Company Logo

 Here is my company logo/title that I created using Photoshop CC over a period of time. The companies name is now therefore "Throne Cinema" and the cuts in the font are meant to resemble sword marks to add greater depth to the image.

To create the finished product it involved isolating and selecting each individual letter and cutting them, placing them back together and eventually grouping them into one layer. 

The background for the image was created by a close up photograph that I took of a piece of scrunched up paper. I then edited the colour schemes and levels, highlighted the shadows in a program called "Lightrrom 5.3" which allowed me to give the effect of a stone background. 

Laura Mulvey's "Male Gaze" Theory- Textual Analysis

'The Male Gaze' theory was developed in 1975 by Laura Mulvey in her work "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" she outlined the various ways in which the male gaze works in media texts. The concept of the gaze is how people are presented to the audience. From a feminists perspective this can be viewed in 3 different ways:

1. How men look at women
2. How women look at themselves
3. How women look at each other

The main idea is the representation of women as a sexual fantasy from a heterosexual male point of view.  An example video of this idea portrayed in the real media platforms today is Nicki Minaj's video for her song "Anaconda" on YouTube. 

This is the opening shot to her video, immediately the audience is confronted with the sexualisation of the three women due to their costume and posture and position. This clearly suggests that they are purposefully positioned to make them more appealing to the audience in a sexual fantasy manner which is most likely from a heterosexual males perspective using the Male Gaze theory.

This second medium close up shot shows Nicki Minaj obviously in a provocative position, using the theory it would be stated that she is purely that way due to women being seen as an image and the general objectification of women and their bodies. This statement can be emphasized by the sound itself as the main hook of the song which is from a male who remains unseen throughout the entire video can be linked to the needs of the male ego is: "My anaconda dont... My anaconda dont... My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns hun". Which could also denote the idea that men are the controlling subjects as he is clearly an active male (in the song only, not visually) but he has hierarchy over the passive women in the videos because he is actively choosing and objectifying the females to satisfy the needs of his male ego. This could be further investigated to suggest that the reason the male singing the hook of the song isn't visually seen is because the audience may be in the position of said heterosexual male and they are viewing the video from his perspective.

In this long shot featuring the 5 women being fairly candid in the shot with the mise-en-scene being a plain white background with white chairs adds to the simplicity of the shot, but it also draws the audiences attention purely to the women. Using the theory it would suggest that men (in this case it could be seen as the audience) do the looking and that the women are there to be looked at, which can be reinforced by this particular shot since all the attention is being directed to them.

In this shot, featuring the only male in the video fellow artist Drake, the mise-en-scene still remains simplistic. One factor to focus is the proxemics between Drake and Nicki. Nicki's proxemics in relation to Drake's is much lower as she is seen crawling on the floor towards him. The theory would suggest that Drake is on a higher level to satisfy the needs of the male ego and it allows for the objectification of Nicki due to her costume. It also could suggest that the proxemics are portrayed in that way to show the male as the controlling subject as being higher up will give him more power. The blue lighting has male gender connotations and may have been added to possibly add masculinity to the shot because of the males presence. 

Music Director Research

The role of a music video director is to create the artistic and dramatic aspect of a music video but to also conduct the artist/musicians/actors/models and the tech crew. Music videos can become viral purely because of the music video director if they are very well known.

Successful music video directors include: Hype Williams who directed Daft Punk/ Pharrell's 'Get Lucky', Spike Jonze who directed Kanye Wests 'Flashing Lights' and Adele's "Someone Like You"

Jake Nava (pictured above) is an English music video and film director. His clients for music videos include: Britney Spears, Beyonce, Pink, Usher, Destiny's Child, Artic Monkey's and many more artists. 

Arguably one of Jake's most famous projects is Beyonce's "Single Ladies", the video was successful on a world wide scale and gained millions of views on different platforms and has been considered an iconic/classic music video. The video features Beyonce and 2 backing dancers using a plain black and white background which was inspired by Bob Fosse who choreographed  a performance by Gwen Verdon in "Mexican Breakfast". The video for "Single Ladies" was shot alongside another single called "If I Were A Boy" by the same artist and Jake Nava. Both videos are completely in black and white and Jake Nava stated that this was inspired by a vogue shoot, which is an example of a repeated motif seen in his work. 

Here is the link for Beyonce's "Single Ladies" music video where you can see his work: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY

Here is the link for Beyonce's "If I Were A Boy" video where the obvious comparison of similar colour effects can be seen: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWpsOqh8q0M

Significant CD Covers

CD covers were once absolutely critical in relation to the sales for a particular artist. The cover allowed the artist/band to express themselves and their music in another artistic fashion for a multitude of reasons. Those reasons may have included: self expression, the attraction of a larger audience, to form a theme with previous releases but mainly it was to visually recreate what the audience may have expected to hear on the CD itself. In some cases artists did the opposite which may seem fairly abstract however it still typically represented the music genre as niche or abstract itself. Ultimately, what defines a CD cover as a classic is subjective opinions of the audience, however objective methods such as statistics involving sales can be used to reinforce the subjectivity.

An example of what may be considered a classic CD cover in mine and many other opinions is Nirvana's 'Nevermind'. Nevermind is the second studio album released by Nirvana in 1991, the album has sold over 30 million copies world wide which shows obvious success. The album cover is abstract and some may even consider it crude, but even today people will easily identify the artist and the album if it didn't have the logo in the lower left corner and that's essentially why it can be considered a classic, because its become timeless.

Another example of an incredibly famous album cover is Pink Floyd's ' The dark side of the moon'. This shows that an album cover alone can set an artist apart from the rest and become instantly recognisable.

Significant Music Videos

There are various different factors which can determine whether a music video can be considered a 'classic' including: the playtime it receives on television, the sales of that particular song, the artist themselves or the director of the video. However the main deciding factor is personal preference of the audience and the prevailing opinion of the individual.

Different sources of music reviews and critics etc have created numerous amounts of lists of what they believe is the best collection of music videos and CD covers in existence, these lists can and do vary greatly. For example the NME have provided their own list of what they think is the best 100 music videos of all time.

An example of a 'classic' music video due to the content and the artist, which received a huge amount of play time and millions of hits online would be Micheal Jackson's 'Thriller' released in 1983. In 2006 Guinness World Records listed it as the "most successful music video" due to it selling over 9 million copies. The video on YouTube currently has 194,676,565 views on the website.



A 'classic' music video appears to generally refer to a music video created previously that still remains popular in current genres/sources of viewing the video and may be considered "mainstream" music, however ultimately it is a subjective approach that defines 'classic' music videos.

Views/hits/playtime are a key component in what makes a video a classic. An example of this would be Psy's 'Gangnam style'. This was released on the 15th of July in 2012 and in 2 years it has accumulated 2,087,878,242 views and was the most watched video on YouTube for a huge amount of time.

Since this mainly involves subjective methods although statistics like sales and views etc one video that I would consider a 'classic' is Green Day's 'American Idiot'. The song was released with the album on the 20th of September 2004, but the video was uploaded on the 21st of August 2012 and since then has received over 16 million views.

In some instances, the simplicity of a video which still remains powerful in some form can be considered a classic. An example of this is Beyonce's 'Single ladies' where the choreography is the main focus of the video, which currently has over 320 million views on YouTube.

Practice Music Video

Here is my groups practice A2 music video: 'Wastelands' by Linkin Park. This was created by myself, Jack and Tom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWvWbvtSAZ8&list=UUht5fxUjha19_XNfG0mi2EA