History of Artist

The name of our artist is DAZE and his real name has not yet been revealed by the artist. He is 16 years old and is from South East London and still attends secondary school.  

He has always had a deep passion for music and has and still does write lyrics at home in his room and during break, lunch and lessons at school. He has always had aspirations to become a musician and write his own music. After he had produced a few songs he put together an EP and go round shops truing to promote his EP and sell it to shops in order to develop his reputation. 

Despite pushing his music career forward and trying to sell his music to stores, he is a very shy character and is also quite mysterious, an example of this is the fact he has not revealed his name. He has hardly any friends at school and is very much so trying t0 find his place in the world. His core belief is that nothing is perfect and everyone and everything has its imperfections.

Song Choice

After a long discussion with Kallum and Jack, we came to a conclusion to pick Heathens from Twenty One pilots. The genre of the song is rap rock and alternative/indie which was released in 2016 as a part of a soundtrack for the film Suicide Squad. One of the reasons we chose this song is because we felt as if it is suitable for our artist as well as us having a connection with it as well.

Audience Profile

Class feedback on Pitch

Myself, Kaan and Kallum presented our pitch and idea to our classmates and received very useful feedback which we will try to use and take on board in order to make our artist and brand better.

Postive Feedback;

• The song choice
• The artist's background
• The label
• Locations made clear

Constructive Feedback;

• Narrative of video was not made clear
• Our artist's name was unknown
• Too young

Mood Board

                                                          Mood Board

This is our mood board which was designed by myself, Kallum and Jack. We went for a dark colour as it suited the song and the mood. The dark background gives it a moody vibe and we added the name of our artist in purple for it to stand out. The locations of our scenes are also on our mood board as well as some balloons which we will be using throughout our music video.

Feedback

Today the class teacher gave us feedback on our post. I will go through this sheet and improve on my blogs as well as the lay out of it

Daze

Myself, Jack and Kallum sat down to discuss the origin and background of our artist who will feature in our music video, Daze. The background we decided to give our artist was that he is a young boy from South East London who had always had a passion for music since he was young. During his school life he was never popular and didn't really get on with people at all and isolated himself. He had always had an interest in singing but never really told anyone about it, even his parents. He would record his own singles and then put them onto CD's and go around places such as Camden and Central London handing his CD's out to independent music stores trying to promote himself. He originally called himself 'Dizzy' as referring to his state in life, not sure where he is going or what he wants to do and had no real control of his destiny. After some feedback from people in the music stores someone suggested the name 'Daze' and he has stuck with that. One of his singles did very well in music stores and got some attention online and now he is releasing the follow up single 'Heathens'. He is an signed to an independent music label called 'Dirty Hit', artists also signed to this include the 1975.

Genre

What is genre?
Genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music s belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions.

Genre Theory - Daniel Chandler
Genre can provide structure which can allow a great deal of creativity and virtuosity. Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content. Genre provides key elements for an audience to recognise, so that they may further appreciate the variation and originality surrounding the representation of those elements.

Heathens - Twenty One Pilot
The genre for our song is Pop.

Group Discussions

Myself, Jack and Kallum started to discuss what songs we can pick. Our teachers advised us against any recent songs with a music video as she feels that our one would be heavily influenced by it. We originally decided with Logic 1-800 which is a song about mental illness, however, we came to a decision that it will be hard to make a video without being influenced by the video. At last, we decided that we were going to go for "Heathens" by Twenty One Pilot. The tone of this song helped us decide and give us an idea of where we will be filming. We picked locations such as alleyways, tunnels and tube stations. As well as this, we came to a conclusion that Jack will be our performer. We also discussed what the actor will be wearing and came up with something dark as it would suit the tone of the song. Towards the end of the lesson we started our mood board. We finally decided that the stage name for our artist will be called DAZE.

The Culture Industry

Culture Industries was first introduced by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.

Culture industry refers to the standardizations and false-singularity of cultural items, and how these cultural items are regulated.
It says that we, as people, have become standardised because corporations produced standard  product which fit our needs and demands.
So corporations produced our needs, and desires.

If the cultural products lode their sense of meaning and authenticity due to their mass production, so do the individuals who buy them.
We may not realize that each time we buy a new and trendy product, we are merely buying the new trendy "thing" to add to our very own material product of a self. The truth is that we are buying this product because it is frequently publicized through media only to illustrate this materialized commodity of "cool" that everyone must have.
We are truthfully as much of a commodity as the product it self. Regardless, we have a situation where the consumers are being victimized by the producers in that they know what we life and give us what a we want; therefore, we no longer have genuine experiences.

There are many examples of music videos that support Adorno's theory. A popular example is Justin Bieber. He fits into Adorno's and Horkheimers theory as he appeals to a passive audience. He has many catchy songs such as his 2010 hit song "Baby" which used repetitive words through out the chorus. Like wise, his song "Sorry" does the same thing. Justin also has the looks to attract his audience.

However, not all of music artists has been conventional to Horkheimers theory is Ed Sheeran. He is not as looking as Justin Bieber and his early music career wasn't as successful. He became a popular artist through his album which was released in 2011. In this album, Ed Sheeran has many songs such as The A Team and Give Me Love which aren't catchy songs and are particularly slow compared to Justin Bieber.

Post Modernism

What is Post Modern?
Postmodern media rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgements of value are merely taste.
Post modern media rejects the idea that any media product or text is of any greater value than another. All judgements are merely taste. Anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and culture 'eats itself' as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.

Philosophers within the post modern movement.
Baudrillard and Lyotard, both men shared a belief that the idea of truth needs to be 'deconstructed' so that we can challenge the dominant ideas that people claim as truth, which Lyotard describes as 'Grand narratives'

In the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality, removing the illusion that stories, texts or images can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth. So we get the idea that there are always competing versions of the truth and reality, and post modern media products will engage with this idea.

Postmodernism is also said to reflect modern society's feelings of alienation, insecurity and uncertainties concerning identity, history, progress and truth, and the break up of those tradition like religion, the family or, perhaps to a lesser extent, class, which helped identify and shape who we are and our place in the world.

Post Modern as an aesthetic
Hybridity
Hybrid forms are said to level hierarchies of taste. It is said that all distinctions between high culture and popular culture, have gone , or become high culture and popular culture, have gone, or become blurred. Postmodern texts 'Raid the image bank' which is so richly available through video and computer technologies, recycle some old movies and shows on television, the internet etc. Music, film and TV provide excellent examples of these processes.

Bricolage
This is used to refer to the process of adaptation o improvisation where aspects of one style are given quite different meanings when compared with stylistic features from another. Youth subcultural groups such as punks, with their bondage gear and use of swastikas were eclectic as they took clothes associated with different class positions or work functions and converted them into fashion statements 'empty' of their original meanings. A more recent, feminised example would be the combination of Doc Martens and summer dresses worn by girl.