Star Project

Kylie Minogue 

“A star is an image constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) from a range of materials – eg advertising and magazines, as well as films and music.” Richard Dyer.

  For my star project I have chosen to research how the star herself Kylie Minogue's image has changed throughout her career. A much loved Australian pop-s tar who has been in the music industry for many years and has had an impact on the music industry by her image.

       

Kylie Minogue's career started off from the hit TV show 'Neighbours' where she was represented as a young, innocent, sweet girl and set her up for the rest  of her career. Kylie was signed to the 'Mushroom' record label in 1987 where she went on to release her first single 'The Loco-Motion' which spent 7 weeks at number one in the Australian charts. This success lead her to travel to England with her record company to where she continued her successful career with her next number one hit 'I should be so lucky'. This soon saw Kylie having a massive breakthrough in the music industry world wide. Since the start of her singing career in 1987 she has successfully released 11 studio albums which have all made it into the top 15 in the UK charts starting with her debut album 'KYLIE', released on the 4th July 1988 only a year after her entering the music business and shot straight to number 1! 

                                                          

As her career shot off her image became more iconic as she managed to pull of a variety of styles from classy to a more revealing approach. Her appearance off stage is always kept to a classy standard but however has gone for very similar looks as and also been compared to Marilyn Monroe, a woman who was seen as a sexual object in the eyes of the public during her time. Kylie however has a different approach to her image on stage where she always seems to be wearing more revealing clothing and has more of a provocative approach to her stage presence.

                   

One of her most iconic styles had to be the skimpy gold hotpants she wore in the music video of 'Spinning around' in 2000, a single from her 7th studio album 'Light Years' which some say was her best ever single. Kylie seemed to have a love for her own body or knew it got a reaction from her fans and so continued to show off her body in one of her more revealing, some say trampy, items of clothing a white piece that dipped ridiculously low to show as much of her body as possible!  Seen wearing minimal clothes during tour and in many music videos, using her body and sexualising herself to appeal to a wider audience and gain more of a following and support. Which she achieved. Kylie had a huge fan base from the young generation to the elder generation and you would think as the pop goddess herself gets older that her style and image would change drastically but that's not the case. Kylie has kept a continuous image throughout her career (and her body) seeing as at the age of 45 she still manages to pull of a little skimpy number but also presents herself as the classy, sophisticated lady she is!

                                

Kylie Minogues image over the years hasn't had a drastic change but you could say been slightly tampered with to fit her growing self. She has gone from a young innocent girl from Neighbours to a highly respected pop goddess who has a lot of class about her but also knows how to pull of a cheeky little number when necessary. Her image has always added to her success and not just her outfit choices but her changes in her music to suit all her fans and obviously her natural beauty. The more drastic change is from the person represented on stage to the sexual woman on stage.

Some Song Ideas

These are some of the ideas our group first came up with for our choice of song. We listened to all the different songs we had each picked and even though when we first started thinking about our music video we all wanted an upbeat song we could have fun with we also started thinking about taking a more serious approach with the music video. So the variety of songs we first started picking from helped us get an insight of what we personally and as a group were actually looking for.



We listened to Kate Nash- Foundations and thought about what we could do for a video but then thought as we had all seen her video multiple times we may possibly start mimicking the literal take on the song which she also does in her video.




We also listened to 'Together in Electric Dreams' after hearing it on an advert several times and talking about taking a more fun and over the top approach to our music video. We were settled on this song for a bit and had ideas about the music video and different shots and fun ideas on how to create a humorous video. As it is a male singer we were going to sing it as a boy band, obviously dressed as men but also play the background singers and other extras and we were also thinking to base it in an earlier era. However we decided after a bit that even though this was what we first had in mind we didn't want to take it too far and turn it from humour into cringe.




Lana Del Ray- Summertime Sadness was another option we had in mind as we felt we could take the song and apply any music video to it but also felt it might be a bit to serious for us and not everyone in our group approved of the song and thought that that the group could get bored of the song as it becomes more dated seeing as it is only a recent release.

Prelim

This is our preliminary task that we done together as a bigger group and took individual parts so we were all able to have a practice at lip syncing and being in front of the camera. We used the song 'nothing compares to you- Sinead O'connor' as the video allowed us to focus more on the lip syncing which is an important factor of our music videos as good lip syncing is crucial. Also we learnt how difficult it is going to be editing our music video in time with the music and lip syncing.