Our Band's Myspace

http://www.myspace.com/thescarlettpimpernells

Some screen shots of our myspace page:

Album Cover: Final

Final Album Cover:
Front Cover:

Insert:


Back:

Music Video: Final

Final Music Video:

Storyboard of Shot Sequences

A storyboard for a shot sequence:












Sequence from near end of video. Not the exact end however.
Final sequence was slightly different e.g. with more cuts to studio performance.

Example: 5. Reference to the notion of looking...

The audience are often invited to look in a voyeuristic way, particularly at the human body and intimate moments, as they can enjoy a voyeuristic or scopophilic pleasure from doing so.

Goo Goo Dolls- 'Iris'

In this video the viewer is openly invited to look (as if) through a telescope at the narrative with Nicholas Cage and a woman. However, I think this is perhaps more a way of linking the performance with the narrative than to give the audience pleasure (sexual or otherwise) as the clips appear to be from a film, and so we just get an impression of seeing clips from a storyline that we are quite distanced from. There isn't really a voyeuristic element to this, I personally feel, as the lead singer, though looking at the characters through telescopes does not appear to do so with shame or his own sexual pleasure in mind, but in a sort of godlike/watching over them way. It seems more paternal, or like an omnipresent god keeping an eye on them.

Kylie Minogue- '2 Hearts'

In this video the audience is invited to watch Kylie as if they are in the audience and she is performing to them live in a seductive way. The eye contact accompanying her 'sexy' movements achieves this. The audience is being invited to get scopophilic pleasure from this video.

Sir Mixalot- 'Baby got back'

Theres alot of objectifying of the body in this video.
The way the women's bodies, not their faces, are what the camera is focused on, causes the audience to feel that their attention is also be drawn and focused onto these women's bodies. The camera tells the audience where to look, so when the camera is framed tightly on a woman's bum, then the audience feel that they are directing their own attention at the bum and hence are objectifying and watching the female body. This is also encouraged by the camera steadily zooming in closer to the body.

Example: 4. Demands of the record company...

Busted- 'What I go to School For'


Busted were a heavily marketed and commercial band, and therefore their record label would have had alot of say in the production of this video, particularly as it was the band's first video release. This makes it a very good video to look at in considering the techniques used to market and promote the actual band/artist through the music video.

• Loads of close-ups continuously of the band members here, particularly Charlie, and particularly through the performance section of the video. These provide good 'visual hooks' and are important in order to identify the performers to the audience. Direct adress also helps to achieve this identification here. This identification of the individual band members through these 'money shots' would have been especially important given that this was their debut video.
• Motifs such as 'the busted jump' (where all the band members jump with their guitars) can also be identified in this video, and can help to give the artist's videos a 'visual style'.
• The iconography of the band's image is also very solid, with their dress codes (rebelliously scruffy clothes; baggy jeans, sweat bands, badges, torn uniform, schoolboy ties- a bit of a visual trademark really), cheeky but not disgraceful behaviour (scruffy uniform, fancying a teacher, dropping a pencil on the floor so the teacher 'shows me more') and all three of them playing guitar together in the very low-slung fashion.

Example: 2. Relationship between lyrics and visuals...

The relationship is either:

• Illustration- where the lyrics are matched by the visuals (this is synchronous), however, this is not always done in a literal way and illustration could be symbolic. Often here the lyrics and narrative will go together tightly.
• Amplification- where new layers of meaning are added to the lyrics by the visuals.
• Disjuncture- where a contradiction occurs between the lyrics and image.

Avril Lavigne- 'Nobody's Home'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbm4G_7rGzQ

(Sorry, embedding is disabled for this video)

This video I think is a good example of the relationship between the lyrics and visuals being illustrative, especially at the part where the homeless girl tries to call home, which indicates that she probably does 'want to go home'. However, it is a more symbolic relationship as someone picks up the phone, and therefore somebody is 'home'- so perhaps it is that 'nobody's home' in the way that she doesn't feel that she has a real 'home' to go to.

In this way the relationship is also one of amplification as it adds new meaning to the lyrics. We would not have necessarily linked the song with a story about a homeless girl who appears to have ran away from home for some reason without seeing the video.

Example: 1. Music Videos demonstrate genre characteristics...

Spice Girls- 'Wannabe'


This video, promoting the Spice Girls who were/are arguably the ultimate girl band, clearly demonstrates genre characteristics, such as:

• There are both individual and synchronised group dance routines.
• The individual group members breaking away and having individual moments where they are directly addressing the camera and performing with attention entirely on them.
• Lip-synching- though featuring in most genres' music videos, it is characteristic of the girl band/pop group to lip synch with no microphone or suggestion of the technical process of recording. The actual musical process is less important (generally) to these groups and their target audiences.
• Also recurrent themes such as fun and mischief making and female empowerment are genre characteristic of the girl band that can be seen here.

Slipknot- 'Duality'

This video, promoting a song by Slipknot, a metal band that are of a decidedly different genre to the Spice Girls demonstrates some clearly different genre characteristics.

• There is a big sense of a live performance, complete with all the equipment that would accompany this. This is a genre characteristic as the target audience for this group would be more into the musical process and probably seeing the band perform live.
• There is a far greater sense of realism with this video, reflected in the live performance and hand held camera style, that is common to this genre.
• Themes of chaos and anger/rage can clearly be seen here, that are common characteristics of this genre and the videos that accompany it.

Blink 182- 'All the small things'

I think this is a very interesting video in terms of genre characteristics of music video, as it is essentially mimicing and often mocking the characteristics of several other genres.

• This mocking and cheekiness is in fact characteristic of the playful, non-serious genre of 'pop-punk-rock' that Blink 182 conform to.
• When performing as 'themselves' they do so with the typical stage-style set up, including instruments, that is common to their genre. This is because their genre of music is also one that takes the musical and instrumental aspects more seriously.

Characteristics of other genres featured in the video:

• The boy/girl band- matching outfits (when leaving the plane at the beginning, and in the 'studio-performance' scene where they are wearing matching camouflage apparrel) are characteristic of this genre, as are the synchronised dance routines. Also the performances here are done so without microphones or musical equipment.

Analysis of ______ using goodwin's theory stuff

Goodwin's theory

Andrew Goodwin has identified the following features of music videos (in Dancing in the Distraction Factory- 1992, Routledge):

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. a stage performance in a metal video, a dance routine for a boy/girl band).
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (and this is either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting).
3. There is a relationship between music and viduals (and this is either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting).
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist (visual hooks) and the artist may develop motifs which recurr across their work (a visual style). These include close-ups of the star's face (the 'money shots'), iconography of band image and visual trademarks/motifs.
5. There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (achieved with screens within screens, telescopes etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body (and I believe also increasingly the male body in recent times).
6. There is often intertextual reference (such as to films, TV programmes, other music videos, etc.).

Learning Goodwin's categories I think should help me when analyse music videos myself, and also has impacted on my approach to constructing my own music video.

BLK feedback

Angela things are looking good on your blog, well done. You must get the following done however;

complete any unfinished postings
embed some of your video links properly - some just appear as code
some video analysis using the Goodwin theory framework
keep up with reflections on the group project and how things are going from your perspective
also you need a list with some links to good music video/music industry related sites that you have found useful

that would be good for now

Ms B

Key features of Music Video

These are some key features of music video that I have learnt:

• Music videos work around three codes- music lyrics and iconography. The relationship between these codes is key to understanding how music videos work.
• They are designed to provide pleasure in order to keep the viewer watching, and to encourage repeat viewings.
• The starting point for analysis is to explore whether the video is primarily performance-based, narrative-based or concept-based and how elements of each are used in it.

Inspirational Video- 'Under the Bridge'

I accidentally found this video while looking for the video for the non-acoustic version of the song.
It's therefore a video to the acoustic version of 'Under the Bridge' by 'The Red Hot Chili Peppers'.

The reason I thought it could be useful to look at and possibly reference is that there are several parallels with our idea for the performance, in that it is black and white for most of the song, is entirely performance, and shot in a simple location.
I think there are alot of very simple shots of the instruments, vocalist etc. that look professional and interesting, e.g. the low angle, off-centre shot of the guitarist playing.
Perhaps we can take staging notes from this video as well?

Performance Shot Idea

I think a close-up shot, probably with the face in profile, of one of the performers (probably a singer, and probably James B) laid over a shot from the narrative could be interesting and work.

Like in the video for 'Under the Bridge' by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, during the chorus.

Black & White Stills Practise: Ladsies

Image:

Actor/model thing: Lukey

Original image:

As you can see it was really very dark.

Here it is greyscaled without any further editing:

So I cheated and used Paint Shop Pro's 'One step photofix'.

After 'photofix':

I think I might have removed some more noise as well at this point.

If we greyscaled it now it would look like this:

I thought it might be able to cope with a bit more contrast:

More contrast: Also I thought it looked quite cool in high-ish contrast colour:

I shall relate this to the main idea in a minute or so.

Practicing Black & White Stills: Girlies

Today I took some shots of Saxon (who was nearby at the time) and some of Luke so I could fiddle around with contrast and effects on Photoshop, partially just to practise using Photoshop as thusfar I have only used Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 7 & 9. It was also intended to investigate how to create the black and white filmic effect crucial to create the film noir aesthetic.

Edited shot:

Original shot:

What I did: I cropped the image, airbrushed it a wee bit, used the 'despeckle' tool (in order to remove some of the noise that I found showed up more once the contrast had been upped), and then I increased the contrast and brightness and then greyscaled the image. I also added a gaussian blur effect but cannot remember when I did this.

What I think about the end result: While possibly a bit striking the image is far too... grainy? Basically its very blotchy and not at all like the smooth, flawless images of the films we are trying to imitate.

What I think went wrong: There is probably something technical that would help this or that I should have used, but I think the main problem lies in the poor lighting of the original image. I think it needs to be brighter, less diffuse light (this shot was only taken by a window on an overcast afternoon).

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Later today I took some shots of Cat, seeing as she's the actual femme fatale.

Here is one of the original shots:

First attempt at editing:

What I did: I removed some of the noise to try and make it look 'smoother', upped the contrast and greyscaled it.

What I think: I think it's better than the last attempt as Cat was standing closer to the window. I think it looks a little bit strange in the way that the shadow falling over half of her face is in almost an exact half and half line, but maybe that's just because the light was still quite diffuse?

Group Gold Blazer Idea

As posted on the group blog, Luke suggested that the lead singer wear a gold blazer, tying in/anchoring the 'Gold' theme of the song with the performance base.At first I was skeptical as it could look very Butlins entertainer/tacky or comical, but I now think it could work. James pointed out in the group meeting yesterday that we could be focusing too much on what Spandau Ballet & co. would do/wear with the song, rather than thinking of creating and marketing our own band over which we have complete freedom and control. I thought this was quite relevant to what I had been doing and how I had been approaching some aspects of the project. I am therefore going to be aware of this and avoid it if relevant in the future.

I think it that having it worn with tight black trousers/jeans and a black t-shirt could work well.

Costume for Detective Character

He will need to be a hardcore, conventional, cliche, iconic detective man to make his identity/character type and hence the genre of the 'film' and what is going on in the narrative clear. Hence his costume will clearly be VERY important.

Images of Film Noir era detectives:

coming soon...

Detective Hat

We must have a good hat. Quick google search of 'film noir' presented me with the following images (these all taken from first two pages I believe):

........hat hat hat hat. We must have a hat like this!

Beige/Camel trenchcoat/raincoat

I think veeeery important. Second only to hat. See above 'detective hat' pictures, and most feature such a coat.

(eBay items).

Costume for Femme Fatale (Cat)

I've been researching typical 50s clothing for women, especially dresses/glamorous outfits.

Here are some relevant images/items I found.

50s-style dresses

Clearly they liked their a-line, calf-length full skirts and halternecks.

Clothes from actual femmes in Film Noir films:

Will put some screen shots here.

Costume for Band

Just posted on the group blog asking for James' and Luke's measurements, as I'm thinking agood place to get cheap and decent costume (especially seeing as I think we're considering a slightly retro/80s feel with the blazers) would be a second hand shop (vintage or charity), tk maxx, or ebay.

James

I think we discussed him wearing a (slightly tight?), black blazer with the sleeves rolled/pushed up a little, and the buttons at least partially open.

Some images of similar/possible looks along these lines.
I think there is a shirt/t-shirt debate to be had here. A shirt certainly allows for nice sleeve-rolling (see last image) and may prevent the looking-too-young syndrome. I think it just needs trying out.

Luke
I can't recall what specific role Luke was going to fill?
However, I think a similar outfit to James could work. Maybe a different colour combination (e.g. James could wear a white shirt and dark blazer, while Luke could wear both black shirt and black blazer?). He could also wear his clothes slightly differently, e.g. more or less buttons undone. This would cement the band's image, be aesthetically appealling, whilst also cementing these band members together. The costumes shouldn't look identical I think because this could look a little big boy band or amateur?

Others
We don't know who will play the other members, but I think the previous idea about them being somewhat similar but not identical is appropriate?

What I think we need to achieve with the costume is:

• to make the actors seem slightly older than they are
• to address/convey the band's image/genre/style and cement this with the musical genre
• for the band to look physically/sexually attractive to at least the relevant portion of the target audience (heterosexual females/gay men)
• for the style of the the costume and appearance of the band in the performance to not jar too much with the visuals of the narrative.