To start we looked at the theorist Andrew Goodwin, his theory of music videos taken from his book 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' states many things. Firstly music videos often tend to include a demonstration of typical genre characteristics, for example a video of stage performance is typical for a metal video. Secondly, there are frequently references to the notion of looking and treatment of the female body in music videos,mirrors and cameras are often used to show this. Moreover, Goodwin also stages that the music video must have a relationship between music and visuals. Goodwin also expresses how record labels of the artist have certain demands when it comes to there music videos such as close ups. As well as this, he also explains how the '4th wall' is near always broken when the video is a performance.When researching Goodwin we firstly didn't understand the differences music videos had, such as these key words: performance, narrative and concept. We decided we needed to look into which real media products,music videos, had performance,narrative or concept based themes throughout.
The first real media product we looked at was a Performance Video, 'American Idiot' by Green Day
This is a performance video, we can tell this as there is nothing but this location with the band singing and playing the song. Like Goodwin said in his theory, this music video defiantly breaks the '4th wall' when we see the old fashioned T.V cameras. This band is defiantly punk/metal, we can tell this from their outfits and colours chosen in this video, with the black contrasting to the lead singers tie and also the green colour that appears throughout the video. Furthermore the drums and heavy guitar also indicates to the listener that this is a punk/metal band. Again like Goodwin said, performance videos are usually linked with metal bands.
A narrative real media product, music video, I found is Kodaline 'All i want'. In this music video, it is about a man who just wants to be accepted in life as he looks different. Although this hasn't got any of the band members playing or singing the song, there is a clear relationship between lyrics and visuals like Goodwin stated,for example when the lyrics in the chorus say 'all i need is to find somebody' the man is usually alone or with his dog, indicating that wants someone to be with. At the end this is finally found when the beat picks up as he is walking through the streets with a female colleague that he likes.
A concept music video I found was 'Pelican' by the Maccabees. Like the narrative video, there is no band present, furthermore it doesn't have a narrative, its essentially lots of images going through space. However, like Goodwin said, there are relationships between what we are seeing on the screen and what we are hearing, this is shown when the lyrics say 'Go back to where we came from' this is linked with the images going back in reverse order as to what we see them in, showing a clear relationship between lyrics and visuals.
Forms
My music video was a mix of both narrative and performance. Although it is more performance based, we wanted to link visuals and lyrics. To do this we wanted a flashback story line that would tell the story as well as the song. Overall I think it worked really well, with a good balance between flashbacks and reality that told the story of the song equally.
Comparison to real media Products
Like our music video there are plenty of other real media products (music videos) that have both narrative and performance based themes throughout. One that I found was Mallory Knox 'When are we waking up'
Although not in the same Genre as our music video, we had both had performance elements. We can see this through the use of close ups used in both Mallory Knox's video and ours when it come to playing the guitar. We both used side angle close ups to show the performance of the guitar
Gianluca Volpe 'Your Place Used To Be Mine'
Mallory Knox 'When are We Waking Up'
Furthermore, like ours, Mallory Knox also have a narrative element to their music video. There narrative is about a young boy who has a supernatural power, again nothing like our genre however there are similarities. In their video they show the boys face at a mid close up, in our music video you also see the narrative characters face at mid close up.
How did we Use or Challenge form?
In our music video, we defiantly used Form and didn't challenge it. We took inspiration from lots of different artist in our genre, especially Ben Howard. who has elements of both narrative and performance in his music videos
In our music video, we have elements of narrative set in one location, a corn field, like Ben Howard's video 'Old Pine'. We took inspiration from another Ben Howard song 'Keep Your Head Up' in which we liked the colours of the golds and oranges, we decided to apply this to our music video to conform to the genre and form. Below is an screenshot from my music video and Ben Howard's old pine, you can see the similar colours of the gold and orange in both music videos.
One Music video that i found that did challenge form was Rudimental 'Waiting all night'. This music video is very different as it doesn't feel like a music video, more like a documentary. From the way its filmed using what looks like a phone camera, to the documentary style story line. Although it doesn't follow the conventions of form for a music video, I really like this video as it is different and unique. Looking at this now I think making something like this would have been really difficult to make, thus we didn't challenge form.
Conventions of music video
The conventions of indie music videos are :
- Common for artist to perform live in their music videos. this focuses the viewer on the music and artist more
- They often have a narrative storyline running through them that relates to the song
- They often have visuals that link to an instrument that the artist is playing.
- There is often close ups and mid shots of the artist, this highlights the emotion in the video.
- They often have an effect on the video
Analysis of conventions of genre to my music video
My music video has the artist singing his songs live, moreover it also has lots of close ups of the artist and his playing of his guitar. We used this to convey the emotion of the song. Furthermore we put an effect onto the narrative parts of the video to signify its a dream state and that the artist is visualizing the past.
Comparison to Other Music Video's on the conventions of this Genre
Close up are shown here in Ben Howard's music video for 'The Fear'
Close Up are again shown in Ed Sheeran's music video for 'Small Bump'
Narrative is shown in Birdy's version of 'Skinny Love'
Again narrative is shown in Damien Rice's 'The Blower's Daughter'
All these real media products have the same conventions as used in our music video, thus we used convention and didn't challenge it.
Conclusion
To conclude my music video uses both form and convention and doesn't challenge either. We used a wide variety of shot types to achieve the right performance and narrative themes we wanted throughout our video. Furthermore we took inspiration from real media products of artist such as Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran to achieve the right look for our music video.
Ancillary Task
Inside Left
Inside Right
Back Cover
Poster
This is my Ancillary Task: Digi pack and Posters. We decided to use form instead of Challenge when it came to our Digi pack and posters as Ginaluca is an Unknown artist we wanted him to be the selling point and therefore made the Digi pack and poster with him on it, so that the buyers would know that this is the artist.
Other Digi Packs and Posters are similar to ours and therefore shows how we used and didn't challenge form.
Comparison in Genre
From this we can see that this poster has the name of the artist, where they are going on Tour and the dates of the venues. It also has what album this tour relates to, My poster has all this information on and therefore shows how we used form when making our poster
Another poster again shows the name of the band, dates and venues of where this band are going. Moreover it also shows which album this tour relates to, further showing how we used form.
This image of Ben Howard's digi pack again highlight the similarities between this one and my own. It has his name in bold letters, images of the artist and the names of the tracks of songs on the back cover.
Comparison not in Genre
This image of Katy Perry's Digi pack again shows the similarities between mine and real products. Although not in the same genre of music as Gianluca Volpe (Our artist) it is clear to see that form for Digi packs don't change.
This poster From Avicii, from the dance genre of music shows the similarities between each genre for the form of a poster. Both have the names of the artist in bold letters, they each have dates in which they are playing, and also have the logos for the record company's they are signed too .
Conclusion
Overall, we did use form when making our Digi pack and poster for our Ancillary task, as we used the same layout and structure too real media products therefore showing the similarities across all genre.
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