Tuesday 22 October 2013

Cast list


Band
Joe Bryant - Singer
Rob Pipes - Guitarist
Jack Coates - Bassist 
Jordan Mudd - Drummer

Narrative
Jack Bell - Protagonist 
Kiera Coleman - Antagonist
Niall Foot - Extra
Sean Bryant - Extra
Marie Bryant - Extra

History of music videos

A music video is a way to promote an artist, modernly, it promotes the release of an album. According to Sven Carlson (1999), there are three types of narratives within a music video; narrative (story), performance and abstract. Classically it used to just be performance but as time went on more and more artists challenged conventions to be noticed. Usually there is a mixture rather than just one, and this has now become the norm.   

In the 60’s, music videos were completely different to how they are now. If you wanted to watch a music video you would have to watch a film. Cliff Richard starred in “Summer Holiday” 
(1963) which showcased his hit single “We’re All Going On A Summer Holiday”, this song was incorporated within the narrative of the film. The video is made up of a performance of Cliff singing the song whilst driving a bus. 



The Beatles changed this by staring within their own (mock) documentary  “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) so instead of playing characters they played themselves. As this was their own film they could do what they want so they can incorporate their songs within the narrative. 

Then Bob Dylan came along and recorded a documentary called “Don’t Look Back” (1967). The documentary opened with the track “Subterranean Homesick Blues" and this broke conventions as there was only one edit with no performance just Bob holding cards containing lyrics or relating concepts.



The introduction of music television changed music videos forever. British television show, Top Of The Pops, allowed artist to promote their songs by miming a live performance. In the late 70's, they started showing music promo videos. Which increased sales as the audience would want to see the videos again the following episode. 


Thanks to his video for "Ashes To Ashes" (1980), David Bowie secured his first UK number one. The video was directed by David Mallet who as also worked on videos such as "I Want To Break Free" by Queen (1984). This shows the power of promo videos and it's effect on an audience. 










The rise of MTV brought music videos to mainstream. MTV started in 1981 and aired "Video Killed The Radio Star". This service made music videos accessible 24 hours a day making videos more popular. 

In 1992, MTV started listing directors making their role more important. This made directors introduce their own style and flair. This is when directors started coming more popular such as director Mark Romanek who directed the video "Scream" by Micheal Jackson which cost $7 million to create and owns the title of most expensive music video.








The biggest music video provider in the modern age is Youtube, which launched in 2005. This service made music video viewing fast and easy making it more accessible especially for a modern audience. One of the biggest music videos on Youtube is Ok Go's video for "Here It Goes Again" (2006).  

Audience research - focus group


This research is an effective way of finding out about your audience as you can have a detailed chat about what a mixed audience likes. From this focus group I found out about audience from different genres who live different lifestyles.

Thursday 17 October 2013

Audience research

I created a poll on my blog and sent it across my social media sites. Theses are the results I recieved.



I created this poll to understand who my audience are. From the results I gained, I can see that my demographics are between the age of 15-24, mixed but mostly female, enjoy rock music, enjoy music videos and prefer a performance narrative. To make my results fair I put my poll onto social media such as Facebook and Twitter which have a mixed audience rather than just sending it to people at college who are all within the 15-24 demographic. With the results I received I can conform towards my audience's wants and needs to make my music video successful.



Monday 7 October 2013

Concept ideas

Concept one

The narrative follows our male protagonist, he will been seen as an outsider which will be represented with the cinematography of long shots as well as miss-en-scene of all black clothing. He is seen as an outsider because he avoids people, this is because when he touches people they die. In the video we see him accidentally touching people and killing them; editing such as shot reverse shots and eye line matches will be used to establish the tension between the protagonists and the accidental victims. In the middle of the video, our protagonist gets angry because of the people he killed so we will have shots of his screaming in his bedroom/in front of a mirror and a shot of him throwing a brick at a wall; these shots will be edited to be in slow motion to capture the emotion on the protagonists face. Towards the end of the video, our protagonist meets the female antagonist; in terms of mise-en-scene, the antagonist will be dressed in all white. This supports Levi Strauss' theory of binary oppisites as the protagonist and antagonist contrast each other. Through shot reverse shot we will see the protagonist and antagonist approach each other and they touch hands. This will be supported with a full band performance throughout. This concept would work as it fits with the main theme of the song which is depression and isolation.

Concept two

This narrative follows a male protagonist who appears to be the last man on earth. Throughout the song we will see him walking around streets, long shots would be used establish loneliness. As the song goes on we will see flashbacks from his life before, this will represented through editing of blurrines. As this is happening we see shots of the antagonist who also this she's the last human on earth. At the end we see them meet. This would be supported with a full band performance. This concept also fits with the themes of the song.

Concept three

Performance with montage of in a social context. We have taken inspiration from Save Your Breath’s video for Stay Young

Editing

For the performance section of the videos, flashing lights could be used to create a sense verisimilitude of a live performance. Also the use of close ups with tilts of the musicians and long shots to show band unity.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Lyric timings


We put the timings with the lyrics to help us when constructing our storyboard so that is as accurate as it can be.

Lyrics

We put the lyrics on our blog so that it is easy to access so we can use it for our storyboard and so our talent could learn them for the performance to make it look authentic.