Ellie Goulding Star image

Ellie Goulding is a British singer songwriter. Her career began in 2008 when she got signed to a record label, and from then on has been a success. She has got to work with several other artists in her genre of pop, such as Tinie Tempah and Calvin Harris.
Ellie's debut album 'Lights' was released in March 2010, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart.


Her genre of music is pop and synthpop, and her audience is likely to be young females of an age range of 15-25, just like our artist. In most of her music videos, close ups are used to help the audience become familiar with her and help grow her fan base, there not used to sexualise and objectify her like they would be in a Beyonce music video. Thus, Ellie is relatable to the star image of our artist. As we will use close ups to sell our artists as the 'girl next door', just like Ellie is portrayed as in her music videos.

Ellie's costumes and makeup tends to be very minimal and ordinary, she wears enough makeup to enhance her beauty and make her seem older, but not too much, so that she doesn't sell herself through her looks but rather through her creativity, talent and youthfulness. Thus making her organically synthetic, just like the star image we are creating for our artist. Her outfit choices tend to be very high street, just like an outfit a teenager would wear on a day to day basis; from shops like Topshop and ASOS. This further emphasises her as the 'girl next door'. Moreover, this helps her fit into Dyer's paradox 1 of being ordinary and extraordinary. As her famous nature portrays her as extraordinary, however her minimal makeup and 'girl next door' fashion sense portrays her as ordinary. Therefore her star image is relatable for her audience watching, allowing young girls to not feel so distant from her but more similar to her.

Ellie wears normal, everyday clothing that her target audience would wear

This is the kind of star image we want our star to give across, and so for that reason we will dress our star in every day clothing and give her minimal makeup but enough to make her look about 16-17 years old. Close ups used to highlight her simplistic makeup. Ellie's outfits are just normal, everyday outfits her target audience would wear. Through the use of close-ups, costumes and makeup. Ellie Goulding's star image is represented as an energetic, youthful and a sort of innocent female artist, who likes to have fun in her music videos whilst portraying a meaningful narrative when she feels it's needed. From her innocent and simplistic nature, her audience young females of an age range 15-25, just like our target audience. With a possible secondary target audience of young males, as they will see Ellie as an ordinary young women who they would usually go for.

Close-ups to highlight her simplistic make-up

                                      

Inspiration from film

We decided to get some inspiration from some films to include in our music video. These films are 'paper towns' and 'Grease'.

Paper Towns
This film is about a boy called Quentin who lives in Florida and meets a girl called Margo when she moves in across the street from him when they're younger. He has a crush on her when they meet and they are good friends. However, as they grow up they start to drift apart and by the end of their senior year of high school they're practically strangers. 

We decided to use some ideas from Paper Towns to add to our music video. The main idea we took is to have the concept of young love and young relationships to feature in our video. We also wanted to take the idea of the relationship eventually falling apart and the couple drifting apart from each other in order to show the reality of young relationships and to help create empathy towards the characters to help embrace the connection between the stars and the audience. This is because our audience is teens and young adults which is also the target audience for the film. The star image of our artist is the 'girl next-door' type which is is similar to the girl in the film who is fun, kind, friendly, quirky and genuine.

Grease

Although 'Grease' is a musical, we decided to take some ideas from the narrative of the film. This film is about a young couple who have a summer romance but then at the end of summer have to part their ways and go back to school. However, they later find out that in fact they now go to the same school as Sandy, the female character, moved there. 

We will also be using the idea of a summer lover that is later broken however they won't get back together. These characters are meant to be in their teens, which is the ages our artist and actor will be as well. This film appeals to teens and young adults, mainly girls, which is what the target audience for our video will be.The character of Sandy is presented as 'the girl next-door' in the film which is similar to the artist in our video. 

Inspiration from music videos - 'Want U Back'

Inspiration from music videos - 'WILD' and 'Fools'

Inspiration from music videos - 'Everything Has Changed'

Inspiration from music videos - 'Story Of My Life'

The VALS of our audience

Our target audience is primarily teenagers and young adults, from the ages of 15-24, as they are most likely to relate to the narrative of loosing their first love, and the memories they shared together. Moreover, they will be primarily female because of the star image as the 'girl next door' of the main singer, making her relatable as many teenagers would've experienced what she has gone through. However our secondary target audience could be males as they will watch the video due to being attracted to the girl.

This brings us to the VALs of our target audience. VALs is an acronym for Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles which is used to define certain niches of an audience. VALS was developed in 1978 by social scientist Arnold Mitchell.

Here is a description of all the different VALS: