Filming

We have now started to gather footage for the music video at some of the locations with I spoke about in an earlier post.

Actors

In the music video, there are currently planned to be four characters starring in the video. Only two of them appear for a significant amount of time. These two characters are the singer/antagonist, and the victim. We have found people to play these parts in our music video. We have asked Martyn Long to be the Singer/Antagonist, he starred as the Antagonist in the thriller opening sequence for my AS coursework, so he suited the role most. For the victim, we have asked Ben Richardson to play the part. As  the characters in the video are going to be the artist, Martyn and Ben are going to be the people who we are creating a persona for when making the ancillary texts.  

Costume

The costume that the characters wear in the video is important, as it is one of the few ways that you can characterise people within a music video. As there are no scripts of dialogue in a music video, it can be difficult to understand what a character is like if not portrayed correctly. This is why dress is very important in a narrative focused music video like ours, as instead of trying to show off what the artist is like, we are trying to bring across a story.

With the main character, we are trying to show that he is from the areas shown in our video, so the costume we had in mind include dark/dull clothing. We have decided that this character should wear a dark coat and jeans, as we think this will create the sort of look that we want that character to have.

For the other character, we wanted him to have a sort of insane criminal sort of dress, and from watching antagonists from various thrillers we found that suit were often used for these sort of characters in a modern setting. The two characters that are the most obvious are the Joker from Th Dark Knight and Moriarti from the BBC's Sherlock series. We aren't aiming to make our character look like the joker, but the joker does wear a suit, and we think it would be a good idea if this character wor a suit in our video.

Locations

As the song we are making a music video for is considered as industrial, to get a similar feel to the song, we thought it would be a good idea to film our video on an industrial estate. Two immediately spring to mind, as they are located fairly near our school and where we live. This is the area of purley way in Croydon and the industrial estate just outside our school. These areas have quite a grey and bland look, which on a cloudy day, will create a good atmosphere that will fit the song. There are also areas around Sydenham that look fairly old and run down that we can use easily as it is located near us. We also found some good locations that would suit the video around West Croydon by using Google streetview to take a look at the area. This proved very useful for finding specific locations, making the process of finding locations much faster. For the shots of the singer, we are going to film the actor in front of the green screen in our Media Studies department so we have a freedom of choice with the background. We have also found an area in the outskirts of Croydon near a woods, where we think it will be a good idea to locate the attack, as it would be a good place to commit a crime due to the cover from the trees and the isolation from other people.

Permission to use the song

Here is a link to a post the Joe made showing the email form that we sent to industrial records asking if we could use the song "Six Six Sixties" by Throbbing Gristle in our music video.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCevkUNpMHtSr7WX9L-a9tvrrJCK3oyAwNRbhmYRiW8zTiCo33Yg5MsncU5ChBzBesaqU1ZVw5PTVH2t68U4LHYjyqEODdAB7eFQehI-Mc1VlQipQtnPVKscLmiGU3FKiPFggc-TY0zTGH/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-09+at+10.19.17.png

Record label and Album artwork

The other member of my group Joe Richardson has posted some information about the record label that our song was released , and the album artwork of the album that is is on. Here is a link to his post:

http://josephrichardsonmediastudiesblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/record-label-and-album-cover.html

Animatic

Whilst coming up with ideas for the video, we drew up some pictures to give a very rough idea of what will happen in our video. We then edited these pictures in together in a montage to fit in with the song to create an animatic. Here is the video:

Music video idea

For the music video i am going to make, I have decided to work with Joseph Richardson. Here is a link to his blog: http://josephrichardsonmediastudiesblog.blogspot.com/

For the music video, we have decided to use the song "Six Six Sixties" by Throbbing Gristle. This is a song by a very unconventional band, and this song is off of their most accessible album. The idea behind the album was for the band to be unconventional by being conventional, as the band was criticised for being extremely predictable. They also used the name "20 jazz funk greats" for the album along with a normal looking album artwork to trick some people into buying the album. This means that we can create a conventional music video for the song, and it would seem authentic as it follows the idea for the album.

The song we have chosen has a sinister feel to it, so we have decided the visuals of the video to be like a thriller. The idea at the moment is to have an individual walking around an industrial estate with cuts to a close up of the vocalist on particular lines of the song. We are currently planning to have a narrative in the music video, the person walking through the industrial estate starts to appear more edgy throughout the video. This is because he can sense that he is being watched by someone, this person will be the vocalist. At the end of the video the vocalist will attack the other character before the video then concludes.

Here is the song:

My Group

For the A2 project, I have decided to work in a group with Joseph Richardson, candidate number 5114, I have pinned a link to his blog onto mine. Here is another link to the blog:

http://josephrichardsonmediastudiesblog.blogspot.co.uk/

Applying Narrative theory to a music video

There are many music videos that have a narrative, and considering that it is very possible that the video i am going to make may have a narrative, i thought it would be a good idea to study narrative within music videos. To see if there a link between narrative in music videos and narrative in film, I am going to apply Todorov's and Propp's theories to a music video to see if there any similarities. I am going to use the music video of "Feelin This Way" by Mikar-The-Vipar here is a link of the video:



Todorov's theory suggests that there are five parts to a narrative. The first of which is a state of equillibrium at the begginning of the narrative. This does happen in the video, and this is the point in where Mikar has not yet met the girl yet. The second part of the theory is that a diruption occurrs within the narrative. This happens when Mikar realises that he likes the girl in the video. The next stage is a recognition of the disruption, and this happens during the part where you see Mikar hanging out around bars and playing pool. The penultimate stage is that there is an attempt to repair the disruption. This does happen in the video but it doesn't exactly end well for Mikar. This is the point where the girl abandons him. The final stage is when a new equillibrium occurrs, and this is at the stage at the end of the video where Mikar is upset that he has been used by the girl.
This shows that the music video in this case does actually follow Todorov's narrative theory, this could be that case for all music videos with a narrative, but i am going to need to study more videos before i can fully conclude that Todorov's theory applies to music videos as well as film.

Propp's theory suggests that there are a number of character types and in each story the have similar roles. In the music video, there are two characters, and a debateable third. Mikar-The-Vipar is the hero in the video as he leads the narrative, and his quest is to get the girl. The girl can be seen as two character types in this musci video. For the majority of the video she seems to be the Heroin who is the hero's prize for completing his quest, but later in the video she could be seen as the villain for leaving him. The debateable third character is the person who rings the girl causing her to leave Mikar, this person who is presumeably another man the girl is interested or her boyfriend also appears to be a villain within the narrative as they are in conflict with Mikar over the girl. This shows that this music video follows Propp's theory to extent. It does have the main character types, but considering there are only about two characters in the video it doesn't contain all of the character types which Propp identified.

Conventions of Noise rock

As part of my research for my music video, i am studying the conventions within the noise rock genre. Here are three of the music videos i have studied:








Out of these three videos only two of them show the artists. The Health video is quite different to the other videos, and other videos of the genre that i have seen as it uses footage purely from a television programme. Taking footage from programmes can be common in music videos for this genre, but only like a three or four second long clip, so this genre still goes against the conventions of the genre by the amount of television footage in the video.

The Sonic Youth video is quite conventional of the genre as the film quality is quite bad and this is done on purpose to fit the the more distorted sounds, the band is in the video and this is conventional of the genre

The Polvo video has the artist in the video but the people playing the instruments are actually friends of the band instead of the actual members. This subverts certain conventions of the genre as the artist is often seen playing the song, although some members of the band are still in the video so it still follows conventions in that sense.

Goodwin's Music video conventions

After studying Andrew Goodwins theory that music videos follow six conventions, I decided to apply this to a recent music video to see if the conventions apply to all music videos. The song that i decide to study was Crystalline by Björk. Here is the music video:



Here is a powerpoint presentation i made including screenshots showing points throughout the video where the conventions are shown.

Goodwins conventions for crystalline

View more presentations from To_mt.

There are however some of Goodwins conventions that this video does not follow, there is no voyeurism of the female body within this video or intertextual references and as far as i am aware the video does not follow genre characteristics closely