Intertextuality - My Original Music Video (DO NOT STEAL)

Hey all, obligatory Knight of the Wind reference goes here...

In this post I'm going to be looking at some of the intertextual references I've noticed between my video concept and other media texts. Some of this is completely unintentional; it's just that since I've been working on this video I've started noticing similar concepts in other pieces and I thought I should post it because it's actually pretty interesting. In my opinion, at least.

First up - my video will feature a lot of fast-paced cuts, including some cutting between performance, narrative (with actors shown playing characters) and conceptual elements which reference bodily harm. It's dawned on me that because of this, my concept seems like a significantly tamer version of this: (heads up: LOTS of blood, LOTS of gore. If you don't like that kind of stuff, you might want to give this one a miss).

They are similar in the way that they both have performance elements, they both show a 'victim' character, and they both have a lot of rapid cuts to shots of things which could be used as weapons. The difference here is that I'm not going to be showing the actual bodily harm. Why? Because a) it wouldn't fit my narrative; in my video the lead isn't actually going to attack the victim, he's just going to consider it, and b) it's more marketable that way - good luck trying convincing a music video channel to show anything which isn't some terrible reality programme bloody murder during the daytime when people are actually watching.

Secondly -

This was pretty much unavoidable given that the song I'm using was featured in this game, but eh. Shadow the Hedgehog's storyline revolves around the title character making moral choices as to whether he supports the hero characters in fighting off the evil Black Aliens, or whether he sides with the Black Aliens and conquers the Earth. My video also uses the moral choice concept, in that the lead is considering killing the victim character but is unsure as to whether he should go through with it.

Next up - I know I've mentioned this before but it's still relevant...

The similarity here is the use of the rapid cuts and the strobe lights combined with performance visuals. It was this video which inspired me to go with the strobe cuts when I realised the green screen idea wasn't going to work, so there is a definite link here.

So yeah... I'm probably going to find more intertextual links over the course of the video's production...

-HM.

Rock Video Analysis 4 - I Am the Least of Your Problems

So I intend to use a lot of dark shots during the performance segments of my video (which in my case will be done using the green screen and a dark background), so I thought it'd be a good idea to see how other artists have approached this idea.

To make up for the worrying lack of FotL in our lessons since Mr. S. left, I'll have a look at the I Am the Least of Your Problems video, as it features a lot of performance sections in a dark area.

(heads up: lots of flashing lights)

This video shows the performers in a very dark room with the only solid lighting being on the band members themselves; this is creating a really sweet intense aura which in all honesty I think is very effective in setting a dark tone. I do intend to try to create a similar tone to this in the I Am... All of Me video, though I want to use the green screen to create an artificial setting as opposed to using an actual room for the sake of exploring the uncertainty of the performer's mental state. It also gives me the chance to play around with the background to move from dark to light to enforce the conflict idea I have mentioned in previous posts.

In terms of the kinds of shots used, I feel it is useful to look at the way Falco is presented in this video as he is playing guitar and lip-syncing, as I will be. A great deal of the shots of him are close ups of his face, with only the occasional mid shot to establish that he is playing a guitar; this is something I wish to use in my video as it will help establish my performer's image (as per Goodwin's theory) by making my face recognisable (thus boosting my ego making me famous and my record label lots of money as a result of it). The occasional mid shot is necessary to show the guitar; thus satisfying one of the conventions of rock videos.

Additionally: the blinding lights. I should use these! But not in such a blinding way. My song is much slower than this song, so I do not need to have them going so fast, and ideally I'd like to have an element of randomness as to when they go off (I will use the lights to represent the 'light' side trying to break through the darkness; I want it to be a struggle so it shouldn't use any kind of consistency). This will have to be done in post production rather than through the use of actual strobe lights to avoid interfering with the chroma keyer effect.

I also want to use some of the slightly random looking cuts we see here. Again, to emphasise the struggle of light vs. the darkness, I was thinking of having very short cuts to zoomed in versions of the shot which will be lighter than the main shot - I could also potentially have the main shot in greyscale with the short 'struggle' shot showing my face in colour. I'll see what looks best when editing.

-HM.

Album Image Analysis: The 2nd Law - Muse

For the sake of developing my own digipak for my artist, it is necessary to look at the presentation for albums which will appeal to a similar target audience to my product.

The album I'm going to be marketing is a rock album, so I should look at the presentation of other rock albums. One band which have a similar audience to the audience I identified previously (older teens/young adults) are Muse, so I will look at the way their recent album "The 2nd Law" has been presented.

Here we have the front cover. The main thing that stands out to us is how dark the tone of the front cover is. Whilst there is a lot of colour used, it is done in a way which compliments this dark tone, as opposed to making it look bright and friendly. There is a lot of emphasis on the abstract imagery on this cover, which gives the impression of it being dark and mysterious; thus intriguing those of the older teen/young adult demographic.

The band logo is placed in the top left corner of the cover; this is done in a way that it stands out (thus attracting long-term fans of the band) without overshadowing the original artwork in the centre.

The album title ("The 2nd Law") has a white to red gradient pattern acting as its colouring; this seems to be for the sake of adding a touch of colour to the text for the sake of making it more aesthetically pleasing. 

Track listing on the back! Here we see the same white to red gradient which we saw on the album title on the front, which seems to be for the sake of staying consistent throughout the presentation. This strengthens the album's image, thus making it more memorable to potential consumers.

On this same point of consistency, the back cover maintains the dark tone from the front cover; this reinforces the maturity of the album, which will draw in the target audience mentioned earlier.

-HM.

Rock Video Analysis 2 - I Want It All

Continuing on from a previous post where I looked at Hardline's Takin' Me Down... here's the video for my favourite Queen song (tied with '39 and Stone Cold Crazy, but they don't have videos...)

So, let's look at how this video relates to Goodwin's music video theory then! In regards to screenshots, these do have a VEVO logo over them. Last time this was the case I was able to Photoshop them out; however this time there are significantly more affected, and my computer which has PS on it takes decades to load up. These will have to suffice.

1) Relationship between lyrics and visuals

As with the Takin' Me Down video, this is purely performance, so that fact tied with the rather vague meaning of the song makes it difficult to pick out examples of this. That being said, however, the "I want it all" lines in the chorus could be interpreted as a desire for a supreme status in one way or another; and at these moments we see a lot of cases where the camera is placed below the band (low angle shot) members, which could represent them being 'high up' -

2) Relationship between music and visuals

As I mentioned before, it's a performance video. This gives us the link between what we see and hear in that we can see the band miming the song on their instruments. There are a couple of things especially worth noting in this video - first is during the a cappella intro we see nothing but close side-on shots of the band member's faces as they are lip-syncing -

This is drawing all of the attention to the vocal harmonies, thus satisfying the relationship between the music and the visuals. Also, as with the Hardline video, we get lots of shots of Brain as he's playing his solo, thus emphasising the solo in the music.

3) Genre characteristics

The Hardline video was performance heavy. This video is performance heavy. Pretty much every rock video I've seen before has been performance heavy. I think it's fair to say one of the conventions of rock videos is that they are performance heavy.

As we can see above, a lot of focus is given to the guitar, though we're also seeing some attention given to the other rock instruments used (the bass and drums) - though nowhere near as much.

4) Close-ups/artist motifs

As seen earlier there are a lot of close-up shots of the band members, to help make their image more prominent throughout the video. It seems most of the attention in regards to image is given to Freddie and Brian - which is highlighted heavily in the vocal exchange part way into the song by showing nothing but close-ups of their faces during their lines -

No, that isn't bad cropping on my part, it's actually shown at a different resolution in the video. Possibly used as a deliberate effect to draw more attention towards them by leaving less white space at the side of the shot.

Brian is shown with the two things we automatically associate with Brian May - his Red Special and his awesome hair (Barthes' Mythologies, anyone?).

There's one point I specifically need to make in regards to the presentation of the artist - and that's that Freddie was really showing signs of his illness by this point - and it's clear that they've gone out of their way to try and hide this - particularly in the way they've employed really harsh halogen lighting to hide how pale his face was at the time. This also seems to be why a lot of the close-up shots of Freddie are shown in greyscale (which would be a recurring theme in a lot of later Queen videos) -

5) Emphasis on 'looking'/voyeurism

I can see no examples of voyeuristic treatment of females... as there are no women in the video. I'm also not seeing much use of 'looking' to engage the audience, outside of the part with Brian/Freddie during the vocal exchange part (for which I will not repost the images to avoid excessive load times...). Part of me is thinking this is part of Queen's image - they've always been shown as more of a whole, rounded theatrical act as opposed to a typical rock band, so it makes sense for them to be shown as a one-way performance.

6) Intertextual references

Again, I'm not seeing anything... possibly because it's entirely performance. The closest thing I can think of is the a cappella intro being filmed over a plain black background, similar to their own video for Bohemian Rhapsody.

-HM.

Rock Video Analysis 1 - Takin' Me Down

I would love to have made a reference to one particular Dumbledore quote from HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH but sadly the obscene nature of it would have been too unprofessional even for me. But oh well.

For the sake of not making myself feel too conscious about post lengths etc. when analysing these, I'm going to put each analysis in a separate post.

Because Johnny Gioeli was fantastic at Summer of Sonic yesterday I'm going to start with an old Hardline video. (I'm using a MySpace embed because the ones on YouTube have terrible quality. This is slightly better but still not too great).

http://www.myspace.com/video/melodicrocker/hardline-takin-me-down/13951868

As this is solely a performance video this could be interesting...

1) Relationship between lyrics and visuals

This is fairly limited because of the aforementioned fact about it being performance only, but there is one fairly interesting point to note - most noticeably during the first chorus, the camera is positioned low down in a low-angle shot so it is looking up at Johnny whilst he's singing the "taking me down" part, so it looks like he is looking down at the viewer.

2) Relationship between music and visuals

As a performance video what we see on screen ties directly in to what we hear, so to get the obvious stuff out of the way: the vocals are lip-synced, the band are miming their parts on their instruments, the Earth revolves around the sun etc.. On to the more interesting stuff, we see a succession of different shots of Neil Schon when he is playing his solo - of particular note is this close-up of his guitar -

This amplifies the status of the guitar in the video quite a lot (and therefore draws attention to the sound of the guitar in the song), both because it is a close-up shot, and because the greyscale filter is applied only to this close-up, and not to any of the full-body wide shots of Neil playing which precede and succeed it.

3) Genre characteristics

This is pretty much your stereotypical classic rock video. So, what do we expect from a rock video?

In regards to props - guitars?

Check.

Costume - performers wearing not much?

There's also a heavy focus on action and the video has a lot of fast-paced cuts to represent this - this is something people usually associate with rock music. re: cinematography, pretty all of the shots seem to have a camera pan rather than being stationary to reinforce this action.

4) Close-ups/artist motifs

As you can see from the screenshots I've already posted you can see that there are a lot of close-up shots of the band members, which helps make them recognisable to audiences, thus building up their star image.

To the point of artist motifs/similarities to their other work, despite the constant lineup changes they still seem to keep a consistent use of seemingly random individual greyscale shots mixed in to the video - I've seen this present in this, the Hot Cherie video from the same album, as well as the Fever Dreams video (which actually only came out a couple of months ago).

It's also worth mentioning that all three of these videos consist almost, if not entirely, of performance. This could be to stress the fact that they are pretty awesome as a live band, thus helping sell concert tickets (whenever Johnny hasn't decided to take a ten year break, that is*)?

Also of note (though slightly irrelevant) is that their 2012 album Danger Zone makes reference to the 1992 album Double Eclipse by featuring a picture of an eclipse on the album art.

5) Emphasis on 'looking'/voyeurism

Nothing in regards to the male gaze (there are no women in this video), yet the band seem to be wearing hardly anything with Johnny having forgotten his shirt altogether which is probably to please the fangirls.

There are a number of shots which show the band members looking directly at the camera, as if to address the audience - this helps engage the audience to a further level than just having them passively sitting watching.

6) Intertextual references

I can't see any other than the fact they were conforming to what was popular at the time e.g. the long hair/instruments/performance appeal being similar to what a lot of other rock bands of the time were doing.

*not from music in general, just from Hardline. He's been in Crush 40 with Jun Senoue. And Crush 40 are the best thing.

-HM.

Hip-hop "music" videos

With that being a very liberal use of the word "music".

In this post I'm going to be looking at several hip-hop music videos to try and get an idea of some of the tropes which keep appearing throughout the genre, as well as seeing how the videos fit in with Goodwin's music video theories.

Just a warning: I am fairly biased against the hip-hop genre. I hate it. How much do I hate it? Well, the other week I had to be taken in to hospital after randomly passing out at a party and was in there for five and a half hours not being able to eat or walk around, feeling physically sick the whole time, developing a neck ache from the shape of the 'bed' (which is really just a plastic board of some kind) whilst being tested for all sorts of things, including having to be pinned down to have a blood sample taken because of my unnatural intolerance of needles. I would take that over having to listen to hip-hop any day.

On that note, let's look at a video from an artist I would quite happily punch in the face, Eminem. Apologies if this becomes a bit laggy.

1) Lose Yourself - Eminem

The first thing we see is a use of cinematography to establish the setting: a bird's eye view of a city, followed by a wide shot of a street area. This is showing us that it is set in what appears to be a deprived area, which from my background knowledge seems to be a recurring factor of hip-hop videos.

Now, how is the artist himself presented to us?

Eminem is shown wearing both a hooded jacket and a hat in some shots, and the hat alone in others. He also appears to be trying to look angsty in a great deal of the shots - in the same manner as those individuals who find it worthwhile asking random members of the public what they're looking at.

You could say they're trying to make him look like he's a threat, or that they're trying to make him look 'cool'. Personally I think he looks like a waste of organs.

As far as intertextual references go? We see a lot of reference to "8 Mile", which IIRC was a film he brought out around the same time as this record. I am also aware that product placement is common in hip-hop. Yay for consumerism!

2) Low - Flo-Rida ft. T-Pain

Ugh, this song. Most of what is shown here is in a club, tying in with the lyrics which are about a bird in a club. As with the Eminem video, the guy is shown at times in a hooded jacket, which again appears to be to make him look threatening.

In reference to the lighting, we see a lot of shots which feature nothing but coloured lights.

I imagine this is just to remind the viewer that it is a club. In case the terrible music and shots of people dancing hadn't already managed to get this message across.

There are also a lot of women shown in the video, and as you would expect from a hip-hop video they are shown in a respectful manner -

All the shots of women dancing in this video are highly sexualised, and it's definitely worth mentioning that from what I could see none of the women appear to be on screen for a significant amount of time - suggesting that this 'hip-hop lifestyle' the video seems to celebrate sees women as objects to be used for sex as opposed to actual people. The idea of women being treated as objects could also be seen in the shot where Flo-Rida is shown completely surrounded by women, as though they are being seen as his 'property' -

3) Drop It Like It's Hot - Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell Williams

As with the Flo-Rida video, here the artist is shown completely surrounded by women - again this could be seen as objectifying women by showing them as being Snoop Dogg's possessions.

It's also worth noting that the whole video is presented in greyscale; this appears to be for artistic effect.

4) Can I Kick It? - A Tribe Called Quest

I think the most interesting point about this video is the portrayal of the artist - instead of being shown as either yobs or guys who treat women like objects, these lot actually come across as genuine nice people who have a sense of humour. Whilst they are dressed in typical hip-hop costume in the same way Eminem is in the Lose Yourself video, they aren't trying to be threatening in any way, and are shown having a laugh in a good majority of the shots.

5) Gangsta's Paradise - Coolio ft. L.V.

Firstly, Coolio is a hypocrite and I hate him. Why? He whinged and whined about Weird Al basing Amish Paradise off of this when in actuality all he's done himself is taken Pastime Paradise and shouted over it.

But that's irrelevant, what's relevant here is the video. Two things which stand out here in particular - firstly is the representation of women. Whilst the women in this video don't appear to be shown in a sexualised manner (opposing Goodwin's theory re: voyeurism in music videos to appeal to a male audience), there are some moments where the male artist is shown to have a high degree of dominance over a female in the video, e.g.

The combination of both the staging of the people in the shot and the position of the camera show Coolio to be above the female lead, rapping 'at' her, whilst she submissively listens to what he's going on about - which could be seen to suggest that males are more dominant in that the female doesn't appear to challenge anything which is being said to her.

Secondly is the artist's image - as with Eminem they seem to be trying to make him appear threatening/intimidating. This is achieved through the use of lighting; the shots featuring Coolio are particularly dark, with the only lighting covering his face -

This also reinforces the point in Goodwin's theory regarding videos containing a lot of close-ups of the artist to promote their image - with this taking it a step further and ensuring that the only thing you can see in the shot is Coolio's face.

6) Airplanes - B.o.B. ft. Hayley Williams

What's this, a hip-hop song I can sort-of tolerate? That is only because of Hayley Williams' part, mind you.

Making their reappearance from the Low video are the brightly coloured lights!

The screen in the background changes between a number of different colours, with the black, red and green being most apparent. Whilst this isn't down to being set in a club environment like the Low video, it does appear to be aiming for a similar kind of effect (making the setting seem active/lively).

In terms of voyeurism, it seems a lot tamer than the other videos - some of the shots of Hayley at the beginning could be interpreted as going out of their way to draw a male audience (thus satisfying the male gaze theory) very little attention is given to these shots in comparison to other shots of her, such as those with her in the printed photographs.

These shots also help build up the artist's image - Hayley is shown to be a regular human being, walking through typical everyday snapshots, who the audience is meant to feel that they can relate to. This contrasts to the way B.o.B. is presented - as seen in the earlier screenshots, he is dressed in a black jacket and is seen performing a variety of different arm motions towards the viewer, making him look slightly threatening, in the vein of Eminem and Coolio (though not to the same extent).

This could lead to a point regarding the representation of males and females; B.o.B. is shown to be slightly intimidating, whilst Hayley is shown to be innocent and potentially vulnerable, depending on interpretation. This could be representing the male artist having dominance over the female one.

---

So, to summarise and answer the question, "what are the conventions of hip-hop music videos?", we need to look at the recurring trends in these six videos.

Setting
I'm seeing two main kinds of location from these - the 'street', and the club. The 'street' features in Lose Yourself, Can I Kick It and Gangsta's Paradise, and is shown to be a deprived area with things people usually associate with deprived areas, such a hoodies/gangs. Often shown in a negative light, but not always - A Tribe Called Quest don't seem too bothered about their surroundings. The club, which features in Low (and to an extent Airplanes/Drop It Like It's Hot) typically features a lot of flashing lights and dancing.

Portrayal of Artist
As mentioned many times already in this post, a lot of the videos portray the artist as being threatening, in the sense that you wouldn't want to bump into them in a dark alley. This is especially true in the Eminem/Coolio videos, whilst being pretty much completely subverted in the A Tribe Called Quest video. This is potentially to make them appear 'cool' or 'rebellious' to their audiences - specifically picking up an appeal to teenagers. If we go by Dyer's theory of an artist's image being something which has been manufactured to make them a star who has a big appeal, we could theorise that the labels have identified what this particular market are looking for, and have built up their stars to meet these expectations.

Representation of Women
Some of the videos I have looked at here show women to be little more than sex objects, with this being especially apparent in the Drop It Like It's Hot/Low videos. These two are especially guilty as they show wide shots of the male artist surrounded by multiple women in a way which makes it look like they 'own' said women. They also show women wearing next to nothing whilst dancing suggestively, which appears to be a method of gaining the attention of heterosexual males.

Shots of Artist
There are lots of close-ups of the artists in each of these videos; going by Goodwin's theory, this is typically a demand from the institutions for the sake of making it absolutely clear to the viewer who is performing the track, as well as being a factor in building the artist's star image.

-HM.

Audience Research - Rock Video Feedback

Hey all,

A few days ago, I posted my results from a survey about what people like to see in music videos. Whilst I was able to collect a fair amount of responses, in retrospect I've noticed a few problems with this information:

• The questions are perhaps a tad leading. The wording on some of the possible answers in the multiple choice questions seem to be a tad pushy towards one particular answer.
• It's a tad too generic; I'd asked anyone who felt like answering to give responses. As it stands I'm more than likely to be making a rock video, and people typically have different expectations for different genres.

To gain more useful, information, I sent out messages and emails to people who I know on various forums and social networks to just tell me what they like to see in rock videos. This way I've managed to get some more relevant responses with answers that weren't prompted by the question. Believe it or not, there are actually people in this world who can bear to talk to me!

One trait I seem to be finding is that rock fans like seeing the artist perform. This counters what I found in the previous findings, where most people went for narrative videos...

Another comment I received which I found interesting was from someone who seems to prefer more mature tones in videos - even though this idea received little support in the questionnaire.

Whilst this input still isn't technically perfect - after all, with a more specific target demographic I wasn't able to get as much information - it has given me a more representative idea of what fans of the genre want to see.

-HM.