Review of previous student videos (Research)

During this exercise, I was able to look over past student videos to see how the videos were marked. It was an eye-opener for me to see what to use and what not to use. It also enabled to develop my knowledge of the conventions in a music video and to correctly use these features. 

 
Adam, Lisa, Nasima & Sayvita
This is an example of a good music video because it corporates a lot of shots and angles to captivate the audience. For example, there is a range of close-up shots which show the emotion of the artist. The colour red is very widely used in the video and this is noticed during the close-up shots connoting love references. The idea of using other people in the video with a script of the lyrics on them adds interest into the video engaging the audience to sing along. Since the video is black and white, the video has been filtered to only show the objects that are in red. The low angel shots were used to make the artist seem taller and relates to the idea of love being big. 'everybody needs love' 
In one shot, she is denoted singing the chorus in darkness where her earrings and red lipstick is brightly shown. All in all, this music video allows the audience to easily be visually interested. 



Adam, Lisa, Nasima & Sayvita from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Analysis of a previous student video

Here is a video a student group made last year for their coursework, watching a few of them helped me understand what it was that I wanted to do in my group's music video and allowed me a chance to look at what shots work well and can be filmed easily.

Sabien Flint, Jayden Murphy, Tenica Achord-Green, Michael Sintim
I thought this video worked very well, because there were a few different locations, like my group plans to do, but it didn't become confusing and I always knew what was going on. The lead singer wasn't part of the narrative, and I think this worked well because he was the story teller for the man getting frustrated at his boss while he worked in the office, and it went very well with the music. An example of this is when the video cuts back and forth from the singer to the character very quickly in time with the beat as the song reached it's peak. The motif of the graffiti background for the singer is very good, because it fits in with the image of the genre of music, along with the costume he wears. The BMX rider is a good addition, because it allows light relief from the story line, as well as being well shot. The worm eye view shots during the chorus are reminiscent of the rap genre too, and can be seen in many videos.

Thrasher from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Vladimir Propp (research)

Vladimir Propp was a Russian scholar who analysed plot components of Russian folk tales  to identify the narrative elements. His book 'Morphology of the Folk Tale' was published in Russian in 1928 depicted of 31 functions which were common in narrative structures. He used the breakdown of sentence structures to small elements which were easy to analyse and assess in Russian fairy tales. Examples of this were: VICTORY, STRUGGLE and GUIDANCE. 


GREEN DAY- 'BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS
This depicts of the band walking along the road of a stranded neighbourhood that seems to have lost its happiness through times of war or global warming. The video is shown with a vintage effect to show how old the 'struggle' is. It denotes of people standing in the land is close up only showing the torso. They are seen to be wearing old, nasty-looking clothes which can connote that money is running in short supply. This video shows a narrative structure of 'struggle' as the lyrics describe of being alone in the world. For example, 'I walk this empty street on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams'. This is depicted in the video of the band walking across the empty land. Close-up images of the environment are shown persuading the audience to sympathise with the situation.  Since the Iraq war had started the year before, the war-stricken images could connote consequences of the war to a community and could represent other wars which have evolved in countries over disputes of land for example. 

Music Video Choice (add video of song and poster)

We have chosen Marina And The Diamonds - The Outsider for our music video. This is because you can hear the passion in the song, and this will be easy to reflect in a video, rather than a boring song with a girl singing about boys. Also, we needed a female artist because the group is all girls, and there would be too much hassle to organise bringing a boy in for all the filming sessions.

This is a poster the group made to show our influences. It includes locations and eccentric people, which we hope to envisage in our music video. They are all eccentric dressers, including Lady Gaga, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Noel Fielding. We chose people that stand out because we want our artist to fit in with the connotations of 'The Outsider', someone who isn't the same as everyone else and is very memorable. If we can manage this then I think our music video will be very memorable too, because of the costumes and style of the video.

There is no original video to compare this song to, so we will either have to stick to what the lyrics say or try and fit in other references to the song, otherwise it will become just another generic pop video that nobody will remember after five minutes. We plan to have our artist walk down London's Southbank, from Waterloo to London Bridge, and maybe cut in other locations and scenes to get a storyline going.

Lip Sync Tutorial

In the lip synching tutorial I learnt a load of new skills, including how to hold the camera steady without a tripod and how to do a moving shot while sitting on a chair with wheels. I learnt new skills on final Cut Pro also, such as how to pinpoint one point in the song, for example 'dance' by looking at the wavy lines on the equaliser tab of the video. The filming for a music video differs from the filming for a thriller film because you need to have your artists looking directly into the camera, which doesn't happen often in films, and you also needed a wider variety of shots to keep the viewer interested.

Summarise the main points of the handout on Andrew Goodwin's theory on music videos

Andrew Goodwin  believes traditional narrative analyses do not apply to pop videos because they approach it from a different angle to novels and films. The reasons for this are as follows:

• Pop videos are built around songs; usually these do not pose traditional narrative structures
• Pop videos use the singer as a narrator and a character
• The singer usually looks into the camera, as it helps the viewer at home feels involved in the song

Pop videos rely on repetition, such as images in the way the song repeats choruses or lines, or rhythms of other songs (intertextuality), allowing us to become familiar with the genre and have certain expectations. The video would be played on the radio, or an advertising film or TV tie-in, making the song familiar to the masses. Pop songs have a form of closure and ending because the three minutes that a video is based on must end. This is reflected in the structure of the music, building to a climax or constant repetition before fading out.

Some videos are autonomous from the music the spring from, e.g the visualisation of a song may go beyond the original meaning. Sometimes the video provides a visual pleasure that encourages numerous views, which promotes the music. The videos may promote films as well, showing that there are three types of relations between songs and videos: illustration, amplification and disjuncture.

• Illustration - The video tells the story of the lyrics, using dance and other things to express the feelings/moods of the song
• Amplification - The video introduces new meanings that do not contradict with the lyrics but add layers of meaning
• Disjuncture - The video has little connection to the lyrics or where the video contradicts the lyrics

Pop videos usually have easily recognisable features, e.g. Michael Jackson used to give a yelp and/or twirl in his videos. Also, women are presented as objects of male desire, especially in heavy metal and hip hop videos. Madonna and Beyonce present themselves for males to look at, but they look directly into the camera  and cease to be passive.

In some videos the instruments are portrayed by different objects, e.g. Rock The Casbah by The Clash, where an armadillo trundles along every time the piano plays. Videos also try and appeal to as wide an audience as possible without alienating anyone. Videos that feature older bands often show them in their younger days - but this would be 60s and 70s, so an older audience can still identify with them.

Lastly, videos that are from songs written for films usually incoporate images from the film in the video, for example Celine Dion in My Heart Will Go On uses clips from the film Titanic.

Illustration

This video is illustrative because it shows Eminem standing on rooftops and giving examples of confident body language, showing that he is 'not afraid' of anything or anyone anymore. Also he flies, something that nobody can do, and this shows that he's a changed man, as he says in the lyrics.

Amplification


This video amplifies the lyrics of the song because it isn't literally about what the lyrics say all the way through, but it shows the mundaneness of common life, which is the underlying meaning to the song.

Disjuncture


This video is an example of disjuncture because the video has nothing to do with the lyrics, most obviously because they are singing about being a spy, and girls, but neither of these are represented in the video.

who was Vladimir Propp? find out who he was and apply his theory to a music video you have seen. FINISH

Vladimir Propp was a Russian scholar who analysed the basic plot of Russian fairy tales.Vladimir broke down sentence structures where it was then used to analysize them into narratives. there are 31 of these narratives and they include words such as: VICTORY, PURSUIT and DELIVERY.
an example of his work onto a music video is....FINISH