Theories of Music Videos

In this post, I am going to look at different theories of music videos from various different people across several different eras, and try and relate them to modern music videos and see if their theories still apply.

Firstly, I am going to study a theory by Michael Shore.

Michael Shore published a book called 'The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video' in 1984. He came to the conclusion that music videos build upon the views of adolescent male fantasies, and that music videos are soft core pornography with cliched imagery.

Mainstream artists such as Rihanna and Beyonce, have music videos which contain a lot of provocative dance moves. For example, in Beyonce's music video for 'Who Run The World', she is dancing in skimpy clothing, living up to the male fantasy.



This is ironic as the song is meant to be about females running the world and being superior to the male race, yet they are provocatively flaunting around their bodies in skimpy outfits , and they're not doing that for other women to look at their bodies!



Another part in this video that I find completely ironic is the fact that she solutes the men at the end, even though the men are meant to be inferior to the women.





Below, I have embedded a Prezi of my analysis of Andrew Goodwin's theory of music videos:

Perspective on Music Video Analysis by Sven E Carlsson

Sven E Carlsson has looked and commented on the way music videos are analysed and broken down (http://filmsound.org/what_is_music_video/).

He said that videos are broken down into two categories - performance clips and conceptual clips.
Performance clips show the artist(s) singing/dancing/miming, but conceptual clips are mainly clips which show a narrative.

For example... (taken from She Looks So Perfect by 5 Seconds Of Summer)

This is a performance clip

These are conceptual clips from the video

Music video artist as a "modern mythic embodiment"

Carlsson said that there are 3 different types of music video artists representing different types of performance in their videos:


1. The Commercial Exhibitionist

This is when an artist 'sells themselves' rather than the song. It is typically R&B artists who do this (mainly females, and in a provocative way).
An example of a 'commercial exhibitionist' is Rihanna. Below are screenshots from her 'Rude Boy' video:

She is covering her exposed body with the title of the song, so you are immediately drawn to look at her naked body. Her arms cover the letter 'E' on the title which implies that she is wanting you to look at her rather than the song title - therefore, promoting herself rather than the song itself.

Another example of a 'commerical exhibitionist' is Robin Thicke. In his video for 'Blurred Lines', he constantly promotes himself and his image, and the song comes second to, and is less important to him than, his own self image.

2. The Televised Bard

A televised bard music video is a 'spiritual journey' taken by the singer(s) expressing awareness about a certain issue.

For example, Linkin Park's video for 'What I've Done' shows images and clips from disasters and crises' happening around the world:

Throughout the video, we are shown televised imagery of crisis' around the world, in order for the audience to feel sympathy towards the people being shown.

Another video which uses outside images is Christina Aguilera's 'Beautiful'.

The images used in the above video trigger sympathy and empathy from the audience towards the people being shown in the clip, and every so often we see Christina singing, but she is indirectly talking to every person we see in the clips.

3. The Electronic Shaman

This is when the artist is never actually shown in the video but often shown through a cartoon character etc., but the music video usually represents a hidden meaning.

One example of an 'electric shaman' are the Gorrilaz. They appear in animated form in all of their videos and rarely appear in public, apart from live gigs and a small number of music awards, and even then they sometimes appear in animated form. They do this for a similar reason as The Neighbourhood - they want their music to come before their own personal fame.

'Everybody's Watching Me' Analysis

Just like the other videos by The Neighbourhood, the entire video is in black and white, which is a theme that they use for all of their videos and pictures.

However, this video is only 1 minute and 41 seconds long, possibly just giving a preview of the song.

An old boom-box appears on screen, when a hand pushes a button on the top and the song starts playing.

A little boy is seen swimming in a swimming pool through a medium-long shot.

The camera is half above the surface of the water and half beneath it, and whenever the boy dips his head under the water, the music sounds as if its underwater with him.

The boom-box is then turned off and the music stops.

The screen fades to white and The Neighbourhood's logo appears on the screen.

Making A Music Video

According to Pete on http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/music-video-for-level.html, a music video can be completed in a few simple steps; he has got this information from studying different music videos and collating the common themes and conventions into a few steps.

He said there are 6 key elements which he has found are in every music video, and they are the following:

• The video lasts at least as long as the track (can be longer if you have an intro or outro or both)
• The video features the artist / band quite prominently
• The video features some element of performance- singing and playing instruments (usually miming) and often dancing or acting too
• The video has some kind of concept / narrative along with the track
• The video does not feature a complete narrative but the concept may involve fragments of narrative
• Different genres of music produce slightly different visual conventions in music videos

Below is his 9 step guide for students on how to create a music video:

1. Choose your track

It can be a mistake to go for something too well known as the image of the original video will always be hanging over you, particularly the image of the artist. There is plenty of material available from relatively unknown bands which you could use from MySpace or elsewhere; you can create an image from scratch with your own performers adopting the role of the band.

Also choose a track which stimulates some visuals and which isn't too long. Three minutes for a music video is enough of a challenge, so don't go for some five minute epic- you'll struggle to sustain it for the viewer.


2. Write a treatment

A treatment is your pitch for the track, with a suggestion of what your 'concept' might be. It needs to be clear, workable, and realistic in what you aim to do. If your idea is too elaborate, more can go wrong and you'll only be disappointed.
Get feedback on this from teachers and fellow students and then review it in the light of their comments.

3. Do lots of research

You should be looking at real music videos from the same genre of music as your own, not to copy them slavishly, but to get a sense of what the conventions are. Look closely at them and break them down to see how they work:
How do they use verse and chorus?
How do they use the beat and rhythm?
How do they showcase the star?
How much do the visuals relate to the lyrics?
What's the concept?

You should also look at other student videos to identify strengths you can draw upon and weaknesses you can avoid.


4. Plan for everything

Storyboard as much of it as possible.
It might be tempting not to bother with storyboards but it is a mistake if you do so. You need a visual plan for your work as it won't just happen when you have a camera in your hand! I would recommend using post-its for constructing a storyboard, as you can move the frames around and change the order easily. Once you have done the storyboard, the next step is to turn it into an animatic, which quite literally involves taking a photo of each frame (on your phones or a webcam, nothing fancy) and then dropping the frames onto the timeline of your digital editing program. You can then cut them to length, in time with your music on the audio line and then export the whole thing as an animatic- a moving storyboard.

The other crucial aspect of planning is logistics. This involves production management skills, thinking ahead to everything that could possibly go wrong on your shoot and to every little detail of what you will need. Nothing should be left to chance- costumes, props, locations, camera equipment and people all need orgnaising. Don't have your actors just wearing any old clothes- plan what they will wear; don't rely on someone else remembering particular props, have a list of who is bringing what. For a music video, the instruments are props, so don't forget them! Don't assume everyone will simply turn up- make sure everyone has all the phone numbers and everyone knows exactly where they should be and when.

You really will need suitable places for the performances and you will need to think about variety for these. You should also aim to shoot the whole thing well in advance of deadlines, as you may end up having to shoot some of it again!

Above all else, make sure your performers have rehearsed and know the words and that they are willing to throw themselves into it. If they don't look enthusiastic and don't look as if they mean it, the video won't work!


5. Set up a blog

This should be the place for all your evidence, showing the journey of your project. You can use it to link to ideas and inspiration, to examples of your research into music video, the genre and your particular artist, to post recce shots and ideas for hair and costume, for your storyboards, your animatic, screengrabs of work in progress and for feedback from others.


6. Know your equipment

Make sure you have practised with the equipment and that you know how to set it up and how to get the best from it. Cameras, lights and the edit program are all going to be important to how your video looks, but an easy one to forget is the music- have the track, (preferably with some 'beeps' at the start so it will be easy to synch video material with the master track at the edit stage) and have it on something where it is audible. It is no use just having your singer with headphones on so the camera can't hear the music- it needs to be played out loud!


7. The shoot

Shoot the performance at least ten times with different set-ups. You may think this is excessive, but if you are going to have something to cut together with coverage of every second of the track, you need lots of material. Make sure you have plenty of cutaways as well, for interesting shots that will retain the viewer's interest. Experiment with extra angles and lighting changes and don’t forget: lots of close-ups, which is the dominant mode of music video!


8. Capturing

Label everything you capture and organise it so its easy to find; don’t capture stuff you don’t need, but do capture full takes of the song, as if you stack them on top of each other in the timelines, you can strip away what you don't need easily thereafter. By the way, multi-track timelines like Premiere and Final Cut are ideal for editing music video- iMovie and MovieMaker are much harder to use for lipsynch material.


9. The edit

Synch up performances first and get the whole picture rather than tiny detail.
Cut and cut again, aiming for a dynamic piece of work. Do any effects work last.
Upload a rough cut to your blog and get feedback, then act upon this to finesse your final version.

50's, baby!

After looking at some videos by The Neighbourhood, I have found that they use a lot of features which are iconographic of the 50's.


I have created a Pintrest board full of images of 1950's iconographies; cars, clothing, diners etc.


Follow Amy's board 1950's on Pinterest.


I have found that the common clothing of 1950s men was either leather jackets or bomber jackets, and women wore more sophisticated clothing.


American diners were extremely popular in the 1950s, and so I am going to use Johnny Rocket's for the set of some of my video. I have seen American diners used in a few music videos:

Cher Lloyd's 'Want U Back'

 

 

 

 Lady Gaga and Beyoncé's 'Telephone'

 

 

 

 Sean Kingston's 'Beautiful Girls'

Copyright Permission

In order to use 'Sweater Weather', I have asked permission from Columbia Records and Sony Music as they have the rights to the copyright agreement.

Below I have screenshotted the form which I have filled out in order to ask for permission to the song:

At the end of the form, it stated that the company would contact me within 2 days and let me know if I have permission to use the song in my video.

I will make a post in a few days with whether I have been contacted by Sony or not, and whether I can use the song or I have to change it.

'Afraid' The Neighbourhood - Analysis

The video begins with a black screen, and fades into a black room with a white spotlight on a young boy and a table with a tall pillar with a cup on top; the white clothes the boy is wearing and the white pillar with white cup contrasts with the black background.

The boy walks over and takes a drink, which is when an extreme close up of the boy drinking out of the cup blurs into a black screen with 'THE NBHD' written on screen.

 

A straight cut is used to show the boy lay on the floor with only a single spotlight on him, which is when the music starts playing and the camera zooms into him.

When the beat hits, the boy blinks and the band are seen in his eyes because of an extreme close up shot.

One of the shots we can see in his eyes is a medium shot of the band's lead singer sitting naked in a white chair - he is exposed and vulnerable just like the boy is, which links to the title of the song, 'Afraid'.

We then see then lead signer with the word 'AFRAID' "carved" into his forehead, which implies that he tries not to show his fears to the world but this song exposes these fears to the world.

The camera then zooms out and, in the left and right background, there are two spotlights on two people - one is sat at a piano, and one is sat at a table with a cigarette; it could be someone writing the lyrics for the song, and the other is someone playing it on the piano.

The spotlights then fade out and a spotlight appears in the foreground so we can see the little boy sat on the chair.

This spotlight then fades out, and, again, we see the two people in the background. Then the spotlight appears in the foreground and the lead singer is sat naked on the same chair the little boy was sat on.

This continues for a few shots and it is implied that the little boy is the lead singer when he was younger, showing his vulnerability and possibly how fame and being in a band has drastically changed him from that once young boy.
After quite a few of these shots, the little boy disappears and it is just the lead singer sat in the chair, implying that the little boy is a symbol of his innocence and now that he's gone, it means that his innocence no longer exists.

A picture is taken of the lead singer which shows his skeleton, suggesting that everyone can see right through him and this song is letting us get 'inside of his head' and get to know him personally and what he's thinking.

The whole video up until this point is in black and white, but the camera shows a high angle medium-long shot of the band performing the song with purple spot lights on them; purple has connotations of wealth and richness, but also of flamboyancy, which could have implications of what fame can make you become.

The music then stops and there is silence as the camera slowly zooms in on the little boy lay on the ground. This is contrasted with extremely quick editing of clips from the video so far, which is edited in reverse, possibly to show that the effects of fame can be reversed.

The chair that was shown towards the start of the video is now totally empty, and the little boy has disappeared.

However, a shot of the little boy is seen, but the spotlight isn't covering his whole body and his face is in the dark, implying that the singer's innocence is somewhere inside of his, he just has to find it.

 

The screen fades to black as the music fades with the image of the empty chair.

The Neighbourhood Videos

Before I begin to destruct the music videos of The Neighbourhood directed by Daniel Iglesias Jr. & Zack Sekuler, I am making this post which includes all of the videos imbedded, mainly for reference.

Below are all of the videos by The Neighbourhood which have been directed by 'ENDS' (Iglesias and Sekuler duo).

Afraid


Sweater Weather



Everybody's Watching Me

A Little Death

The Califournia



The Califournia 2.0



Female Robbery



The Victouria



Let It Go



The London

The Neighbourhood

I have decided to follow the idea of creating my own music video, using the song 'Sweater Weather' by The Neighbourhood.


The Neighbourhood

The Neighbourhood are a Californian Rock band, formed in 2011.

 

Members:          - Jesse Rutherford

                        - Jeremy Freedman

                        - Zach Abels

                        - Mikey Margott

                        - Brandon Fried

They used Web 2.0 to promote themselves to the world, but they kept their identities hidden and didn't release any information about themselves other than their band name and a few songs online. This increased interest in the band and it was only a year later that Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe released the name of lead singer, Jesse.
This proved to the world that their music came before their fame, and they say they have 'tried to stay grounded' and 'almost anonymous' in comparison with their music, and this is seen in the black and white style of their music videos.

Their album 'I Love You' has an indie-rock sound, and was released in April 2013 on Columbia Records' label.

The music video for 'Sweater Weather' was directed by Zack Sekuler and Daniel Iglesias Jr. (also known as the duo 'ENDS').

They have also directed:
                                    The Neighbourhood videos

                            - 'A Little Death'               - 'The Indio'

                            - 'Afraid'                          - 'Everybody's Watching Me'

                            - 'The Califournia'             - 'I Love You'
                            - 'Let It Go'                      - 'The Califournia 2.0'
                            - 'Female Robbery'            - 'The Victouria'
                            - 'The London'

                            - Tapioca And The Flea's 'Take It Slow'

                            - Bad Suns' 'Cardiac Arrest'

                            - X Ambassadors' 'Unconsolable'

                            - Jonas Brothers' 'First Time'

                            - Hunter Hayes' 'I Want Crazy'

Zak Sekuler has also edited 5 Seconds Of Summer's new video 'Don't Stop'.

'Sweater Weather' got to Number 1 in the chart of 'US Alternative Songs'.


When I searched Google for images of the band, nearly all of the pictures which appeared were in black and white. The fact that the band have carried on the black and white theme from the music videos onto different media platforms, shows just how much they want to use their music to create an image for them, rather than relying on anything else.

In my music video, I will use the black and white theme which is used in all of their videos and pictures, as it fits perfectly with the song.

The Start Of Something New

Hi! Welcome to my A2 Media Blog!
Over the next year I will be researching pre-existing music videos and genres, and then plan, film, edit, and evaluate my own music video.

I have a few ideas that I will be posting on my blog initially, but I hope to gain new ideas and improve existing ones in the process.