Auteur Theory

Auteur Theory

In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's production reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the author's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process. In some cases, media producers are considered to exert a similar "auteur" influence on films they have produced.

In law, the film is treated as a work of art, and the auteur, as the creator of the film, is the original copyright holder. Under European Union law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory.

Auteur theory has influenced film criticism since 1954, when it was advocated by film director and critic François Truffaut. This method of film analysis was originally associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the French film review periodical Cahiers du Cinéma. Auteur theory was developed a few years later in America through the writings of The Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris. Sarris used auteur theory as a way to further the analysis of what defines serious work through the study of respected directors and their films.

Some examples of Auteurs of today’s music videos are Spike Jonze and michell Gondry both have created names for themselves by creating memorable and influential music videos that inspire and influence other music video makers such as us. Spike Jonze was born Adam Spiegel in October 22, 1969 and is renowned for being an American director of music videos and commercials. He is also an Academy Award-nominated director and producer within the film and television industry and is most known for his 1999 film Being John Malkovich and the 2002 film Adaptation and are both written by Charlie Kaufman. Jonze is also credited as a co-creator of MTV’s Jackass. Although Spike Jonze’s previous life before music videos seem irrelevant it directly transfers into his music videos that he was a TV and film director, as the style and frequently used Intertextuality and cinema shown is that of a director that moved genre of media. Exploring unusual concepts that surprise and intrigue the view are Jonze’s forte. One of the Bands he had worked with is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs who are an alternative rock/punk band from New York.

With no clear evident linear narrative, this video is challenging to conventions, this is quite usual of both Spike Jonze and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. The video is the camera following the antics of violent horrible children (contrary to their smart attire and cute faces) set in an abandoned house. They are causing havoc throughout the video whilst the band plays ignoring the bedlam of their surroundings. The Low key lighting is emphasized with harsh electric lights and green filters which exacerbate the particular ghoulish feel of the video. The main theme or concept of the video I feel is the exploration of control by presenting a lack of in the video. Goodwin’s theory of star image is seen in this video as the lead singer is the main focus of the camera in her bright red plastic leotard, the opposite of the surroundings –making her stand out. Her performance is exaggerated and close ups and longs shots appeal to the voyeuristic need of the audience of their videos.

Posted By Dominic Lattimer

Planning

Posted By MaD

Roland Barthes signs and signifiers

During music videos there are many signs and signifiers that both advertise the artist and send out meanings to the audience. These are either private or shared.

There are two layers of messages that can be sent through visual images, Linguistic message and the literal image. Each of these also has separate sections that build up a modern music video.

Roland Barthes deals with the relationship between the linguistic and the semiological sign. He notes several points of difference between the two:

1) Whereas the elaboration of language systems is brought about as the result of the "speaking mass”, that of semiological systems is more usually associated with a group who fabricate the language.

2) In semiological systems parole or "speech" is poor. Barthes gives the example of cars. The range of choice of difference of cars is very restricted by comparison to those offered by speech. Semiological signs are second order signs; they rely for much of their meaning on the linguistic signs within which they are framed.

Posted by Dominic

Props we needed for our video and reasons why

List or props for our music video

.Candles

.Smoke machine

.Strobes (6)

.Mic and Mic stand

.Keyboard and Keyboard stand

.Bass guitar

.Electric guitar

.Mannequin

.Hang able torches

.Camera (2, one for handheld and one for fixed camera)

.Tripod

.Extension cable

.Glass Jugs (5)

. Laser machine

The obvious things that are needed for a music video e.g. a camera, tripod, mics and mic stands and also instruments don’t need to be explained. But there are specific reasons why we need the rest.

Lighting is obviously very important in any music video, but more important in ours than most as were filming in a dark, dirty cellar that without appropriate lighting would be very dark and unclear. For real rock performance effect we used a laser machine, to create bright ultra modern looking feel. This added more depth to our video as the same shot could look different with editing etc but also could look different with different amount of odd lighting; different colours, brighter or darker, whether the lasers were on flashing mode or constant etc. We felt this added an extra dimension to all performance sections of our video, which was the large majority so we didn’t want to bore the audience. Mise-en-scene and the general ambience of the video is extremely important to us so to make it look like a cold evil cellar in the abstract parts, we decided to include old wine making jugs that looked like old alchemy tools. And tea candles that had two purposes, one looking ominous and making audience think about rituals and two helped with the lighting of the dark cellar we were in. To aid in the process of transforming the cellar into this scary looking performance space we used a smoke machine. This made the video look more professional and also helped the idea of our video by increasing amount of smoke throughout video, it shows how were fighting against music corporations and losing the battle as smoke is filling cellar. Originally to create more variety in lighting we had 6 strobe lights that illuminated the faces of the band members making them stand out more in the video. Due to technical difficulties 5 of them broke so we replaced them with hang able torches that illuminated the face of the keyboardist and the lead singer when they were performing.  The mannequin was included by us to aid the narrative and reason for our music video, how bands are losing their identity after being controlled so much by big music corporations. So we decided that in some shots Theo the keyboardist was going to be replaced by a mannequin, this is quite abstract and shocks the audience for a split second making them want to watch on.

Posted By Dominic

Hall vs Cohen

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils. Marxist theories account for some diversity, because they focus on classes and class-fractions rather than youth as a whole. Stuart Hall described youth subcultures as symbolic or ritualistic attempts to resist the power of bourgeois hegemony by consciously adopting behavior that appears threatening to the establishment. Conversely, Marxists of the Frankfurt School of social studies argue that youth culture is inherently consumerist and integral to the divide-and-rule strategy of capitalism. They argue that it creates generation gaps and pits groups of youths against each other (e.g. mods and rockers), especially as youth culture is the dominant culture in the west. Interactionist theorist Stan Cohen argues youth subcultures are not coherent social groupings that arise spontaneously as a reaction to social forces, but that mass media labeling results in the creation of youth subcultures by imposing an ideological framework in which people can locate their behaviour.

Posted By Dominic

Analysis of Costume

Although in some ways our video goes against the conventions for performance based rock videos we wanted our costume to clearly represent a rock video.  We have three members of our band; Jack the lead singer and guitarist, Matt the bassist, and Theo on keyboard.  Above is an image of our band together.

Firstly we decided after studying and analyzing The Foo Fighters video ‘The pretender’ we aimed to emulate the look provided by the lead singer Dave Grohl, e.g. black jeans, white shirt, dark hair and dark punkish shoes. The decision of this was because the dark clothing represents the dark heavy sound of our song and the stark contrast of the white t-shirt shows that Jack is the light of the band and has been reborn as he’s singing about his past troubles. This is shown through the lyrics (see previous post) and the flash of the church at the beginning.

The bassist; Matt, we decided should look more grungy and more heavy rock as to take less attention from the lead singer. To get this look we simply gave him a beanie hat, this almost covered his eyes. Through Intertextuality and a shared social code, this shows he doesn’t want his identity shown and this keeps with our theme of fighting against the establishment and being underground. He also assumes the role of the ‘Head banger’ in our band a convention or rockers when songs get to deep heavy beats they bang their heads up and down and usually move there long hair about. Matt doesn’t have long hair, so this is another technical reason why he wore a hat along with a dark brown t-shirt black jeans and black shoes.

We decided to include a keyboardist in our video because the song has a lot of synth in it. Theo the keyboardist was probably the most difficult to dress as a keyboardist in a grungy rock video isn’t really going with conventions which we were trying to do with the costume. So we chose dark clothing such as brown hoody and navy trousers and vans, to again show he doesn’t want people to know his identity. We decided also to in some shots to replace him with a mannequin this would be fairly abstract and shock the audience but It does have a purpose. When we were discussing how keyboardist aren’t shown in rock videos when in some rock bands they would still need them, it showed the music companies have clearly thought they don’t look good enough or are important enough to be in the actual band and only play for them and don’t appear on cover or in videos. So we included a mannequin to show how if music companies change and remove things from indie acts even more, then bands will become faceless and not have an identity and how some bands don’t even play their own music live so might as well be replaced with mannequins.

Posted By MaD

Pictures of our band and set as we found it

Jack the lead singer:

Matt the Bassist:

Theo the Keyboardist:

Full Band:

What we were planning to be the first shot, the entrance to the cellar, and various angles of the set:



Posted By MaD