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.