Production Meeting One

The band

Short History Of Pop Promos

Textual analyse of a Pop Promo

Justin Timberlake

Cry Me a River

Mis-en-scene
The lighting starts off dark and moody, the rain creates a glum atmosphere. However inside the house it is bright, clean with white interior. This makes the house look expensive, modern and informs the viewer that the owner is rich.
Justin Timberlake is driving a black, shiny car, he is represented as classy with luxious items. He also appears well groomed and attractive to his fans. He is sitting next to Timberland, a popular producer and artist in the hip hop scene, this makes him seem a bit more edgy and shows he is trying to move away from his clean cut pop image.
Also the first female actress shown has long dark hair, she's attractive and slim, this will actract the male audience, she has a small tattoo on her back which has connotations with being a 'bad girl' and a rebel.
In comparison, the second female actress is wearing light colours, has blonde hair seems more angelic, despite the lyrics relating to her cheating on Justin.

Cinematography and Editing
Close ups are used throughout on Justons face for the female audience to enjoy. In the opening there are short quick edited shots to make the video exciting and fast paced, much more action packed.

Visual Effects
During the video, Justin smashes a large glass window, the camera shows the stones being thrown as they appear extremly close, in slow motion on the screen. Suddenly a low angle shot shows the CGI millions of pieces of glass breaking.
In another scene, special effects are used so that he appears as though he is jumping unhumanly high, almost flying this makes him look like a superhero.

Relationship between lyrics and visuals
This video shows Timberlake taking revenge on an ex girlfriend, the lyrics "you left me all alone" and "confused for some other guy" could mean she cheated on him, in the opening shots she is seen with another male character which backs up this idea.
Also the lyrics "cry me a river" could tie in with the rain and swimming pool in the video.

Intertexuality
When this video was released there was contriversy that it was about Timberlake's ex girlfriend singer Britney Spears. The actress used in this pop promo has many similarities to Britney, medium length blonde hair, a cap hat and jeans with all part of her signature look at the time. Also in the video the face of the actress is hidden, so the audience would associate her with Britney.

Performance or Concept based?
I would say this video is concept based, however there are many close ups of Justin singing.
The narrative is of him taking revenge on his ex girlfriend, he breaks into her house and records himself getting intimate with another girl on his ex's bed. As he leaves the house he lets the TV play the recorded footage for his exgirlfriend to see.

How is the singer presented?
Justin is represented as a 'bad boy', wearing dark clothing, breaking into and smashing up a house and getting intimate with an attractive, half naked girl.
He looks cool, jumping on the work surfaces, almost like a superhero, or similar to films such as 'House of flying daggers'.
I think this promotes his image well as he would have been trying to unassociate himself with his old pop group Nsync 'goody two shoes' image.

Who is the intended audience?
Young teenage girls aged 14-25, also boys of a similar age who would inspire to be like Justin Timberlake.

Brief

My name is Charlotte Bale, this is my media blog for A2.

Today in class we had our first production meeting, we discussed our brief for this year.
Our media teacher Jon set out the task of creating our own "Pop Promo", we can use a well known commerical band/artist as our music track or alternatively a smaller, maybe even local artist.
We organised everyone into small groups, Suzi Couszins and I decided to team up as we have similar music tastes so we could choose a song we would both enjoy working with.

The "Pop Promo" should last for around 3 minutes, and we have to consider;

• R.A.I.L.I.N.G
• Who the intended audience is
• E.C.M.S
• Forms and conventions
• Visual effects
• The relationship between the lyrics/music and visuals
• Use of intertextuality
• Whether it is performance based or concept based
• How it promotes the band's image

Firstly, I am going to analyse two music videos for inspiration.