Evaluation Task #2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
• Richard Dyer’s theory of star image
• What’s his star image?
• How is his this sold through video, digipak and poster?
• How do they work together?
Richard Dyer&Star image
Richard Dyer is an English academic who specialises in cinema and analysing the extraordinary world of ‘stars’ in the entertainment industry. The term star refers to artists who live their life publicly due to their work and are therefore seen as almost superficial creatures. He argues: ‘Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings’ making the point that the artists’ image needs to be well established which is done through the marketing campaign around the music. The star images consist of particular characteristics of the artists, for example rebellious/anti-authoritarian, plus their looks and their music genre. Sometimes, the background of the artist is very important as it can contribute to the image, giving reason for certain behaviours. A pop-star is different to a performer, Dyer claims, as a star is promoted to this status by management and has an identity or persona which is not restricted solely to their musicianship.
A star is constructed out of 2 paradoxes, Dyer says. Number one is the star has to be simultanously ordinary and extraordinary, so that fans can look up to them and adore them but also relate to them as human beings. Paradox number two says that the star has to be absent and present at the same time, the fans should feel close to them, have posters on the wall and watch interviews, but also know in the back of their mind that they would never get to know the star they admire. This is how the star image works but it is of course different applied depending on what kind of artist is dealt with.
Identify the artist & image/3 key qualities of image
Peter & The Wolf is an indie artist and therefore I would describe the constituent features of his star image as creative/talented, sophisticated, intelligent and original. Because of the importance of creating a star image we created a campaign for Peter & The Wolf to sell both his music and image. This includes a music video alongside the new single, a digipak of the new album and a poster to promote the album release.
These three products promote the star in different ways each but overrall work together.
Identify our target audience
The audience we target with our artist is aged between 17 and 35 years, male and female, and a more intellectual and middle-classed audience. As it’s a calm and easy music sung by an unintrusive singer it will appeal to an group of people that might be occupied with a job and listen to calming background music, or to younger people that are rather individual and don’t like following the mainstream music.
How are these qualities shown?
Our main product is a music video which is supposed to promote the song by creating a visual. This encourages repeated consumption and brings it to the grand advertising platform, television. Our aim was to make a music video that was original and different. It is artier and more melancholic than most videos which tend to be very fast paced and colorful. We focused on strong, well composed visuals, such as the shot when the artist stands behind the perspex covered in scribbles and the stark contrast between the ballerina in the white room and the color of her lips and mask. These visuals aim to create a special atmosphere and give the music video an intense, serious and artistic mood that provokes emotions and thoughts in the viewer. We made these creative decisions to emphasize Peter’s own image and style, which is a calm, passionate musician who seems not to care about the world. The muted colors, naturalistic lighting and a realistic environment promote the idea that Peter might be slightly mad or depressed. The focus is only on Peter which reinforces that he is a solo artist.
The digipak was created with the intention of maintaining the same style as the music video. We did this in order to construct a unique selling point and a face of the whole campaign as he is a new artist. For example, we used the artist’s hand writing for the font of the cd cover and inside layout just like we used his scribbling in the music video as an element in the music video. This makes the digipak more personal and individual. We also used the red wallpaper that was seen in the video as part of the layout in the album which contributes to our aim to create the face of the campaign. All the elements of the digipak help to build and sell the artist’s star image.
The poster’s purpose is to advertise the artist, in particular his new album that includes the music video song. The photo is chosen from a shot we took on set and strongly conveys the mood of the music video as well as reinforcing Peter’s image and personality of being sophisticated, serious and deep.
All of these different media products work together to construct the image of Peter & The Wolf by creating a face and look for the artist which is substantial and stays in consumers heads. As his music is not mainstream, the target audience is a niche audience that is already interested in indie music. All of these produced media are made in order to promote and sell his music which is the final goal!
Comparison with real artists
In terms of image we took some inspiration from artists such as Bright Eyes and Patrick Wolf, who are independent alternative musicians that have similar personalities and star image to our artist Peter and the Wolf. Those musicians are not appealing for a wider audience.
We got inspired by music videos from Birdy’s cover version of Skinny Love and Patrick Wolf’s ‘House’ for our location shots. The main inspiration for our studio shots came from Bright Eyes video ‘Lucky Easy Free’ which we interpreted into our concept.
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