Theorist Andrew Goodwin proposed that "Music videos ignore common narrative as they are essentially advertisements. As consumers, we make your 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." The theory itself consists of six key ideas: 1. A relationship between the lyrics and visuals 2. Genre characteristics - style and iconography 3. A relationship between the music and visuals - editing to the beat 4. Close up shots of the artists to create the"star image" 5. A frequent reference to
notion of looking (screens within screens, mobile phones, billboards and
particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body) 6. Intertextual references to other media texts may be present Sam Smith - I'm Not The Only One This largely narrative music video perfectly demonstrates Goodwin's proposed relationship between lyrics and visuals, in this case complimenting each other. The music video plays out the events detailed in the lyrics, most broadly the breakdown of a marriage as the husband cheats. The fact that the song doesn't start till around 40 seconds into the video make it appear as I direct commentary on the visuals. From the perspective of the wife, linking directly to the title of the song, the pain and overall mood of the lyrics is reflected in the often low key lighting and close up shots (uncomfortably long takes).
Kodaline - Love Like This Demonstrating Goodwin's second key concept, Kodaline's video conforms to the key characteristics of the indie genre.The muted colour palette, dim lighting and performance element (with particular attention on the artists playing instruments) are all conventional of indie music. As well as this, the video explores the relationship between the music and visuals in editing to the beat. The visuals cuts quite cleverly with the beat as the lead singer is initially slapped in the face, leading into a wipe transition to the next shot.
Taylor Swift - Shake It Off I've found that the pop genre most commonly creates the "star image" which much more focus on performance as opposed to narrative. Throughout the Shake It Off video, Taylor Swift is almost exclusively centre frame, in the foreground of shots (sometimes use of selective focus) and close up shots.
Jason Derulo - Swalla Like a number of his songs, most recently Jason Derulo's visuals for the song Swalla are almost entirely focused on voyeuristic images of the female body - links the idea of the male gaze.
Madonna - Material Girl The video itself perfectly demonstrates intertextuality as a parody of a scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe. The mise en scene and shot composition of the video are almost identical to the original. Most simply, Madonna modernised the scene from 1953.
Filming our prelim will be in two main sections: 1) shots in the second half of the clip in the kitchen are and 2) the two individuals playing a board game.
Although the actual video is filmed in one location, a house, we are unable to do this so will be filming 1) in Julia's house and 2) in the school library in front of the book shelves to try and create the look of a living room.
I'm leaning more towards the indie rock genre however in researching the indie genre more broadly I've found various quirky videos. The fun and upbeat tempo of the Of Monsters and Men song Little Talks perfectly suits the quite random, childish nature of animation chosen to be used in the video. I was really interested in the use of colour in high saturation amongst black and white footage that makes up the majority of the video. Personally, having listened to the song first I would not have even thought of using black and white due to the more mundane mood associated with such.
For our music video, I think I would prefer to focus more so on narrative rather than performance. Typically these are the kind of music videos I enjoy watching as well as the relationship between the song itself and the story is really interesting. One of my favourite music videos, due to the strong narrative and protagonist, is Ed Sheeran's Bloodstream. The protagonist is obscured in a series of lavish locations, alternating between both high key and low key lighting to emphasise the contrasting mood of what was and how the protagonist lives now (almost in the shadow of his past - the line "all the voices in my mind")
In todays lesson we showed our finished prelim to the class, which allowed us to gain feedback about the successes and possible areas of improvement. Though the sort of cheesy pop genre of music videos isn't something we're likely to do, it was fun to do. One question we got quite a few times was how long it took us to both film and edit. In doing our prelim, one key thing I learnt was that it is easier to edit chronologically even though this isn't always possible. The video for Foundations by Kate Nash is almost entirely lip syncing so the accuracy of our editing was really important. If we changed something earlier in the video, even if it was really really small, the whole video would then be out of time. I had actually experimented with stop motion in my AS film opening evaluations so wasn't as complicated as it could have been.
In Friday's lesson we were introduced to some of the genre codes and conventions, relative to the style of music. Alongside this, we saw a number of theorist interpretations of genre including Steve Neal who said "Genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations". One theorist that particularly interested me was Susan Haywood and her idea that genre was "according to the ideological climate of the time". This works around the principle that genre is relative to, for example, political or social circumstance. Immediately this made me think of Katy Perry's video for Chained to the Rhythm, which on the surface conforms to the conventions of a Pop music video but actually has political intent.
For the prelim, our group decided upon Kate Nash's video for her song Foundations. First off, we story boarded the opening 40 or so seconds of the video to ensure our shot composition was as close to the original as possible. We filmed the second half of the video first in Julia's house, where the lighting was initially a problem. However changing camera positioning that direct natural light was either avoided or coming from behind the camera. This is something we paid extra attention to at AS and will even more so at A2. The entirety of the video is lip syncing meaning the accuracy of shot length and general timing of movements was really important. Throughout filming we have had the video playing in the background and Emma actually singing along. In editing we've taken the audio off and had the song added back over the footage. Mise en scene is the area in which we had to adapt and find objects/locations as similar as possible to the video. When we make our own music video we will have a lot more freedom with this. There's still a few little bits to finish editing and then hopefully it'll be done.
