Case Study- Skyfall

Skyfall (2012) is a British spy film and its the 23rd film in the James Bond series, produced by Eon Production, directed by Sam Mendes and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan. The film features the theme song Skyfally by Adele. In Skyfall, James Bond is played by Daniel Craig, which is his 3rd time. And the main villain named Raoul Silva played by Javier Bardem.

Audience

Target Audience and Appeal

Skyfall's target audience mainly consists of white males aged 12A, this target audience has been relatively the same throughout the entire James Bond franchise. However they do have a female audience presence recently. Skyfall appeals to their target audience of white males with the use of the main protagonist, James Bond being a stereotypical, white, masculine English man. The target audience can relate towards Bond and even see him as a role model due to his exciting life filled with action, exotic countries and woman. However, Skyfall does widen their target audience with the use of a increase of female main characters, such as Judi Dench as M and Naomie Harris as Eve Moneypenny. These female characters are seen as independent woman who are equally strong and powerful as James Bond. Furthermore, Skyfall deliberatly targeted a for a low age rating of 12A to make their film more avaliable to a increased number of people, no matter the age.

Industry

Marketing 

It was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer(MGM) and Columbia Pictures. And MGM could advantage of their positive reviews and included them in advertisements to increase sales and views across the globe. To connote this, Skyfall received countless awards and nominations which highlights the quality of the film, this can be suggested by the table below:

A Global Text?

Skyfall is a global Text and has entertained audiences across the world which can be demonstrated by the gross revenue of over $1.1 billion. Furthermore, the age rating of only 12A increases the number of young audiences can view the movies, even though the film does consist of violence and sexual content.

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Genre

Due to Jame Bond films having similar genres throughout the entire franchise, Skyfall is no different, in most cases. Therefore, Skyfall contains a range of codes and conventions of action and spy films and sub-genres including elements of romance.  

Narrative

 The narrative in Skyfall is quite linear and therefore, fairly predictable; James Bond against a evil villain. Throughout Skyfall James Bond (Main protagonist) faces a evil rogue agent turned into a cyber-terrorist. However, within Skyfall James Bond is represented as a flawed-hero due to him failing basic training mission in the first half of the film, making the narrative about his progression and development into his iconic and super-spy which audiences can recognise.  

Representation

With Skyfall there is a range of representations which span the film and even the franchise. Therefore, masculinity is a continuous theme throughout old and modern films, but James Bond films wouldn't even exist without it. SkyFall's masculinity is over exaggerated to make James Bond save everyone and be the hero.  Masculinity is the backbone of James Bond. All of their films stereotypically represent that white English men are privileged and upper class  with their wealth and power, alongside their line of woman following them. This poorly represents how general people live in England.

Furthermore, the representation of woman throughout the James Bond franchise is controversially degrading, woman are often represented as objects and damsels in distress. This is suggested in Skyfall due to the gradual increase of  woman which James Bond has slept with through the course of the film. This is a common and overlooked theme in all James Bond films since the start of the franchise. Additionally, In total, Bond has slept with 53 women over the course of the 25 completed films.

Case Study- Kingsman

Audience

Target Audience and Appeal

Kingsman (2014 Dir.M.Vaughn) has a age rating of 15 due to the violence, sexual and action throughtout the film which could disturb a younger audience. Furthermore, Kingsman is attempting to contrast but relate to stereotypical Jame Bond films, making their target audience mainly young males and females but does appeal to a more broad audience with the use of a variety of different characters with difference ethnicity, age and genders, making the character relateable to most audiences.

Industry

Marketing 

Kingsman was distributed by 20th Century Fox and they  used a range of trailers to advertise and promote the film to their audience with sneak peaks and teasers which could potentially interest and appeal to their target audience, as shown below:

Adding to this, to further advertise Kingsman, they released and displayed a number of intriguing and appealing posters (example top of page) featuring protagonist and antagonist characters to present the main actors performing in the film. 

A Global Text?

Kingsman was published across the world and become very mainstream due to its high budget of $81,000,000, therefore by the weekend it made over $42,000,000 (13/2/15) and had a gross profit of $128,017,991. 

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Genre and Narrative

Kingsman consist of a variety of genres, this includes: comedy, action, spy, etc. These genres appeal to the target audience. Additionally, the narrative of Kingsman is fairly linear, however it does contain some multi-narrative elements with the use of different character perspectives

Representation

Kingsman positively represents woman through the use of the Spy Roxy, is represented as a independent and strong woman who can stand up for herself. She is equal or even better represented as a better Kingsman Spy then Eggsy. On the other hand, Kingsman poorly represents woman, this can be suggested  in the relationship between Eggsy and Princess Tilde, which  is simply limited to a controversial sex scene at the end of the film. Additionally, Tilde is also represented as a damsel in distress due to her imprisonment, which relates to a princess locked in a tower, waiting for a strong male hero to rescue her. which suggests that Kingsman represents woman in a range of lights, negative or positive.

Case Study- Adele

Brief Background

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on the 5 of may 1998 in Tottenham, London. Her mother was Penny Adkins and her farther was Marc Evans, however her farther left when Adele was only two years old. Adele started singing at the young age of 4 years old, and when growing up she spent most of her spare time singing and not studying. Adele graduated frin BRIT School for performing Arts and Technology in Croydon May 2006 with her class mates Leona Lewis and Jessie J.

Audience

Adele's target audience is 15 to 30 year olds females who are interested in Pop, soul, blue-eyed soul and R&B music. But her audience does consist of other people who are male, additionally alot older and younger than the target range.

Industry

Adele is extremely popular across the entire world, thanks to her breath taking music, however she is most popular in the UK. Her global success as a singer/songwriter has made her music very  accessible for all audience. Adele's music is all over YouTube, Spotify and Itunes and her own CD's. When she first started, her music started attracting listeners on Myspace in 2007 and he received the Brit award "Critics' Choice" and also won the BBC sound of 2008 poll.

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Previously, Adele's songs were within the soul, blue-eyed soul and R&B music genres, however recently her music investigated some mainstream Pop music elements, to potentially feed into a more main stream audience. Furthermore, her lyrics reflect some of her life's experiences and 

feelings, such as references to her up bringing, with only her mother to raise her. additionally, in some of her music videos contain narrative to link the song to a specific event and to relate to their audience.

Case Study- Stormzy

Brief Background

Stormzy, also known as "Micheal Ebenzer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr" was born 26 on July 1993 in Croydon, London, England and he is a grime/hip hop artist. Stormzy started rapping since he was 11 and would clash with much older rappers at local youth groups. He stated "I was a very naughty child, on the verge of getting expelled, but I wasn't a bad child; everything I did was for my own entertainment. But when I went into an exam I did really well." But then he adds "six A*s, three As and five Bs at GCSE, but then only achieved a "humbling" ABCDE at A-Level" 

Audience

Appeal and target audience
In Stormzy's early music career, his audience consisted of mainly young males who were interested in grime and hip hop. But recently he has gradually became more and more main stream with his pop music, therefore his audience has expended to males and females between the ages of 13-25. He appeals to his audience by making his songs relatable to his audience and he appeals to his audience through social media, like Twitter with his 1.22 million followers.

Other literal responses

Industry

Global appeal
Stormzy is very well known and popular across the world, but especially in the UK, his global success as a artist is very unique and outstanding. Additionally, Stormzy gained this popularity through how he published his music, making it very accessible for his audience, and other audiences. He did this through YouTube in his early music career, but later on he released music CD's and he was available on music platforms, such as Spotify and Itunes. 

Marketing and promotion 

Stormzy has been published in all kinds of press, but recently he has been on the news website "Independent" (https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/stormzy), this website explores important events in his music career. When Stormzy is in the press, he is being promoted, and his music is being advertised to a even larger audience. Stormzy has also been on: newspapers, magazines and TV. Additionally, Stormzy has been on radio talk shows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkyorIPV6zY) where they discuss his music and his life. Furthermore, Stormzy's music has also been promote through the range of awards he has won, as displayed above.

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Stormzy is a singer/songwriter, his songs is within the grime/hip genres but recently his music has explored pop genres, to potentially feed into a more main stream audience. The lyrics in his music also is used for the rhythm of the song and to display issues and experiences about his life and in the world to relate and appeal to his audience. Furthermore, he uses narrative in his music videos to further relate to a personal experience or a story to give his song meaning, making audiences decode it in many different ways. For example, in his song "Cigarette and Cush" he uses narrative to demonstrate a love story about a drug dealer and police officer, which makes the song have a deeper meaning if the audience reads into the lyrics.  Furthermore, in his music videos, Stormzy tends to wear fancy uniforms to counteract the stereotypes towards black males, even in "Cigarette and Cush" where he is a drug dealer.

Case Study- Ed Sheeran

Brief background

Ed Sheeran is a English singer and songwriter who has currently released three albums. He didn't come from a rich family, and he started off performing off the streets and now is performing across the world. 

Audience

Appeal and target audience
Ed Sheeran target audience is made up of a variety of males and females aged between 15-25, however this target audience is not a restriction, Ed Sheeran's audience also consists of much older or younger listeners. This is due to his wide range of different music genres he experiments and thrives in, this includes: rap, pop, indie and mixtures of in-between. Ed Sheeran appeals to his audience through social media, no wonder he has over 16.6 million Twitter followers. Furthermore, Ed appeals to his target audience due to his age, he is only 27, which is quite young compared to his major success the music industry.

Other literal responses
Ed Sheeran's popularity has grown massively due to his outstanding albums and unique singles. In 2011, Ed released the album "+" and it got over 4 million sales world wide, in 2014 his album "x" sold over 14 million copies and in 2017 he released "÷" and he got over 3 million sales. This can be demonstrated through this table below:
  




Uses and gratifications
Ed Sheeran uses social interactions to relate and appeal to his audience, in multiple occasions he has supported and surprised his fans. For example, he has surprised fans at their weddings by singing live at the wedding parties. Furthermore, in one instance he overheard a young girl singing one of his songs at a mall, so he jumped on stage and sang it with her. This presents that Ed loves to be with his fans to surprise and improve their lives.

Industry

Global appeal

As stated previously with information and statistics, Ed is very popular and his global success of an music artist is outstanding and will continue to do so. Furthermore, his popularity is due to the accessibility of his music from CD's to YouTube Videos, audiences are able to get his music anywhere. In YouTube alone he has over 28 million subscribers and his song "Shape of You"has received over 3.3 billion views world wide which is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.

Marketing and promotion 

Ed has been all over the press; newspapers, magazines and TV. And he has been on countless radio talk shows discussing his newest songs and next plans. Furthermore, Ed Sheeran's music is promoted through his endless amounts of awards such: Grammy Award for Song of the Year and Brit Award for British Breakthrough Act. Some of his awards can be seen below:

In addition to this, Ed Sheeran has his own website to promote his next tour and newest songs: Here. Furthermore, he uses his website to advertise and sell his own branded merchandise of clothes and other products.

Who owns what radio station?

This blog post identifies who owns what radio station, to discover similarities and differences in ownerships between radio stations. 

For example, a unexpected ownership of the radio station "Smooth" lead to the research, that Smooth radio actually owns a number of very well known radio stations, such as:Heart, Capital and Classic FM, as well as LBC, Radio X and Gold. This company is led by Founder & Executive President, Ashley Tabor, Global Group CEO, Stephen Miron and Director of Broadcasting, Richard Park. However the radio station "Magic" and even the radio stations: Kiss, Absolute Radio and Heat radio is owned by the same company called "Bauer Radio" . 

Music Timeline

This blog explores the music timeline from 1950 to 2018 by showing the key moments in these years, such as the launch of new music platforms, digitalisation, talent competition, piracy and even complete new genres.

First music 
the first ever recorded proof of music was in 325, constantine declares Christianity the offcial religion of the Roman Empire. The spread of Christianity in the western world spurred the development of European music.

Music digitalised
Music was mainly digitalised in the early 2000s with the help of the rising technology of computers and other devices for the primary means to record, store, play and distribute music. Therefore, music was more available and had more of a variety for consumers across the world.

Music Plat forms
January 1993- Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) was the first free online music platform ever launched to the public.

January 2002- Last.fm was launched as a music platform that uses music recommender to build playlists and specific user profiles

September 2005- Pandora launched as a rebranding effort for music genome project with the goal of using scripts and song organisation programs to produce specific user radio stations which is based on the user's history and music.