Research & Planning: Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin identified key features in music videos:

- relationship between lyrics and visuals

- relationship between music and visuals

- genre-related style

- multiple close-ups of main artist

- voyeurism, especially in terms of females

- intertextual references to other media texts

A good example of this is Kanye West - Gold Digger, this music video includes all of these key features as it includes many close ups of Kanye West, close ups of parts of females bodies (voyeurism) and intertextual references as the women are presented in a magazine theme and shown on the front pages of various magazines.

When developing my own ideas of a music video and how I want mine to look when I come to producing one, I will use some of Goodwin's key features such as close ups of the artist/character and the relationship between music and visuals.
The song I am going to be using is a slightly odd song, not very mainstream at all so I want the video to reflect an idea of being out of what we would consider to be normal. Hopefully creating slight comedy and an entertaining video.

Auteur Theory: Focus on Spike Jonze

The Auteur theory was first studied and recognised in the 1950's when French film directors, such as Francois Truffaut, started to focus on the directors or certain films to work out a pattern or trend in their work. Studying the contribution of a director to a piece of film, recognising the creators personal creative visions and their effect on the overall outcome of the film. This theory is different to the 'Genre Theory' that focuses on similarities within films, such as the generic love story going through stages of love and loss, eventually resulting in a happy ending. The 'Auteur Theory' focuses on what is different between texts rather than what is similar.

Spike Jonze, pictured above, is perhaps one of the best examples of the auteur theory in the sense that his work is very recognisable and can be traced back to him simply by the themes and camera work involved.







'Bjork - All is full of love' and 'Kanye West - Flashing Lights' are similar videos directed by Spike Jonze. They are both very much opposite to the genre theory of generic storylines, both being quite abstract and almost random to the music being played. Jonze does not often have the performers performing the music in the video and will use a character singing the lyrics instead in most videos. The videos are also quite dark and have an almost depressing and 'lonely' feel to them.







These two videos, 'Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice' and 'Fatboy Slim - Praise You', have an element of comedy because they are videos of unfamiliar scenes and things that seem quite silly at first. Having a smartly dressed man dancing round an empty building extravagantly seems like something you shouldn't, or wouldn't see so is humorous. Having a group of people start dancing in a shopping centre is again very unexpected and creates humour when watching. The unexpected nature of his comedy follows on through a few more videos.

Audience Theories: Effects Theory and Cultural Studies approach

- Define effects theory:

The effects theory has arisen from psychologists attempting to explore an existing belief that media violence, e.g. television shows, films and computer games, would influence the audience to be violent, having a direct behavioural effect on the passive audience. This could be why pregnant women often play calming, sophisticated classical music to their womb whilst pregnant, believing this will create a smart and polite child.

This has been labelled the 'Hypodermic Needle Theory'. The 'Bobo Doll' experiment is the most famous example of this theory.


The legitimacy of this research can be questioned and maybe should not be taken as the absolute truth.
In recent times, violent lyrics and computer games have been blamed constantly for the rise in crime and bad youth behaviour. The main questions asked by the researchers are whether music has an effect on the listeners and whether or not that is a negative effect.
However, this research was only carried out using aggressive music and was never carried out with genre's such as classical. This does raise many questions and is evidence of a bias study.

- Define Cultural Studies approach:

The cultural studies approach takes the 'effects theory' into account but also encourages researchers to understand the active nature of certain audiences. The tests were to try and understand particular aims and objectives of media texts but to also see media audiences as active and responsive, adopting different standpoints in relation to the values expressed.

These are:

• Preferred Reading - Audience take in the messages from the media text and accept them as correct and natural.
• Negotiated Reading - Audience see the values to be legitimate and accept them, but will adapt the their reading to work with their experiences etc.
• Oppositional Reading - Audience understand values but reject and disagree with them.

Preferred Reading: Target audience would be in favour of people robbing a bank and handing out money to the public to rebel against society and would view it as the right thing to do.


Oppositional Reading: Some people would see this as very 'thuggish' and a ridiculous way of showing your lack of support for the government.


Negotiated Reading: People may not be willing to participate in such an act if it ever occurred, but can see the reason behind it and has no strong feelings towards the act/video.

Music and Effects theory:

- What kinds of questions are the researchers interested in? (why don't they experiment with classical music?
The kinds of questions being asked are those that will create an outcome that they are trying to gain in order to create 'interesting' results to the experiment. They have not carried out a fair test as they are only researching one end of the musical spectrum and have not recorded behaviour changes from the classical and less aggressive end of music.
This is working with the common conception of the 'Hypodermic Needle Theory'.


- What are the key concerns that have been raised about the effects of Rap music?
Key concerns about rap music have been that people may try to become 'gangsters' or take on the mentality of rap artists and act as the lyrics implore them to, e.g. 'Fuck the police.'
Many songs from 'thug rap' have spoken of ways to grow up in 'the hood' and can encourage young people growing up in said areas to believe this is the only way to grow up and survive, therefore creating negative behaviour among communities where this style of music is high in profile. 
In a more positive light, songs have empowered young people and have created a lot of confidence within communities to stand up and have a voice. This positive mentality is out shadowed by the more destructive and aggressive music which is more common within society today.


- What does the author of this site consider more problematic than the music?
This site is showing Americas deep routed problems to create a lot more violence than rap music itself, readily available guns, drugs, alcohol and knives are the cause of violence. USA's reluctance to take blame for their own problems and downfalls has created mass media criticism of rap music and artists. Conservative pundits have publicly criticised the rap industry and the effect on the listeners, while also backing education cuts and supporting the National Rifle Association. To suggest rap music is the root cause of all crime is simply outrageous.

Music Video Genre Exploration

Music videos all belong to certain genres made noticeable by the director of that video, each genre has been partnered carefully with the music genre to gain maximum relation and exposure to the intended target audience of the music.

For example:

Parody:

Film parody music videos are often comedic and entertaining in general. This song from Limp Bizkit was made to be the accompanying song to the feature film, Mission Impossible II, the film is about spies and secret agents so the music video has paradied these ideas and created new characters out of the band members with short clips of the Mission Impossible flashing on the screen to re-itterate the partnership. This video has minimal comedic effect although it does have small showings of comedy throughout.

Low Budget/ Quirky:

Low budget music videos have recently become an established genre mainly within the Independent side of the music industry. Independent artists do not have a big budget to create music videos and will often create an interesting routine or performance to create a 'buzz' about their video, gaining free advertising through video sites such as Youtube, a good example of this being 'Ok Go - Here it goes again' creating a dance routine using running machines. Very simple and very effective. Since the explosion of 'Indie' bands from the early 2000's, many signed bands with larger budgets have created videos that seem low budget and have the same characteristics as those made with no resources to stay within the genre and to gain the same advertising and exposure they crave from being 'quirky' and different. These videos are usually very entropic.

Performance/ Spectacle:

Performance/ Spectacle music videos are made to be interesting and enticing to the viewer, keeping attention to the end, making the viewer feel as though the video is definitely worth watching till the end. They will usually be relatively high budget videos.

Sexy/Raunchy:

Sexy music videos are almost all made showing scantily clad women rather than men. They attract a certain area of the market, and are normally made for R'n'B or Rap artists tracks. This is a trend that has arisen since the mainstream inclusion of R'n'B in the UK. R'n'B male performers have been known to be very cocky and arrogant so these videos simply emphasise these 'qualities' and show their ability to have 6 or 7 model like women constantly at their side.

 

Narrative:

Narrative music videos are made to tell a story, the video above is a song about a teenager who likes a girl that doesn't take notice of him, the video simply acts this songs story out to emphasise the plot, this is a very generic and redundant storyline with a very predictable ending. The video is not made to be thought provoking or to have a big 'twist' from the normal sequence, it is telling a story and does just that. This genre of music video is especially in songs about love etc.

Introduction to A2 Task

For the A2 media studies coursework we have been set the task of creating a 'Digipak' along with a music video for a track that has not previously had an official music video made to accompany it.
A digipak is a style of compact disk packaging that is usually a cardboard case consisting of 4 designs, with a theme throughout, containing a CD in a plastic tray.

I have also been asked to create an advert to advertise the newly released digipak, in a similar fashion to the ones shown below:

My chosen partner for the work is Jo-Anne Williams, we will be making the music video as a pair but the digipak, digipak advert and all analysis will be done individually.

Lip Syncing exercise: Post- Production

In the process of post-production and the editing of the footage I learnt different techniques that would be very useful to me in the final task. I learnt how to cut and insert clips and use different layers that can be individually moved about to make to lip syncing accurate and realistic. When doing this we selected the Rolling Edit Tool because it allowed us to edit a point between two shots without changing the rest of the video or the other shots.

In the shot where "Britney" is tapping the pencil, we were able to speed the shot up slightly in order to make it in time with the audio and therefore make it look realistic. We did this by changing the percentage of the speed of the clip which then changed the duration of the clip.

In the final task I expect to pick up and learn more techniques that will benefit me in the making of my music video that will help me in creating a music video that is of a high quality, I will do this by experimenting and doing some research into the uses and tools featured in Adobe Premier Pro.

Lip Syncing exercise: Research and Planning

Creating a time plan helped to assess how long it will take to produce the video which then meant that we could get it done within a reasonable amount of time. We planned what we would get done in each lesson and thought about how long each step of the task would take and divided it out so that we could get it done within the time that we had, this allowed us to prepare and plan what we needed to bring to each lesson and therefore allowed us to keep organised throughout.

We created a time line of the shots that showed the order of the shots and roughly how long they were. We numbered each shot so that when it came to editing we could easily refer to which shot and therefore put to video together without getting the order mixed up, this saved a lot of time and also a lot of confusion. Another way we saved time was by planning the order in which we were going to shoot each shot, this meant that when filming following the order that we had produced was less time consuming than filming the shot in the order of the video.

We also created a health and safety list of things that could create potential hazards and explained how we would deal with them. Health and safety is very important in the industry so we wanted to mimic this idea of ensuring that everyone involved is safe and that all potential hazards are dealt with.

In the final task I expect to be planning in a similar way to this task but with a lot more depth and accuracy. I will need to produce:
- detailed research of what I want the video to look like- plan of where I will be shooting the video
- time line of the order the shots will be featured in the final product
- time line of the order I will film the shots
- time plan showing what I will do and when to ensure I finish the task on time
- health and safety report with what potential hazards there may be and how they will be dealt with
- plan of who will be in the video and what they will be doing
- costume plan (including props) of everyone featuring in the video
- plan of all equipment needed and where I will get it

Lip Syncing exercise: Digital Technology

My knowledge of production technology developed greatly throughout this task because before I had little idea of how it would be done, doing this smaller task before the final task has allowed me to develop skills that would be of great use to me for the final task. This task was done within a group although the final task will be done individually, this allows us to pick up skills and learn from others within the group.

In this task I learnt that in order to ensure we have enough footage for editing and to make the video, it is best to film more shots than needed and have longer takes than needed to prevent not having enough footage and then having to go and do more filming. This is often done in production as it is not expensive and doesn't cost any more to film lots of footage.

For the editing we used Adobe Premier Pro, doing this task allowed me to understand how to use the software and be able to use it fully and take advantage of what it can do. When editing we cut the shots to what we needed and put different shots on different layers and moved them about in order for the lip syncing to be accurate.

Later in the course I hope to develop more skills for using the technology and be able to use it even more to my advantage. For example, I would like to pick up more editing techniques from Adobe Pro Premiere that would help me to create a professional, high quality music video for my final task.

Lip Syncing exercise: Britney Spears - Hit me baby one more time