Star Image- Cheryl Cole

Cheryl Cole is one of the most famous women in the UK. Cole has become a recognised and photographed style icon; referred to as a fashionista by the press. She has been photographed for the covers of British Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar, while also becoming the new face of cosmetic company L'Oréal. However, Cheryl has changed her image massively since she first gained a place in Girls Aloud in 2002. 

On 11 January 2003, Cole was involved in an altercation with a nightclub toilet attendant, Sophie Amogbokpa, at The Drink nightclub in Guildford. Cole was subsequently charged with racially aggravated assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Cheryl is now far away from this abusive image, as she has even won an award for 'Best British Female'.

She has transformed from a wearing chavvy clothes to glamorous outfits and has become a famous style icon, with her own clothes and shoes selection online at 'StylistPick'. It is very interesting how Cheryl has decided to present herself in order to be successful, when she was in Girls Aloud she may have wanted to appeal to younger audiences, and so wore les fashionable clothes. 

Similarly, when splitting from Ashley Cole she decided to keep her name as she had become so famous as 'Cheryl Cole', rather than 'Cheryl Tweedy'. 

Music Video Preliminary Task- L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N (Noah And The Whale)

This is our preliminary task. We had to create a music video of about 1 minute, that included 3 different locations, 2 different costume changes, and an element of performance. We were asked to shoot it like a proffessional music video, and not shoot in locations such as a park etc. We feel that we have done this successfully, and really like the music video we created. I think that the quirky style of the music video suits the indie band that we chose. For example, the use of a barbeque for drums, and the random people in the streets, created a unique and indie feel. One of my favourite parts of the video was the chorus when the signs were lifted up by people on the bench, as I think the whole video led up to this moment, because enigma was raised through the randomness of people holding different letters.
However, there are parts of the music video I would change, and want to improve on in our future work. One of the major errors, was the lip sync. You can tell that our lead singer was not sure on the words and this made the video look less proffessional. Therefore, in the future I will make sure we rehearse and the band learn the lyrics well, in time with the music. Another mistake I feel we made was not selling the artists as much as we could have. I think there should have been more close ups of the whole band, and will ensure to do this in the future.
Finally, by creating this music video, I have learnt a lot about what I will need to do for the real task. I realised that we need a huge amount of footage to make editing easier. I will make our video look more proffessional by giving more costume changes, and making our star look like they are a famous celebrity. However, overall I feel we did really well with our preliminary task, and it has set us on our way for a good final project.
In relation to Software I haven't learnt a lot as I am already quite skilled on IMovie. However, I realise that this year I will be using Final Cut and I have never used this before so I would have like to of used it for preliminary so I could have learnt.

Disjunctive Story Board- Little Red Riding Hood

This task helped me to learn about the use of disjunctive storyboarding which is used across most of music videos. In the majority of videos, the narrative is discontinuous and cuts from scene to scene, as opposed to a film or television programme. In groups we made storyboards for a music video based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In doing this we can now understand and have some idea of how to storyboard for our real project.

 

Goodwin and Mulvey's theory of Voyeurism

The idea of voyeurism generates from Froid, but in media is used particularly to describe the gendered pleasures of cinema. Some argue that male have a controlling powerful gaze, and the female is objectified.
Goodwin for example says that the camerawork, and editing, with fragmented body shots emphasise a sexualised treatment of the star. This can be seen in videos such as 50 Cent's 'Candy Shop' and 'PIMP' in which we see the camera gaze at women from a low angle to display them in a sexual way. The camera also tilted up the women's body as if to portray the male glance at the objectified woman. The idea of voyeuristic treatment of the female body is often apparent with the use of dances as adornment to the male ego. In 50 Cent's videos we can see this as the women are used in comparison to his nice cars and flashy clothes.
Laura Mulvey argues that men have the control in the relationships between the camera and characters, the characters on screen, and the audience watching. In Eric Prydz' video 'Call On Me' the women are portrayed as sex symbols as they are doing highly provocative actions. However, in the group of about 10 only one is a man, which could be argued to be the women in control, as also most of the camera time is given to the women, particularly the leader who seems to be in control of the man. On the other hand, the ratio of man to woman could be suggested to be demeaning to women as it is a common male fantasy.
Mulvey's theory could be criticised, as some female independent stars' video's including voyeuristic gazes at men. For example in Britney Spear's 'Womanizer', in many scenes she is in control of the men, e.g. the man is kneeling to her and she hits him. However, it is clear that in most circumstances Mulvey's theory is true, for example, even in 'Womanizer', Britney is shown naked which gives the male audience the control. Even in Nelly Furtado's 'Man Eater' you would think she would have the control, but in fact it appears she is dancing to appeal to the men and it is them holding the voyeuristic stare towards her.