looking at them in shock or disbelief.

Rich Mix

On the 9th November our media class went to Rich Mix which is an arts centre in Bethnal Green. We went to a work shop about music videos called "From MTV to Youtube" which lasted the whole day and really helped us with ideas and tips for our own music video coursework.

In the morning we had a session with the head examiner from the OCR media studies, Pete Fraser. He went over the history of music videos starting from the 1930's when there was the first experimental type of music video by Len Lye. He also gave us his 10 top tips for when we are making our own music video for our coursework which included keeping our concept simple and planning as well as we can. He also showed us some examples of past student music videos which I found useful because we could see the kind of standard of the videos from previous years and from different schools around the country. In the afternoon we had 2 more speakers who presented to us which I thought was the most interesting part of the day. First of all a music video producer, Liz Kessler, spoke to us about how to get into the media industry and about her own experiences. She also shared with us examples of her own work that she had produced which included artists such as Will Young and a new pop star called Lissie. The second part of the afternoon was run by a music video director called Corin Hardy who was very interesting and inspiring to listen to. He told us about how he got into his job and about the 30 minute feature film he made called "Butterfly" that took him 5 years to make. This film opened doors for him as the band "Keane"'s manager saw his film when it was entered into a film festival and asked Corin if he would make a music video for Keane. This led him to direct a number of music videos for bands such as The Horrors, Biffy Clyro and The Prodigy. We also had an exercise set during our lunch break which we had to complete. In our school groups we had to think of a concept for a music video for the song "God and Satan" by Biffy Clyro. We then nominated one person from our school to pitch our ideas to Corin Hardy and Liz Kessler infront of the other 6 schools there.

I really enjoyed the day and think it really helped us to get some important tips and ideas for our own music video.

We filmed some parts of the day with our flip camera which I will upload soon.

Story board practise

To have a go at creating a storyboarding and help us with our own storyboard, we used a song of the same genre, and same band, to draw a storyboard for it in practise for our own.

We chose the song "On Call" By Kings of Leon as we thought that by it being the same band it would be the closest match to our own song. We only storyboarded the very begninning of the song just to give us an idea and we actually found it quite hard because there was not many vocals but there were a lot of different shots for the instrument parts.

This is the song that we used but unfortunatly the embed code has been disabled so this is the link to youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DK_8VZm_Dg&ob=av2e

This is our story board that we created for the first few lines of the song:



We also gained inspiration from this video as we liked the opening shot of the feet walking along and have decided that we can adapt this idea and fit it into to our theme of obsession and put it into our own video. We thought that we could have the feet of all the band members walking along the street and then a few steps afterwards have the obsessed fan walking in the same direction to give the idea that she is following them or always near them.

Audience theory

What is audience theory?
Audience theory is an element of thinking that developed within academic literary theory and cultural studies.
With a specific focus on rhetoric, some, such as Walter Ong, have suggested that the audience is a construct made up by the rhetoric and the rhetorical situation the text is addressing. Others, such as Ruth Mitchell and Mary Taylor have said writers and speakers actually can target their communication to address a real audience. Some others like Ede and Lunsford try to mingle these two approaches and create situations where audience is "fictionalized," as Ong would say, but in recognition of some real attributes of the actual audience.

What is the Hypodermic Syringe effect?
The hypodermic syringe model is a model of communications also referred to as the "magic bullet" perspective, or the transmission-belt model. Essentially, this model holds that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The model is rooted in 1930s behaviorism and is largely considered obsolete today. The hypodermic syringe theory implied that mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on their audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change.

Initial ideas mind map

My group decided that it would be a good idea to write down all of our initial ideas into a mind map before putting them onto our storyboard so we have a clear idea of what we are going to do and what kind of shots would look best.

After starting to write our ideas down and the more we were discussing it we saw a pattern in our ideas of a girl who is obsessed with the band and so thought we could make our video around the theme of "obsession". We also thought that this would be a good theme for our group because last year when we had to make an opening for a film, our initial research, even though we did not go through with it in the end, was about a stalker, so we did quite a bit of research on stalkers which we can expand on this year and fit it in with our theme of obsession.

We took a photo of our initial ideas that we put into a mind map and this shows some of the shots we came up with and the actors that we are hoping to use:

Possible band names

As a group we discussed possible band names that we could use that represented our band brand and our music video. We looked at our wordle of our band brand ideas and used them to try to come up with a name. We also used websites on the internet such as www.bandnamemaker.com/generator/ which helped us with our ideas and gave us some funny and more serious suggestions. We also looked at other bands within the same American Rock genre to see their kind of names. We tried to make names that reflected the idea of "Kings" as the original band is called "Kings of Leon" and also names that reflected "Charmer" as this is the name of the song. We made a wordle for our initial ideas and this is what we came up with:

Meeting log update

This an update of our meeting log for our first few meetings explaining what we have been discussing in our group meetings:

Band Brand

As we need to create a band brand for our song we decided to create another wordle using all different words that represent our band, Kings of Leon, and the song, Charmer. We had to think about the costume, lyrics, genre, theme, musical influences, sound and instruments that represent our song and this is the wordle that our group created:



From this wordle we will also have another meeting soon about a possible name for our band by using these brand influences.

Audience feedback to treatment

When we presented our treatment to our class we asked them to respond to it by writing a few words or comments about what they thought about our initial ideas of our video.

After we collected all of the comments from our audience, we used the website www.wordle.net to create a wordle out of all the feedback. This website allows you to put in all different words and comments and then makes a "word cloud". The words that are most frequently used appear on the wordle as bigger and bolder so you can see the most prominant words. This will let us see our audience feedback in an easier way and see what the majority of the audience thought.

This is our wordle:


So from this wordle we can see that the majority of our audience thought that our treatment and initial ideas were creative and professional, while a few people said it was unique and a good interpretion of the song and lyrics.

Our treatment

We have made a treatment about our song "Charmer" by Kings of Leon which we pitched infront of an audience to gain audience feedback to see if our ideas are realistic, achievable and effective.

We made a document to hand out to our audience which included details of our initial ideas and included pictures for the visual concept of our video. Some of the things we needed to include in our treatment is:

• Background on song
• The basic narrative or concept of our video - performance, narrative or concept
• What ‘feel’ we want to provide for our audience
• How we will achieve this
• What are the codes and conventions of our genre
• In what ways are we conforming to or subverting them
• What themes are running through our video
• How we will use costume and make up to convey our messages
• The location

This is the document we handed out to our audience:

Kings of Leon Treatment

We also made a short powerpoint presentation to go with our treatment to make it more interesting for our audience:

Kings Of Leon - Charmer Treatment

We also filmed our treatment when we presented it to our audience but unfortunatly only 2 members of our group were able to be present to film, however we all worked together on the above documents and preperation of the treatment:

Asking permission from music producers

As we have chosen an established band to make a music video for, it is important that we ask permission from the producers of the song to use it in our coursework. Angelo Petraglia and Ethan Johns are the two men who worked on the album "Because of the times" by Kings of Leon which has the song Charmer on it. This is the email we sent them to request permission for the use of the song:

Dear Sirs,

Our names are Molly Wing, Aimie Condon, Sarah Isaacs and Charlotte Boag and we are media studies students at Enfield County School and we are currently in the early stages of producing a music video and promotional digipack alongside that. The reason for our email is to request your permission to use Kings of Leons' song 'Charmer' that you produced for our chosen video song. We have no intention of selling our video and we can assure you there will be no copyright issues at akk as it will solely be used for educational purposes.

If there are any issues please feel free to contact us.

Yours Sincerely
Molly Wing, Aimie Condon, Sarah Isaacs and Charlotte Boag

Chosen song lyrics

She's such a charmer oh no.
She's such a charmer oh no.
She's always looking at me.
She's always looking at me.
She's such a charmer oh no.

She's stole my karma oh no.
Sold it to the farmer oh no.
She's always looking at me.
She's always looking at me.
She's such a charmer oh no.

Born in west virginia oh no.
Married to the preacher oh no.
Shes always looking at me.
Shes always looking at me.
Shes such a charmer oh no.

Shes always looking at me.
Shes always looking at me.
Shes such a charmer oh no. oh no.


The lyrics to the song are very short and easy to learn which means it will be easy for us to get someone to effectively mime the song in our video and for it not to look false.

We also decided that we could come up with lots of ideas for performance and narrative ideas through these lyrics and they can be interpreted in different ways to create an effective video. In one of our meetings we discussed the possbilty of setting up a gig type setting in a big open space with an audience of all girls. We could make one of the girls from the audience stand out by putting her in bold clothes that are different to the rest of the audience who is admiring the lead singer. We also decided on a couple of shots we could use, for example making a split screen of all the different instruments playing at the same time or having all the band members in a split screen lip syncing.

Our chosen song

Our group has decided to make a music video for the song "Charmer" by Kings of Leon. We all like the song and like the rhythm and riff of the song. We think the lyrics of the song are quite easy which means it will be easy to get someone to mime the words for our narrative part of the video. Members of our group and other people we know, together, own all of the instruments that are used in the song so we could feature them in our video and have people playing them.

This is the song we have chosen:

Our Chosen Genre

We have decided to move away from our initial idea of doing a Ska song because the song we were originally looking at was "54-46 was my number" by Toots and the Maytals. We decided to move away from this genre as this song was actually more reggae than ska and we thought it was a hard song to make a video for after further discussion. The lyrics to the song decribe someone being in prison for drugs and his prison number was 54-46. We thought that this would be hard to narrate through our video and for this reason we have changed our choice of genre.

This was our original choice song by Toots and the Maytals:



Our new choice of genre is Rock as we think this will be alot easier to make a video for and we know more of this type of music.

Main characterstics of rock
- Strong rhythm
- Simple lyrics
- Guitar riffs

Iconography of rock - pictures

Genre Theory

What is genre?
A tool that helps us study texts and audience responses to texts by parting them into different categories that have common elements. It has been argued by Daniel Chandler (2001) that the word "genre" comes from the French for "class". The term is used in literary text, media theory and to refer to a distinctive type of text

Sub genres
This is a genre within a genre. Genres are divided up into specific categories to allow us to identify them specfically by their recognisable characteristics. Steve Neale (1995) says that genres are not "systems" but they are "processes of systematization" meaning that they are are not set in stone and genres are dynamic and evolve over time.

Meeting schedule

This is a meeting schedule that I made on an excel spreadsheet to keep track of when my group meet up and what decisions we make and what we do in each meeting so that I can look back on it and see how our ideas developed throughout the year.

Secondary source research mood board

Media Mood Board

This is my mood board for our initial chosen genre of ska. I got most of my pictures from the search engines Google and Yahoo by typing in ska and reggae as most of the songs we have been looking at come under the genre of ska-reggae. The colours I chose to put on my mood board include green, reds and yellow which represent Jamaica which is where ska and reggae originated from. I also have pictures of beaches and other relaxed scenes which are good locations for ska and reggae videos. I also put some pictures of ska bands on there such as Madness, The Specials and Toots and the Maytals. From these pictures we can see the types and clothes and settings they were in during their performances which we can use for our own video and dress people up to mimic their appearence. I've also used a picture of the front cover of the soundtrack to the film "This is England" because all of the songs from the film are from the ska genre.

How artists are portrayed and represented in the media

This cover of Hip Hop magazine Vibe shows Eminem in a way which everyone in the public is used to him being shown. He is portrayed as strong and muscley which is shown through the choice of outfit which is a vest to show his arms and chest. He is also shown to look quite menacing and hard faced through his facial expression and crossed arm pose which is expected from most rap artists. The expression in his face shows the public that he is not scared of anyone or anything as he is looking straight forward into the camera as if to look at the reader. His eyes are very dark which go with his dark vest and dark tattoos which again represent his dark personality and background. All of these things which are used to portray Eminem in this photo also reflect his songs and the dark lyrics which he writes.

This photo of Dizzee Rascal on the front cover of NME magazine is a completly different representation to Eminem. His facial expression is happy and friendly which represents to the public his warm personality and appreciation to his fans. His big smile also compliments the headline of the magazine which says "I'm speading joy around the world, man". The clothes he is wearing represent what most urban or hip hop artists wear of vests, baggy jeans and chains. The pose that Dizzee Rascal is in with his arms wide open almost in a hug position also shows his openness which will perhaps be revealed in the interview within the magazine.

Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up

I've chosen to analyse this video because I have always had to watch this video the whole way through and think it is very clever and challenges sterotypes of teenage boys. The video is from a persons point of view the whole time and it starts off with them having a shower and getting ready before going out, taking drugs, drinking alcohol getting in fights and sleeping with girls. The video is narrative as it is like a story being told of this persons life and showing us what a typical night out for them is. I also like the camera movements and editing as the person is getting more drunk because the picture becomes more distorted and jerky to show us how they are viewing the situation and the influence of the drugs and alcohol on them. The end of this video has a twist because it turns out the person you have been in the head of for the whole video is a woman when it has been set up to make you think it is a man because of the behaviour being shown. There are also certain things that happen in the video that go to the beat of the song such as when she smashes the window of the car and also when she rips the record from the DJ decks. This draws the viewer back to song and makes sure that the video does not completly distract you from the actual song, lyrics and beat.

Although the controversial video has been named in some top 10 lists of greatest music videos, it was infact banned from MTV when it was first released. This may have been because of the extensive use of drugs and alcohol and the violence you are shown, or it may be because of the homosexual activity which is often frowned upon in America which is where MTV is based.

Narrative and Performance used together

These two main forms of music video are found to be used together in a lot of music videos these days because these are seen to be most effective and interesting. I think this is because by just having a performance video it can sometimes get quite boring if it just them performing and very repetitive. If the music video is fully narrative this can also sometimes have cons as well because I think sometimes if there is no lip sychronising within the video and it tells a full story this can sometimes destract the viewer from the actual song as they get too engrossed in the story telling and this can sometimes be a bad thing. This is the reason why most artists choose to mix the two forms together and sometimes tell a story whilst performing.

Some examples I found of this are:

Dizzee Rascal "Dream". This has Dizzee Rascal rapping the whole song whilst a woman is playing the piano but I would say it also has some kind of narration because there are other characters within the video that are puppets that are telling a story related to the lyrics. The woman also introduces the video like the beginning of a story.


The Gorillaz song "Clint Eastwood" is also a mix of forms as although it is not actually the band that are shown in the video, they have cartoon characters that represent them and are playing instruments in the video. This aspect of the video makes it a performance video but it also kind of tells a story throughout the video which makes it narrative.


The song "Boys and Girls" by Good Charlotte. This video at the beginning shows the band in a gig performing the song which shows the performance side of the video but it is also narrative because the video switches to showing actors telling a story within a neighbourhood. I could not manage to embed this video into my blog but this is the link to YouTube where you can view the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYRjUTV9jgQ

Lady GaGa and Beyonce's video "Telephone" is a good example of a mix of forms. Although the song is only around 3 minutes long the video is a total of just over 9 minutes because there is a lot of acting scenes in the video to tell a detailed story which is why it makes it a narrative video. There is also a couple of scenes where the performers are singing and dancing for example in the diner which also shows the performance side of the video.

Narrative music videos

This type of music video is like a short movie to a musical background. They contain a short visual story that is easy for the viewer to follow and sometimes make sense of the lyrics and put the lyrics into a visual form. There is sometimes no lip synchronisation but nowadays most music videos mix up the two forms of music video and use bot narrative and performance to make their video.

A good example of a narrative music video is Eminem's video for "Stan". Although the vocalist is shown and he is clearly rapping throughout the song it is still a narrative video because it tells and story and takes you through the events happening in the song in a visual form:

Performance music videos

This format of music video is where the vocalist and sometimes the rest of the band are in the video singing or miming the song in one or more setting.

Sometimes the performers may be in a simple gig setting or it may be in an abstract setting such as a beach or on another planet.

In a performance video you can see the instruments being played in the band and see the vocalist singing.

An example of a performance music video is Seven Nation Army by White Stripes. This video shows the band playing their instruments and the vocalists singing. It is a simple video that does not really tell a story and instead is concentrated soley on the song, the lyrics and the instruments being played:

Artist research - Dizzee Rascal

Dizzee Rascal was born as Dylan Kwabena Mills on 1 October 1985. He is a British rapper, songwriter and record producer of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent. His music is a blend of garage, hip hop, grime, ragga, pop and electronic music, with extremely eclectic samples and more exotic styles.

Dizzee was born in Bow, east London. His father died when he was young, and he was raised for most of his life in a single-parent family by his mother, Priscilla, who did the best she could for her rebellious son.

He attended a number of schools in East London, excluded from four secondary schools in four years - it was a teacher who first called him "Rascal". In early interviews he mentioned what his rebellion as a child included as he described himself fighting with teachers, stealing cars and robbing pizza delivery men. In the fifth school, Langdon Park in Poplar, he was excluded from most classes except music. He also used to attend YATI (Young Actors Theatre Islington). He began making music on the school's computer, encouraged by a music teacher and during the summer holidays attended a music workshop organised by Tower Hamlets Summer University of which he is now a patron.

Experimenting with his decks and styles, he became an amateur DJ, making occasional appearances on a local pirate radio station. Aged 16, he self-produced his first single, "I Luv U". In 2002, he jointly formed the Roll Deep Crew, a 13-piece garage collective, with former school friends. Signed by the XL record label, he signed an additional solo deal. After winning a Sidewinder Award for Best Newcomer MC in 2002, in June 2003 the re-recorded and re-produced by Jacob Freitt single I Luv U was released, becoming a Top 30 hit single.

Boy in da corner
Dizzee's first solo album, Boy in da Corner, was released in August 2003, entering the UK Top 40 at #40. The album peaked at #23. In the same week the album was released, while performing with Roll Deep Crew, the rapper was stabbed six times in Ayia Napa. Many newspapers suggested that this event was connected to an apparent feud between Dizzee and So Solid Crew, and him pinching Lisa Maffia's bottom. After Dizzee was hospitalised, So Solid Crew member "Megaman" was questioned about the incident, but was immediately released by Cypriot police. Following the success of single "I Luv U" and the album, the second single from Boy in da Corner was "Fix Up, Look Sharp". The single gave Dizzee his first UK Top 20 single and also became the biggest hit from his debut album. In September, Dizzee was awarded the Mercury Prize for the best album of 2003. Along with being picked as the #1 album of the year by Planet Sound, Boy in da Corner was also chosen as one of the top 50 albums of the year by Rolling Stone magazine. The third and final single, taken from his debut album, was "Jus' a Rascal", which became his fourth top 30 success. The song was also featured in the film "Kidulthood", released in 2006.



Showtime
His second album, Showtime, was released in September 2004, jumping ahead of his debut album by entering the UK Albums Chart at #8. The first single from the album, was titled Stand Up Tall; it was written and produced by dubstep DJ Youngsta and entered the UK Top 10. The second single "Dream", another top 20 hit, was released in November 2004. It sampled and used the chorus of Captain Sensible's song "Happy Talk". The "Dream" music video consisted of a mock 1950s style children's marionette show depicting scenes corresponding to the lyrics about Dizzee's youth; street culture, crime, single teenage mothers, pirate radio and garage clubs. Later in 2004, Dizzee Rascal was part of Band Aid 20, a group of British musicians who re-recorded "Do They Know It's Christmas?" but rather than singing his two lines, he rapped them. In 2004, Dizzee Rascal made an international endorsement deal with urban brand Eckō and designed his own shoe with Nike in 2005.

Maths + English
Dizzee's third album, Maths + English, was released on 4 June 2007. He stated in an interview before the album's release that "Maths" refers to producing, in terms of beats, deals and money and "English" to writing lyrics. The first single off this album, Sirens, was released on 21 May. In 2008, Dizzee Rascal recorded a song for suicide charity CALM; the song "Dean" was about a friend of his who took his own life. In December of that year, he was arrested following an alleged incident involving a baseball bat in Southeast London. He was released on bail to return to a police station later in December.

Tongue N' Cheek
Dizzee Rascal released his 4th album, Tongue N' Cheek, on 21 September 2009. It included his 4 number-one hits "Dance Wiv Me", "Holiday", "Bonkers" and "Dirtee Disco". Its release was announced on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, where Dizzee Rascal revealed some details about the album, including track information and production. Dizzee also confirmed in an interview on Radio One, that he would be leaving his grime roots behind, in favour of more mainstream pop. On the 16th February at the Brit Awards, Dizzee Rascal won the award for Best British Male.

He later performed a mash-up entitled "You Got the Dirtee Love" with Florence and the Machine. This collaboration was released as a charity single the following day and peaked at number 2 in the UK charts. On the 31st May 2010 Dizzee re-released the album Tongue N' Cheek with a few new tracks on which was released on 24 May 2010. It went straight to Number 1 on the UK singles chart and as a result gave Dizzee the record for the most number one singles on an album by solo male artist.

Dirtee Stank
Dizzee Rascal has created his own record label, called Dirtee Stank. It was not until 2005 that Dizzee Rascal really started with the label and made his first signings, Klass A and Newham Generals. The label's MySpace page states that the ethos of the company is "about bridging the gap between indie, majors and the street. Stank is the way forwards". The label's logo is a picture of flies circling faeces. When asked why this logo was chosen, Dizzee stated that it was the "streetest thing I could think of"

This is the performance of "You've got the dirtee love" at the BRIT awards by Dizzee Rascal and Florence and the machine:

Artist research - Eminem

Eminem was born as Marshall Bruce Mathers III on October 17th 1972. He was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri but moved across various towns and cities such as Kansas City and Michigan with his poverty stricken mother Deberah Mathers after his father left them when Eminem was aged 2 and never returned.

Eminem was performing rap from the age of 14 under the name M&M. After retaking the 9th grade twice due to truency and failing grades, he dropped out of school at age 17.

Early Career and "Infinate"
Eminem was signed by the record company FBT Productions in 1992 whilst he was still working at his minimum wage job at a resturant cleaning. In 1996, his debut album Infinite was released. Subjects covered were his struggles with raising his newborn daughter Hailie Jade Scott while on limited funds and his strong desire to get rich. After the release of Infinite, Eminem's personal struggles and abuse of drugs and alcohol culminated in an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Jimmy Iovine, CEO of Interscope Records, requested a demo tape of Eminem's work after he won second place at the 1997 Rap Olympics. Eminem had also won Wake Up Show's Freestyle Performer Of The Year award helping him acquire a record deal. Iovine played the tape for record producer Dr. Dre, founder of Aftermath Entertainment. The two began recording tracks for Eminem's upcoming major-label debut The Slim Shady LP.



The Slim Shady LP
After being signed to Aftermath Entertainment in 1998, Eminem released his first major studio album, The Slim Shady LP, heavily based on the production by Dr. Dre, one year later in 1999. It went on to be one of the most popular albums of 1999, going triple platinum by the end of the year. With the album's popularity came controversy surrounding many of the album's lyrics. In "'97 Bonnie and Clyde", he describes a trip with his infant daughter, disposing of his wife's body.


The Marshall Mathers LP
The Marshall Mathers LP was released in May 2000. It went on to sell 1.76 million copies in its first week, breaking the records set by Snoop Dogg. The first single released from the album, "The Real Slim Shady", was a success and created some controversy by insulting celebrities. In another single, "Stan", Eminem attempts to deal with his new-found fame, taking on the persona of a deranged fan who kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend. Q magazine named "Stan" the third-greatest rap song of all time.

The Eminem Show
Eminem's third major album, The Eminem Show, was released in summer 2002 selling well over 1 million copies in its first week of release. It featured the single "Without Me", in which he makes contraversial comments about boy bands, Limp Bizkit and Moby. The album reflected on the impact of his rise to fame, his relationship with his wife and daughter, and his status in the hip-hop community. He also addresses the charges he faced over assaulting a bouncer he saw kissing his wife in 2000.

Encore
In 2004, Eminem released his fourth major album, Encore. It sold over 700,000 copies in its first week of release. The album was driven by the single "Just Lose It", notable for being disrespectful towards Michael Jackson. Despite the comedic theme of the lead single, Encore had its fair share of serious subject matter, including the anti-war track "Mosh".

In 2005, some industry insiders speculated that Eminem was considering ending his rapping career after six years. He released a greatest hits album under the name Curtain Call: The Hits, on December 6 2005 under Aftermath Entertainment. In July 2005, news broke out of a potential final bow for Eminem as a solo performer, quoting friends who said that he will begin to fully embrace the role of producer and label executive. On the same day of the release of the compilation album, Eminem denied that he was retiring on a radio interview, but implied that he would at least be taking a break as an artist.

Relapse
In September 2007, Eminem told a radio station he was in limbo on whether to release another album. In December 2008, he gave more details on the album, which he reported was being titled Relapse. "We Made You", the first official single and its music video, were released on April 7. While Relapse didn't manage to sell as well as Eminem's previous efforts, it was still a commercial success that received some critical acclaim, while also re-establishing his presence in the hip hop world. Relapse was named one of the top albums of 2009. Relapse has sold more than five million copies worldwide.

Recovery
In April 2010, Eminem let all his followers on Twitter know he was releasing a new album by tweeting "Recovery" with a link to his website. The album was released on 21st June. The first single, "Not Afraid", was released on April 29, and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.



Acting career
Eminem made his official Hollywood acting debut with the semi-autobiographical 8 Mile, released in November 2002. He has said the movie is not an account of his life, but a representation of growing up in Detroit. He recorded several new songs for the soundtrack, including "Lose Yourself", which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003. It was reported on November 8, 2009 that Eminem will star in the upcoming 3D horror anthology, Shady Talez, directed by John Davis. He has also been involved in various voice overs for example in the 50 cent video game "Bulletproof".

Drug issues
Eminem has spoken openly about his addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs, including Vicodin, Ambien, Valium and Methadone. His group-mate Proof from D12 stated that Mathers "sobered up" in 2002 from drug and alcohol dependence. However, he did turn to zolpidem sleeping pills for relief from sleeping troubles. This caused Mathers to cancel the European leg of the Anger Management Tour in August 2005 and eventually go into rehab for treatment for a "dependency on sleep medication". In a 2009 interview with Jonathan Ross, Eminem admitted that at the height of his addiction, he considered suicide, saying that "I just wasn't taking care of myself, at times I wanted to just give it up." He also confirmed that he is now sober, commenting that "Rap was my drug ... Then I had to resort to other things to make me feel that. Now rap's getting me high again."

This is the video for the song Lose Yourself which Eminem released for his film 8 mile:

Artist research - Tom Jones

Tom Jones was born in the small mining village of Trefforest, Pontypridd near Cardiff in Wales on the 7th June 1940. He was born with the name Thomas John Woodward but later decided to use the stage name Jones due to his mothers maiden name and his Welsh nationality.


Tom Jones is a singer but has also been involved in television when he had 2 variety shows. His first was called "This is Tom Jones" which was on air from 1969 until 1971 on ITV in the UK and on ABC in America. His second variety show lasted for a series of 24 episodes which was called "The Tom Jones show". As a singer, Tom Jones has recorded and released songs from a wide range of genres including pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, and techno which has sold over 100 million records.

Tom Jones started off his singing career in the 1960's when he was the front man of the Welsh beat group "Tommy Scott and the Senators". The group was introduced to manager Phil Soloman when they were spotted performing one night locally in Wales but the partnership was unfortunatly short lived. The group continued singing locally in pubs and gentlemens clubs when Tom Jones was spotted one night by Gordon Mills, a London manager.



Many record companies found Jones' stage presence, act, and vocal delivery too raucous and raunchy. Eventually, Mills got Jones a recording contract with Decca. His first single was "Chills and Fever" which was released in 1964. It didn't chart, but the follow-up, "It's Not Unusual", which Gordon Mills wrote, became an international hit. It reached number one in the UK and the top ten in the USA even though the BBC refused to show it and it had to be promoted by a pirate radio station.

In mid 1960s Gordon Mills got Jones a number of film theme tunes such as "Whats new pussy cat?" and "Thunderball" which he recorded. He was then awarded the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1965.

Tom Jones moved to Las Vegas where he started to perform at the Flamingo. This was the start of Jones' recognisable and famous charasmatic performances where the reponses from the crowd were a knicker hurling frenzy. His time in Las Vegas resulted in his meeting of his idol Elvis Presley who he became closer and closer to until his unfortunate death in 1977.

In the 1970s Jones' popularity within his music started to decline and his hits were not reaching chart levels. His friend and manager Gordon Mills sadly died from cancer in 1986 and this led to his son Mark to become his new manager. He saw an oppertunity for his father to regain popularity by changing his genre of music to something more modern and this resulted in hits such as "A Boy From Nowhere" and "If I Only Knew".

Tom Jones carried on recording and performing hits into the 21st century when he was awarded a BRIT for best male in 2000 and then another BRIT award in 2003 for his outstanding contribution to music.



The singer was awarded an OBE in 1999 which was then followed by a knighting from the Queen in 2006 for his services to music.








Tom Jones is still blooming in his music career as he performed at the Glastonbury fesitval last year in 2009 and has just announced he will be releasing a new album called "Praise and Blame" on 26th July 2010.



http://www.tomjones.com - this is the offical Tom Jones website where people can look at tour dates, news, photos and buy Tom Jones merchandise.

http://www.myspace.com/tomjones - this is Tom Jones offical MySpace page with all the latest news, videos and interviews.

http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialTomJones - this is the official youtube channel for Tom Jones where there are videos of him in the studio and documenting the making of his new album.


This is my favourite song by Tom Jones "Delilah". I like this song because it tells a story and the music to go with the song creates tension. I have been brought up listening to Tom Jones music and this has been one of my favourite songs from a young age: