Music videos

I have have been looking at different music videos that are relevant and in the same genre as our song. We have found that most of the videos are very slow and mostly black and white, here are some of examples of the music videos i've been looking at ..




The editing in both these videos is in some ways the same because they both have a slow movement to then, however there singing is still synced with the music. I think this is an effective edit because it sets the mood of the song.

The first music video is The 1975 - Chocolate, Their video is set in black and white throughout the whole video giving it a sort of old film look to it, it also sets the theme of night time and that its sort of an underground video.

The second video is Ben Howard - Old Pine, this music video has sort of the same editing as the first video, it is edited in slow motion and the singing is synced with the artist. But the video is more of an artistic video because with the waves clashing against the rock, with all the silhouettes and the lens flairs. This video is more about life and about finding yourself.

Personality

In our lesson today we looked at different personalities and what personalities we had. I discovered that my personality is the red box, however some things aren't accurate. We discussed with our groups on what rolls we would take in creating our group blogs and music video, we decided that i would be taking on the roll of filming with the camera and helping my group control the camera. Also i will be helping on the editing as i've had an experience with a lot of editing with many different editing softwares. I will be also helping doing the blogs with my group and giving ideas.

Andrew Goodwin Analysis

"Music videos ignore common narrative as they are essential advertisements. As consumers, we make up our own meaning of a song in our minds: a music video can anchor meaning and gives the record company/artist a method of anchoring meaning"

This is Andrew Goodwin's theory around music videos, of which he has 6 different conventions:

1. A relationship between the lyrics and the visual which illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics.
2. Thought beats: seeing the sounds (the relationship between the music and the visuals, which amplify or contradict the music.)
3. Genre-related style and iconography present
4. Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist: the creation of a star image to promote a recognisable brand image.

5. Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
6. Intertextual references to other media texts may be present, especially in humorous videos.



 

This hit music video, produced in 2013 'Miley Cyrus - We Can't Stop' is a prime example of Andrew Goodwin because there is a defiant relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. The song is based on partying and not caring what other people think about you. The video is set in a partying style completely and has no real narrative. 


Iconography 

 Iconography is traditional symbolic forms associated with a band or a artists. Throughout music, artists try to give themselves a thing to be reconsigned by. Most artist use iconography in their music videos or on pictures. One big band that use iconography is 'Kiss', The 1978 band use face paint to cover their faces, this is because people didn't think Jewish people could play rock music or sick like a rock star  However, Kiss hid their faces to be make their target audience interested and why they used face paint because no other band used it. This made them unique and popular giving them the traditional symbol to their band.

The video below is a interview of Gene Simmons in 1974, straight away we see the tradition trade mark of Gene Simmons is the tongue. He has a overly sized tongue sets him aside from the other band members and is very recognised by his fans. 

Semiotic Thoery

 Roland Barthes - The study of signs and their relationship to meaning.

The Concept...

                                                   

      Preffered                       Signifier                   Signified

The actual thing reffered to..               The physical form of the sign           The concept that enters
        "this is a rose"                             (word or image)                  our minds when see the signifier
 

Connotiation - Is the meaning society has gave it or we have given it.

Denotation - Is what we actually see. 


The Connotation and Denotation apply's to the rose theory, for example; The Denotation (Red Rose) the Connotation (Love).

One of the prime examples of semiotic theory is The Kuleshov Effect / Effetto Kuleshov, The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Russian film maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s.

Questionnaire

In this blog post their will be a short questionnaire for you to answer. This would help me a lot for my group research and  also help our group deiced on our song or what genre it should be. Thank you for your time.

Please click the link to open the questionnaire.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JaaVvesmStl-zdLqHcNiNswPSC5Nt3Po42nWhec4kFw/viewform

Odd Future - My Favourite Album Cover

                                

Music isn't my main interest however i enjoy most genres. The genres that i'm most interested in are Indie folk, dubstep, hip hop, and rap. My music interests tends to be mostly on artists who aren't mainstream as they produce original music, but i also like song that are popular. 

I don't really have a favorite album cover but their is a number that I admire such as

This is a album cover by Tyler the Creator and is 'gang' or group 'Odd Future'. The album cover is called 'The OF Tape vol 2'. This album cover stands out to me due to the sheer level of comedy they have included in it, its not typical and I've never seen an album like this. The 'Face' on the album cover is the whole gang mixed together. 

This album was released in 2012, march 20.

Album Cover

 Definition

An Album Cover is the front publishing of a commercially released audio recording product, or album.

Columbia records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director, in 19368. Alex Steinweiss is credited with inventing the concept of album covers and art. 

this is some of Alex steinweiss' first work on album covers, with these album cover it replaced the the original cardboard inslip. 

All of his covers seem to be very abstract and as eye catching as possible. The font and size varies in each album cover giving it its own personality and own uniqueness to the artist. Because Alex steinweiss making the first album cover, a lot of other major music companies started to follow the trend. Towards the 1960s album covers started to become a lot more creative and developing a lot quicker with the technology, By adding a lot more cartoon images on the cover. One of the famous album cover with a cartoon front cover is The Beatles 'Yellow Submarine




                                  " 

Week 3

This music video ia called 'Yonkers' by tyler the creator. This music video is a one shot take making it a simple yet hard to accomplish. This video was realised in 2011, itv was also directed by the artist.

Week 2

This Music video is "Demo 23" sung and also directed by Tylor, the Creator. this song is also very comical and different to other music videos, this music video is very resent and was released in 2013.

Week 1

This week i have  chosen the song 'Hopeless Wanderer' by Mumford and Sons. I thought this song was a pretty good insight on how to lip-syncing would be in an actual music video. However this music video is very comical and funny.

This video was directed by Sam Jones and was made in 2013. The video stars sone of the upcoming actors and comedians

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is an area of postmodernism.

The main concept behind it is the influence a text has on another, and the similarities between the two. One feature of intertextuality is pastiche, which is denying the existence of the original form.

One music video that uses intertextuality is the recent 'Treasure' by Bruno Mars



This video, despite being released in 2013, is styled just like and an intertextual reference to a music video from the 1970s with the costumes, setting and the camera filter among others. In this case intertextuality could be used to have a wider range of audience, because it will remind the older audience of when they were a kid, this is shown by the post-production (editing) by it being similar to what they recognise. Because it is recognisable and they know the main sorce makes it intertextuality and Post-modern. If someone had not seen the main sorce then it wouldn't be post-mondern to them or intertextuality.  
Here is an example of the original text:



The film 'Moulin Rouge' is a Postmodern text, and has features of Intertextuality.
Throughout the film there are various montages of music from the last 50 years such as The Beatles, Nirvana and David Bowie. The film takes place at the turn of the 20th century before this music had been released so is a Pastiche to the music played then as well as to Bollywood films and their style.

Example...

Theorists of intertextuality problematize the status of 'authorship', treating the writer of a text as the orchestrator of what Roland Barthes refers to as the 'already-written' rather than as its originator. This is stating that something we may think is new or recent my have been already done, also that nothing is original. 

Parody and Pastiche

Parody - A Parody is a work that mimics in an absurd or ridiculous way the conventions and style of another work - in order to derive ridicule, ironic comment or affectionate fun. 

Pastiche - is the imitation of another text, work, artist or period. 

Both Parody and Pastiche are work of the Post-modernist theorist Fredrick Jamison, Fredrick Jamison argues that nothing is original in postmodernism and that everything uses another as a stimulus.He once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organised capitalism. 

Example of Parody

Original image by Leonardo Da Vinci                                           
             The Mona Lisa
          Circa 1503 - 1507










 Duchamps Parody of the Mona                                       
Lisa adds a Goatee and a mustache 






Example Of Pastiche 

Rizzle Kicks 

Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham created the music video 'frozen' for the hit singer Madonna, Chris in his early years had worked with short films and also making them . While producing short films he was asked to do work in music production. He had used his talents and skills to produce some of the most well known videos today. When starting work in the music business he had worked with Warp records. The first video that I had looked at that was produced by Chris cunningham was Madonna frozen, the second video that I will be looking will be by 'Aphex twins'. In my opinion I think that most of the videos that he will involved with are focused on one point. Horror, gothic, dark and deep emotion.In his short movie career he had mainly produced dark films. Examples of these are Alien 3, Alien and Rubber Johnny. All of these films are aimed at a specific crowd, dark and twisted. He also shows this in his music videos, an example of this is in the two music videos, Madonna frozen and Aphex twins come to daddy. In the music videos they contain many different edits and cuts, but they are not shown in the video - this makes it look like it was simple and took no effort.In the video above it shows Chris Cunningham's style, it shows the dark, creepy and emotional. The overall video is about the darkness and the emotion. This is shown by the children in the video, edits and the actors.The video below is another example of Chris Cunningham's work, the video is Madonna Frozen. Again in the video it shows the dark and emotion that is involved with the producer. Chris Cunningham has a pattern that he follows when making videos.

lip syncing

This morning I had performed the 'lip syncing task', in this task I had to lip sync a song from the band 'Foo Fighters'. The song that I had lip synced with two others was learn to fly, I found this task not so challenging, however the other two people felt ashamed  and couldn't do the lip syncing.

Simulation - Simulations generally come in three styles: live, virtual and constructive. A simulation also may be a combination of two or more styles.



Simulacra - Something that replaces reality with its representation. Jean Baudrillard in "The Precession of Simulacra"


Hyper reality -hyperreality is generally defined as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins.

Music and Me

I've always loved listening to music but the songs I listen to now are very different to back when I was a child. I always remember listening to old bands with my dad as he took me to school or around the house.

CHILDHOOD
This song reprsents my childhood because it was one of the first songs that I remember listening to. Me and my dad used to listen to this song when he was taking me to after school sports or just general driving. I still listen to this band quite a bit because it reminds me of the past.
     
                                  Pink Floyd - wish you where here

TRAVELLING
When I was a kid I worked for my dad quite a bit over the summer holidays, we travelled to Manchester on deliveries in my dads van. The song that I decode and relate to my past experiances is JCB by Nizlopi.



However the music I listen to now differs to the old ones. I listen to a lot of calm music and some up beat songs, the genre I listen to are mainly indie or dubstep.


                               Mumford and sons - hopeless wanderer




That was just one example of the songs I enjoy, I also like artists like Ben Howard, Gabrielle Aplin, and many more. My taste in music can differ to genres like house music to indie folk because I like songs with meaning and soemthing that can relate to my schemas.

What Makes a Good Music Video?

The music video I will be talking about and analysing in this blog post will be Of Monsters and Men - king and lionheart.




Instant impact - The main impact of this music video is the story and how it is being shown in the music video. The song is about a mother whos son had been taken away from her. However the mother never gives up looking for the boy. The video is very over exaggerated with monsters and spirits. This music video is very artistic and has a lot of different camera angles and effects to show the story as it would feel in real life. It reminds me how George milies made is short films and old movies it shot of has that theme.

Linear editing - In this video there are a lot of edits and CGI, this would have been done in the post production stage to get the video the way the band what the video to look. The angles and shot that the camera used were very noticeable , for instance there is a lot slow motion and close ups in the whole music video.

Visual pleasures-  The quality of the video is if a high standed, ranging up to 720p to 1080p making it very clear to look at. The mise- en - scene is very dark and not well lite throughout the whole video. Even though the lighting is of a low key bis goes well with the song. dark and mysterious and emotional, this is suited towards the song and the video.

Wow factor - The video has a unique wow factor, when watching the video it gives a sense of emotion. This song is a very 'get up and do it' song, the whole theme is very interesting and original, they' ve made the  video look like an old movie with the set design and the 3D look to it.

Pop Culture - The video does now show any evidence of a pop culture, the song is aimed towards a certain culture and fan base. This is shown by the song itself and the instruments used.

Analyses of Coursework

1b) Analyses one of your coursework productions in relation to the concept of audience.

'Division' is the Magazine i made in AS media studies, Its a three page magazine containing the front cover, contents page and also the double page spread. 'Division' is what i'm going to be analysing. I will be focusing on the audience side of the magazine. However, i will be looking at aspects such age, Gender etc. 

'Division' is a Indie magazine that is based in the UK, it is looking at new and upcoming artist within the UK. By getting its inspiration of bands and artists such as Mumford and Sons, Two Door Cinema Club, Lucy Rose, Ben Howard and Of Monsters and Men. I realised that the magazine should be aimed at teenagers because they're coming into the stage of thinking on their own and indie is getting well known in the younger generation. Teenagers of todays generation want to be their own person, by liking things other people are familiar with and finding upcoming artist better than the 'mainstream' artists. This is also because of the audiences personality. The targeted audiences personality is very much the same as it is a group. Indie have a  distinct lifestyle as they have the own fashion sense and they 'set the trend'  

For  my coursework I will be looking at the Genre 'Indie'. The genre Indie will be related to the work to come. Each piece of work that I create will be relevant, even in this piece. I have recently created a music Magazine in my last course  that is also relevant to the genre of my choice - Indie. Front cover, Contents page and a double page spread.

The images that are on my media product are related to the genre and the Magazine, the images are about people that represent the genre and the Magazine.

Interduction to Media A2

During A2 my class and i will be looking at music videos and how they have grown over resent years and how they've changed. We will be looking at the development of album cover and how they became art.

Thought the course we will be making our own video, album cover and poster.We will be doing this in groups throughout the course, we will work together to decide a song and we will also be making a separate blog for our research and discussions on what we should and can't do.

we will be looking at different genres to help us discover our song choice and move us forward in our research. The research will help me a lot in my work as it will a low me to get a good understanding of the music industry and what i need to do for my course.


Poster  - 

music video -