Asessment

Looking at your print products and ideas for your promotional video, discuss how you constructed an identity for your artist. You should consider issues around gender and youth and discuss how you have challenged or subverted dominant ideology. This should be a discussion of all aspects of mise en scene.

Constructing an identity for an artist is a significant part of the music production time line. A music promoter must ensure they have an artist constructed if selling music to an audience, so they can also sell the brand of the artist along with a song. This means an artist can continue to release other songs to the demographic audience and also an album if the constructed artist proves successful enough, therefore raising more profit for the music producer. Consequently whilst we have to produce a music video, we must also produce an entire brand of an artist, bearing in mind that they would release future songs because the music executives would not want to fund a ‘one hit wonder’.
Whilst choosing our genre, dance/hardcore, we found it difficult to choose a well produced song which was not already released and had not got a constructed artist behind it, but eventually we found one. The artist it was produced by was ‘Sublime’, who is virtually unknown to our target audience. Therefore this made it easy to construct Sublime and ensure ‘she’ fits in with what our demographic audience demand. We decided to feature ‘Sublime’ as a female because the song uses a female vocalist and this fitted in with our target audience, where there are a larger percentage of females in contrast to males who like the dance/hardcore genre. We also thought that using a female and promoting Sublime as a female would be empowering to women of the demographic audience, as the dance/hardcore genre is highly saturated with male vocalists, such as ‘Darren Styles’ and male DJs, such as DJ Hixxy. Also constructing our artist to be female would make our product unique in a highly competitive market, as there is not much female competition, meaning our product is more likely to succeed. Using a female in the largely male market of dance/ hardcore meant we were challenging subverted dominant ideology, meaning that our idea might be seen as risky by some music executives but gives it a unique feel which is uncommon in the music industry.
We wanted our artist to be of around the same age of our demographic audience – 17- 21 – which means that the young audience can relate to the artist and are more likely to buy and enjoy her music. Also ensuring she is young age connotes an edgy, trendy message to the audience which we struggle to achieve if she was older. Subsequent to choosing the gender and age of our artist, we had to decide on her costume to use in the video and mock ups of the CD cover. During research, I found a lot of the models on the CD covers analysed were in skimpy outfits which had high sexual connotations to the demographic audience, this was intensified through things like the models pose and expression. Although I wanted to give our artist a sexual identity because it would mean her music was more likely to be popular, I didn’t want to make her costume to risqué, bearing in mind the young demographic audience and the innocent nature of the song. Therefore as a group we decided to make the artist appealing, by making sure she is wearing make up but more covered up in contrast to models on the dance/hardcore CD covers. The artists costume would probably be a dress or top and we contemplated using only a shoulder shot on the CD cover to make the artist less sexually provocative. In the video the costume we would choose to dress the artist would be a dress and heels or possibly fashionable clothing to appeal to the young demographic audience.

Looking at your print products and ideas for your promotional video, discuss how you constructed an identity for your artist. You should consider issues around gender and youth and discuss how you have challenged or subverted dominant ideology. This should be a discussion of all aspects of mise en scene.


Constructing an identity for an artist is a significant part of the music production time line. A music promoter must ensure they have an artist constructed if selling music to an audience, so they can also sell the brand of the artist along with a song. This means an artist can continue to release other songs to the demographic audience and also an album if the constructed artist proves successful enough, therefore raising more profit for the music producer. Consequently whilst we have to produce a music video, we must also produce an entire brand of an artist, bearing in mind that they would release future songs because the music executives would not want to fund a ‘one hit wonder’.
Whilst choosing our genre, dance/hardcore, we found it difficult to choose a well produced song which was not already released and had not got a constructed artist behind it, but eventually we found one. The artist it was produced by was ‘Sublime’, who is virtually unknown to our target audience. Therefore this made it easy to construct Sublime and ensure ‘she’ fits in with what our demographic audience demand. We decided to feature ‘Sublime’ as a female because the song uses a female vocalist and this fitted in with our target audience, where there are a larger percentage of females in contrast to males who like the dance/hardcore genre. We also thought that using a female and promoting Sublime as a female would be empowering to women of the demographic audience, as the dance/hardcore genre is highly saturated with male vocalists, such as ‘Darren Styles’ and male DJs, such as DJ Hixxy. Constructing our artist to be female would make our product unique in a highly competitive market, as there is not much female competition, meaning our product is more likely to succeed. Using a female in the largely male market of dance/ hardcore meant we were challenging subverted dominant ideology, meaning that our idea might be seen as risky by some music executives but gives it a unique feel which is uncommon in the music industry.
We wanted our artist to be of around the same age of our demographic audience – 17- 21 – which means that the young audience can relate to the artist and are more likely to buy and enjoy her music. Also ensuring she is young age connotes an edgy, trendy message to the audience which we struggle to achieve if she was older. Subsequent to choosing the gender and age of our artist, we had to decide on her costume to use in the video and mock ups of the CD cover. During research, I found a lot of the models on the CD covers analyzed were in skimpy outfits which had high sexual connotations to the demographic audience; this was intensified through suggestive poses and expressions. Although I wanted to give our artist a sexual identity because it would mean her music was more likely to be popular, I didn’t want to make her costume too risqué, bearing in mind the young demographic audience and the innocent nature of the song. Therefore as a group we decided to make the artist appealing, by making sure she is wearing make up, but more covered up in contrast to models on the dance/hardcore CD covers. The artists costume would probably be a dress or top and we contemplated using only a shoulder shot on the CD cover to make the artist less sexually provocative. In the video the costume we would choose to dress the artist would be a dress and heels or possibly fashionable clothing which would appeal to the young demographic audience, and make our artist more relatable to the target market. Therefore by choosing to use less sexually provocative costumes and poses, we are also in avertedly challenging stereotypes typical of the dance/hardcore genre. This means we will have to ensure there are other attractions to the demographic audience, such as a good quality, well produced song/ video and an amiable constructed artist, who will appeal to our target audience.
As a group we decided to follow other codes and conventions of the dance/hardcore genre so we did not put off our target audience completely and they would be able to easily recognize the genre we aim to replicate. The codes and conventions we have decided to follow is the locations of the music video; although similar to other dance/hardcore genre videos, it means the audience are able to follow a particular storyline throughout the video, keeping them more engaged. It also means that following a storyline and using specific locations is obviously successful and hopefully this means our video is more likely to be popular too. Another code and convention we have decided to follow is the colorful nature of the music genre; during research we found that CD covers and adverts were extremely bright and eye catching, which connotes the playful aspect of the dance/ hardcore genre to audience members. This made it more engaging in contrast to adverts from the rock genre, which used mainly black and dark colours. Following these certain codes and conventions will mean that the audience will be easily able to identify the dance/hardcore genre and will make it stand out from different genres.
Overall I think we have chosen to keep the important aspects of the dance/ hardcore codes and conventions the same, such as the colour scheme, but have decided to change some negative aspects of the music genre such as the overly sexualized models in videos and CD covers. Hopefully this will be effective with our audience as they are younger in contrast to other music genres and therefore they will be more receptive and more willing to sample something unique and different.



I answered these questions in relation to my coursework as it helps me practise my essay writing skills and also helps to keep me up to date and on track.