From youtube.com, Posted by kellyclarkson

Kelly Clarkson Because Of You from the album Because Of You
(C) 2005 19 Recordings Limited

“Because of You” is a narrative video, intercut with performance shots where the artist sings to the camera, breaking the fourth wall. The focus of the video is the artist, shown through medium close ups and close ups of her throughout the video. She is rarely not in a shot. Within the narrative, there is continuity editing to create the story. Montage editing is used in the performance shots, which are random and do not need to make sense. These elements, intertwined, make the video surreal. This convention for music videos means they do not entirely need to make sense. As with this video, shots are edited to the pace and beat of the song, with long shots for slow music and short, jump cut shots for fast paced music. The shots range from wide to extreme close up, depending on the action. Close ups and extreme close ups are used mainly to focus on the artist. The lighting reflects the mood and setting of the song, with present day scenes in a dim, underexposed lighting and flashback scenes overexposed to create a dream-like state. Stereotypical representations are created through mise-en-scene as the flashback characters are recognisable as people in a broken, dysfunctional family. The modern family represent a part of the dysfunctional family, but also show love towards each other. These features are seen through figure expression and performance. Other mise-en-scene to show this is costume, the flashback mother in her nightwear and dressing gown, too exhausted to change, and props, the flashback father is portrayed as distant as he fails to look at his daughter’s drawing, instead concentrating on his phone call. There are also special effects used, like slow motion, to build up dramatic tension.

I will draw inspiration from this video as I need to keep within the same conventions as used for this artist. These conventions include, main focus on the artist, the use of narrative and performance styles and editing to the pace of the music.

Breakaway (album, 2004); Behind These Hazel Eyes; Because of You; Walk Away

My December (album, 2007); Never Again; Sober; One Minute

All I Ever Wanted (album, 2009); My Life Would Suck Without You; I Do Not Hook Up; Already Gone

It is very obvious that the style approach was chosen to bring the album and the single covers together. Each single from a particular album has the same distinct style. For the singles off the album “Breakaway”, “Kelly Clarkson” is in block capitals on a black background, with the title scrawled underneath in a sort of handwritten effect. There is very minimal dark colours, emphasizing her. The style for “My December” album and its singles is very different, but follows the same convention of being alike in their own right. A worn, urban and derelict look. The cohesive look is followed through in Kelly Clarkson’s new album “All I Ever Wanted” as well, with a very “bubblegum-pop” style of bright colours, perfect hair and sparkling objects.

As the song I am using, “Addicted”, is from the “Breakaway” album, my cover has to be in the style of this album and it’s singles.

To establish my target audience, my first port of call is the Kelly Clarkson website. On doing so, I found that there are two membership options, one for her fan club, costing $29.99 to join and one that is free, in which you can just access the forums. This suggests that her fans must be dedicated to pay for membership to her site. After signing up to the free membership, I looked through the members list to see if I could find out information on the users of this website (interests, location, age…), but there was little evidence of any.
As this bore little luck, I decided to use Quantcast, an online serch engine designed to find out the demographics of people using particular websites.

Another fan site, kckellyville.com, also showed a pretty even split of 51% male 49% female. 70% of the site is used by 13-34 year olds (34% 13-17; 36% 18-34).  77% of the users are caucasian and 52% are in education.

From all this information gathered, I have a very strong idea of who my target audience is 13-34 yr old white male and females (they are very close in range), possibly in education. This is actually evident on Kelly Clarkson’s Myspace page where her friends fit into the demographic for this audience.

I have put the questionnaire on social networking site Facebook, to gain sufficient responses for my research. I also asked people face-to-face, which helps give a sense of what they mean/feel about the artist.

The Questions with a selction of answers:

What genre of music do you listen to?

“anything and everything”; “rock, mainly”; “a bit of everything”; “stuff on Capital (radio station)”; “chart music”

What artists within the pop genre do you like?

sugababes; girls aloud; pixie lott; kelly clarkson; britney spears; christina aguilera; beyonce

What do you like about them?

style; music; videos; their personality

How important is their image in videos and on CD covers? Why?

“in pop they have to have a clean image”; “i don’t think it’s that important cos its their music what counts”; “i think it is because they become fashion icons as well”

What do you like/dislike about the image of Kelly Clarkson?

“no preference”; “i think she’s in-fashion and stylish”; “i don’t know”; “i don’t think she’s that fashion conscious, maybe classic looking”

Do you prefer a narrative music video or performance style video?

“narrative”; “can you have a bit of both?”; “narative probably, i like stories being told”

What would you like to see on the website for a recording artist?

pictures; backstage; music; lyrics; tour dates/events

From the answers gathered from my questionnaire, the majority of people listen to various types of music, which I think fits Kelly Clarkson as, although she is typecast as “pop”, she sings soul and rock as well. She held among other respected successful female solo artists.

The majority of audiences prefer narrative music videos, or videos with a bit of both narrative and performance style and consider image an important part of a pop artists style. They don’t see Kelly Clarkson as mush of a style icon, but being in the music industry, image is still a conscious thing.

as for the website, I will try and incorporate all the points made about what would like to be seen on a website, however, these may not be apparent on the homepage. Such items I will have are images, latest news, videos, tour dates and music.

*problem uploading vox pops*

This is the storyboard for the music video of the song “Addicted” off the second album “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson. A detailed look at all the storyboards and layouts it can be found on my Flickr page, accessable via the images below.

 

 

This is the layout idea for my web homepage:

The same idea goes for my webpage design as I have used similar conventions as existing websites to create my own. This can be seen by comparing my sketch for a website homepage to the homepage of my chosen artist, Kelly Clarkson.

    

  

 Production Forms

  

final website

Originally uploaded by A.Griffith

final digipak product

Originally uploaded by A.Griffith