Star image

According to Richard Dyer’s theory stars are constructed, artificial images with a unique selling point. Richard Dyer says “A Star is an image not a real person that is constructed". 

Stars have been made to appeal to audiences which will in turn generate revenue for record companies. Majority of record companies nurture and shape their stars on Photoshop to get them an unrealistic face and body which targets vulnerability.

Stars are also made for money purposes. Increasing the brand identity benefits the institution as they become a household name increasing sales in all the different aspects of media. Dyers theory states hegemony which is also known as culture. It is the idea that the audience relates to the star because they have a feature they share or admire with the star. some fans may even attempt to replicate the star in their behavior, what they say they do.

Adele

Adele's use of head-shots and font throughout her albums and promotional posters engages with the audience as they become familiar with the repetition of the artist's work. The artist's popularity has risen so much to the public that she is now only known as "Adele". Another interesting thing about her is that the number on album title represents the age she was when she wrote the songs which connects to the audience's age group. The artwork and composition of the album also allows the audience to believe she has a restricted personality as their is no direct eye contact between Adele and the camera.

The song "Send my love (to your new lover)" is a perfect example of how star image is created as Adele is the only person featured in the video on a black background.

Finalised idea for promotional poster

This is our finalised annotated idea for our promotional poster. As a pair we decided that we wanted to make it similar to the digipak so the audience familiarizes with the artist. To enforce artist recognition we also decided to place the logo top center with a contrasted background.
The photo is most likely to be taken at Marlow park on the day of shooting for our music video to enable the same mood and atmosphere our video creates.

Initial ideas for promotional poster

Finalised idea for digipak

Below is our finalised annotated idea for our digipak. We decided to choose an image of the singer (actress) for the font cover as we wanted to create star image by familiarising the audience with the artist. We also decided on using a head-shot as we had previously found out from research on RMA's that a lot of other well known artist's such as Lana Del Rey have also used the same promotional technique.We are also planning on making the red paper boats a metaphor of her in the song set sail, as she moves on from her current relationship. Therefore it was important to incorporate them into the inside panel as it allows a preview of the music video to the audience.

It was difficult to decide on the final digipak idea between the two of us as we both were unsure if wanted base our theme around water or love. In the end we decided on water as we didn't want love to overpower the singers star image.

I decided to create a more realistic version of my finalised idea on Photoshop using images I found online. As it was only a draft I didn't any extra or informative information.

Initial ideas for digipak

This is our template for our digipak. As you can see there is a front panel, back panel and inside panel. Even though the disc isn't considered a panel we are still planning on including it in the design. When planning what to put on our digipaks we decided that we wanted to incorporate the artist, love, relationships, weather and boats as it fits the theme of the song we are planning on making a music video to.

Finalised idea for music video

Our favourite idea was to base our music video around the journey of a relationship ending between a couple, the reason is because the lyrics of the song mean to move on and let go.

Story line summary 

• Boy and girl break up through texts
• girl in bedroom
• Boy travels away by train
• Both reflect on the relationship
• Girl goes outside 
• Same location but different tenses

The main character of the video will be a girl aged 17. The story line is going to be about a boy and a girl who have recently broken up due complications in the relationship which will be made clear to the audience at the beginning and later on through text messages. As it was the boys decision to end the relation he is going to be the one to travel away by train. At the end of the video we see the boy and the girl in the same location however as the girl looks up at him, he's gone.

Initial ideas for music video

Brain Storming/ spider diagrams

We decided to make a spider diagram as we thought it was the best method of sharing our ideas between us.

Spider diagrams have lots of benefits such as:

• They are easy to add ideas to later or at any time
• They help you focus on the links and relationships between ideas
• Well structured, keep you organised
• Useful for considering lots of information

By creating a spider diagram it only pushed our ideas further and narrower. 

 First brain storm:

Second brain storm:

Looking back at our first spider diagram we noticed that majority of what we had put on it was quite cliche and unrealistic such as the paint, smoke effects and filming in London. After a few days of making the first draft we decided it was time to rethink and narrow down our initial ideas as they were very broad. Making a spider diagram only pushed our ideas forward as we could clearly see what aspects of the diagrams we wanted to carry on.