I feel that Blink 182's music video for their song "Always" is a strong influence for my group's own music video. Firstly the narratives are quite similar, in that it features a female protagonist with three males competing for her affections. The frame is cut into three horizontal sections, each portraying a different outcome for each boy. It succeeds in helping the narrative to flow in a unique way and it is something the group would consider when it comes to the final stages of production for our own video.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Narrative in Music Video
- Female looking for the right boyfriend.
- She goes on dates with a number of different boys from punks, to gangsters to geeks, in the same restaurant, at the same time on different days!
- The scene in the restaurant remains the same but the boys change, and the roses seem more wilted in each scene.
- But of course she chooses the best looking boy, but he ends up to be the most big headed boy, and doesn’t really care about her.
- However, the Geek that she dated really likes her and is the ‘real superman’. (He is seen in the background of most scenes wearing a baggy superman t-shirt)
- As the video goes on, the geek appears to be better looking.
- The girl begins to notice him again.
- After a number of awful dates with her new boyfriend she is bored and leaves him, he doesn’t care as he is too busy looking at himself.
- Finally she gets with ‘Superman’!
- Want the video to also include animated shots, which have been influenced by legendary comics and Superman cartoons. For example, speech bubbles and signs that stress the sounds
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Influencing the Audience
If audience is a mass, it raises all kinds of questions about the power of the media to influence people - not just individuals, but whole sectors of society. There have been a number of theories over the years about how exactly the media work on the mass audeince. Two I will outline are called The Hypodermic Model and The Two Step Flow Model.
The Hypodermic Model
It grew out of what is referred to as The Frankfurt School, a group of German Marxists in the 1930s who witnessed first hand how Hitler used propaganda to influence a nation. According to the theory the media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who as a powerless mass have little choice but to be influenced - in other words, you watch something violent, you may go and do something violent.
This theory has been particularly popular when people have been considering violence in films. There have been films such as The Exorcist and A Clockwork Orange which have been banned in the past, partly because of a belief that they might encourage people to copy crimes within them. On the other hand no-one has ever really claimed that everyone will be affected by these texts in the same way. Many people have therefore seen the theory as simplistic because it doesn't take any account of people's individuality and yet it is still very popular in society in areas such as politics. Every time a young person does something violent and makes the news, newspapers and MPs will try to link their crime to video violence.
Another interesting example of the theory in action is the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Before every one of his murders, he watched a clip from his favourite film in order to get himself excited. This is the kind of fact that might seem to prove the hypodermic syringe theory.
The Two Step Flow
The Hypodermic model proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did not reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential campaign and published their results in a paper. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the mind of is audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active asociates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow.
This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts.
The Cultivation/Culmination Theory
According to this, while any one media text does not have too much effect, it shows that although one viewing may not have a big effect, viewing constantly over time has a greater effect on people’s behaviour, making them desensitised (distanced from ones emotions). Therefore the result being that violence in the media means children become less shocked by real life violence. On the other hand many may become more sensitised, this is where the viewers are shocked by the violence, therefore becoming more aware and emotional.
Gratification Theory
According to this theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. In other words, when we encounter a media text it is not just some kind of mindless entertainment - we are expecting to gain something from it: some kind of gratification. In this model the individual has the power and they select the media texts that best suit their needs and attempts to satisfy those needs. Researchers have found four kinds of gratifications individuals recieve:
- Information: we want to find out about society and the world, we want to satisfy our curiosity. This would fit NEWS AND DOCUMENTARIES.
- Personal Identity: we may watch television in order to look for models for our behaviour. So, for example, we may identify with characters that we see in SOAPS.
- Intergration and Social Interaction: we use the media in order to find out more about the circumstances of other people and help us to empathise and sympathise with the lives of others.
- Entertainment: sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxtion or just to fill time.
Reception Theory
This theory is based on the idea that the audience create their own image of media texts, meaning that although a number of people watch the same programme, individuals interpret it in their own way. This can be influenced by the our individual upbringing, the mood we are in, the place where we are at the time or all kinds of other factors. David Morley classes the varied readings of people in three groups, which are:
Preferred Reading: what the media producers hope the audience will take from the text.
Oppositional Reading: audiences from outside the target audience may reject the preferred reading, receiving their own alternative message.
Negotiated Reading: audiences acknowledge the preffered reading but modify it to suit their own values and opinions.
Constructing an Audience
Foundations By Kate Nash & Directed By Kinga Burza
Foundations
Kinga Burza
Kinga was born in Krakow, Poland and raised in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia before moving to London in 2005 and signing with respected film production company Partizan of Michel Gondry fame in 2006. She completed a BA at the University of New South Wales, before she went onto postgraduate studies in Theatre and Film at UTS in Sydney. Whilst studying at university, Kinga began teaching herself by making amateur videos for her then boyfriend Sydney musician Jack Ladder and many other friends she had in bands. Since being in the UK, Kinga has shot videos for M.Craft, The Thrills, The Rakes, The Teenagers, Calvin Harris, Kate Nash, Ladyhawke and recent Billboard No. 1 newcomer Katy Perry in LA. Promo Magazine has dubbed Kinga to be among 'the next wave of up-and-coming directors' while both I-D and Dazed and Confused Magazine have also run features on her. She was nominated Best New Director at the CAD Awards in 2007 and won a Young Gun award for Music Video Direction for Kate Nash's "Foundations" in 2007. Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" reached No.1 on the BillBoard charts. In 2008 Kinga won Best Pop Video at the UK Video Music Awards in London for Kate Nash's "Foundations".
I thoroughly enjoy watching the video to Foundations at every available opportunity. Its light-heartedness and simplistic techniques (excluding the animation) is something I would like to incorporate into my own music video. The humour used with simple camera angles and editing techniques I feel would appeal to the audience I am trying to reach, i.e teenagers around 14-18 years old. I believe it would create light hearted and at times humourous connotations throughout the video.
Criteria of Advanced Portfolio
- Main Task: Produce a music promo video
- Ancillary Task One: Produce a website homepage for the band.
- Ancillary Task Two: Produce a CD/DVD cover for the release of album as part of a digipak.
Our research, planning and evaluation involves the use of our blog where we will evaluate and reflect on the creative process and experiences of our production.
We must answer the evaluation questions. These are:
- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- How effective is the combination of your main product and acillary tasks?
- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Questionnaire Results - Music Video
Target Age Range
When asked what attracted them to a music video, people included the answers of storyline, setting and humour. As the graph depicts, storyline proved the most popular answer with males and females with nearly 3/4 of participants including this in their answer. The second and third most popular were humour and SFX. While SFX may seem the more difficult and time consuming to include, we will have to go buy the effects we have on an iMac computer. However storyline was deemed the most important and as a group we had discussed previously that a storyline would prove integral to our production.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Our Chosen Genre
The pivotal moment when the pop video became as important as the pop single. The first television channel devoted totally to music, MTV has grown into a global brand as all-pervasive as Coca-Cola or Nike, colonising and dulling the collective pop consciousness with the tyranny of the rotation play.
Mainstream Genres
- a focus on the individual song or singles, rather than on extended works or albums
- an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology.
- an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities
- an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance
- a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments
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Rock
Rock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1960s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music.
The sound of rock often revolves around the guitar back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are sometimes used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music developed different subgenres. When it was blended with folk music it created folk rock, with blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and Latin music. Also in the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, glam rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included new wave, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.
Characteristics
- Rock Music is commonly identified by its strong rhythms, singable melodies, and fast tempo.
- A typical band consists of three guitars (lead, rhythm and bass), vocals, keyboard and drum kit.
- A typical rock song would follow the following pattern:
Introduction
Verse 1
Chorus
Verse 2
Chorus
Solo Instrumental Section (middle 8/bridge)
Verse 3
Chorus
Coda (outro)
R&B
Rhythm and blues (also known as R&B, R'n'B or RnB) is the name given to a wide-ranging genre of popular music created by African Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The term was originally used by record companies to refer to recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular.
The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. Starting in the 1960s, after this style of music contributed to the development of "rock and roll", the term "R&B" became used - particularly by white groups — to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, the term "rhythm and blues" was being used as a blanket term to describe soul and funk. Since the 1990s, the term "Contemporary R&B" is now mainly used to refer to a modern version of soul and funk-influenced pop music.
Characteristics
- Rhythm and blues bands usually consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, and sax.
- However, contemporary R’n’B does not not use as many instruments due to modern technology.
- Simple repetitive verses are common to help create mellow, individual sounds.
Singers are emotionally engaged with the lyrics, often intensely so, they remain cool, relaxed, and in control. - Lyrics are usually relaxed.
Hip Hop
Hip hop music is a musical genre which developed alongside hip hop culture, and is commnoly based on concepts of loop, rapping, DJing, scratching and beatboxing. The music is used to express concerns of political, social, and personal issues. Hip hop began in the Bronx in New York City in the 1970s, primarily among African Americans, with some Jamaican immigrant influence. The term rap is often used synonymously with hip hop, however, the latter denotes the practices of an entire subculture.
Rapping, also referred to as MCing or emceeing, is a vocal style in which the artist speaks lyrically, in rhyme and verse, generally to an instrumental or synthesized beat. Beats, almost always in 4/4 time signature, can be created by looping portions of other songs, usually by a DJ, or sampled from portions of other songs by a producer. Modern beats incorporate synthesizers, drum machines, and live bands. Rappers may write, memorize, or improvise their lyrics and perform their works a cappella or to a beat.
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Gender Representation in Music
- Kid Rock is looking down his nose at the camerah. This makes him look arrogant.
- He is superimposed over the title. This suggests superiority.
- He is dressed in red and is centralised in the image. This shows the male to be the dominant figure and the red allows him to stand out.
- The women are sexualised, half naked and seductive poses. The women at the "mercy" of Kid Rock.
- There is a relationship between the characters and the camera. Most of the women look desperate as they try to gain his attention, while there are one or two who are looking at the other women. This in some sense is a male fantasy. Or in another sense is an idea of "bitchiness".
- The leg position of the blonde woman is possesive as it is wrapped seductively around Kid Rock's leg.
- The theme of red is continued throughout, with the title, sub-heading and clothes of Kid Rock. This suggests a seductiveness, sexy and devilish theme.
Gender Representation
- P. Diddy is in a suit. This presents him as sophisticated and business-like.
- His glasses make him mysterious, as if he is hiding behind a mask.
- The extreme close up shows that it is "all about him". He is beckoning the camera towards him as if in control.
- The woman is dressed promiscuously. Her hair is placed unaturally and her face is hidden placing more emphasis on her body.
- P Diddy is leaning on her like furniture, so she is just an object.
- She is clinging on to him, highlighting her weakness.
From this lesson I have learnt that there is a strong sense of patriarchy in magazine covers and album covers. Women are used as sexual objects and this is why women questioned their position within the patriarchal society.