Gabbie Hanna - Music Video

Gabbie Hanna

Gabrielle Jeanette "Gabbie" Hanna was born February 7, 1991. She is an American YouTuber, viner, actress, author, poet, comedian, and singer-songwriter.

Her debut single, "Out Loud", was released on September 6, 2017.

Her debut book, Adultolescence, was released on September 19, 2017. 

Hanna is now on a book tour on September 19th-27th in eight locations, including Dallas, Houston and New York City. 

The single "Out Loud" was inspired by the poetry in Adultolescence. In its first 24 hours on YouTube, the "Out Loud" lyric video collected 1.8 million views. The single made it all the way up to #3 on the US iTunes charts. After this success of Out Loud, Hanna confirmed she will be releasing an album.

Marketing an image

Spice Girls and Katy Perry

Spice girls & Katy Perry

In the mid 90s, family management team Bob Herbert, Chris Herbert and Lindsey Casbon set about creating a girl group to compete with popular boy bands that dominated the pop music scene in the mid to late-1990s. 




Selling the 'Spice Girls'

The Spice Girls were sold to us as a group of friends, just goofing off and making top-selling singles
together.

They were actually a carefully selected group of strangers chosen, after hundreds of auditions.

They had endless merchandising and sponsorship deals, and were involved with everything from
Pepsi ads to Polaroid ads to Barbie-style Spice Girls dolls.

Everything about them—including their Scary/Posh/Sporty/etc. nicknames was under the control of men or corporations. 

(“Ginger Spice”) almost didn’t make it into the group, because she looked older than the other girls; when they asked her age, she reportedly said, “I’m as old as you want me to be. I’ll be 10 with big boobs if you want.”

Creating a Brand

Often artists/groups are sold as a brand and the music video acts as a product of the brand, in the hope that the audience will be inspired to “buy into the brand”

For some artists the ‘image’ is of greater importance than the quality of the product. The Spice Girls are a good example of this.

Other times it is the song and the meaning of the song that is sold, and the artists ‘image’ has little to do with the sale of the song.



                                                                              

Katy Perry

Katy Perry's Target audience is young girls between the ages of 14 to 17


Katy Perry has to be like an older sister or a friend. She has to reflect some of the anxieties young girls have and be someone young girls can admire and want to be (appear sexy but in a non-threatening way).

How Katy's Personal life affected her brand:

Katy Perry like most artists, used her personal life to create her brand. This began with her relationship and divorce with Russell Brand. Her relationship with him led her astray from what she was trying to show in her music, her image in her music videos, and the lyrics in the songs had changed from sexual but not threatening, to have a lot of sex appeal. It took a few years for Katy to realise what had happened and return to the way she was before. 

2008

One of The Boys Album, released ' Hot n' Cold' - this gave her a brand.



2009

Katy meets Russell Brand, after her controversial hit 'I Kissed a Girl'.

 

2010

Katy gets married to Russell on the 23rd of October, she then releases the songs 'California Gurls' and 'Firework'. California Gurls received a lot of criticism, because it strayed from her previous image that was held up by her younger fans, into a more 'sexy' image. 



2012

Russell Brand gets a divorce with Katy on 30th December, 2011. Katy admits that she has contemplated suicide after the divorce and the affect it had on her.

2013

The songs 'Wide Awake' and 'Roar' were released following the controversy. These singles show her previous image returning. They show her gaining back her 'girl' power. And how her new image is built from the pain of the divorce.  

                                                                                                   

Katy's latest album 'Witness' and the newest single Swish Swish, were built from the original comical image of Katy Perry. They have her acting as a character much like in the earlier videos, 'Hot n' Cold' and 'T.G.I.F'. 

She has let go of the previous image that Russell had her create. She uses references of Russell in most of her songs after the divorce and uses the humour of it to move on from him. 

Andrew Goodwin

Purpose of Music Videos

Record Companies and Organic and Synthetic Music

History of The Music Video

Styles of Music Video

Styles of Music Video

There are many different types of music videos that are currently popular withing the industry;

Performance based - The Killers - Mr. Brightside




Performance based music videos are when the video is of a concert or some sort of act of the song.



Narrative Based - Eminem ft. Rihanna - Love the Way You Lie



A narrative in a music video is where the video has a storyline and has a story behind it, for my example i'm using 'Love the way you lie' by Eminem and Rihanna. in this music video it shows the breakdown of a relationship


Abstract/Concept - The Strokes - You Live Only Once


An abstract music video's main purpose is to create a feeling or mood in an artistic way.

As live/In Concert - Oasis - Let There Be Love


These type of videos show a montage of the artists performing at a concerts.

Intertextual - Katy Perry - Roar



This music video is intertextual because it makes references to old jungle movies. Intertextaul music videos focus on creating references to any kind of media text via another media text.

Pastiche - Foo Fighters - Walk

 

A pastiche is where the music video is dependant on a different media product. They create a parody of the media product and without the official media product then the music video would have nothing to compare to. For example in the music video 'Walk' by the Foo Fighters, this music video is where they depend on the film 'Falling Down' which is about a man who has a mental breakdown whilst sat in traffic.

Animation (Stop motion or Digital) - Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer



Stop motion is a technique when the camera is repeatedly stopped and started  to give animated figures the impression of movement. Digital animation is the process used to generate animated images.

Gabbie Hanna - The Pitch

Album Art Exercise

Album Cover Exercise

The following exercise, was done to prepare for the digipak and magazine advert, that goes along with the music video. This exercise was completed on Adobe Photoshop, which was a new experience for me as i have never used the programme before.

The task overall taught me many new skills - and allowed me to have a go at creating this part of the portfolio. Layering was the first key skill. In order to get to the final product, different layers of text and images had to be placed down - all in separate layers to create one final piece. 

The indie band photo was heavily edited, the use of the "curves" function on the background, and this set the over alarm aesthetic for the album cover. The picture is seen to dip in and out of contrast - and is also backed by a filter that makes the picture look like its presented through a static screen on a TV.  I think that this was the most effective cover as it fit the general tone and style of an indie band.

I then did an album cover for a girl band where i used layering. I also used a feature on the programme which focuses light on one area of the image, i used that to focus on the girls in the middle. I also brightened the image to reflect a happy tone and it compliments the way the girls are positioned.

Finally for the solo artist cover I used specific text to highlight the contrast of the artist and background. This allowed me to express more creatively, a personal interpretation of how I viewed the artist. I gave the image a black and white filter, which contrasts how the singer is feeling in the image. The way the light is focused on the corner of the image bring attention to the the title and the fact that it is just under the artist, shows focus on them.

Case Study: Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters is an American rock band, which formed in Seattle, Washington in 1994. They got their name from the UFOs and various phenomena that were reported by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II, which were collectively called "Foo Fighters". They were founded by Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl as a one-man project following the break up of Nirvana after the death of Kurt Cobain. 

Nate Mendel

William Goldsmith

Prior to the release of Foo Fighters' 1995 debut album Foo Fighters, which featured Grohl as the only official member, Grohl recruited bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith. 






"Best Of You"

This music video is performance based and is edited as a montage. 
The video portrays 'life in a nutshell' and how it can go from being chaotic, the car crashing and the rose dying, to all the happy things like the child being born and the couple in bed.  Andrew Goodwin's idea about how some videos either "Illustrate, Amplify or Ignore" the lyrics of the song is shown here. This video amplifies the lyrics of the song. 

 
"Long Road To Ruin"

This music video is mainly narrative based but it has elements of intertextual, parody and performance based music videos. The main narrative of the video is, a TV show and behind the scenes the cast doesn't like one of the actors. That actor the quits the show and starts a music band. As he is doing all this he is trying to impress this one girl who doesn't like how hes using popularity to impress her. The things happening in the video illustrate the song. The title of the song is "Long Road To Ruin" , and he is literally driving a car in the video and all the other scenes of the video is how he ends up ruining his life and a relationship and right at the end he drives the car off a cliff.



"Run"

This video is performance and narrative based. It's illustrating the lyrics of the video by showing the viewers that when you get old you should live the rest of you days to the limit, not sit in a care home and slowly die. They aim to show that they should be enjoying their last moments. They use role reversal near the end of the video where these old people attack a bunch of teenagers and steal their car, usually it would be the teenagers harassing the elder. This video also makes a reference to Michael Jackson's song 'Thriller' with the small dance sequence at the end of the video where they act and dance like zombies, similar to 'Thriller'.




"The Pretender" 

"The Pretender" is a performance based music video, which shows signs of conflict in society, as they had a group of police officers dressed in riot gear. 
This video could also be showing someone finding it hard to be understood by everyone else as he sings "what if i say i'm not like the others". 




                                                                                         

Foo Fighters' music videos create discussion and instead of being straight forward and illustrative they make you question and think deeper about the video and the lyrics. Andrew Goodwin said that different sub-genres have certain characteristics. For example, boy bands such as One Direction and The Wanted most of the time have some sort of dance routine in their music video. For rock bands their videos are almost all the time performance based. Using Foo Fighters as an example we can say that Goodwin was right. The rock band wants their audience to see them as a band.

Shot Variety & Pace (Foo Fighters Animatic)

Foo Fighters - Pretender

Editing to the Beat

Editing to the Beat 

I think i was very successful in editing to the beat, i used markers on the timeline whilst editing. These markers helped me successfully cut footage to the beat.
To improve i should use special effects and add split screen. These techniques would be used in most real music videos to be able to demonstrate the pace of the music and to intrigue the viewer. 

ABBA Music Video Remake & Evaluation

ABBA

For this exercise we had to recreate an ABBA music video using all the same shots and angles. 
I think that we were successful at remaking this video, as we made sure that the lip syncing was on time. Also, i think we were successful because we rehearsed the choreographed sequence many times to make sure we were on time and in sync to the original music. I think to improve we should focus on staying in character and not laughing whilst shooting. Overall, our video is quite similar to the original which we are very proud.