Meeting One

In this first meeting we had decided on the people we were going to do this project with. My group includes Ella Baker, Catherine Haggarty and Anna Wylde. These are people that i am pleased to be working with as i know they will bring forward good, interesting contributions and i know with this group we will be able to challenge our creativity. Within this meeting we had promptly chosen our song choice. We firstly listed all the understated artists which didn't have a strong image related to their name. This list seemed to grow very fast, then someone suggested the 90s song 'Hey Mickey'. As we all listened to the song, we were all thinking of ideas for a music video and domestically all chose to make a music video to this song. We checked to see if a music video existed for this song, which it didn't. This helped us as we were able to create our own original idea and thoughts to the video. We were going to use the fact that the song was from the early 90s to our advantage and make an updated version of a music video for this song and set it with all the technology that is available now.

Music Director

Anthony Mandler 

The music video that inspired me to research into this music video director, Anthony Mandler, was Lana Del Rey's 'National Anthem'. Personally I love the style of this artist video. It shows an old type of textured filming, that looks as though it was filmed in the 70s.

After looking through a variety of Anthony Mandler's work i started to recognise a theme/style that repeated across a majority of his work. All of his work is created like a short film, with amazing Mise-en-Scene and locations as backdrops for the shots.

Mandler has worked with many well known artist, this is a list of some of the artist that he has directed videos for: 

• Rihanna "Unfaithful" in 2006, most recently "Only Girl (In the World)", "California King Bed","Man Down", "Diamonds" 
• Jay-Z
• Drake
• The Killers
• Lana Del Rey
• Mary J. Blige 
• Amongst many other artist.

Anthony has also ventured out into doing commercials and has worked with international clients such as Motorola, Samsung, Nike and Ciroc.

Appling Intertextuality

Intertextuality: this is when different media texts draw upon existing materials that the audience is able to recognise. These references can come from a range of sources such as; cinema, fashion and art photography. 

This is Lily Allen's 'Not Fair' music video that i feel excels the definition of intertextuality. This is a video that reflects upon a different era in time. The artist has used the setting, costume and props to state what period of time that she is singing in. The video begins with  the original presenter of 'The Porter Wagoner Show' which is from 1961 that famously used to star Dolly Parton. 

The presenter, Porter Wagoner, has emphasised the setting of the video by wearing his classic attire that he wore on every episode of the show. 

This video has been set on this well known TV show and the staging of the video is just like the one on which the show used to be presented on.

At the beginning the audience establishes the show from the sign as well as the audience sitting in the studio, all of which were dressed in costumes just as in that era. 

In addition to this the music video is also shot in the same resolution as were in 1861, with that slightly fuzzy and unclear pixel. This is mainly seen when there are close up shots. 

The use of the costume, after the TV sign, clearly states in which time the video is set in. Alongside the props of the band using harmonicas and there being a goat on the stage.

Applying Voyarism

I have chosen to us the example of Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ music video to express the term of voyeurism. This is a term which shows male or female performers/artist that give some sort of pleasure to the audience from the screen. In this case I have chosen a female performer which mainly gives the voyeuristic characters to mostly males, through her costume, actions and Mise-en-Sene.

The song begins with a shot of a female figure being put onto some sort of playing board, immediately the audience can see that this female performer, Katy Perry is seen and being used as an object. The fact that she is seen as small from the proportion of her being place by a males, Snoop Dogs, hand.  The narrative of the music video is that the female, Katy Perry is being placed in a candy filled board game which the male, Snoop Dog is playing in his own candyland castle. The narrative progresses as there is a battle between the two and Katy triumphs. At the beginning Katy is seen as the object but throughout the video the narrative is subverted and the ending is  Snoop Dog  being surrounded by girls  and buried to the head in sand.  

The costume plays a vital part within this video as Katy is dressed in short, extremely tight dresses with thigh high suspender, which are all related to the candy dream that she is in. 

The most obvious shot of the video, which is what I personally feel make the video categorise as voyeuristic is the shot that has the least amount of costume on Katy in the nude on a candyfloss cloud, which covers her private areas, eating candyfloss. This was such a strong image that this shot was the cover of her album, evidently as her entre album was this theme.

In these shots the camera was scaling Katy's body slowly up and down. 

Katy is always making eye contact with the audience which enhances and engages the intimacy between the audience and the artist. 

Katy also has a choreographed dance scene within the video, in this herself and her backing dancers where dressed in revealing clothing; a cupcake bikini and hot pants. In this scene there were medium close ups of the girls stomachs and crotch areas.  

In the performance that Katy Perry was giving her actions was emphasising the voyeurism within the video as all the seductive actions were either in slow-mo or shot as a close up. This was mainly used on the with the whip-cream, as seen in the images below. 

She was also performing different facial expression and seductively eating different sweet things throughout the video. 

The entre video was set in a candy land so the Mise-en-Sene was an entre fantasy of a male’s mind of a girl. This is what I feel captures and relates to the audience, males.  

Applying Goodwin's Theory-Florence and the Machine 'Spectrum'

Andrew Goodwin has a theory of 6 applied rules to the features a music video contains; i have chosen Florence and the machines's 'Spectrum' to demonstrate and analyse Goodwin's theory on.

  

Rule 1: Music video demonstrates genre characteristics
Florence and the machine is classified as having many different genres, which include rock and soul. Florence and the machine's video's are identified through the fact that everyone of her songs and videos includes a theatrical dance sequence; which usually expresses the narrative of the song. These are indications to the rock genre.   

Rule 2: There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals 
There is a very clear relationship between the lyrics and visuals of this video. This is something that is shown through all of Florence and the Machine's video. Although the video doesn't have the clearest of what may seem like a narrative, the Mise-en-Scene and staging of each shot of the video had an obvious connection with the lyrics. Many of the artist video's lyrics and visuals are amplifying, as the meaning of her lyrics are much deeper than seen. These are some of the lyrics from the song, which i have analysed to demonstrate the relationship that the visuals have.

And when we first came here
We were cold and we were clear

This is the in the first verse of the song, the visual for these lyrics are the artist sitting amongst the colour scheme green with lights and mirrors. This shows the clarity and coldness of the people and atmosphere.

We’ll be dressed up all in blue,
With the ocean in our arms,
Kissing eyes and kissing palms.

In these lyrics Florence is in a blue setting, the ballet dancers are in white but have blue beaming lights on them. The setting which the artist is in has created an artificial ocean relating with 'the oceans in our arms'. Her action match those of 'kissing palms'.

With metal on our tongues,

In the same staging as the previous lyrics, the characters amongst the artist are dressed in Eygptian armor that have literal metal tongues in their mouths.  

And when we come back we’ll be dressed in black!  
The visual of these lyrics is the artist draped in a floor length all black material, which is then flung off of her. 
Rule 3: There is a relationship between  music and visuals 
The artist video's usually without fail has an impecible relationship between music and visuals. As the artist genre is soul, her songs have very powerful moments with the lyrics. The visuals of the video have a real connection with the music, in the timings of the shots and changes of the shots. The interesting feature of Florence and the Machine's video is that she has as much energy and input as the dancers have surrounding her. They all have a big enthusiasm in the powerful moments within the music, where all the instruments and lyrics are higher in volume. These moments are usually in the chorus of the song. 

Rule 4: Demand for close-ups of artists, may develop motifs which recur across their work
This rule is clearly seen and demonstrated throughout all of Florence and the Machines video's as all of her videos have a close-up or and extreme close up of her face expressing the emotions of the lyrics or just performing, as an artist does so. This of the artist face is definately as motif that is seen across all of Florence and the Machines work. This clearly states how the artist is recognised and seen to the audience due to these particular shots. 

Rule 5: Frequent reference to notion of looking, particularly voyeiristic treatment of the female body
This is something that has not been used in this video but the could said to be done in a less obvious way. As part of the video there is a younger Florence character that is seen. This could be notion of looking but just looking through a different perspective.; in a younger view and perspective of life.

Rule 6: There is often intertexual references
David LaChapelle, the music video director, has used the ballet as a reference to intertexuality. This ballet is a vital aspect of the performance in the video/ It is used to express the narrative and emotion of the song as many different types of dance would. The Mise-en-Scene, props and clothing also seem to have an indication to different eras in time, relating to the lyrics of the song.  

Reviewing Previous Yr 13's Music Videos

As we are making our music videos this year I have looked at the previous year work, to analyse and critically evaluate their videos. This would enable me to gain knowledge of what I can do this year and what not to do. Through doing this I hope to gain some inspiration which could benefit me in the future with making my own video. I categorized the groups into two sections; the video's i loved and thought were extremely well done and video's i personally felt lacked in a few areas, that i didn't enjoy as much.

IKE & TINA & MONEYBOX

It was very clear that through watching the videos of the prior year 13's that there are a few key aspects to a music video which are critical to making it look professional and really appeal and capture the audience. These aspects consist of good choice of performer, realistic lip syncing and location amongst many other things. The music videos that i personally felt achieved a great standard, which I would classify, being on top of the list of the 11 videos, would be Jamie T's Ike & Tina which was produced by 13B6 and Moneybox by 13B5. I thought although Ike & Tina used a narrative in the video the concept of it was cleverly done. The group looked into the lyrics of the song a read between the lines and used that to their own advantage and incorporated that into the 'story' of the video. This is what i thought was unique from all other videos that i watched. The video ultimately mirrored the song, it was edited and cut quickly as the song was fast pace, which matched very well. The whole video had a great performance from beginning to the end, there wasn't any part which i thought lacked in performance and as a result of this i think that the idea was bursting with charisma. 13B5 used Mise-en-Scene as a main focus of their video, this is also a very important when making a video as this needs to link and connect well with the song choice. Along with the MES the group used a contrasting effect on the shots I think the casting for this video was vital as female performer was able to perform exceptionally well, with only simple shots with a white background.

PRISONER & LOST

With this video, Prisoner made by 13E11, is an example of how dragged out a video can feel when all the small aspects which build a good music video are missing. This video clear shows that if small things are not considered when filming it can have a great effect on the quality of the outcome. Aspects such as the lighting wasn’t taken great account of, this made it slightly unclear and difficult for the audience, especially when the costume looks extremely bright with the beaming sunlight. Another area which I felt made the video lack in quality was the use of the location. There was only 1-2 main location, this made the video feel very repetitive and personally for me, made me feel slightly uninterested. One of the main features with this video that made me think it was ranked lower in my list is that the audio and video didn’t sync up together. This was very off putting throughout the video. Although these were points which I think didn’t make the music video top quality, the video did have a narrative to some extent but was mainly performance. The narrative didn’t really progress in anyway. Lost which was made my 13B4 is a good music video but I personally felt firstly because the song was slow it was very difficult to stay engaged with the audience without making the video just as slow as the song. Most of the video was narrative which consisted of interesting shots and clearly states what the narrative is. Due to the fact that the song was slow this in turn made the editing slow which made the performance slow and the video seem very long. From this I have learnt that choosing a slow song will be risky unless there was a very unique narrative or style of shooting.  

Reviewing our Opening Sequence

Through doing my opening sequence last year I haven’t learnt many things that I would now do differently going into this music video process. 

Blogging: A main part which we didn’t do was blogging at the same time as we were working, this was our group blog as well as our individual blogs. This is something crucial that I will do differently in the next project. It was difficult trying to remember things that we were doing instead of writing them a the same time.

I think that with our opening sequence the concept was over thought which made it become very difficult and complex. What I learnt from this was that keeping something simple can be just as effective if it is executed well.

I feel that although we like the locations that we filmed our opening sequence in, various places in London, I think that due to the fact that the locations were far away and we managed to film in one day; if we needed to do any pick up shots that would have been difficult for us to do. Alongside this fact I also think that obviously with any editing it is difficult to keep nice continuity but because we had major landmarks in our opening, it was extremely important that we needed to get a majority of the shots accurate.

A slight issue that I would hope to overcome this year is the amount of work that all members of the team put into the project. This year I hope that we could overcome this problem as it became difficult calibrating all schedules together. This year hopefully we will be able to distribute the work loads evenly. 

Welcome!!

Welcome to my A2 Media Studies blog. In this blog you will be overseeing my work and progress through making a music video.