Applying Structural Ideals

Today as a class we learnt about structuralism in my media class. Some of the ideals highlighted in the lesson I feel that I can apply to my music video.
The enigma code I feel applies to my product. As the director/ producer I can control the information my audience sees. I will do this in my video by only showing a certain amount of detail at a certain point. I will hold back the important details about the to main people until the end of the video where everything will be seen. Teases will be present in the video; I will show certain parts of the characters. This keeps the audience engaged. Doing this could also mean that a hermeneutic code could be applied; only at the end of the video will you see the full picture.
The true meaning of my video will never be understood because everyones reading will be different. This is down to the background and cultural influence of those who watch it. It is down to me though to make the preferred reading as obvious as possible. I will push this through mise-en-scene, camera work and editing.

Ancillary task: CD Digi-pack

• The colours used on this digipack (red, white, and black) works effective. It is a colour scheme that I think suits the kind of band that Back to Basics are. The red and white dominated the image because the bands music is quite optimistic but they have a dark side hence the colour black.
• The repetition of the word good was to create a sense of optimism amongst the audience: when you repeat a word you start to believe it. The title of the song featured is also called Good so this positive image is also reinforced.
• The photo used on the inner sleeve was a photo taken in my music room and it is of my drum kit and guitar. It is a photo taken using the application Instagram. I used this program to create an image that looked dated/ retro. This is an application used by a lot of the people in my target audience so this would be a link to my audience.
• The lyrics feature in the inside sleeve of my digipack because this is quite often seen in CD single digipacks. It is also quite a fast song so you cannot often hear all of the lyrics all of the time.
• I have used synergy in my sleeve design as I feel that it is way of cross promotion and increasing the amount of exposure my bands music has; if someone likes the single they will like the album.

Rejected chosen CD design

Audience chosen CD design

Simpson's task

To practice my editing skills. I was set the task of editing together a trailer for the Simpsons movie. My trailer had to be 30 seconds long and include all of the essential information. The resultant video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_YTe4_DsY&feature=plcp.

I edited the video together in Adobe premiere pro, I did this as I deemed it to be a program that had the best tools for the job. The quality of my video is low due to the source footage being of a low quality. The soundtrack to my trailer is sound files sourced from the low quality video files. The trailer I deem to be quite sucessful despite the low quality images because thats all that I had to use. I have learnt from   my time spent doing this trailer task. The tools now feel less alien to me as prior to this I had no previous experience within the program. I understand how to set my video up and how to manipulate as well. Learning how to add a soundtrack to my clips will help me when I construct my music video as this will be vital.

Extension task

As an extension to the trailer task I was asked to create as soundtrack album sleeve to accompany the "Simpsons Movie". This was a task that I created on Adobe Photoshop. I chose this program as I thought that it was the most appropriate one to use. All of the images were gathered on the internet. However one had to be edited due to it's low pixel quality. Above is the final result. Some of the idea's present on this design were acquired from the already released soundtrack album. This was my way of research. It is a design that follows the same colour scheme as the rest of the simpsons movie franchise; if I changed this I assumed that people would not relate to this product as much as they possibly could. I have put Bart Simpson on the front as he one of the most memorable characters from the show. I have included the logo from the movie so that people know what this is for instead of it just being another random simpsons product.

Screen play

This is my first time attempt at writing a screenplay. I wrote the screen play based on the Sherlock Holmes scene featured at the bottom of the right hand sheet. I saw this as good practise as I had never written one before and as it is necessary for my product I thought practise was need. Prior to writting this screen play I studied others written by professionals. This research helped me a lot. I got positive feedback on my work; this can be seen at the bottom of my screen play.

My Semiotics

I will encode my media product with various signs like a media professional would and hopefully these sign will give the audience my prefered reading.

• The use of musical equipment such as drums and guitar will lead the audience to believe that this this is a music video rather than any other type of video. The fact that the videos soundtrack will be dominated by exclusively music and nothing else will also make the audience think this is a music video.
• In the video with the use of shots and behaviour, I hope that the audience will recognise that the two people are very close because the too people are they are brothers.
• That the video is modern; it will be shot in HD on a HD camera and all of the clothes and props are modern. Nothing will make it look back date because thats not where the music direction has come from.
• I want the audience to believe that the band really love music as I want those in the video to be wearing band T shirts and the fact that music miscellanea will be present every wear that you look; CD's, LP's, Singles, logo's and posters. This will appear to some who are viewing the music video as the advertising of other bands but I as the person who is constructing the video; see it the way that I want to see it and it's main intention is simply to show the audience that the members love music.
• That the band are middle class. This is an important message that I want to put across because the vast majority of the audience will be and the audience has to be able to relate to those in the video other wise they won't be able to truly connect with the video or the people in it.

My Media Pitch

This is my media pitch that I did to my media class. I did this to see what my class thought of my product and to get feedback which could lead to potential improvements in my my work. The pitch itself took place in front of a full class of people and the feedback was great. The sound quality is not the best in the world but my message is gotten across. I presented my pitch using a powerpoint as my background also as an aid. On my powerpoint I placed links to my song and also placed images relevant to my pitch. These included images of my final digi-pack, logos of establishments that will promote and sell my product. Also images relevant to my target audience were present.

The feedback from the audience was all positive; one girl can be quoted as saying it is "very impressive". Throughtout the question and answer session I was questioned on what my video contained and many things that were raised I had not even considered so doing this was an eye opener to what actually needed to be contained within the video. I thought this was a very useful process for this very reason.

Click the link to see the presentation which I presented; My Pitch Powerpoint.

Early work

This is my website flat plan that is did at the beginning of the course which I now consider void due to the fact that I do not consider myself skillful enough to produce a website therefore I have decide to change tactics and create an advert instead. Colours on this design are also void as the band that I am doing my website for has changed and this scheme does not suit the current band. Below my design here are rationale questions answers explaining my choices.

This is my work that I did for my digipack at the begining of the course. This as with the design above is also inaccurate as my design ideas have changed, in this case it is substantional the change. This change was all down to a miss-understanding on my behalf. It was said that a digipack a digipack is normally about six panels and not two that I had created. A more accurate flat plan can be seen on my flat plans main page. However the influences present here are not all that out of date; I have used the colours from the one on the left and I used the abstract styling of the left image as an influence.

 AS with my previous pieces this is out of date but the feedback on the sheet is over all quite positive. The design on each of the websites is still quite good. The bright colours on the happy Mondays website motivated me to make my design bright and eye catching. The simple colourings on the Who's website made me want to use a limited colour pallete because it leads to effective looking imagery. This influence will not be carried to a web page but has been carried to my CD digipack and advert.



 

Semiotics

Semiotics are quite simply signs. Examples of this usuage of signs in the golden arc of the M for Mcdonalds or another example is the tick for nike. We as an audience have to decode these signs as the producer has encoded them. We can decode in two different ways;

• Denotation - Literal interpretation 

• Conotation - What the denotation implies and this is subjective and is only ever someones personal perspective.

To demonstrate the example of a movie poster. The poster was for Mission Impossible 2.

 

Denotations are; Bird, man, fire, large title, cut on face, leather jacket, mid length hair, stern face.

Conotations are; Scar on face = Battle, Fire = explosion, Leather = Motorbike, Slick back hair = Motion, Stern face = Agression, Bird = Pheonix.

Signs, words and actions all combine together to make up codes which when they are together mean certain things to certain people. However only some of these aspects us directors and producers can control.

• Technical aspects I have full control over. I can choose what microphones that I am going to use to record the vocals or what camera I am going to use. This is under my control.
• Presentational aspects are not so controlled; these things are acting, camer work and lighting.
• Aesthetic is something that I have no control over because it alters due to your cultural background.

Now;
We understand what an image represents and we see what we believe. However the image or sign that we see is not the thing itself. We believe what see and forget what we see is just a sign. Reading things like this allows us to gain a knowledge and understanding about the micro elements of life.

1. Umberto Echo - a sign is anything that can be sued to tell a lie. Saussure - a sign makes meaning.
2. A sign can be split into two- The signifier and the signified. The signifier is anything that is a sign and the signified is the concept that a signifier refers to. 

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is a denotation. Conotations involves signifying signs (think of one signifier and then it leads you to another; a second signifier). E.G the word rose (which is a sign) may lead you to thinking of an image of a rose (a second sign) so nothing is ever signified. A collection of signs is called a paradime.

In relation to music video; I have placed no hidden meaning to the video. I have tried to make my video very literal. Despite this people will place there own interpretation on what is present within the video. People are always free to interpret what they want when viewing something but if people find something it is not intentional. Signs have very little meaning in the context of my video. The fact that the band are wearing T-shirts with logo's of other bands is a sign in the sense that it signals that the band like that band.

Director 3 - Anton Corbijn

Anton’s work started in photography but in more recent times he has become a music video director. He has worked long term with several bands. Bands like U2, Depeche Mode and Echo and the Bunnymen. His visual style is often quite dark and gloomy. This is most apparent in his video for the Joy Division single “Atmosphere”.

The video is filmed in black and white this makes the video dark, this has been done to reflect the music that the video has been set to. It is a mysterious video in the sense that there is limited information available. More questions are asked than answered. Who are these men/women in the black and white gowns? Why are they moving a picture of Ian Curtis across a beach, of all places? All we, the viewer, can gather is that these people judge this man to be an icon. Which he is. I judge the concept of this video to be a simple one and I aim to have a simple concept in my video.

This music video for Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”. This video has a narrative based around the children’s tale “The Little Prince”. The video relates to the music video in the sense that the king featured in the video is enjoying the silence. Most of it appears to be filmed on a grainy but color camera, possibly a Super 8. This main narrative is cut up by scenes of the band in high contrast, 
black and white. This is more his typical style. I am a fan of the high contrast shots in this video. I will try to replicate these in my video.

This video is a tribute to the band Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”. The narrative follows a very similar line to that of said video as is the costume. Chris Martin instead of carrying a deck chair is carrying a famous painting. This same painting is the album cover to which the song comes from. It has been shot in a similar grainy lo-fi way to the Depeche Mode video. The music is follows the song as Chris Martin is singing as the king mentioned in the song. I like the Lo-fi video style of this video and it is similar to the way I want to shoot my video.

Pride (in the name of love) is the name for this video; it features all four members of the band U2, who perform this song, in a dark room being filmed on a high contrast black and white camera. This video was never chosen as the final version as I feel the record company deemed it too un-commercial due to its colour choice and content. There is no distinct narrative as it a video that just features shots of bono singing and the other members simply standing.The full face view of the band in this video will feature (in part) in my music video as it is almost like the band are talking to you specifically.

Anton directed this video, “Lips like Sugar” in the bands home town. The city; Liverpool. The Band; Echo and the Bunnymen. Most of this video is filmed in black and white with the exception of the live band shot which are filmed in colour. However the colours still dark, following in the rest of the video’s style. You see a lot of isolation in this video; Ian McCulloch is walking the street alone, similar to kings above.Isolation is key to the narrative in this video and it is something that I like about this video. I will hopefully be able to apply this narrative style to my piece.



Director 2 - Samuel Bayer

 As well as music video’s Samuel is a Film and advertisement director. He has many high profile clients such as Coca-Cola, Sony and the U.S. Army. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in 1987 with a degree in Fine Arts. He became successful in the alternative rock era of the early to mid 1990’s.

This is the music video for Smells Like Teen Spirit. The video depicts a high school concert which turns into chaos. It appears to show that American high schools were not a very nice place; the place is filled with mist. The overall colour scheme is quite dark. We can tell it’s American due to cheerleaders being present. A variety of shots and camera angles have been used. This was done to create a dynamic video. The use of slow motion also does this.

Almost Gold by the Jesus and Mary Chain’s music video stays very true to the song; the band is performing against a gold coloured background. In this video, the band is often seen as shadows. This adds a layer of mystery to the band and relates to the dark sounding music they produce. Industrial images are also used, this could relate to the band heritage. Focus shift has been used to great effect. It makes for more interesting viewing.

 

 This is a screenshot from the music video “Zombie” by The Cranberries. The video has shots in both colour and black and white. The black and white shots are very military orientated; destroyed building and people with guns/weapons. The colour shots are lead darned in gold and controversially standing in front of a cross.  It is very reminiscent of the IRA situation in Ireland at the time of its release. Lyrically and musically the sound is quite dark so the black and white shots work well.

 

This is what I would call a fun music video. It is for the song holiday by Green Day. It is a video that relies heavily on special effects; the scenes in the car were filmed using a green screen and a visual effects package. Fast cuts are used in this video to keep up with the pace of the music; it is a fast song. Bright colours have used regularly used this has been done to draw people into viewing the video, this works because bright colours are eye catching.

This is a simple performance video of the last single released by My Chemical Romance of there “Black Parade” album. Famous Last words is the title. It see’s the band wearing a black and white military uniform against the background of fire. The uniform is battle worn as if this is their “Last” stand in a fight. The fire suggests also violence. The colours are quite consistent throughout; Black and white and red.

Director 1 - Jonas Åkerlund

Jonas Åkerlund is a Swedish film director, who also directs music videos. He is best known for his music video work. He has won several awards for his videos including video of the year. He first came into public view with his videos for the Swedish pop act “Roxette”. He has a very diverse portfolio working with artists like Lady Gaga as well as the German industrial band “Rammstein”.

This is the music video of The Prodigy’s song Smack My Bitch Up. In its day it was highly controversial in its day due to its depiction of drugs, violence, and nudity. It is shot entirely from a first person perspective. This is a usual way of shooting a music video. It tells the narrative of a person, who we suspect is a man, who goes out on the town and partakes in activities of an explicit nature. Despite criticism the video was acclaimed. I like the first person perspective on this video and I aim to incorporate this idea into my music video. I will not be including the explicit parts of this video as it will  not suit my genre.

This is “Beautiful Day” by U2’s music video. It is similar to all of their other videos in the sense that it features all members of the band. It is shot mainly in full colour with black and white shots put in to vary its content. The band performs “Live” in this video but as always the main focus is on Bono. The main location of this video is a French airport. The band can be seen walking around it and even performing on the runway as a plane takes off. The very scenic shots in this video are something that I am 

This is the video to the song “I Miss You” by Blink 182. It is a video that is filmed in a haunted house. To compliment this, the band and all of the other actors are dressed up in 1920’s clothes. A ghostly feel is created by doing this. The band perform live in this video, this performance is interjected with haunting imagery; spiders, ghost and witches to name a few.  A glow effect has been added to all of the different scenes. A transition effects has been used fairly regularly in this video, this has been done to make the video more exciting. The idea of the band performing is an aspect of music video's that is conventional and I aim to be as conventional as possible.

Country Girl is the name of this video. It is for the band Primal Scream. The main narrative follows a “slag” cowgirl’s trip around the town.  The video is very American in its theme despite the band being Scottish. The lead girl is considered attractive with this in mind I consider this a video for heterosexual males. Only the lead singer of Primal Scream, Bobby Gillespie, features in the video; he is seen singing the song. The lead singer almost talking/ singing to the camera is an idea that I enjoy and one that I will include in my video.

This video is for the song “Mein Land” by Rammstein. It is a 60’s style video with the band dressed in casual beach attire, not dissimilar to the clothes the Beach Boys used to wear, having a beach party. The font used also dates back to this era. However near the end of the video, the video changes to a live video in which we see the band as they are supposed to be seen; dressed in leather and make up and being inappropriate. The make-up choice is similar to that of Brandon Lee from the movie The Crow. The sense of parody and fun in this video will feature in a small section of my video. As with other video's I have directed/ stared in there is always an element of fun in them.