Album Cover Art Analysis-The Beatles - Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

This album art can be deemed as pop art, art that emerges from popular culture and high art. Peter Blake is the artist who designed this album artwork, Blake is famous established, british pop artist. This album artwork is viewed as a revolutionary creation it broke boundaries of a work of art with its collage of famous figures. The flowers displaying the bands name relates to the time and lifestyle, the hippee nature of peace and love. The bass drum towards the back reveals circus writing which gives an element of fun, the drum itself codes music. 

A large statement is made with The Beatles wearing vibrantly coloured military uniforms. This is actually mimicing the establishment. It defies and undermines the military ways. The bands actual positioning establishes their cult significance, in front of the many famous figures in the background.


Finally the actual background is a blue sky representing happiness; freedom; summer of love; exotic; peaceful; heaven; hope. And a palm tree that signifies the idea of an island, the band being untouchable, escaping the british norm and the sense of exotica. 

Album cover design draft 1

Album Cover Art Analysis

• The album cover design establishes the genre of the music.
• It establishes the identity of artists.
• It established credibility of the artist and the album itself.
• It seeks to attract audience attention through striking imagery.
• It acts as a persuasive device drawing the audience in.
• The cover can be original, Inventive, Innovative, Unique or conventional depending on what is sought.
• Album cover use codes and conventions to communicate with the audience.

Music Video Analysis Micheal Jackson - Thriller

Michael Jackson's Thriller is considered to one of the most revolutionary and voted most influential video ever, the 14 minute music video is credited for its fanatastic effect of merging filmaking and music. Selling 9 million units it made it in to the Guiness world records.

The video falls under the genre of horror and this is revealed clearly as soon as the title screen appears, with font colour being red to symbolise blood and slashed lettering. The opening scene shows the mise-en-scene to be realistic, dark, eerie setting with diegetic sounds of crickets. 

Micheal Jackson is dressed in his iconic costume including the white socks and rolled up trousers. The opening continues by entering some non diegetic music which isnt the actual song and we are then shown the short film before the videon even begins which is one of the reasons for video being revoloutionary, this had not been done before. We are shown a series of close ups that convey Micheals characters transformation with the mise-en-scene fitting the genre once more, dark forest surrounded by fog. Once again this was so revoloutionary as it the audience were watching a film within a film, something that defied typical conventions of a music video.

The setting changes again into deeper fog ending the short film and merging the world of the song and the narrative. The song becomes a vehicle for the video, ultimately inverting the music video. The people in the narrative join in with the song when the zombies begin to dance which is the iconic dance that people still imitate. 


Finally the video ends with actual credits once again using a convention of a film, supporting the idea of the merging of genres. 

Carol Vernallis Music Video Theory

What is clear from my detailed research is that the music videos synchronise the images with the rhythm of the music itself, Vernallis states that the videos exhibit, "quick cutting or editing on the beat". This is evident in a number of videos i have analysed, for example in Tupac - Ghetto Gospel it follows this theory various times throughout. Specifically showing the effect in a fairly fast montage.

The music videos i have analysed have a number of very short scenes or edits with consistently quick cuts; this notion is also explored by Vernallis who states, "edits in music video come far more frequently than in film".

There s a massive responsibility of editing in music video, the editing has to be to be able to convey the narrative if there is one to be displayed. "Music video editing bears a far greater responsibility for many elements than does classic Hollywood film editing".

"...the editing in a music video works hard to ensure that no single element (the narrative, the setting, the performance, the star, the lyrics, the song) gains the upper hand".