Jerom Thambipillai's Media Blog

R+P Post 15: My Record Label

My chosen record label for my artist is Virgin EMI records.

We thought this label would be the most appropriate as it reflects our artist the best. It supports small acts such as MNEK and Elle Eyre however is associated with much bigger acts such as Kanye West. This means it has the reach to push our artist forward. Another reason Virgin EMI is desirable is because it has similar acts to ours including Seinabo Sey and Alessia Cara.

R+P Post 14: My Target Audience

Our primary target audience will be young British people aged from 16-25. We felt this would be a good audience to target as we ourselves are in this audience and thus could target our project more accurately. Audience feedback would also be easier during the research/planning and construction processes as we could easily get peers in the audience to have a look at our content.

This audience would also be suitable for our artist Layla Ade as we feel that her views and meaningful music can fully be appreciated and understood by this audience as they would be able to personally relate to the issue of police brutality raised in the song.

During the video we plan to have a simultaneous male narrative embedded within the studio shots of Layla Ade. This will hopefully appeal to both sexes equally as they will find relatability in our two main characters.

R+P Post 13: Influences and inspiration from art, fashion and culture

I was influenced by the following artists/celebrities that are linked to the world of art, fashion and culture

Declan Mckenna

Declan Mckenna is a 18 year old indie-rock artist that was raised in Hertfordshire, despite this he has a relatively large following from London.

Although he is male and our planned artist is female I was inspired by his fashion choices. Mckenna is often seen with colourful vintage clothes that clearly represent his character well, this is something I wish to replicate with our artist.

Examples of his fashion can be seen below

Erykah Badu

Erykah badu is well known for her big curly hair. This was inspiring as I really wanted our artist to have a visual motif of some sort. Badu's curly hair has inspired me to try and replicate this with our artist.

This signature afro can be seen in countless photoshoots and her album "London Undergound"

R+P Post 12: Artists/bands that have influenced my ideas

In order to create our fictional artist I drew inspiration from some artist/bands and other celebrities that have influential qualities.

Visual motif

Daft punk are known for their helmets

One of my very first ideas about our fictional artist is that he/she should stand out on a visual level. I found this influential as it immediately makes the artist memorable, before you've even heard a track. Artists such as Ed Sheeran and Sia have signature looks. Sheeran is known for his ginger hair, Sia is know for her blonde wig and Daft Punk are known for their helmets . These reoccurring elements are known as "Virtual motifs". This really interested me as it almost turns the artist into a brand logo and is synergistic in the way it appears across all of that artists media. This has influenced my ideas as it has opened up the possibility of my artist having a visual motif such as big afro hair or braids.

Sias visual motif of a blonde wig is seen across numerous music videos and album covers

Ed sheerans visual motif for his ginger hair

This visual motif was then used for his debut album as it has an orange colour scheme

Activism

I really admire when an artist is more than the music and aim to spread awareness on certain issues. However this doesn't necessarily apply to artists only, as many celebrities are activists and fight for certain causes. For example Emma Watson, best known for playing Hermoine Granger in the extremely successful Harry Potter series, is a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador who fights for women's rights. This is inspirational as she has made herself more than the globally-known character.

Emma Watsons twitter page clearly shows she fights fir big issues

Beyonce is very similar in the fact she is mainly known for her music, however she is also known to be an activist for many different causes such as #BooksBuildLives and Gender Equality.

Beyonces page clearly shows the multiple causes she fights for

Activism allows our artist to be more than the music and helps people to get a better feel for them as a person and helps spread awareness for real issues in the world. Thus it has influenced me to make my fictional artist and activist.

R+P Post 11: Artists websites that have inspired and influenced my ideas

An artist website is essential to an artist as it is one of the first official media to come up when the artist named is searched for on the internet. It serves as a source of information as well as links to projects and other media the artist is associated with. Below are some artist websites that have inspired and influenced my ideas.

Chance the rapper

Chance the rappers website had a consistent theme that matched his album cover for "colouring book". I really like the synergy between the website and the album cover which made the website seem modern and up to date. I hope to also provide synergy between my artists website and the album cover and thus this website is influential to my ideas.

Declan McKenna

Declan Mckenna's website took a different approach with various themes and a continuous scrolling navigation. There are no buttons to take you to specific pages of the website which I particularly didn't like however I really liked the seemless scrolling aspect of the website and hope to include something similar in my website.

Izzy Bizu

Izzy bizus website had a video playing in the background. This gave the website a professional modern look that I found really interesting as a consumer of the website. Although a video as a background isn't usually a convention of artist websites I found it deeply inspirational and will attempt to emulate this effect with my website. Her website also included conventional pages such as the video page and live dates page.

Researching different artists websites have fueled my ideas for what I want my website to look like. Not only this, this research has informed me of many conventions of artist websites such as social media links, gallery/videos and a tour date page. Thus I will use conventions when constructing my website.

R+P Post 10: Album covers that have inspired and influenced my ideas

In order to gain a good idea of the conventions of album covers I looked into various ones by artists.

Common album conventions include...

Visual motifs- e.g. ed sheerans hair, sia's wig and ariana's bunny ears.
The name of the artist and the name of the album
Track listings in the inner sleeve
Synergy between other productions from the artist or production company
Contact links such as website or social media

An inspirational album cover was logics-under pressure. The graffiti design was interesting and fitted well with our initial ideas of graffiti related shots. I also found the use of visual motifs inspirational. An explicit example of this can be seen through Sias wig. The iconic blonde wig is seen throughout all of sias content ranging from music videos to live appearances and album covers are not an exception. I intend of containing a visual motif specific to our artist within our album cover.