Year 13 Media project start

Today I got into a group to start our Year 13 media coursework, this time I choose to work with Oliver Merry. I worked with him in my year 12 coursework and we agreed that we worked well together as the previous media project we did was very successful. We did however loose 2 members of our group who left school.

My group and I met up and we decided which project we were going to choose, luckily we all preferred the Music Video and two supplementary tasks, then we had to decide on the song. This was going to be a tough choice as we had to think of a song that we not only all liked, but one that we could think of many ideas for filming to fill the 3-4 minutes of a song.

We brainstormed a few bands that we all liked, and then choose some songs that were popular and that would be fun to do so therefore we would enjoy going it a lot more. Also we choose an array of different bands that do different types of music so we had a huge choice of what we could do. For example The Prodigy who performs a rave genre whereas Foo Fighters and Kings of Leon perform alternative rock music. After looking through what songs the bands we like sing we short-listed them and we ended up with a brainstorm like this of the bands we all liked and the songs that we would consider making a music video for-

The Prodigy

-Omen
-Invaders Must Die
-Warriors Dance
-Smack my Bitch up

Foo Fighters

-Best of you
-The Pretender
-All My Life

-Times Like These

- The one

Oasis

-Wonderwall
-Live forever
- champange supernova

Kings of Leon

-Reverly
-Use Somebody
- Notion

Queens of the Stone Age

-No one knows

After much discussion and by exploiting media technologies like MTV and the Playstations 3 new Vidzone that allows you to watch any music video that Sony are involved in for free. We decided to choose No one knows by the Queens of the Stone age because we liked the beat that the song had and the variation of different instruments that are used throughout the song. We looked at the songs lyrics and we found that throughout the song and we found that the song mentions taking pills so we based our idea around this and incorparated this into the video.

Controversial videos

Controversial videos
A prime example of a music video that caused uproar was “Smack My Bitch Up" by The Prodigy, because people thought that it was done to promote violence against women. The basic plot of the video is a night out in the city filmed from that is filmed in a first-person perspective, portraying drinking and driving, snorting cocaine, violence, vandalism and sex. The video was banned on MTV but was only allowed to be shown after midnight because of its content. The vidoe has been named at #1 on the countdown and therefore named the "Most Controversial Video" in MTV's history. Even though this video has gone through much critisim it has picked up a few awards along the way such as Best Dance Video and Breakthrough Video at the MTV awards.


Click images to make bigger :)

Each of the pictures above are screen shots taken from the video they each show the parts that gives the music video its reputation. The screens shots go in order the first shows the person in the video snorting cocaine the second shows the person kicking somebody while they are on a nightclub dance floor. The third shows the character throwing a brick through a car window and the forth show the person having sex with the stripper. Each of these four things sex, drugs violence and vandalism give the video its Controversial qualities.

“Like a Prayer,” by Madonna was also a very controversial music video worldwide for a number of reasons these include Madonna making love to Saint Martin de Porres who some faiths perceived as being a black version of Christ stigmata. The video also included cross burning discrimination, rape faith. The video went on to top the top MTV's countdown of "100 Videos That Broke the Rules"

Music Video Research #3

Today me and my group got hold of 'Dancing in the Distraction Industry : Music, Television and Popular Culture' by Andrew Goodwin. Because of time the restriction that we want to finish planning and filming before the holiday is over we were forced to skim read and make quick annotations, this is what we got:

There are many different descriptions of music videos, some examples are:

-Mercer looks at them as a kind of cinematic genre
-Fry and Fry look at them in terms of Adverts
-Fiske as a new form of Television as classic postmodern texts
-Walker sees them as visual art
-Lewis sees them merely in terms of shopping mall culture
-Marcus views them as semiotic pornography

Because of all of these descriptions it is very difficult for critics to fairly review them, an example is MTV, MTV has been criticised for this generations youth's short attention span and obsession with image, however it has also allowed black artists, like Michael Jackson to gain International Fans.

Music videos also give artists a chance to create a 'star persona'. An example of someone who gained great success from her star persona as a sex symbol is Madonna, of course now she has changed her star persona to a role model of female power due to her age and lack of ability to pull off her previous star persona. Also with the process of Meta-narrative, every promotional video released by an artist builds up a character that the public recognise and associate with that artist, again Madonna is a good example as well as Kylie Minougue's transformation from a frizzy-haired soap star to a sex icon.

This book is a great secondary source for our research because it explores a range of vital view points on music videos. However it is restricted for us because it is set at Degree level media students which makes it a little hard to follow.

Music Video Research #2

Today me and my group began to watch numerous Music videos using VidZone brought to us by the Playstation 3 this is a example of a new technology that we had exploited we also spent quite a few hours looking through a range of different videos from different artists on channels TMF and 4 music, we watched them in there dozens whilst making notes to get some "ground rules" used in most music videos that will help us when we come to planning.

We came up with the following technical elements that appeared in most of the videos:

• Fast Edits
• Jump Cuts
• Post Production visual effects
• Moving camera work to convey energy
• Edits that reflect the tempo or structure of the song
• Lip Syncing
• Dynamic Performance
• Close-ups of the singer/Guitarist doing solo etc.
• Also the name of the song, artist and album appeared at the bottom at the beginning and end of every song.

We also did some reaserch about the ITV documentary mirrorball this programme featured a range of different music videos with the director of them talking about them a few of the videos that we watched were Jonas Akerlund "Ray of Light" , Cardigans "Favorite Game", Prodigy "Smack my bitch up". This documentary was a good source of information as it showed us-

The importance of editing

The promotional values that come with a controversial video such as Smack my bitch up

Directors point of view (Concept Development)

The Prodigy with their award for the highly controvertial smack ma bitch up.

Today my group and I decided to start our research of music videos, we will get our research from a variety of sources, but we choose the internet as our first source. While on the internet we looked at “pop up video” on YouTube this was a show that was shown on VH1 that de- constructed music videos while they were playing they did this by a series of pop up displays. We looked through a variety of websites and made notes as we went along, this is what we found:

• By law and definition, a music video is not an art form in it's own right, the way music and films are, but is a promotional tool (similar to an advert) that promotes Singles, Albums and Artists.
• However many still have their own Artistic Merit, are highly technically accomplished and aesthetically pleasing.
• Music Videos have been called the Ultimate 21st century text as it captures the best and worst of modern pop culture, which is:
- Visual Style over Substance
- Things must look good instead of having a profound meaning
- Post Modern erosion from reality
- Intertextuality, the including of lots of cultural references
- These are not meant to be hidden, the audience are meant to be pick up on them
A few examples of cultural references in music videos would be Eminem's Without me, it includes many cultural references like:
Elvis Presley

Porn star Jenna Jameson and fitness model Kiana Tom appear in bed with Eminem at the beginning of the video

Robin played by eminem

and Osama Bin Laden

• Music Videos use textual and visual schizophrenia by jumping from many unrelated clips.
• Music Videos have turned music into a commodity, a product rather than a live music experience.
• Music Videos have been criticised for taking away the viewers freedom to interpret a song, this relates to the concept of Synaesythesia when a piece of music sparks images in the minds eye.
We also found 3 different types of Music Video, they are:

-Illistration Videos - Literally shows on screen what is happening in the lyrics.
-Amplification Videos - Take the lyrics or mood of the song and develops them into a bigger, related concept.
-Disjuncture Videos - Are completely random or abstract with no obvious link to the song.

We also exploited another media technology by watching “making of video” on MTV, which gives the viewers an insight of how the videos work and how they are put together. We watched the making of “Best of You “by Foo Fighters from season 12 of the show as we were considering a Foo fighters song to do for our piece. It was very helpful in showing us about the fast edits, close ups of singers guitarists and drummer and also how to put across visual indicators such as death and love.