GG - Music Video Idea/1 - Fatboy Slim (Right here, Right now)

My final and probably most likely new idea would be to the song Right here, Right now. My idea would be to have both performance and narrative, the performance would consist of 1/3rd of the music video.

I took inspiration from the music video by Coldplay on their new song 'Paradise'. We would have series of scenarios of a singular figure travelling throughout the Yorkshire country-side, (this would be cut with the performance as well). Firstly, the male would be travelling along in a car, the car then runs out of petrol just outside a bike shop. He then goes in a buys a second hand old bike, after further travelling along more country-side he gets a flat tyre. He then spots an old skateboard in a farm yard and so on. He finally reaches a river were he ditches the skateboard to cross the river, he then continues his travels on foot. Finally he reaches his destination of where the band, who are playing the performance aspect, are practising. We then see the meaning of the video, the main character kicks the drummer off playing the instrument and plays them himself showing he will not be replaced in the band.

The filming will consist of a huge range of short taken shots, I have lots of ideas and plan to do some practice footage of the narrative very soon.


Fatboy Slim - Ident 03 - 1 on MUZU.

Podcast/5

We have selected and thought of an idea for 'The Swing Movement - Jigsaw' after weeks on deciding.

GG - Music Video Idea/2 - The Clash (In Hammersmiths Palais)

The Clash originated in 1976 and emerged as a Punk Rock band, they were very popular during their time under the spot light.

My idea would be to have all footage in black and white, representing how old the song is. We would film in a rough area of a city or town, with the main characters dressed in quite old fashioned clothing, the 1980 puck look. The idea of the video would be four males searching around the derelict area, they all then come across some old instruments near a tip. They then gradually pick them up and start playing along to the song. Slowly a crowd gathers around them, and they start performing to an audience. At the end they all just put the interments down, everyone leaves and they continue with their routine before they found the instruments.

We would film in a rough run down area and all footage will be in black and white. We will use a range of shots to keep the audience guessing.

The Clash have made some very special and significant videos during their time, including the well received 'London Calling' video.

GG - Music Video Idea/3 - The Swing Movement (The Town or The City)

My reason for choosing The Swing Movement is because we would have easy access to the band, also we have all the instruments to film with. My idea would consist of mainly the performance aspect of music videos.

We would film a huge range of shots of the band playing in my basement at home, this would cover around half of the video. The rest would be a narrative of a male or female character struggling to come to terms with city life. We would create an impression of unhappiness and a sense of suffering as the person walks the city streets of Leeds. We will pick quite a rough area of Leeds to film, the main character will just be walking through the streets looking at his surroundings, this being the tall building and all the people who surround him. We would film the narrative aspect in black and white to create a sense of uncertainty. 

We will use a range of slow a fast takes, whilst also using transitions to cut between the two scenarios. 

I believe if I look at some of the Arctic Monkeys videos they will help with this idea. 

GG - Music Video Idea/4 - Fatboy Slim (Praise You)

For this idea I was thinking we could relate an idea to the 'big beat' genre of Fatboy Slim by using footage from a party. The song sticks to a basic structure, it follows a catchy tune throughout and the lyrics are the same all the way through.

My idea would be to have a narrative performance and a male falling in love with a girl. We would get a range of shots of him looking at her from long distance's and from hiding positions, this making it clear that the girl is unaware of this boys presents. The idea would be to create a 'stalking' feel with the main male not having the confidence to approach the girl. This would then lead to them both being at a party, they would both make eye contact (with them being surrounded by dancing people). The boy would both gradually approach each other leading the viewer to think she likes him. Then at the end she will walk straight past him and to another person behind him.

We would use a range of shots and a lot of fast pacing editing at the party scene. Also we would cross cut a lot of shots to signify the people their are drunk, also possibly using a fish eye lens. We would film all throughout Ilkley, on the grove and in the woods. The party scene would then either be shot at an actually friends party or in my basement where we will get a load of friends to act for us.

I have found a good persons videos to look at for ideas is David Guetta. 



Fatboy Slim - Praise You on MUZU.

Podcast - 2

Change of idea to 'The Swing Movement' after audience feedback showed our initial idea would prove hard to achieve.

GG - Codes and Conventions of a Digipaks

Digipaks

During class we looked at a range of different digipaks from ones made by students, and some made by professionals. Digipaks are something of the current times because they are seen as more economically friendly, this possibly increasing the chances of someone buying one. Below is a list of the common codes and conventions of digipaks:

• Tend to be made from the material cardboard.
• Image or band of the band who a print relevant to the band of the front.
• Band and album title.
• Website information.
• Copyright statement.
• Bar code.
• Track listing.
• Brief description of the band.
• Band and album name on the side, including category number and company logo.

GG - Codes and Conventions of a Magazine advertisement

Magazine advertisement
I looked at many examples of magazine advertisements for new bands promoting their music, below I give a list of the main codes and conventions of them. I researched and found that on average 50% of most magazines consist of advertisement for new albums and upcoming shows. 

• Album cover or band logo on show.
• Artist name.
• (Price)
• Release date.
• Star review.
• Where it is available.
• Tour dates.
• Band website.
• Record label information.
• Copyright statement.

GG - Practice footage

We plan to take some practice footage this week with the music from our new band selection 'The Swing Movement.'
Plan
We are going to take 30 seconds of performance shots of them playing. They are not all living in Ilkley at the moment so we will get others in to play the role of the band. This wont be a problem nearer christmas because they will all be coming home.
Location
We will film in my basement at home, in here there are all instruments including a microphone making it the easiest and best place for us to shoot some practice footage.

GG - Change in idea - 'The Swing Movement'

We have decided to scrap the Lazlo Bane idea, after lots of planning we have decided this idea wont work. Instead we are looking to do a song from the unsigned four piece band, 'The Swing movement.' We believe this idea is more achievable through us having access to the band,making our performance aspect a lot better. We are currently deciding on a song to do, below there is an example of a video someone made for them of their song 'To the Bone' which has been released onto the itunes store and Spotify.

The Swing Movement - To The Bone from Ben Symonds on Vimeo.

GG - Key Influences on our video idea

When thinking of an idea for our chosen band, we found looking at the Arctic Monkeys work was very helpful especially when it came to the music video itself.

The video for 'Teddy Picket' really helped us decide how we wanted to film our performance footage. They used a lot of close-up shots and shaky camera work. This made their video look more like a documentary and we liked this look.



Our narrative was set out to be based around a relationship breakdown. We looked at a lot of rom-coms to help us think of ideas of how we could show this on screen. We looked at a clip from the film 'Break Up' which showed a couple having an argument. I thought that this would help me when directing the actors through using more body language because we cannot usual speech.



Although we have both performance and narrative in our video we have no plan in making them link. Non of the band members will play a role in the narrative.

Podcast/3

Digipak and Mag-ad ideas. The main codes and conventions for them.

GG - Narrative and Performance in Music Videos

Narrative - Story on going in the video, can be something that links to the lyrics.
Performance - The band or the instruments being played on screen along to the song.
Not all music videos consist on both Narrative and Performance. You can either get an all performance video, or all narrative video. These are becoming much less common.
In modern day videos they mainly consist of both narrative and performance. A great example of this would be Coldplay - Fix You. The narrative links in well with the lyrics, this is commonly used in most music videos, the link between lyrics and whats going on on screen. Also the performance aspect of this video was done at a live concert, filmed on set. This works well with the rest of the video.

In mine and Toms music video we plan to use both performance and narrative. The narrative will be linked with the idea of 'Superman' explain in a previous post and the narrative will be based on our main male playing guitar on the streets singing along to the lyrics of the song.
We believe this will work really well together, also it will create a better video because it will be more interesting to watch.

GG - The Rise of the Directors

During the years of 1992-2004 it was seen as the 'rise of the directors.' Around this time directors and producers names started to get shown after a video on MTV. People started to become interested in the costs of production, also the different techniques each director used when designing an idea for a video.

1992–2004: Rise of the directorsIn December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze,Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallström and David Fincher.
Two of the videos directed by Romanek in 1995 are notable for being two of the three most expensive music videos of all time: Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream", which cost $7 million to produce, and Madonna's "Bedtime Story", which cost $5 million. "Scream" remains the most expensive video of all time. During this period, MTV launched channels around the world to show music videos produced in each local market: MTV Latin America in 1993, MTV India in 1996, and MTV Mandarin in 1997, among others. MTV2, originally called "M2" and meant to show more alternative and older music videos, debuted in 1996.

Source: Wikipedia 

GG - A brief Idea of our Music Video Lazlo Bane - Superman

GG - Research into 'Alternative rock' genre (draft)

Alternative rock was introduced in the late 1970's early 1980's as was mainly an underground phenomenon. Only the occasional song became a hit such as; The Rolling Stones. A lot of Alternative rock bands toured regularly and released low budget albums as part of their underground work. The genre is seen to reject commercialism of mainstream culture. By the start of the 1990's Alternative rock started to become a hit in British society, with American bands such as; Velvet Underground, having big success in the UK.

In the early 21st century other Alternative rock bands such as; Franz Ferdinand have emerged, but it is seen that R&B and Rap are taking the main stage at the moment when it comes to super genres. 

TW - New Idea - 'Superman' By Lazlo Bane

George and I have recently had doubts about filming a music video for Right Here Right Now by Fatboy Slim,

 and after brief location scouting throughout the october half term, we decided our idea was not the best.
This led us to change our idea to Lazlo Bane'sSuperman, which is most recognized
as the theme song to the hit TV show, Scrubs.

Our new idea is very narrative based, with aspects of a performance. The narrative
would centre around a young man's endeavours and how he fails to achieve his goals,
until, meeting the lyrics, he becomes 'superman' (which would be met with a costume
 and screen effect) and he succeeds. However, at the end, he meets a girl who likes him for
 who he is and not superman, so he dumps the costume which would meet the main lyric of the song,
 'I'm no superman'. This narrative would be cross cut with scenes of the same
character playing an acoustic guitar and lip syncing with the lyrics of the song.

Early ideas for location is Ilkley, perhaps at the bandstand or in a spot commonly used
 by street performers. We also have plans to use a snori-cam to show the change between normal and
superman outfit. We also have plans to cast Jeremy Whitehead as the lead actor for
 the video (see right). Jeremy can play a guitar extremely well and has proven
 in the past to show great effort with lip syncing duties when required, so this experience
will prove extrememly useful.

Here is the song we are basing our idea on, and with it the music video that was
 originally created for it. It is a concept video with performance and shots of on
set footage from Scrubs, with lip syncing in the performance shots. Both these
 methods have been intertwined with shrinking the footage and allowing it to be
 played next to each other, showing more than one piece of footage at once.

GG - Representations of Women in music videos

Representations of women in music videos are very clear and obvious. For a few Pop and R&B female music artists they are not seen for having a 'good voice', they are seen for their 'good bodies' also known as the male gaze. An example of this would be 'Britteny Spears', for most critics she doesn't have a great voice, but this hasn't stopped her from being successful. A lot of her albums are sold through young girls aged 12-16 aspiring to be her, they look up to her. Also a she has a huge male audience, this is down to her looks, she attracts the males through the use of her music videos that portray her in a 'sexual' way.

Another is Avril Lavigne, she started her career with a 'skater boy' look. This proved to be a success at first but as the times changed, so did their tastes in genre. This meant she had to do something different in order to carry on being a success. She changed genres and became more focused around the 'pop' genre. She then came back into the spotlight achieving lots of number ones in the charts.

Females are used in many music videos, from Death metal to Pop (as part on the video not the band). This can help attract to a wider audience, firstly the female audience but also increasing the male audience through the male gaze. An example of this would be 50 cent with his video 'Down On Me'. (An example is shown below).

GG - Deconstruction of Wolfmother - Dimension

Band: Wolfmother
Song: Dimension
Year: 2006
Length: 1.46

Brief Overview
The video starts with shots of the band in colour playing their instruments. This only lasts a few seconds and then we go to the main part of the video. The image changes to black and white with a mountain like background. Throughout the rest of the video we just see a performance narrative in the same area.

Overall, this video is not to the highest standard. It lacks shot variety, it is all shot in one room and all in black and white. We do however see some of the codes and conventions of a typical music video. For example we see a lot of shots of the main lead singer, we also see the use of lip sinking, and finally close ups of the instruments being played. However this video has no narrative at all, it is all performance.

It is believed that Wolfmother made this video how it is to make a statement. They want to go against all the norms of a traditional music video, also they want to keep that rock 'n' roll look of not going with the norm. This proved to be a successful move for the band.

NOTICE

Any posts on my blog from now will either be headed 'GG' or 'TW.' This is just to show who has done the blog post as we will be sharing work from now.