For our creative task We have to choose a song and make a music video for that chosen song. The choice of song is obviously critical to the effectiveness of the overall video. It has got to be a song that i like and also a song that is going to be challenging in the sense that it has lots of work and differing techniques to showcase what we can achieve.
After our choice the entire group gathered round and shared their ideas. Each had a definite potential but none were particuly of interest to me.
For our group I alone had to decide which song we had to do because my group was unavailable at the time. For a start I had to pick genre because if i could determine genre I could narrow down the song choices. I managed to narrow down our genre choices down to two. Pop or Indie Rock. I decided on these two genres because they had lots of adaptability and could be interpreted in different ways. Pop was one of the two choices because it was a good opportunity to have multiple shots and would be easier to enable quick shots, because of the natural pace and speed of the music. For pop we had few choices for song which are listed below.
Rizzle Kicks: Down with the trumpets
However despite the choice of song we had i still wasn't convinced on it, because it was not a song that i wanted to portray due to the fact that it already had a video for it and i didn't want to make a copy. And i didn't exactly like the song so i wouldn't have been able to carry on with it.
In the end I decided to use the genre of Indie Rock because it would have given me a good excuse to use a narrative structure for this because many indie songs do have an element of storyline to them and because they are indie many of them are album tracks and don't have any music video, so we could be creative with our music video. After a lot of trial and error I decided on our song choice which was Arctic Monkeys- I bet you look good on the dance floor.
Album Artwork is taken fairly seriously in the Indie Genre. Album covers is another product for sale in the indie world. It Differs from other genres because these songs aren't generally sought after as much as other genres so they have a lower Digital Download rate than other genres. So to sell they make the album a product, an artefact that you cant get on digital download (sometimes digital download features album Artwork but its still not physical). Also there are now usually much more than the CD now in albums. There usually now is something inside with additional information, something which you cant get through digital downloads. Even here there are different approaches to albums, some favour drawings or paintings as there album covers, some favour photographs but all follow a common theme in that they are in someway in an artistic form. Here are a few examples.
Kasabian-Empire
Radiohead- Ok Computer
Sonic Youth- Dirty
For our song we plan to do Arctic Monkeys- I bet you look good on the dance floor. Here it is below.
It comes from the Album "Whatever people say I Am, Thats what I'm Not" which has taken the simple photo approach to it. I think that personally this we should do something similar to this in the photo approach for multiple reasons. Firstly it is in my mind tricky to create a CGI artwork with the software that has been made available to us. This would make for a very poor quality of the finished product and this is not what i want to happpen. Also I have little artistic talent so coming up with inspiration would be equally challenging. Below is the album in question.
The main features of this particular album is that it is a Single photo. The colour scheme is almost non existant an it is a cooler black and white, compared with other indie Albums (see example album covers near top) are much more vibrant and colourful. This is the style that i would consider using for my own album covers. I think I would choose this because It is simple to achieve because all we would have to do is find a Costume and take a series of pictures at differing angles and simply take the colour out of it.
Below are the other three albums that the Band have released.
Arctic Monkeys- Favorite Worst Nightmare
Arctic Monkeys- Humbug
Arctic Monkeys- Suck it And See
As we can see, the band has taken different approaches to there album styles. The second album they released "Favourite worst Nightmare" has in my opinion taken strong influence from 1960's bands like The Beatles in the Font for there band name and the style that are in the windows also pay homage to the 60's style. Amongst that they have combined that with a more convention Urban scene which once again is dark and Cold coloured. On contrast the 60's is very warm and colourful. There Third album "Humbug" has also taken a retro approach to there album cover. By the look of it it looks like an old photo. The Font has a 70s style to it and it looks almost degraded and rough. This was probably the desired effect but it certainly differs from the other album covers because it uses this style, the others don't have any connection to it. There Fourth album "Suck it and see" is definitely unique because it doesn't follow any Album cover Conventions. Firstly it has no visual art of any form and it dosnt feature the name of the Band anywhere. This isnt smething i would consider using because it is a little to simple and doesn't showcase any real creativity or thought (unless there was actually some underlying message in this). All of there albums are different from one another in almost every sense so this prompts that a Indie album cover isnt predictable or "conventional" so we could do almost anything and claim that it is their album. Well this only applies to the Specific band and may not nessecerily relate to every indie band but because we have to do one for Arctic Monkeys , it's still aplicable.
Below is our Video which demonstrates our Lip sync and Action match. We have used the song All Star by Smash Mouth because it was a fairly low paced song with easy to read lyrics and they were easy to lip sync. Also a key feature of the video was to create action matches, which also make for a good show of technical skill.
This has no bearing on the actual video that Smash mouth produced because this is purely a showcase of action and lip syncing so the narrative of the story doesn't really matter this time.
For one of our formative assessments we were asked to create a frame by frame video of any current music video of our choice. This included Camera, Mise-en-scene, location and costume. We had free reign over the choice of music video to copy, however there were certain limitations that prevented us from certain styles and certain songs. The problem with replicating pop is that the costume tends to be elaborate and also has lots of use of Special effects. Later on I decided the best thing to do would be Indie because they don't have elaborate costume or fancy sets and was easily replicable. The song we chose was Ed Sheerans- Lego House
I think that is quite good because it has used the same designs and the same style as the original video. There were some scenes we could not however replicate because we couldn't organise it and in one shot here is out of sync but that is because the shots at the time were out of sync so it would be impossible to get it right in the editing phase without making it look jumpy or of a poorer quality so i decided to keep it as it was. Below is the original.
Postmodernism is a theory which came about around 1970. It is a collection of Styles, ideals, Literature and media. A common way to describe is a mish mash of genres. E.g. Blade Runner is a mixture of Sci-fi/Film Noir. It is difficult to define but it covers several key terms.
Intertextual Reference- One media text references another Parody- Mocking something in an original way Pastiche- Taking reference in a respectable Here is an example of Parody:
Here is an example of parody. To the left is a clip from the 1970s cop drama- Starsky and Hutch. It is the typical example of a cop show. It does have a certain comical aspect to it in that it is easy to replicate and parody.
And here is a music video for Sabotage by The Beastie Boys. It has parodied this style of cop drama in the use of costume, Mis-en-scene and location in this music video. This differs from pastiche because because it has been done in a satirical way and is made fore comedy as apposed to professional courtesy. Pastiche:
Here is video for Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds are a girls best friend". It is almost unique in its choice of colour, costume, location, and even actress. It would be hard to think of conventions to parody so it couldn't really be parodied effectively.
And here is a music video Madonna's "Material Girl". Because it is so alike to the original i would class it as a pastiche as opposed to a Parody because it is paying tribute to the original by basically copying the Costume, colour, location. Even madonna looks similar so it is a Pastiche.
Intertextual Reference:
This is a scene from the film "Back to the Future". The scene itself was a classic scene.
This video by Death set has literally hundreds of intertextual references from lots of different science fiction films and TV. The reason for the first video is to demonstrate just how big a Intertextual reference the start of the video is. Non Linear Narrative: A non linear narrative is a story which does'nt follow a linear story. This is present in lots of films and TV shows such as Momento or Pulp Fiction which do not follow a chronological storyline, which is another way of saying it is a Non Linear Storyline. In music videos However it isnt as common i have found. This is because a story is sometimes difficult to follow and can confuse the audience. This is generally not what a Music video is desighned to do. However there are some exeptions to this rule. For Example the Coldplay video for "Scientist" has a reverse narrative (The story is moving backward) which can be seen as a Non linear Narrative. It is this because it is a narrative in the sense we want to know what is happening.
Linear-Below is an example of our storyboard off the tracy chapman song "Fast Car". This particular storyboard is illustrating a linear approach to the song i.e. as it is sung. The images relate to the lyrics of the song so it is quite easy to document.
However below this text is an example of our attempt to make the text non-linear. We have done a chronological order for the song so there are no flashbacks or past tenses, instead we have a continuous timeline.
For my textual analysis i am going to use an Indie song. I choose to do this because they generally have a strong sense of narrative which i can comment on and they also have a large creative sense about them which is also interesting to talk about. The video i am going to use is Arctic Monkeys- Florecent Adolesent Here is that video below.
The reason why i chose to do this video is because it has a strong creative sense about it and it is generally in my mind a good video to analyse. It is a typical example of the Indie Rock genre so is therefore a good one to pick for the genre as a whole.
This is one the opening shot of the video and it presents the Location very well. This shot has been taken from inside a car and shows a journey to this location (which is probebly an old warehouse). Location is always an improtant feature of any music video no matter the genre. For the indie genre it represents otherness, because other genres use more conventional locations, for example hip hop or rap tend to focus on Urban areas as opposed to countryside which is common among indie videos.
In this second shot I have, it in my mind illustrates a Narrative structure. This is a shot of two distinct groups of people having a fight which is a narrative in that somethig is happening. This is a trait present in many Indie videos because they aren't mainstream people dont watch there videos as a means of watching the artists, partially because they aren't well known enough to be recognisable but also because they focus more on the music sense.
In this shot the idea of Costume is emphisised. Here we have a shot-reverse-shot of the two main "factions" in this video. As we can see the one on the right is wearing an elaborate and colourful clown outfit and is in contrast with the other person, because he is wearing dull and ordinary colours, perhaps ment to represent the everyday man. Some indie band have emphasis on elaborate outfits for actors. But they usually dont themselves wear anything other than ordinary. This video is one of the examples of costume playing a key role towards the overall product.
This is an example of Prop because this car has deliberately been put into the video to put emphasis on more of the narrative. Props are an important part of the more wider Mise-en-scene which covers many areas which are crucial to many indie videos (this one included) and gives depth which is what they are trying to go for.
This screenshot is further evidence to support the narrative structure
