Richard Dyer's Star Quality Theory

Richard Dyer is an English academic currently holding a professorship in Film Studies at King's College London. He specialises in cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender. 

Richard Dyer's star quality theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are constructed by institutions for financial gain by being built up to target a specific demographic. His theory is broken down into 3 sections: Audience and Institutions, Constructions and Hegemony:

1) Audience and Institutions-
This is the idea that stars are used to for the sole purpose of making money, and the institution modifies the celebrities image around the target audience.

2) Constructions-
The idea that the star is built for an audience and is not an actual person. They are then built with a certain signature to them, making them stand out from other stars. One example of this would be Lady Gaga's loud and fashion sense which separates her from other celebrities.

3) Hegemony-
This is the idea that we relate to the star due to the fact that they have a certain feature or quality that we admire about them or share with them, which then develops an admiration which turns into idolisation. Some people may then replicate what they like about the star, which can have positive or negative consequences.

Location Ideas

These are some of the main locations we are thinking of using. We want to film at winter wonderland this year because we feel the song 'Stay Out' has a very wintery feel to it and would fit well with the setting of fair ground rides and christmas stalls. The next location we want to film in more of a rural location, and we found a cultural park which is accessible to us in London, and the bridge below is where we want to film. We also feel that Covent Garden would be an appropriate place to film as it fits with the theme of our song, along with the record store. 

Mood Board

For inspiration we searched our main themes on Tumblr to create a mood board. Our ideas so far consist of a 60's theme, in which we want to incorporate loud colours from this period, old fashioned items such as flip calendars and vinyl record players, along with a sepia effect to make the footage appear to be old with a retro feel. 

Email for Permission

We e-mailed the manager of the record label Nina Nesbitt is signed to, Universal Music Group  and asked for permission to use her song for our A2 music video to avoid any copyright issues. We are awaiting a reply!

Brainstorming

This lesson we made a brainstorm whilst listening to the lyrics of the song. 

These are our initial ideas, which consist mostly of retro locations and themes which will help us stick to our theme of fun and youth. These ideas will mostly be shots if teenagers in different situations enjoying their youth, which is portrayed throughout the song via the lyrics. 

Lyrics

These are the lyrics to 'Stay Out'. The key lyrics that we picked out to focus on were "They think they're from the sixty's, But they were born in 1991", to show that the group of teenagers we are focusing on are more old fashioned than the period of time they are living in. We had the idea to portray this mainly through shots of old items and iconography with a sepia filter to add this 'retro' feel to the music video. We will also play on the lyrics "stay out" due to the fact that this is the main lyric repeated throughout, to create the young and carefree vibe we are aiming for.

Song and Concept Idea (3)

We recently came up with a new idea to create a more relaxed and chilled out music video. As we could not decide on a strong enough concept for the song we had previously chosen, within the group we went away individually and came up with a song and a concept of our own and then reported back and shared our ideas as a group. When discussing, we all really liked the idea of creating a video with a 60's and retro vibe, and settled on the song 'Stay Out' by Nina Nesbitt, as we believe we can create a fun and light hearted video with a strong message of being carefree within your youth .