Textual Analysis - Analysing Music Videos

Textual Analysis - Representation

WOMEN
In music videos, women are often sexualised. They are also dancing provocatively which then they become an object of desire and positioned for pleasure for the male viewer. Laura Mulvey says that women are objectified and 'not to be looked-at-ness' in films, and also provide a 'male-gaze'. A music video that supports this view is 'Anaconda' by Nicki Minaj.



These stereotype are often challenged. In some music videos performed by female artists, they often concentrate more on the empowering lyrics and vocals, a good example is Adele's 'Someone Like You'.



MEN
In music videos, men are often trying to be a 'real man' figure, trying to look as stoic, aggressive, dependable and as non feminine as possible. An example of this is 'The Man' b Aloe Blacc.




There is another type of masculinity which is very recent and become more popular, and this is hegemonic masculinity, which means it reflects tenancy for males to seek to dominate other males and subordinate females. A good example of this is Robin Thicke's 'Blurres Lines'

Reflection on Music Video Study Day - Editing

In the editing activity, we were given a series of clips, and a selection of music, and we had to use the footage and a selected song to then try and make our own music video. Here is ours:

We had to try and make the music match the dancing, and we also cut it on some of the beats, such as the first one. This helped me because it gives more a further development of skills using final cut and also further developing my skills making music videos.

Reflection on Music Video Study Day - Making the video

We had to recreate 'Let Me Entertain You' by Robbie Williams.

To recreate the video, we had to have performers. We were set up in the college dance studio, and there were 2 guitars, a bass, a drum kit, 2 microphones for backing singers, and also, a microphone for 'Robbie'. In total, we did 5 takes, all of us experimenting with performing and using the camera. There were 5 cameras in total, 2 of them are handheld, to get abstract shots of things like the guitars, or close ups of the performers faces. I have learnt a lot from this exercise, it was a lot of fun, and also really interesting, I learnt that when performing, you have to really engage with the music, and make it look as dramatic and rock'n'roll as possible. Also when filming, you have to think about the shots you want to get, and how effective it will look. Below are some pictures that were took when I was both performing and filming.

Reflection on Music Video Study Day - Top tips from Pete and Jake

Today, Pete Fraser, the creator of petesmediablog and Jake, a professional music video director and editor, editing the likes of Robbie Williams, the Spice Girls and many others. Pete had a lot of tips to give us, like how to choose the right song and how to keep our blog up to date. Here are the tips he gave us:
Plan for everything:

• make a storyboard
• people, places, costume
• talk to group members regularly
• make sure performers know the words and have rehearsed
• use timeline sheets to mark where the verses, chorus' and key instrumental parts are

Know your equipment:

• test shots and try effects
• check the 'quirks' of the camera
• must have a tripod
• experiment on final cut before the main thing
• make music audible on camera, so you can sync the music straight away.

The Shoot

• shoot the performance with different setups 10 times
• plenty of cutaways
• experiment with extra angles and lighting changes
• lots of close ups - artists, instruments
• enthuse your performers
• shoot more than you will need

The Edit

• sync up performances first
• get the whole picture rather than tiny detail
• cut and cut and cut again
• aim for a dynamic piece of work
• do effects last
• upload a rough cut to blog and get feedback

Choosing a Song

• avoid famous artists/songs
• think about sub genre
• strong visual idea/concept
• aim for 3 minutes or under
• needs lyrics for performance
• listen to advice

Also, Jake mentioned 'salt and pepper' moments, once you have finished the final edit, this means look for specific phrases or accented hits, where you can then use your skills to make it more effective.

All of these tips have been extremely helpful, especially coming from people that know the business professionally, and this will make me think about what shots to use and also other important things to then make our video look as professional as possible.

Narrative Analysis

The prezi above are a selection of music videos from the indie rock genre, that we all individually analysed.

Narrative Theory

Narrative - A form of story-telling
- Open - The story isn't finished (eg soap operas)
- Closed - The story is concluded
- Linear - A beginning, middle and end
- Non Linear - No sense of shape

Andrew Goodwin has 3 narratives for music videos:
- Illustration - Literal meaning of the song lyrics and how it relates to the video. An example of this is Miley Cyrus' 'Wrecking Ball', as you can see she is literally swinging on a wrecking ball.


-


Amplification - Performance and narrative and how it relates to the lyrics. This shows George Ezra performing the song throughout the video, but also telling the story at the same time.





- Disjuncture - Abstract, often ignoring the lyrics and trying to offer different meanings. A good example of this is Sia's 'Elastic Hearts', which shows a performance based video with no relation to the lyrics.



  


There are 3 types of narrative:
- Performance based. For example Royal Blood's 'Little Monster', which shows the band doing a live performance of the song with an audience.




- Narrative based. For example Kodaline's 'All I Want', which tells the story of a man with a disfigured face, trying to get past life with his condition.



- Combination - A mix of performance and narrative. For example Mumford and Sons' 'The Wolf'. It shows them doing a live performance of the song, and also cuts to scenes of the band behind the scenes on tour, and getting up to fun things whilst wearing costumes.



Andrew Goodwin - Intertextuality - Making reference to past media texts. A good example of this is 'Love Story' by Taylor Swift, as it makes reference to William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'.
Todarov - Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - New equilibrium - This means there is a conflict, then the story develops, then a resolution.

Levi-Strauss - Binary opposition




AS A GROUP, WE HAVE DECIDED TO DO A COMBINATION OF NARRATIVE AND PERFORMANCE FOR OUR MUSIC VIDEO.

Inspirational Genre Videos

The song 'Paradise' by Coldplay is one of the most popular music videos on YouTube, with 416 million views. This is a narrative music video, which means that it tells a story. I have discovered that a lot of music videos in indie rock use the same narrative method. In this case, it shows man in an elephant suit trying to get back to Africa with the rest of his elephant friends, later, we find out that it is Chris Martin in the suit (the lead singer), and his elephant friends are the rest of Coldplay. It uses a lot of series of shots and camera angles. The first shot of the elephant is him behind bars in a closed frame, which shows that he is weak and has nowhere to go. It also uses a lot of long shots to show the scenery of the landscapes shown. There is also links from the lyrics to the video, for example, the elephant is trying to get money to buy a bike, and has signs with the lyrics on. There is also a part where the chorus comes in, and says the lyric 'paradise', and you see a long shot of a beautiful view, to show a form of paradise.




The song 'Hopeless Wanderer' by Mumford and Sons became very popular because it had some famous comedy actors in, such as Jason Sudekis and Jason Bateman. This music video also has a lot of series of different shots and camera angles. At the start of the video, the director tries to make us not realise that this is not in fact Mumford and Sons on screen, by using a low angle shot of the singer and the sunlight behind him. The mise en scene show them wearing traditional folk clothing, and set in a barn, even though Mumford and Sons are still an indie rock band. Also, similar to 'Paradise', the lyrics refer to the setting. The song is called 'Hopeless Wanderer', and you see the band, wandering hopelessly. There is also a sense of humour in this song too, There is an interlude where they are dressed like a barber shop quartet, and at the banjo solo, the banjo starts smoking, which is humorous for us watching.

Chosen Genre

As a group, we have to decided to do the indie rock genre as our genre for our music video this year. We have decided this because not only do we all love that style of music, it is a hybrid genre, which incorporates styles and conventions of other genres, which will then let us be more creative and broad of what we create as a group.

Researching Genre

Below is a prezi that me and my group created. It shows different that we all individually chose and did research on, and saw how a music video of that paticular genre links with other music videos of the same genre

 

Above is a table of which people vote for their facourite music genre. I chose rock, and this is a screenshot of what other 50,026 people said. As you can see, the mainstream music that is payed nowadays is the most popular, eg Rock, Pop, Hip Hop/Rap and Electronic music, which means the others are considered to be niche genres, such as the origins of music, ie Jazz, Blues, Classical and Country.

Martin Loop and Jim Collins

MARTIN LOOP - Genres are not pure, they are a blend.
JIM COLLINS  - Hybridisation

MUMFORD AND SONS

Mumford and Sons performing 'I Will Wait' in 2012

Mumford and Sons performing 'The Wolf' in 2015

Mumford and Sons started off as a country/folk rock band when they released their first album (Sigh No More) in 2009 and their second album (Babel) in 2012. 3 years later, they released their 3rd studio album, Wilder Mind, which changed the genre of Mumford and Sons. They went from a folky rock band, to an alternative rock band. This completely changed how they were looked, and some were mad that they have changed their genre slightly, but some think it's the band just evolving. Looking at the 2 images above, you can see the difference in their image in the space of them years, they had traditional folk instruments on the top, but now you can see they have average rock band instruments on the bottom. In the top image, both Andrew Goodwin's and Martin Loop's theory apply to this. They were a a blend of folk and rock in most songs of the Babel album, and also shows they are a hybrid band.

A Definition of Genre

A conventional category that uses shared characteristics to group pieces of music together into groups and subgroups that share certain elements or style.

Group Members

My group consists of:

Rob Terry

Adam Trotman

Beth Connelly

Anya Wagstaff

Skills Development in Editing

This video shows my editing skills that I have developed, I tried to sync the beats to the cuts to make it look more professional. Multi-time editing is a lot different to single track editing, because each camera has recorded all of the footage, which then gives you wider choice when editing of which shot to use in the final video. The tools I used which I haven't previously is the opacity tool, which lets you then choose which shot to use. A thing that I found easy about the task was cutting it at points and then choosing the shot, as I have skills in editing videos that I have developed myself, but in order for myself to get better, I will ask our teacher for help in editing videos, and particularly using the Final Cut software, which I am quite unfamiliar with. I could also look at YouTube tutorials to then help me with it.
skills dvlpt in editing from Rob Terry on Vimeo.

Andrew Goodwin: Analysing Music Videos

Andrew goodwin music video from Rob Terry

Skills Developed in A2 Fortnight

In the A2 fortnight, our task was to create a recreation either Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass or Lips Are Movin’, and our group decided to recreate Lips Are Movin’. We also had to create a digipak, and a website.

Skills developed using digital technology

The software that I used mainly was Final Cut Express. This is video editing software we used to edit the video. I have never used this software before, as I did the music magazine at AS, so I decided to try and develop my skills in video editing. I used the splitting tool quite a lot, as I needed to trim parts out that weren’t needed, and do my best to synch the video with the music. This has further developed my skills in time for A2. We also used Adobe Photoshop, which is image editing software used internationally. We used this to make the digipak. I had skills in Photoshop, so I used them to teach the other members of the group how to work it. We used a website called www.wix.com to make the website, putting the video on, the digipak, and using inspiration from other websites to then make it look more professional.

We had to use several hardware to make this possible. We had a Samsung stills camera to take the still shots, to then put them onto Photoshop, and to put on the website. We also used a Panasonic camcorder to record the video. We had to place the camcorder on a tripod, and use lighting etc. to make the shot professional. We used Apple iMacs to edit everything. I knew how to use the stills camera, which then let me show other members of the group how to use, but I also needed on how to work the camcorder, which I eventually got my head around. All these skills I have learned will definitely be very helpful when doing A2 work.

Skills developed in research and planning

The A2 fortnight has shown me that I have a lot of research and planning to do, and has shown me that I need to manage my time well. I need to use my time well when it comes to research, and I need to develop better organisation skills when it come to production, because I need to consider actors, costume and props and the location of shooting.

Skills developed using real media conventions

This activity has made me think about how I incorporate real media conventions. I need to go into more depth and think about the micro elements when shooting. Mise en scene is a big one, so I seriously need to research about costume, props and location. I also need to think about cinematography, and how shots, angles and duration can affect the whole product. I also need to think about how my character will be represented, using the micro elements, which will then lead the audience to a direct conclusion about the character using stereotypes.

Jeghan Jainor Lipssss R Moovin' from Rob Terry on Vimeo.