My Chemical Romance Tour Advert Analysis need do

This is an advert which is promoting the comeback tour of My Chemical Romance after their 4 year break. The advert itself is simple yet it’s keeping the audience guessing what the band will be like after their break as their whole image has changed drastically.

The advert is designed to look like a film, this links to the actual videos of the band as they all tell a story of a synthetic world created by MCR. 

 The slogan is bold and therefore impossible not to notice, it also links to the bands cult and artist, because it is suggesting that the consequences don’t matter, therefore encouraging their fans to be like them and become rebellious. The advert is very masculine as the male is taking on a very broad stance; also his facial expressions are very direct and slightly aggressive. I think to fully understand this advert you need to have prior knowledge of the band, this is manipulated by the photographic image.

The dark colours again link the advert to the film genre, for example they are all fairly dark, masculine colours, except the red hair which signifies a drastic change in the lead singer who once wore nothing but all black but now is an explosion of various colours.

 The most noticeable aspect of this advert is the simplicity of the design, the majority of the adverts background is very monochrome, and this contrasts massively with the stance of the artist ‘Gerard Way.’ The use of dark colours has many connotations, one of which being anger. The black background can also be associated with authority; this would link well with the male’s masculine stance.

This advert is very different to other ones that I have analysed; the others are very typical of the artist, such as Rihanna’s being very seductive. This is already expected by the audience before they fully decode the advert.


The use of white text on a black background is a very modern feature of adverts. The most important aspects are very bold and direct for the audience, such as the release date of the album.  The advert stresses the fact the band are rebelling against their norm. The lead singer has a toy laser gun in a holster on his belt, emphasising the childlike manner the band are aiming for.  Contextually knowledge of the band previously will know the members are huge cartoon and comic fans, therefore this video is much based on what they would personally enjoy.

The first videos narrative continues into the bands second video.

                                                

                                  

Madonna Album Advert Analysis

The advert itself is a retro image; this kind of photo shoot was very popular during the 80’s when Madonna was beginning to peak. The advert fulfils an illustrative function, it looks as if Madonna is taking on the shoes of Marilyn Monroe who was a cultural icon in this time era again, and this connects Madonna to Marilyn, emphasising Madonna’s high level status and importance. The fading colours could suggest she is appealing to an older audience, the fact she isn’t using to many bright colours could be due to the fact she’s not in her prime time anymore, so her audience now is very different to what it would have been. All the connotations so far emphasis the old school style Madonna has gone for in this advert.



The main focus of the advert is Madonna, this is because the point of the advert itself is to sell the artist rather than the album, and this is because everybody knows who Madonna is so there is no need to use other kinds of selling techniques as she already has a high status in a cultural aspect. The red lipstick on Madonna brings out the feistiness behind her persona, rather than using a paler colour making her more approachable and softer. This is another connotation of her level of power in music.


The fact the advert is in a train station really suggests that the seller is attempting to place her advert in any busy location because it’s so strong and eye-catching, the busier the location the more people will see it and associate it with Madonna, again selling the artist.

The advert is based on a retro theme; this is shown through the vivacious colours which are used. The advert is very similar to pop art which was extremely popular during the 80’s, therefore this dates the adverts use of photography yet still meets the older target audience as they can relate to the era with personal experience.  The text is covered with brightly coloured paint splodges, I think that this links to the rebellious times in the 80’s, such as the graffiti on streets.  Madonna’s advert also seems fairly faded in the background, the use of darker colours in the background could connote that Madonna is part of older times and is not the prime sensation in the music industry that she once was. This links to the purpose of the poster, to sell her greatest hits, basically its bringing Madonna’s name back into our minds by releasing an album of all her songs which were great in her prime.


The Madonna background consists of a brown colour which acts very similar to old paper. This again dates the advert and relates back to Madonna being part of the older generation of pop. The advert has a dual purpose, one to sell the album but also sell the artist as well. Madonna’s album name is not the main focus of the advert. The artist is, so this suggests that the album and music comes second after Madonna.


The text used is all very small in size, this signifies the lack of importance of the music itself, this contrasts massively with the over the top size image of the artist emphasising her status and importance. It could also be suggesting that the advert doesn’t need large, bold font as the target audience already know Madonna’s songs, therefore they don’t need any reminding of her music. All the text is capitalised which states the significance and importance of the newly released album. The layout itself is very similar to the discourse structure of a newspaper headline, this connotes that Madonna is important and worth telling the world about.


Finally the fact that the album is a greatest hits collection could suggest that Madonna is coming back into the limelight and therefore has to re-establish herself back into the music industry.

Rihanna Tour Advert Analysis

Advert three is a promotional poster that’s using Rihanna as the main focus for a selling technique because everybody can identify her easily. I think that the advert would be found within the majority of female magazines, such as ‘Vogue’. Significantly, the primary colours in this advert are red and pink; we are presented with the alluring smooth complexion of the female subject, and the red feisty appearance of Rihanna’s hair, which is a current iconic image. It is also found on the album covers image on the bottom right of the advert. Comparing the colour scheme of this advert to the colours used on advert 1 where the colours again are still significant, because the shades still illustrates how colour is a signifying element, for instance the use of reds, blues and white, make advert 1 take a cartoon themed effect.



Similarly, the advert use of a typical industrial looking font, a signifier for the advanced western culture we are living in. I think that the spread out letters that spell out ‘Rihanna’ could be seen as a representation of freedom. The ‘twinkling’ effects over Rihanna’s eyes make her look innocent, this adds to the purity of the advert.
Barthes theory would suggest that the semantic meaning of this advert would be to sell an album. He would say we all have a strong relationship with the cultural context of the advert and we all know who Rihanna is, therefore it is the signifiers of the adverts feminine colours, the purity of the female and the artistry of the font that all reinforce to the audience the purpose of the advert and allow the average western audience member to perceive this advert in a way relevant to them, in this case by helping to make the decision to see buy tickets to see Rihanna live on tour.


The advert presents a youthful yet alluring figure; Rihanna is turning around as her back is facing the audience, this could suggest a representation of her inviting the reader to follow her path, in other words buy tickets to see her live. Due to the fact she is making direct eye contact, it’s as if she is personally addressing each individual as they come across the advert. The target audience of this advert is predominantly females who look to Rihanna as a role model; I would expect to see this advert in public locations such as bus stands and inside magazines to reach its desired target audience of females 16 – 30.


The purpose of the advert is to sell tickets to her upcoming tour. The advert contains a variety of signifiers which all give the subject of a seductive status. The advert softly focuses on the photography of Rihanna and the picture itself gives a sense of sensuality and seduction. The advert is very simple, yet still youthful and glamorous. The colours of the advert are presented as a contrast, for example the colours used for the bottom half of the advert are all dark and dull, Rihanna’s hair is the total opposite. This is emphasising the most important part of the advert being Rihanna, the audience would struggle to miss the image whilst they looked at the advert.  


The font size is based upon importance, for example the artists name is in big bold colours, whereas the tiny album promotion in the bottom corner is smaller than any other part of the advert.

Our video

Editing

After we finally finished filming and picture taking, we moved into the final stage of the video, the editing. We have been editing for a few weeks now, due to the still images editing is very time consuming so we have had no choice but to spend a lot of extra hours at college, editing our raw footage. First we uploaded all of our pictures and clips from the camera to the Mac computers, we then added them to Final Cut Express, an advanced software which is a massive step up from the editing programme we used as AS level being iMovie. Final cut is a sophisticated, advancement of software which enables us to edit to the high standards of professionals.



Final Cut Express

After we had uploaded all our footage onto the software, we began timelining our music video together. We had various shots which we trialed and tested in order to find the best order for the letters journey.  

We then began to starting experimenting with various filters and effects to make the different locations of the letter transition smoothly. We wanted the different effects to give our video more edge, but we didn’t want to use too many so that the smoothness was lost.


After watching "We Found Love" by "Rihanna" and seeing the romantic montage of memories at the beginning of the video, we realised how powerful the opening was due to the over voiced narrative. We decided that this would be good a technique to involve in our video, so we went out and shot various romantic shots between two friends "Lucy Brandrick" and "James Mellor". I then read out a voice over which we recorded onto the Macs and overlaid over the montage. After much consideration we decided to change the colours of the montage to black and white to show a difference in time. This linked back to our AS piece where we similarly had flashbacks, again we de-saturated the colour to show time difference, i think this added a lot of effect to our video.

We used "Garage Band" to create a piano melody to play over the flashbacks, but we couldn’t actually find a composed one that we thought fit. In the end we downloaded "Jar of Hearts" piano symphony and used that, we cropped it down using Garage Band and it actually emphasised the theme behind the flashbacks.
 

Once we had filmed the girls journey we integrated the shots onto the timeline, it took us a while to find a suitable order in which they all ran smoothly. Finally we could apply the final touches of editing, we added simple things that had a huge impact on our video, for instance when the man screws up the letter we echoed the sound which made it stand out and made it seem more powerful. We used a lot of slow motion in order to slow down some of our shots, such as when the girl walks through a puddle, the slow motion enabled us to show the water rippling.

Now we have completed our video our main priority is audience feedback, we will upload our video onto websites like "YouTube" and "Facebook" to get some feedback from our viewers. I have tried to upload the video to YouTube during the Christmas holidays but it says we are breeching the artist’s copyright. So when we go back to college I will make another copy and try uploading it again. We will now focus on our CD cover and either our advert or webpage.



Filming process

Due to the fact our first filming process wasnt as straightforward as we hoped for last time, we have now decided to use locations that we know are suitable and to stop any problems arising with actors we have only cast one actress. We have decided to use as many abstract but suitable locations as possible in which the letter will travel through to make the video more entertaining and powerful. Overal the video has taken around 3 weeks to produce, this is because we have had to shot a 4:30min video by only using still photographs, during the editing we will put these photographs all together to show the letters journey. Its a long proces but the end result will be worth it. Sometimes it has taken us around 1 hour to shot enough photos for ten seconds worth of footage.



During the fiming we did have a few problems but no where near as many as with our previous video. The ones we faced were considerebly minor, for example sometimes the wind was stronger than we anticipated therefore it moved the letter out of its previous position meaning it had to be scrapped and we had to start the shots again because one little movement loses the provessionalism of the shot. It was also hard to get the letter to stick to the props we used, such as the letter box where it crawls up and attempts to post itself twice, this shot is one of my favourites as i think its powerful for an audience member to sympathise with the object as it desperatley tries to post itself to the loved on in order to save a romance.