Representation

Who are we representing?

We are representing small indie and alternative bands that are being held down by the record companies and illegal downloads. These bands are being held down in the sense that they are unable to grow and make money, because the record companies take a large slice of the money the make, and illegal downloads mean that people are getting their music for free and thus, making no money for the band from these downloads. This means that the band is unable to promote themselves or go on tour as they lack the funds to do so. This is how the bands are being held down.

Our video shows this by having the band in a cellar underground. This cellar is shown to be underneath the church (a large establishment) and this represents another large establishment – the record company – holding the band underground and not allowing them to grow and make money.

A few things we aim to include in our video that also enforce this message are done so through semiotics and mise-en-scene. A recurring metaphoric device throughout our video is the use of fog/smoke, as this represents the release of our message as the amount of fog will gradually increase and a long shot will be included of fog escaping through a grate in the cellar (message being sent). However also more literally, it can depict the smokescreen music corporations use to mask the fact they are keeping smaller, indie and alternative acts down.

In the Snoop Dogg ft. Pharell Williams ‘Drop it like it hot’ the stereotypical conventions of black culture are informed and contested. The gender roles of stereotypical black rap music are that women are objects used for sexual purposes only this is shown through quick editing only keeping women in show for seconds while they’re dancing sexily. Suggesting they are only useful to men as things to look at. Also they are often laden in diamonds and jewellery – typical gangster accessories, portraying that women are just accessories also. The only race present is black afro-Caribbean this is enforced before we even see any characters with the way a black silhouette of Snoop Dogg onto a white canvas. The distinct portrayal of race and white canvas background runs throughout the video portraying his superiority over white culture and law and order as many taboo things are present in the video (gambling, prostitution, and graffiti) The illegality of the depicted lifestyle is also portrayed through lyrics such as ‘When the pimps in the crib, drop it like it’s hot’ this could refer to prostitution or gambling both associated with black gangster culture. This could show how Snoop Dogg is a ‘pimp’ or gangster which is also enforced by the gang signs and gestures made to the camera by Pharell Williams and Snoop Dogg.

Posted by MaD

What types of music video exist

Firth in 1988 divided music videos into three broad typologies (narrative, performance and abstract); the different form chosen by the director or artist attracts viewers and conveys a direct or indirect message.

Narrative

Narrative videos present a sequence of events in a particular order. A video may tell any kind of story in linear, cause-effect sequencing. However some videos distort the story’s order to change the message and distract the audience from the music. Love stories, however, are the most common narrative mode in music video. The narrative pattern is often that of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. The action in the story is dominated by males who do things and females who passively react or wait for something to happen said Schwichtenberg in 1992.

Performance

Performance videos are used to convey the sense of an in-concert experience, they are associated with serious artists as performance based visuals cue the viewer to think it’s the recording of the music that is the most significant factor in releasing music. In the 1980’s shows live MTV led to a surge of performance based music videos, allowing an extra level to spread the expression of your music to. Michael Jackson was an early pioneer of the performance based video, creating dance phenomena’s still famous today.

Abstract

Music videos are often organized around what we might call "theme and variations". This term applies to music in which a theme, or, motif, follow. In abstract music videos the motif isn’t clear and is purposefully meant to confuse and intrigue the viewer. Music videos use pictorial elements that function thematically. Pictorial elements are the small parts into which a moving image may be divided in - quick zooming in and out, short cuts, colours, shapes, movements, settings, clothes, footage etc.  Abstract video’s don’t set out the footage thematically thus creating odd individual messages for each viewer.

Posted by Dominic

Copyright Permission Email

"Dear Muse/Muse management,

                                                To whom it may concern, we are writing to you to ask of your permission to use one of your songs for our A level coursework. We are a pair of A level media studies students who are planning to create a music video for your song, “House of the Rising Sun”. We are writing to ask your permission to use this song as part of our coursework. We are going to use the song for educational purposes and are not planning to use this song for financial gain. We hope that you grant us permission to use this song for our media studies coursework and we hope to hear from you soon.

                                                Yours Faithfully,

                                                                        Matt Gill and Dom Lattimer (MaD Media)"

This is a copy of the email that we have sent to Muse and the Muse management to ask permission to use their song for our media coursework.


Posted by Matthew

Survey - Research

We have decided to do a questionnaire for our research to see what style of music video would appeal to our target audience. Our target audience is 17-25 year old male how is listens to alternative rock music.

1.        How old are you?

2.        What gender are you?

3.        What genre of music do you listen to?

4.        Do you watch music videos?

5.        What is your favourite video?

6.        What do you like about the video?

Person 1:

1.        17

2.        Male

3.        Pop Punk, Rock

4.        Yes

5.        Fall Out Boy – Dance Dance

6.        Performance, Comedy

Person 2:

1.        17

2.        Male

3.        Indie, Rock

4.        Yes, occasionally

5.        Arctic Monkeys – When the sun goes down

6.        A clear story  throughout

Person 3:

1.        16

2.        Male

3.        Alternative rock

4.        Yes, everyday

5.        Biffy Clyro – Mountains

6.        Performance mixed with weird stuff (might have a message)

Person 4:

1.        18

2.        Male

3.        Hardcore Punk

4.        Yes

5.        Cancer Bats – Sabotage

6.        Funny story, Links to Beastie Boys – Sabotage

Person 5:

1.        17

2.        Female

3.        RnB/ 80’s

4.        Yes, all the time

5.        Beyonce – Irreplaceable

6.        She has attitude

Person 6:

1.        17

2.        Female

3.        RnB/ 80’s/ Hip Hop

4.        Yes

5.        Beyonce – Sweet Dreams

6.        Good dancing

We have done this survey to research what type of music video would appeal to our target audience and what our target audience likes. We questioned people who are not in our target audience because we wanted to make sure that the type of video we intend to create, is not a generic video that can be used for many different genres. We did this because the aim of our video is very precise and the message will only be received by our target audience.


From doing this survey, we found out that our target audience (mainly personified by person 3) enjoys a music video for an alternative rock song to be a performance/abstract video. We also found out that females (not our target audience) prefer music videos for RnB songs with dancing in them.

Posted by Matthew

The History of Music Videos

In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward Marks and Joe Stern hired George Thomas (an electrician) and various performers to help promote their song “The Lost Little Child”. Using a magic lantern (an early form of projector) George Thomas projected still images onto a screen, simultaneous to live performances. These ‘illustrated songs’ became a popular form of entertainment and the first step towards music videos. The arrival of ‘the talkies’ in 1926 meant that many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many dancers, bands and vocalists. Spooney Melodies in 1930 were the first true musical video series. Spooney melodies were a series of live action musical shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) aimed to showcase popular songs in 1930-1931. They were typically six minuets long and featured Art-Deco style animation and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing. Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a short film called St. Louis Blues (1929) featuring a dramatized performance of the song of the same name. In the mid- 1940’s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into the feature film, Lookout Sister. According to music historian Donald Clarke, these films were the “ancestors” of music videos. Another early form of music video was the one-song films, called “promotional clips” made in the 1940’s. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand. “Soundies” were an early form of music video (3 minute musical films) produced between 1940 and 1947 and often included short dance sequences.

Musical films were another important step towards the modern music video and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of the classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930’s and 1950’s. One of the best known examples is Madonna’s  video for “Material Girl” (1985) which was closely modeled on Jack Cole’s staging of “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend” from the film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson’s videos show influences of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including “Thriller” and “Bad”, which was influenced by the stylized dance “fights” in the film version of West Side Story.

In the late 1950’s, in France, and short films were produced by many French artists. In 1961 Ozzie Nelson directed and edited the video of "”Travelin’ Man” by his son Ricky Nelson. It featured images of various parts of the world mentioned in the song.

One of the earliest Videos of a Top 40 hit was Jan & Dean's "Surf City", and another early performance clip was The Animal’s 1964 hit House of the Rising Sun". This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set; with the group lip-synching.

The title track sequence of The Beatles second feature film “Help”, is arguably one of the models of the modern performance-style music video, employing rhythmic cross-cutting, close-ups and contrasting long shots, and unusual camera angles and shots, such as the shot near the end of the song, in which George Harrison's left hand and the neck of his guitar are seen in sharp focus in the foreground while the completely out-of-focus figure of John Lennon sings in the background. In 1965, The Beatles began making promotional clips for distribution and broadcast in other countries so they could promote their record releases without having to make appearances in person.

Many "song films" (often referred to as "filmed inserts”) were produced by UK artists so they could be screened on TV when the bands were not available to appear live. The Who created several promotional clips in this period, beginning with their 1965 clip for “I Can’t Explain”. Their plot clip for “Happy Jack” (1966) shows the band acting like a gang of thieves.

The British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. Also in 1975, the band Queen made a promotional video for their new single “Bohemian Rhapsody” to show it Top of the Pops - this is also notable for being entirely shot and edited on videotape.

In 1981, the video channel MTV launched, airing “Video Killed the Radio Star”  and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. In the early 1980’s, directors began to expand the style of a genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. In 1983, the most successful and influential music video of all time was released; the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller”. The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film.

In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1, featuring softer music, and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV.

In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteurs art form. Directors such as Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, both got their break around this time and brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed.

2005 saw the launch of the website Youtube, which made the viewing of online video faster and easier. This meant that some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. The band OK Go may exemplify this trend, having achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, “A Million Ways" in 2005 and “Here it Goes Again" in 2006, both of which first became well-known online. In 2010, Lady Gaga’s music video "Bad Romance” made headlines by becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube, music-related or otherwise, with 130 million views; it had over 350 million views by early 2011. It, in turn, was beaten later in the year by the video for Justin Beiber’s song “Baby", which had over 500 million views by early 2011.

Posted by Matthew

Semiotics and Intertextuality

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes, propelled by Roland Barthes a French literary theorist; it has become an integral part of any media –particularly music videos. They are defined as ‘the academic study of the relationship of language and other signs to their meaning’ e.g. in religious circles a white dove would symbolise peace. They play a similar role in music videos but are linked with Intertextuality. Structuralist semiotics tend to treat individual texts as, closed-off entities and focus exclusively on internal structures, this limits some music videos and directors and only sends messages from artist to artist. The notion of Intertextuality established by Julia Kristeva connects the text to other texts giving a stronger ‘shared code’ the audience can understand further.  One artist that uses semiotics and Intertextuality in her videos is Lady Gaga, as all her songs have hidden underlying messages. Here is an example of one of her videos and analysis of the Intertextuality and semiotics throughout.

Here is an example of Semiotics and Intertexuality portrayed in a music video by Lady Gaga's Judas.

Obvious forms of semiotics are evident throughout with colours such as red lipstick on Judas which symbolises her lust for him however there are also complicated advanced forms of Intertextuality present. A recurring theme in the video is the presence or absence of tears - when Lady Gaga is moving towards or clinging to Jesus, there are no mascara tears. When she turns towards or thinks about Judas, tears appear. She’s proclaiming her love for Judas but marrying Jesus. She must choose between them, and be either engulfed in the sea which biblically represents (sin) or cleansed in the baptismal waters. She chooses Judas, but is stoned to death and her black hair and nails represent the sin. Black obviously being opposite to white which is associated with peace and love (white dove). Religious imagery and Intertextuality continues throughout the video some of which you would only understand if you were religious. Such as a visual clue ‘love is like a rock’ and peter in Latin means Petrus which in German means rock, however this could also symbolise how love is like a weight around your neck as your thrown into the sea. There are many brief examples of Intertextuality such as a mace Lady Gaga is seen swinging this could refer to the sacrament of confession which the mace is associated with. Lady Gaga can be seen washing in water with Jesus and Judas this shows baptism and cleansing of sins for her loving two men. The Binary Oppositions present in Lady Gaga Judas is good and bad, Jesus and Judas. The modern representation at the beginning shows the Binary Opposition is also modern culture versus religious culture that was once important, people choose love and sex instead of safe and religious. This links in with the Enigma code of the video, it looks like it’s about choosing between men but reflects modern cultures struggle with continuing religious beliefs.

Posted by Dominic