Lip-Syncing Exercise: Clean Bandit - Rather Be

Lip-syncing is something that is essential in every music video but is actually one of the hardest jobs throughout the whole shoot day. It requires not only precision but confidence in yourself and your performance in order to convey the style and genre of the song.

Picking someone to lip-sync to any song is a difficult choice so we decided to do a 'tester day' in order to find out who had the right confidence and skills to pull off a long tiring day of lip-syncing and who would be ideal to pick for when we actually get round to choosing a song and lead singer.

On the shoot day, we had three cameras all in different positions: a tracking camera, a camera in front of a green screen and a low shot in front of a sofa. This made us use all of our different skills and also let us start to get used to the camera on tracks which is commonly used in music videos.

Here are some pictures of my friends Katie and Lulu performing in front of the cameras:

We all had to get in front of the camera and have a go at lip-syncing whilst the song was played through a speaker in the recording studio. We used an electric version of a clapperboard by using our teacher's iPad which also helped with setting and linking the times in unison when we were editing. It was helpful to have the start time on screen as this helped us get started in the editing process as we could link the time on the screen to the time on the editing bar. When we had shots without the clapperboard in, we used a significant moment in the song (in our case, a big bass drum noise) to sync everything together. It is useful to know how to edit things like this for when we start our own music videos for the A2 course.

Here is our finished video:



Overall, I felt the task was fairly successful as we learnt all of the basics for when we film and edit our own music video in the next academic year. I am also actually quite proud of everyone in my video and will be using them for my official video next year.

Analysis of Album Covers: Jessie J

Jessie J is a very popular artist in the current pop music industry. This album was released around five years ago. It is obvious that Jessie J and her management want to present her as edgy and slightly 'dark' due to the dark nails, dark lips and dark eye make up. This star image would stereotypically appeal to the 'goth' audience but actually appealed to a much wider audience due to how unique she was.

In this picture on her album cover, she is not smiling and therefore does not present a 'clean-cut' star image. This appeals to the teenage audience as she is seen as rebellious, like a modern day Joan Jett with a present day twist by using the gold writing and jewellery.

The key theme of black and gold in this album cover is reflected in most of her live performances and music videos and presents a 'chav-like' image, hereby appealing to this type of audience. This image makes Jessie J more relatable to younger and more common audiences. 

Jessie J is made to look quite young in this album cover which is also another factor that appeals to a wide audience. This album cover suggests Jessie J is quite synthetic and stylised and hints that the songs on the album are quite 'dancey' and upbeat.

However, in opposition to this album cover, around five years after she released this album, her second album cover looked like this:

This picture for the cover of her album 'Alive' shows a very different star image for Jessie J. Not only is there hardly any back and gold, there is very minimal colour at all. Although Jessie J was doing very well in the music industry, she and her management decided to shave her head for Children in Need which makes her target audience 'fall in love' with her even more as she is shown as kind and selfless. 

In this album cover, she also looks a lot older and seems to have 'settled' into the music industry as a well-established artist. She has such a large fan base that she is comfortable with changing her star image completely and still retaining her wide audience. 

Unlike the first album, Jessie J gives off the impression as a raw and organic artist due to the bare skin and fairly basic make up and no lipstick. The change in font between the two albums is also very drastic as in the first one it is gold and looks almost like a gold chain with her name on which is stereotypical of dance and R&B artists. However, the font on this cover is very swirly in a basic colour which adheres to the image she is presenting about being 'authentic' and 'raw.' 

Overall, these two albums cover suggest that although star image is very important   when you are starting out, it is affordable to change your image to suit the music you are making when you already have such a wide fan base.

Analysis of Music Videos: Stan - Eminem

This video for the song/rap written by Eminem called 'Stan' follows a strong narrative storyline which was actually based on a true story that impacted Eminem's life enough to make him write this song about it.

This video shows a clear star image of Eminem being adored and admired by a fan who does everything just so he can look like him or feel like he is doing his utmost to admire his image such as tattoo the name 'Slim Shady' on his chest. Because we see this fan go completely mentally and physically 'crazy', this shows that the star image being portrayed to him is so 'good', if not 'too good', as the fan loses his mental health and the love for his girlfriend over the love he has for Eminem.

This narrative video adheres to the typical 'story' in similarity to a fairy tale, with a beginning, a middle and an end. At the beginning, there is equilibrium and that is shattered by the fact 'Stan's' girlfriend is unhappy with the way she in being treated. Throughout the piece, as his girlfriend gets more and more unhappy and he becomes more and more mentally unstable, there is un-equilibrium. And finally, to complete the 'story' there is the resolution (the ending) which in this case is not a happy solution but it is a resolution to all the suffering and pain this man felt, as he kills himself. This makes Eminem feel awful about not replying sooner though so it could mean that the situation is not entirely resolved but just passed on to another person i.e Eminem.

We see iconography being used in this by seeing the posters of Eminem all over the fan's basement walls. This actually shows that Eminem's production company/management and Eminem himself do not think highly of fan 'obsessing' over him as it can have disastrous consequences, like is shown in this video when the obsessed fan kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving off a bridge when Eminem does not reply soon enough to his message.

The fact that Eminem himself is not in the video questions the reason why Dido (the featuring artist) is in the video, playing the pregnant girlfriend. This suggests that they did not want the video to completely tell a story throughout with no lip-synching as it is quite a heavy topic, so they made Dido a character in order to break apart the narrative from the song.

This video is very unlike any of Eminem's newer videos which suggests that his star image has changed from being 'thoughtful' and an independent artist to a more mainstream and 'wide-audience-appealing' artist with songs like Love The Way You Lie FT Rihanna. However, this video has a massive impacted on the audience as it tells such a sad story, hereby making sales of the record higher as it appeals to a wide marketing audience.

Media Theorists: Richard Dyer