Music Campaign: Loyle Carner

A promotional music campaign is a group of different products which all come together and released at once to advertise an artist or band.

A campaign should make it clear of the genre of the band, it should have some form of branding of the artist, the specific audience should be made very clear e.g. younger audience of teenage girls and also it should give some form of social media to be able to follow the artist life as this will create a stronger fan base.

The artist which I am going to analyse is Loyle Carner, he's a 24 year old artist. Loyle Carner's music is chilled Rap/ hip hop. His style of music is very different to most rap artists, his songs feel like poetry and a few poems feature on his new album "not waving, but drowning"

I feel his target audience is males aged 16-22, however he appeals to all age groups as all of his songs are very different to each other. His persona which he gives off seems very relaxed and laid back which I feel lots of people can relate to especially teenagers. Loyle Carner also does cooking courses for children with ADHD, this is obviously a USP as very few artists would interact and commit a week to spending it with their fans.

Loyle Carner website is very simple and easy to use, it simply shows his recent album and the songs which are in the album, he also shows recent tour dates and finally merchandise which you can buy promoting his recent album.

Loyle's  album cover is the same image which is used for the background of his website and the image directly links to the name of the album. The image is very simple but yet very affective, from this cover we can tell that Loyle Carner isn't trying to show off his image as you can hardly see his face, suggesting people listen to him purely for his music not for what he looks like.

His music video for one of the songs on the album is very relaxed, the song doesn't relate to the video. This video doesn't really relate to the album cover which the website does relate to.

Loyle Carner is very passionate about cooking as well as spreading awareness of ADHD which he openly speaks about and that he has it and struggled in school from it, many teenagers can relate to this which can strengthen his fanbase and also maybe attract a larger audience.

This is America Evaluation

The beginning of this is America starts with a clip of a African American man playing the guitar, Childish Gambino is seen standing in the background of the clip. The music behind this is very uplifting and doesn't follow the generic speed of rap and the video at this point doesn't follow the typical representation of a rap video. Childish Gambino in some ways follows the representations of a rapper with the gold necklaces and shirtless but in general he doesn't fit the typical image as he's wearing no designer brands, smart shoes and smart trousers.

The music then has a sudden change of beat and sounds like a different song which at this point it seems as if childish Gambino personality switches as he pulls out a gun and shoots the guitarist in the head. When the shot returns to the guitarist before he is shot, he suddenly has a bag covering his head and looks very dirty. The very quick removal of the gun into a cloth and the removal of the body I feel represents how easy it is to cover up crimes in America. The video has lots of meaning which can be taken in many different ways but I felt this part of the clip is showing that innocent people are being killed over nothing due to the availability of guns which leads to violence.

The next scene of the school children wearing their uniforms who seem very innocent but not far behind them is another group of school children jumping on top of a car spraying money with a money gun and then slightly behind them is what looks like a riot or a gang fight. I feel that this is representing that for African American kids in America, it is so easy to be pulled into a life of crime and violence and that the three stages of different groups behind each other shows how easy it is to be  pulled into the last group.

The very quick change of scene to a black choir group singing comes on when the beat of the song slows down again and becomes less aggressive. The song then returns to being a quicker beat and more aggressive and at this point childish Gambino pulls out a machine gun and shoots all of the choir. This is a very unusual clip to see in any genre of music video, but as the video came out shortly after a choir shooting in America I feel it has a strong link to that and its addressing the gun problem in America showing the true brutality of it as many rappers will glorify guns in music videos, childish Gambino is identifying this problem and showing how deadly guns are in America.

The next clip brings the school children and this time they are completely surrounded by fighting and rioting and police cars. I feel this is a strong message showing that young black children are constantly surrounded by violence and that it can be so hard to stay out of it.

The scene then follows on to school children filming from above on there phones with masks omn to cover there faces, this could be suggesting that social media is part of the problem and that violence and the "gang life" is glorified by many in America and that this is part of the problem of gun crime.

The last scene is very different as the music then goes back to a slower beat and the guitarist from the beginning is back, but his face is covered here. Childish Gambino then walks past with a large joint in his hand and jumps onto a car. The video then ends with the camera going into the distance with Childish Gambino continue to dance on the car.

I feel that this video has many different themes and that they can be taken in many very different ways. I believe that in general the video is going against the stereotypical rap video and is actually criticising what is going wrong and why its going wrong. The video doesn't follow very many typical stereotypes of a rap video as the guns in the video are almost shown in a negative light as it shows them being used. The location of the video is very different to most rap videos swell staying in one large warehouse with no designer brands in sight.

Andrew Goodwin: structure of music Video

Andrew Goodwin believes that the usual narrative analyses don't apply to pop music and that pop videos approach the narrative from a different angle.
Pop videos are often based around the song and songs will usually not follow a traditional narrative structure. The main singer or artist in a pop video is the main narrator and is a character.
The singer will always make eye contact with the camera.
There are three types of relationships between the song and video.

Illustration which is where the video tells are certain story which includes the lyric into the story and the story is based off the meaning of the song.

Amplification is when the video highlights the meaning of the lyrics to show a deeper meaning of the song.

Disjuncture is when the lyrics have very little meaning to what the video is, in some cases the video might even contradict the lyrics.

Star Theory: Richard Dyer

The star as a construction
- Richard said that the star is not a real person and doesn't portray their real image. 
- A good example of this is Miley Cyrus who has changed and gone against her typical representation of her past image of Hannah Montana. 

 












The star As a Commodity
-The image of the star is created often to sell products e.g. t-shirts and posters. 
-Record labels will follow similar trends of past successful bands and they will follow the pattern.
- That is why so many boy bands are around. 

The star as an ideology 
-This is what the artist has been set to believe in, or what they represent. This allows them to build a larger fan base and also makes them seem as a role model. 
-Representing a particular group, religion or belief can build more support for that group.
-The fans will likely copy there views. 
- A good example is Kendrick Lamar standing for black lives matter. 

Dyer believes that the star image is incomplete and that its based around two separate paradox's.

-The first paradox is that the star has to be a normal person so the audience can relate to them in some particular way. However they also are amazing in some way holding a strong talent.
-A very good example is Ed Sheeran as he makes it very clear that he's just a regular guy who likes to sing. 

-The second paradox is that the artist is constantly there in someway shape or from this being through social media, posters or media. Even though you will probably never meet them you are so formal with them, in a way they aren't actually there. 
-This is shown with artists like Justin Bieber who many people would have his face constantly in their life and know so much about him but yet never met him and have no relationship with them. 

Keith Negus- Organic vs Synthetic

Keith Negus- Producing pop
-two very clear ways of thinking about potential artists in the music industry.
-These ideologies shape the way in which the artists images and careers are developed and the way that they are marketed towards specific target audiences.

The organic ideology is seen as natural, it's giving this naturalistic approach where the artist or band is already formed and they are in control. The record label will enlarge the artists image but they're image will already be created. A good example is Ed Sheeran, Eminem or Red Hot Chilly Peppers.
It's a long term strategy as they are seen as truly talented and they aren't forced to write a certain amount of songs or go on tour every year as they are seen to last.

The synthetic Ideology is executives who try to make a successful persona out of the artist or band and they have songs at their disposal.
The artist is a commodity here as their image is created by the company and its very fake often given the opportunity from looks. They generally have a much shorter time to be successful.
The first year of their career is very important as this is done for promotion and if they are not successful they are often dropped from the record company. Typically they attract much younger audiences. A good example is One Direction who started as five single artist who were placed together  as a band.

Record labels will often want and try to sign a mixture of the two ideologies. Its important for them that they have a constant flow of money coming in which is part of the synthetic ideology but then they will also want a long term artist who will bring lots of money in over time and also grow over time which is from organic ideology.

Photoshop workshop

On Tuesday we had our first Photoshop workshop with Matt, I've always been very interested in Photoshop as I have always wanted to make my own designs, but had never been able to use it as it is expensive to buy and complicated at first to use. So for me I was entering this a complete novice. 

These workshops are for the A2 year are where we are going to make a music video, then the use of Photoshop will come in when we our designing an album cover. So in this workshop we used Adobe Photoshop 64. Matt firstly showed us the dimensions we should always use for making the album cover being 12cm X 12cm. The resolution which we were to use is 300 pixel/Inch. 
From here Matt told us to find a picture of absolutely anyone, I chose Michael Jackson.  We were then to save the image to the computer and open the image into Photoshop. 

Our objective was to remove the background of the image we selected using the Lasso tool. Matt told us a tip to hold command down while cutting around the image as this allowed you to be very precise. We then went to find another image to use as a background image, I chose an image of a group of children. We then opened the image into Photoshop the same as before, and it adds a page in Photoshop were I removed the background the same as before. 

We then went on and copied the image and placed it into the image which we firstly cropped. This sent the first image behind and it seemed to disappear.  Matt told me to scale the image to the frame, this sent the image back. From here I wanted my first image to be in front of the children. To do this Matt told me to drag the initial slide below the second slide which brought the image of Michael to the front. To make the two photos blend more so they don't look out of place we were told to go to image adjustment and we could change the saturation here. 

When you are finished with the work you can save it as a JPEG but this means you can't make any changes, I chose to just save it as I still wanted to add more.