Social Media research

 This post was constructed by me (Jason) and Baron, we worked together on a google docs during class to construct this. I wrote the research on Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Luis Fonsi

✨✨✨✨✨✨DRAKE  💅 💅 💅 💅 💅

 ✨💅Drake’s 💅✨ IG account is very simple, is only has one highlight, and posts which don’t have much going on. I feel like Drake is a bit of an outlier, he posts whatever he wants, showing his everyday life. This is in contrast to what we had in mind of artists’ social media posts featuring things like tour dates. He does have them, just not as much as other artists, where their posts are almost strictly business related. It paints a picture of Drake as a laid back, chill, down to earth dude.

Justin Bieber

When we open his IG page, we notice that his profile picture is not of himself but of a doll. We could perhaps do this if we want our star to fit more of a soft-boy image. Near the top there are a lot of collaboration posts with ADIDAS and the NFL. We could perhaps replicate some sort of brand synergy with our artist to make it more realistic. He also humanises himself by posting himself with family and friends doing regular hobbies such as golf. I think it should be important to humanise our star as well as their character would be more relatable to the average person

His highlighted story was of his newest album. I think this is a good idea as the posts about the new album might be drowned out by other post about collaborations and other things. I think we should be able to do this for the tour dates as well.

Ariana Grande

One noticeable thing about Ariana is how she saves almost every single one of her stories as a highlight, which means that there is a lot of them. She announced her new album using a promotional teaser video which I think was unique. It will be a good idea for us to make but it would take a long time to make and I do not think that we have the time to do so. She sticks to very tame pastel-like colours unlike justin bieber, this makes her page seem a lot more neat in my opinion and we should stick to this.

RITA ORA

Rita Ora’s IG has a more equal mix of business and personal content compared to daddy  ✨💅Drake’s 💅✨social media

Luis Fonsi

Luis Fonsi’s instagram, when it comes to promotional material, keeps a set colour scheme whereas the other posts about his life remain colourful. I think that this is the best combination possible as it would keep things looking professional while still humanising Luis Fonsi. I think we should take random pictures of our star doing mundane activities such as going to the market or hanging out with friends 

This especially helps as I am not a person who is very familiar with social media.

Contacting the record label to get permission

 

The song we chose was "Out of Time" by the Weeknd. He is signed to Republic Records which is a subdivision of Universal Music Group. Today I will attempt to obtain permission to use their song

the frontpage of their website

I went onto their website where I could not find any option to contact them nor any email which I could send my requests to. The only resemblance to a contact was only used by their merch store which in this case would be irrelevant for us.

With that I attempted to contact their parent company instead which was Universal Music Group. Over there, I found it after some searching.

the FAQ page on UMG's website

Because we were in Indonesia, it redirected us to the Universal Music Group Indonesia's Instagram page. Unfortunately it was a dead end. 

The link on their IG page leads to here, where there was no option to contact them. I will try to find another way tomorrow

Media Language: How is a "star" represented?

Kurt Cobain, a very big star of his time

The music industry has given birth to a vast amount of household names and stars. In this blog, I will make an attempt to identify how directors help turn people in stars and how they show it in music videos. I will select some stars from various genres just to get an idea of it.

1. Hayley Williams of Paramore (Pop Punk)

These screenshots were taken from their music video for their song "Decode"

Hayley Williams is recognizable, especially due to her uniquely died hair color which was a rarity in the music world at the time. I could also note the use

It also occurred to me that most stars are in fact singers. While Hayley Williams sings in her music video with eye contact, she does this many times throughout the music video.

I also noticed how she is positioned in the center and at the front of the band's formation. Her costume is also brighter and a tad bit more flashy than the others. This may have been intentional by the directors in order to make her more noticeable in the music video and to keep people's attention towards her.

She is the only band member to be given closeups like these, she also possesses the highest screen time throughout the video. It is as if you have to treat your stars with a certain "favoritism" over their peers or musicians. I believe its not a coincidence that she is directly in the center of the screen, she is supposed to be the "center of attention" for the band.

This treatment can be seen on other stars within the same genre:

Tom Delonge in the centre of the band (Blink-182)

He is also treated as if he was the director's "favorite"

2. Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit (Nu Metal)

These screenshots were taken from their music video for their song "Rollin'(Air Raid Vehicle)"

Fred Durst, just like Haley, is very recognizable. He is recognized by his white shirt and backwards MLB cap that he wears in his music videos. In this music video, he is the only band member involved in the b-roll footage

This music video also contains an iconic dance move which only Fred Durst does throughout the video. There are also similarly dressed dancers in the backgrounds. This dance move has been widely used in several memes I have seen on the internet. I believe it might be beneficial for our music video if we have the star do a dance move for it.

He is also given a special stage in which only he performs in during the music video. Once again this for sure to divert attention towards the star. I also notice that while performing it is important to maintain eye contact with the camera.

3. Drake-Solo (Hip Hop)

As a soloist, there is no need to differentiate Drake from a band, but he still needs to be noticeable. This could clearly be seen as his costume contrasts heavily with the background. This tells me that we should consider the backdrop of each location to come up with an optimum costume for the star and supporting casts.

Although having the artist's names in the music video is not something I would think of, I think that it would be a good idea to create the artist's brand. I think I can bring this up to the group when making the storyboard. I believe that we should do this in post production

Drake, while performing, has a lot of exaggerated dance moves and expressions. It makes him seem more active on screen, acquiring more attention. I think we need to choose a star that is expressive so that we can get a performance similar to this

Drake dances some strange moves throughout the video, which in my opinion makes the video a lot more interesting. Choreographing some random dances would be fine but I think it would be a little much as the song we choose is a bit more downtempo. It should be noted that one of his random dances became an internet meme. If we could do the same, it would boost the traffic and success of our star much further.