Recently, since I have started my media project, I have been tending to look at artists and musicians i see in my daily life through the media or listen to and, think about how their image and their profile is presented, as that is a huge part of benig succesfull in the music industry. One of my favourite artists , John Mayer in my eyes has one of the most unhinged and respectable representations as an artist, not letting fame go to his head like many others do so to speak. I've decided to compose a quick profile of his musical life and try to work out how he has chosen to portray himself or if he has been forced to be displayed in a certian way by music labels which many people are, especially female R&B or pop musicans, forced to be portrayed as an arguable sex object, being a bad role model for young female teens. I will however focus on relating this to my music video production and how the cohesion between my ancillary and preliminary productions will display the band in a way that my target audience expect to see them.
So who is John Mayer?
Besides being a great musician in the eyes of many, wikipedia tell us that John Mayer is "
How does he control his image within the media?
John mayer unlike other stars in the spotlight, is capable of controlling his own image and doing what he wants in his music career. One event I would like to reference however is an article by Allison Samuels a senior writer at newsweek talking about John's arguable racist comments within a Playboy magazine interview, you can find a link to the article below:
The article discusses how John Maye's remarks "not worth paraphrasing" about black women are mimiced by the predominant male society and then he himself is not a racist but did not necessarily confide what the majority of men do. An incident such as this can completely tarnishe an artists reputation, for instance the Chris Brown report on him hitting Rihanna made huge headlines purely because Chris Brown and Rihanna were already in the spotlight. In this incident, people around Chris Brown were controlling him advising him what to do and working around to communicate with interview requests, chat shows e.t.c. John Mayer deals with these himself and does not seem to act like he gets the attention he gets, which is basically all a famous person is, someone who is well known for something they have done.
His album artworks are not pushing his own personal talents, from this example it is just the fact that he writes his own songs that is being put to the front. Arguably this shows modesty but often displaying the skills and credit when credit is due of the artists is a good promotional tool. He however emphasises his band often, sharing the credit to all who deserve it.
Perkins, focusing on Representation gave arguement that the use of stereotypes can be good, that stereotypes can change and even be positive (1979.) I agree with this point although in terms of our music video stereotypes were not purposely avoided or used, excpet in the sense of the 'indie/punk' lead singer appearence, using clothes, actors and props. This worked successfully in predicting the result of A Day To Remember's attire and vibe.
So what actually is post-hardcore?
Tracking back bands such as 'Devil Wears Prada' and 'Killswitch Engage' I can see that many of the current post-hardcore bands originated at somepoint from the sub genre of heavy metal - 'metalcore'. Metalcore is a subgenre of heavy metal combining various elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk. The name is a portmanteau of the names of the two genres. The term took on its current meaning in the mid-1990s, describing bands such as Earth Crisis, Deadguy and Integrity. The earliest of these groups, Integrity, began performing in 1988. Contemporary practitioners of the genre include Killswitch Engage, Underoath, All That Remains, Trivium, As I Lay Dying, Bullet for My Valentine and The Devil Wears Prada.
Breakcore is a style of electronic music largely influenced by hardcore techno, drum and bass and Intelligent dance music. Its sound is largely characterized by a high-tempo, well-timed mingling of distorted kick drums (also known as "Gabber kicks"), break beats arranged from samples of the Amen break, and audio samples from a wide spectrum of sources (dialog from horror films, instrumental snippets from metal and Gangsta rap tracks are common). Musicians and DJs such as Drop the Lime, Christoph Fringeli and Dj Balli have said that breakcore is merely a catch-all term which encompasses a variety of distinct electronic music styles that are related through a scene culture and aesthetics, rather than sound.
Avoid red eye. Red-eye is caused when your eyes dilate in lower lighting. When your pupils are big, the flash actually lights up the blood vessels on the back wall of your eyeball, which is why it looks red. If you must use a flash in poor light, try to get the person to not look directly at the camera, or consider using a "bounce flash". Aiming your flash above the heads of your subjects, especially if the walls surrounding are light, will keep red-eye out. If you don't have a separate flash gun which is adjustable in this way, use the red-eye reduction feature of your camera if available - it flashes a couple of times before opening the shutter, which causes your subject's pupils to contract, thus minimizing red-eye. Better yet, don't take photographs which require a flash to be used; find somewhere with better lighting.
