Q1 (2) In what ways does my Print Productions use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In the realization of my front cover I used as main element a black veil which is the main attention of the scene. The veil has the characteristic that it distorts the appearance of the person who wears it, mysteriously hiding its identity and stimulating the audience with a slight sense of doubt. This prop has undoubtedly the power to represent a dark and gloomy feeling that provokes in the audience the stimulation of mystery and the unexpected. I had as a goal to take this feeling of fear for the moral ambiguity a step forward to create a link between the meaning of the song and the digipack and I used the inside panel of my album using the veil covering two claw-shaped hands directed towards the camera, this acts as direct address and reinforces the feeling of being trapped. Marilyn Manson interestingly recreates this feeling in the audience by using distortion and blurring on the outside of her 'Personal Jesus' album, which are very similar to what I achieved with the 'fishnet' veil.

Following the influence of Marilyn Manson, I wanted my photographs to have high key lighting since a good lighting would facilitate things to me when editing the photo and to be able to modify the shadows and the contrast to obtain a mysterious and dark effect as in the Album cover by the artist. For this I took the photographs in front of a window in broad daylight and with a white wall as background. I also put a pair of lamps pointing to my face to create shadows and definition. The result obtained is similar to the one of Manson has in its front and back cover since there is a very high contrast that drastically differentiates the color white of the black.

One way to influence the audience in a conclusive and effective way is to use the front cover of your CD to attract the attention of the audience, captivate them and entice them to listen to the album. A feature that I borrowed from Rihanna's latest album 'Anti' is the way she directly addresses the audience by looking at them at the eyes. I used a mid-shot of my face, looking stray into the camera, which allows me to make a connection with the audience and persuade them to take an interest in the album. By using this shot the focus is primarily on my eyes which is one of the key focal point of the album cover. For the other pictures of my print productions I used a High angle shot which gives me the proper perspective to make the audience feel that those hands are directed towards them and therefore reinforce the sense of fear and mystery.

I challenge convetions of psychedelic bands of music since their albums are usually a clear reflection of their music, especially of the hallucinogenic part induced by drugs, The use of bright colors and extravagant designs is usually the norm to follow when it comes to To design an album of a sicodelica rock band.

I in this case I have been influenced more by the content of the lyrics of the song and the story that it transmits more than by the style of music of the band. It message is clear and concise, the inner stuggle of a moral struggle between evil and good. This may be a problem because when you see the album does not give you the impression that it is a band of psychedelic music since the art used in the album is very contemporary and minimalist. And although my print productions doensn't explicity portray Narrative there are strong links that have been created to the thematic narrative in the song and music video. From all ofas I decided that instead of explicity adressing to the physical conflict between the characters in the music video, I would portray duality through editing techniques, color, design ad layout.

For example the high contrast between black and white colors is an essential metaphor for the audience to unravel the meanings hidden in the colors that refer to the history of music video in the struggle between good and evil. I adress the conflict with the editing technique used to make it red cube in the background melt as it is bleeding, this technique adds damatisco fear and mystery to the plot and aesthetics of the CD. The same use of colors is identically portrayed throughout my print productions which builds a strong link between them and the music video.

Audience Profile

How are narrative techniques employed In Thriller- Michael Jackson

Music videos can show a different form of existing narratives varieties: Rhetoric, abstract, categorical and classical (Bordwell), they are chosen by the director depending on the aesthetics he wants to portray to the story. Those trying to spread a message and not simply want to tell a story, often resort to rhetoric narrative and associative.

A Classical narrative is a specific configuration of standardised options to represent the history and manipulate the possibilities offered by the argument and style. Under manage space and time, the classical narrative becomes the world of an internally consistent story building for action. It is characterised by a character that has to achieve a goal. This character with whom the audience identifies is the protagonist and becomes the main agent of the events that happen throughout history, which unfolds in three acts well known (beginning, middle and end).

The dramatised music videos that used the classical narrative are those where it adapts to the structure of the song.The music video, driving the search of classical narrative within dramatise music video was ''Thriller''.The success of this type of music videos is the fact that its dramatised audiovisuals are more in demand for the audience as there is no need to make a great intellectual effort to understand, at least in the most superficial part, a story.

The singer of this legendary hit is Michael Joseph Jackson.Known as the "King of Pop" was the most successful pop music star in the world, his music included subgenres such as rhythm & blues, rock, disco and dance. It is estimated that Michael Jackson has sold more than 350 million of his musical productions.
The video 'Thriller' was released in December 1983. His impact was immediate and its success was, overwhelming.Thriller had a budget of $ 800,000, which was more than ten times the video made so far, and even higher than some horror movies of the same time ( "Friday the 13th" Sean S. Cunningham, 1980 cost an estimated $ 550,000). Due to the high cost of production, MTV only agreed to finance if it was released as a one-hour program, including the video with its almost fourteen minutes long with his "making of" forty-five minutes (something that movies had only so far).
MTV, due to continuous calls from fans, came to issue it twice an hour. The video also invigorated sales significantly album also called "Thriller", becoming the best-selling album for the second consecutive year. The video, which also aired in theatres was also marketed in VHS and Beta format, selling  900,000 copies, becoming the best-selling music video history.In addition, in 2009, for the first time in history, considering it was only a video clip of long duration, was included in the National Film Registry of the United States with the following statement from the Library of US Congress: "A lavish production that revolutionised the music industry. "The video, which won three Grammy Awards and two MTV awards (best video album and best long form video clip).Its impact was also immediately, which was predictable in a video seen by now as legendary and already part of popular culture. Without going any further, in the protests students of 2011 in America, more than a thousand students, dressed as zombies, they danced the song "Thriller", opposite the Palace of La Moneda, to protest the privatisation of education.

The success of Thriller showed record producers what they could get thanks to a good music video and thus the way was opened for dramatised music videos.From that moment emerged the belief that a music video with a good bill should produce the idea that promotes music that is good, that without a good video can not achieve the success of a bad song. The key to the ultimate success is in the story, which is necessary for any speech that supports an argument. Music videos are available from the story to convey certain values and certain ideas that generally are aimed at increasing consumer desire for their spectators- ann Kaplan

In 1983 first broadcast Thriller, the famous music video of Michael Jackson that apart from becoming a huge commercial success, marked a revolution in the world of music videos, it marked the origin of the dramatised music videos. those videos that, taking advantage of the coverage offered by the song, tell a story following the audiovisual classical narrative.

The theorist Perez Jimenez states: ''Music videos are based on the artistic generation of the moment and is in contact with the most innovative youth demonstrations and saving it from linking to certain cultural ties, a feature that makes the music videos at the highest representations of the spirit of the time they appear' -.The best example of this is that Thriller parody a film genre, the horror, is that many music videos dramatised are inspired by classical genres, especially in suspense, horror and science fiction.

'Thriller' was made by John Landis, film director, who had already dabbled in the horror genre with "An American Werewolf in London" (1980), a fact that has a strong influence at all levels in the performative evolution of the video clip.'The video idea came from the desire of Michael Jackson to create a music video to tell a story, and thus give a visual sense of the music''. John Landis account as follows:''Well, as if from nowhere I received a call from Michael Jackson. He had seen the work of Rick Baker, turning a man into a wolf in "An American Werewolf in London." Michael was fascinated by the transformation and said he wanted to make a film in which he transformed into a monster on the screen''

The video begins with a very similar level, both in content and in its frame, which opens the prologue to "The Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983), also directed by Landis. A wide shot shows a car at night, which stops. Since that initial moment, the viewer perceives is facing something different from the previous videos: hand-held camera positions that simulate someone spying from the darkness, the sound environment of a throaty night, the very situation of a beached in the woods with no one partner close, dark picture of Robert Paynter and makeup by Rick Baker tell us one thing: John Landis did not intend to shoot a music video, but a horror movie. This is reinforced by the director's choice of introducing a filming beginning before the music starts.

Tzvetan Torovan argued that there are three stages to how narratives progress in music videos and Thriller follows these stages.
Equilibrium, a stage that transmits normality to the audience. In the music video, this is shown in the very beginning.The first scene is set in the old B movies of the 50s' when Michael and his girlfriend, played by Ola Ray, arrive at night drive to a large park. Michael declares his feeling to her, but not before warning that "I am not like other guys." foreshadowing what is about to come... She accepts him as boyfriend and he gives her a ring.Two teenagers declaring their love is a common scene known to the audience that is perceived as normal and quiet.
 Suddenly the full moon appears in the sky and disrupts the equilibrium, Michael begins to suffer convulsions and becomes a horrible wolf or werewolf man (although, according to Rick Baker, the manager of makeup, actually is a were-cat or man cat).His girlfriend screams and flees in terror, but the wolfman reached the corrals and pounces on it with its claws reaching the climax of the story. Claude Levis Strauss would argue that constant creation of conflict and opposition drives a narrative, 'Thriller' creates a binary opposition of control vs panic. Relying on camera movement to convey emotions to the audience. The scenes where there is equilibrium mid-shots and stability while Ola Ray is attacked the camera es shaky, quick movements and blurry images portray a scene of fear and vulnerability . 

The scene is cut at that moment rebuilding the equilibrium, and the same couple appears in a current cinema, surrounded by a public scared, watching a movie named: Thriller. The audience´s perception is twisted as everything they just saw has been a story within a story. Roland Barthes calls this phenomenon an 'enigmatic code', he argues its effectivity as this code is essential to satisfy the audience by having their assumptions disrupted by a twist in the story.Thriller follows a type of non-linear narration since it challenges the audience's perception minute by minute while the video is developed.Michael smiles but his girlfriend, very scared, says he wants to leave.

Steve Archer argues that videos tend to only suggest storyline and focus on fragments of the lyrics and example of this is when Michael and his girlfriend go out on the fog falls, and he begins to sing the first verse of the song "It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark". A conceptual narrative is spotted in this scene as Michael amplifies the lyrics acting as he was a monster and tries to scare his girlfriend.The plot continues its development, the different elements of starting the own scene from a horror film begin to increase. Dead rising from their graves, a street at the entrance to a tunnel with high contrast lighting, low saturation, and blue filters, where the only light comes from the offscreen formed through the collision of light with smoke particles, a mass of thick fog with the intention to accentuate the terrifying atmosphere creating a pre-echo of events that are not taken place yet. The disequilibrium.

They keep walking and go to a cemetery where the zombies suddenly begin to come out of their graves. Michael and his girlfriend realise they are surrounded by zombies, and suddenly, Michael also becomes a zombie. Michael and the undead creatures begin to dance before his frightened girlfriend starts to run trying to escape.


As well as a conceptual narrative, towards the climax of the music video performance clips are used.In this street, the protagonists are surrounded by undead and it begins the choreography that relaxes the tension of the climax, Michael becomes one of those creatures of nightmares, dancing between them. This performance choice successfully promotes the music video promoting the singer as the audience would recognise the artist and this familiarity would encourage them to buy the record.While at this time the video predominates over the own narrative film, even in this part was re-edited to suit the duration of the choreography and everything that happens on the screen.

She is pursued to an abandoned house, where zombies and Michael breaking the surround what their path. Just before being caught, she wakes up and realises that it was all a dream. Michael asks "What is the problem? (What is the problem?)" And offers to take her home. The video ends with Michael turned to the camera: it laughs and reveals his evil eyes while sounding Then sound loud burlesque and terrible actor Vincent Price, the narrator of the spoken part of "Thriller".laughter of Vincent Price.

Barthes argues that you can have either open or closed texts, the first is that which exploits all possibilities of updating by its model reader so that for many possible interpretations, some repercussions on the others so that they are not excluded, but instead reinforced reciprocally. Thus, the text behaves as a challenge to traditional structures and also challenges the reader's ability to decipher the text. From the second type the contrary is inferred: a text that demands little to the reader, it goes hand in hand along its lines without assuming any interpretative effort. Thriller is an open text due to its unclear narrative, Consequently, it makes the reader feel trapped and in need of updating the text and progress in reading to corroborate the interpretations that he formulates as the scenes go by.

Consider Thriller as a short film, rather than as a music video, is justified if it is understood the text that begins: '' Due to my strong staff convictions I wish to stress That this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult ''.

From the beginning, Michael Jackson knew the enormous success that Thriller would have on the market, it makes clear that makes no apology for the hidden and thus discover their backs in the case of being accused of it. He was convinced of the quality of his music video, but the most important text of this presentation is not in this commercial vision of Michael, but in the way that defined the music video Thriller. Defined as film and not defined as video. Talk of Thriller as a film have a special connotation is that being a dramatised narrative, collides with most of the music videos that had been done until then, closer to the narrative experimentation of video art or simple visualisation of musicians playing music.

Although Thriller is closer to be a musical short film than a music video,  it marks the starting point for the realisation of the music videos dramatised as we know them today. What happens is that being the first to venture into this kind of narrative, which seeks is the greatest justification of music in history, because the viewer was not yet prepared for displaying this type of music videos.

As seeks to justify the presence of the song, what is done is to use its contextualization, thus, addressing the lyrics of the song on the subject of fear and suspense, thriller uses the aesthetics of horror movies and all his stereotypes: baseball guy carrying the girl in the car and the farthest part of the city, which coincides which is a place a bit sinister and over, go at night. In any film, we have seen that when it comes to a scene of these characteristics, one or both will die. This is no different and we see as Michael becomes a werewolf and attacked his girlfriend, which warns you to leave before you finish transform.

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