DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS - The Music Biz - Marketing Meatloaf

TYPE OF DOCUMENTARY

This documentary is a mixed documentary which mixes interviews, archive footage, observational evidience, pictures, voiceovers, cutaways and archive footage.

THEMES

This documentary talks about changes to the music industry in the 1990's and how Meat Loaf was remarketed to be a global success. 'The Music Biz' talks about how he was thought of as a Hard Rock artist and that before being repackaged as part of an alternative genre, he was a struggling artist likely to be forgotten. Getting him to become a success again was another battle of the music industry that is long and hard fought.

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

This documentary follows a Linear Narrative. There is an explanation of how Meat Loaf was originally a global success at the begining. This helps to set up the story of the documentary to the audience. Problems had been identified by the time we reached the middle of the documentary. This was mostly that not all global audiences liked Meat Loaf and they thought he was too old fashioned. To them, he seemed very much like he was from the 1970s and 1990s.

The end of the documentary shows the success that he recieved for his album 'Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell'. He recieves a Grammy and a Brit award and proves that all of the hard work payed off.

CAMERAWORK

During the production of the 'I'll Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)' music video, we see a high angle looking down on Micheal Bay, making him look inferior to the audience. Close ups of the women are supposed to show how pretty she looks for the music video of this song. Strangely, during the interviews, one man had the camera facing to the side of his head whilst he talked and moved his head to look at the interviewer occasionally. A feature like this is very rare in documentaries and an audience may think of this as rather perculiar. There were noticable panning shots over the river and at virgin headquarters. These helped define their importance to the documentary, particularly at the Headquarters of Virgin. There is useage of a shot reverse shot at the awards cermonies which meat loaf attended at the end of the documentary.

MISE-EN-SCENE

Everything that was part of the mise-en-scene documentary was relevent to the exposition. This included Virgin Headquaters, the filming of the music videos, Radio Stations and Awards Ceremonies. In interviews, we saw a background of an artist's work of the CD covers and also the Magazine covers. This can be linked into Meat Loaf's re-found success and how they had been marketed for what was then a modern audience. Similar features from other struggling artists are presented to the audience. We were informed that Meat Loaf's new album was selling well and record stores such as Our Price and Virgin are now more relevant than they were at the start of the documentary. 

SOUND

'The Music Biz' used a lesser amount of digetic sound in comparison to other documentaries. This was the sound of people being interviewed. With regards to non-digetic sound, this sometimes came from when the narrator responds to what goes on screen. Sometimes a question would be put to an interview subject and the narrator provides the audience with answer. As this is a documentary talking about the music industry, it may seem catastrophic not to include the music of the artists that have been re-branded to be a success. This included Take That, Will Smith and YMCA. A lot of meaning was added to the documentary by the sounds of music, award ceremonies and interviews. 

EDITING

We saw two shots of Meat Loaf working with Micheal Bay so that the audience can observe the relationship between the two men. At the beginning we see a Montage of editing of Meat Loaf's past successes. This is full of a variety of short and relevant clips to the documentary. Between some of the interviews, there were some transitional dissolves to move from one subject to another through a blue screen. This was not done very well, however it may have been due to the technology around at the time the documentary was made. When interviewees became boring the editors would cutaway from the documentary. The rule of thirds was implemented in 'The Music Biz' because one person would appear on the left and another on the right of interviews. 

ARCHIVE MATERIAL

The documentary has large amounts of archived music videos involving Meatloaf, such as when he performed on Top of the Pops. Footage of Mr. Blobby and Take That makes an appearance, but more importantly Meatloaf's press conferences are shown to define important events which he is related to. 

GRAPHICS

To match Meat Loaf's Style, a Gothic white text on black background is used because of how it stands out to the audience. The 'Music Biz' titles are in Red and White, similar colours to the Virgin Logo. There were 'Magazine' style Graphics at times to to make the interviewees seem largely imposed. 'Virgin' style Headquaters are seen when we are introduced to the headquarters of virgin. For this small time, the documentary is more relevant to Virgin than Meat Loaf is to them.