JP: Technical analysis

Technical analysis - Bastille - Pompeii

Seconds	Mise-en-scene	Camera work
0:00 -0:10	Artist on roof on concrete building, blue sky	Extreme long shot, Low-angle, zoom in
0:11 -0:14	Cityscape background, artist from behind foreground. Typography – title and artist name	Extreme longshot , handheld
0:15-0:18	artist	Mid-shot
0:19-0:22	City view and artist in foreground	Mid-shot, pan, hand held
0:23-0:26	Artist looking out window, abandoned building	Long/mid shot, rule of thirds
0:27-0:32	Artist looking out window, putting on leather jacket	Tracking close up/mid shot, handicam
0:32-0:34	Lip syncing, notion of looking/artist looking down. Present/absent	Mid-shot

0:35-0:45	Walking down stairs, setting changing	Long shot, rule of thirds
0:45-0:47	Opening large, white, industrial door	Hand held. Mid shot
0:48-:0:52	Location, city establishing, no people/deserted	Long shots
0:52-0:54	Artist on bike, right to left through urban location	Long shot
1:02-1:04	artist	Mid shot

1:19-1:20	Getting drink from Spanish style café	Tracking mid shot from behind, hand held
1:20 – 1:24	Woman serving, him seeing her, kitchen	Shot reverse shot
1:24-1:26	Older woman with black eyes, smiling	Rule of thirds mid/close shot

Doing this technical analysis for Bastille's "Pompeii", has given me more of an idea of the motifs of the band and the meta narrative they are trying to create. I looked at this Bastille video to get an idea of the band's image and the format of the video for reference for when we make our video for a Bastille song. Looking at the video in detail has helped me consider the style and colouring of shots as well as the lengths of shots used by the band.
The video is a narrative based following a male lead and the audience is positioned to be following and sympathising with this character. We plan our recreating this style of following a male lead in our own video.
The idea of being both present and absent is also something that stood out in this video and we may involve this in our concept.
There are some things that after noticing in the Bastille videos that we don't plan on including in our own video. For example, we are not interested in including lip-syncing or too much performance aspects in our concept and we are also planning on deviating from the standard completely narrative video and including more conceptual, studio-based shots.
Looking at the individual shots has been very useful in planning our own shots. We plan to have an extreme long-shots of the locations in our opening as well as featuring the track title over this image.
There are many mid-shots in the narrative of the video which show the character and reveal more about the character and help develop the narrative.
The shots involving other characters are useful to look at for ideas of shots we will use when involving other characters in our own video.
This technical analysis was helpful in getting more of an understanding of the band style and shot types used in their videos. This along with other research into the band will help us develop our concept further and give us a more detailed understanding when storyboarding and shooting our shots.

CC: "Imagine Dragons" - Print Analysis

JP: Print Analysis

LB: Audience Research - "Focus Group"

Audience Research – Focus Group - How to carry Out.

• Play track to 4-5 people
• Ask them to brainstorm ideas and images they relate to the track individually on a piece of paper
• Discuss ideas as a group
• Explain your concept using mood boards and/or storyboards and start a discussion
• Make notes on their ideas and write up results on blog
• Don’t forget to discuss album covers and magazine advertisements too

LB: "Bastille" Print Analysis

Bastille Print Work from Liam Bedford

I did a print analysis on Bastille because as a group we may want to choose a track done by this group. After doing this, Joey and Chris could do one on a different artist and it may help us finalize ideas of who we want to choose. From doing this I have realized the simplicity of the artwork of this specific genre however I do like the work and would be happy to try and create similar work.

How is the genre of the track/artist evident?

When looking at the artists digipak/advertisement you are able to recognise what type of genre the music is. The cover does not feature the whole band staring into the camera which you would likely find for a pop/boy band type printwork. Instead the covers include an artist both present and absent with the back to camera or harshly visable. Dyer's popular culture traits are not used in this type of genre of music, the band are not used in an over sexualised way which could be a common trait in a mainstream/Hollywood Industry.

How are the band/artist represented?

The bands meta-narrative in their print work is not added too in any way. Their work represents each individual track and solely the individual track. e.g. For the digipak used for the single "Bad Blood" the work is referenced to the music video for the track. This does not add to the meta-narrative of the band but perhaps the small story of the individual single.

When trying to sell the product the biggest thing about the print work is the bold and big typography of the bands name and the track/album name. This shows how the importance of their music far outweighs what their album cover is and is not relying on a cheap "Hollywood" style picture to sell their record.

Group: Track Ideas/Devolpment

As a group we have found it hard to conclude our research to finalize our ideas. We have managed to narrow our Ideas down to a possible track and another band. We started to look at Bastille and their Alternantive type music videos. The possible track is called "These Streets" This track would give us the ability to create our conceptional/narrative type video. However we have also discovered that for their videos the frontman is present in all videos both perfoming and lip-syncing.

 

Bastille - These Streets

However Joey put forward an Idea of a "quirky" electro pop band called "Hot Chip" their videos are more studio based but however also create narrative/conceptual videos. Again this band normally has a performance based aspect to the video as well. The ideas conveyed in their videos would be able to replicate to the Bastille track also as they both have the same sort of style. We have not decided a possible track from this band, but we do like the type of videos being created. If we were to choose a track from this band we would have to use perfomance as an aspect in the video, which we will have to look at more.

Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor

Within the next few days we will need to make a final decision and think of what type of ideas we want to convey through the video. To do this we will start to look more into each band by doing technical analysis's and print analysis's.

JP: Video Analysis - Institution and Audience

Bastille - Laura Palmer

This video is most likely to be consumed through new media technologies, through music channels on television, online through sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. The video would be able to reach a wider audience with these NMTs with most offer the user a sharing function so the video could be easily shared within a demographic of NMT users and reaching a secondary audience and this can be used as free advertising for the record company.

Bastille are part of multinational record companies Virgin Records and EMI and are therefore promoted as fairly mainstream artists however the video tries to maintain the band's star image (Dyer) of being an alternative band rather than acknowledge the very wide commercial demographic that the music appeals to. The audience is fairly wide however the primary audience is likely to be young people (teenagers and young adults).

Dyer's paradoxes can been seen within this video with the characters appearing ordinary and the setting not being particularly unusual but the events within the video are surprising and not common ordinary occurrences.

Dyer's second paradox of the star being both present and absent can be seen within the performance aspects of the video when the singer is lip-syncing the song separate to the narrative and as a performance but never looks into the camera seeming to create a barrier between him and the audience. This encourages the audience to seek more of the artist as the audience tries to complete the image though other products. This would have been planned by the record label as part of the star image of the band.

LB: Video Analysis - Media Language & Representation

Panic at the Disco - This is Gospel 

Media Language - What is the "message" or purpose of the video? Visual Techniques? Pop Culture?

• The video is strongly performance based but also conceptual. The video does not have a direct message that is related to the track itself. However the idea of being held back and forced down can imply the way the music industry works and being forced into doing things that that artist does not want to do. 
• This video is predominately filmed from a birds eye angle as a mid shot on the performer. The idea of the video is that it is all in one take without cuts. The mise-en-scene fits the location used of the hospital bed, the costumes are obviously suitable and fit the idea.

Birds eye Angle/Mid-shot of performer.

• There is a subtle reference to modern day culture in the music industry because of the idea that he is being forced into doing something and held back from being free and expressing himself

Representation-How are the band/artist represented?Social Groups? Ideological discourse?

• The star in the video does not construct a persona. However does add to to his meta-narrative of trying to achieve and become free. He is the only one of the band featured in the video while being held back by other people. However the video is performance based which gives the track a selling point because he constantly breaks the fourth wall while performing.

Meta -narrative of Music Video

• There are no strong ideas being put across by the group in the actual video. The ideological discourse however could implement ideas of challenging against society and breaking through. For teens the video could be seen as a sense of rebellion. Using Laura Mulvey's theory you could suggest there is an idea of male gaze as the video contains the singer for the whole of it. There is a vast amount of close-ups of him. However there is not a strong reference of Goffman et als idea of the "artificial look" which would be more likely to find in a pop video.

JP:Video Analysis - Genre and Narrative

Fall Out Boy - Alone Together  

This is a primarily narrative video which is fairly conventional of this genre as is the use of lip-syncing performance throughout the video within the narrative. While there are elements of performance, Goodwin's notion of looking does not come into most of video regarding performance of the band as it is a narrative story to be watched rather that a video that tries to allow the audience to feel part of the video. However, there is a voyeuristic treatment of women and the women are viewed as sexual objects within the video.

There are many close-ups of the band to appeal to the audience and record label, emphasizing the image of the band.

The video could be viewed as an example of disjuncture as there seems to be very little or no link between the meaning of the lyrics and the visuals. However there is a link between the feel of the music and the video with a sense of action and aggression within the music that is reflected by the visuals. The video is also cut in time with the music and there is lip-syncing involved.

This video challenges the idea of a music video as just an addition to the song itself. The video is one part of a series of videos being created for each song on the album 'Save Rock and Roll' and could be viewed as a stand alone creative media platform of the artists rather than inherently commercial video specifically used as an additional marketing of the song.

Group: Brighton Recce

Where did you go and what were your aims?

• We went to Brighton and went to the pier and surrounding areas, such as the lanes and the sea front. We had to go to 2 exterior locations and 2 suitable interior location with permission.
• Our aims were to get the following shots:

1. Mid-long shot of a panning establishing shot for narrative/performance.
2. Use of high/low angle for performance.
3. Footage of sped up shot of someone in a crowd.
4. Point of view handicam shot.
5. 360 panning shot.
6. Tracking shot with character performer in first person mode of address.
7. A variety of close-ups.
8. Slow motion shot.
9. Focus on/off, close-up, pull focus.

What did you achieve?

• CC: I now know what to film to make a music video look good and I got a lot more footage than I got doing my AS film opening sequence. This means that when we come to edit our footage, if some shots look bad, then we have an alternative and have more ideas to put into the music video.
• LB: From the recce I was involved more in the filming process then last year. I took alot out of this trip as I am more confortable with different shots and techniques that we tried. I personally like the timelapse shots we attempted and would like the idea of trying to do this in our final video.
• JP: In this recce, I did less actual filming of shots and was more involved in  planning the shots. From this I was able to see different aspects of filming and think about things like how a time lapse shot would work and which locations would work

What problems did you have?

• The weather was a problem because it was cloudy, however we wanted it to be sunny as this would amplify the mood we were trying to make.
• Another problem we faced was the fact that we could not film in some shops. This did not help because we needed certain shots fufill our aims of the trip.
• We faced creativity issues due to the lack of time we had to prepare for this, so we just filmed random things due to the time restraints of the trip.

What did you learn that you can take to the next shoot?

• We learnt that we need to plan our shots more effectively as we found that we were roaming around Brighton looking for shots, however a better method of doing this is following our call sheet exactly so we know where and what to film.

Liam & Joey on Brighton Pier

JP:Video Analysis - Media Language and Representation

Paramore - Still into You

The video for this song creates an image of the band as being fun and happy with an overall positive message shown through the song and the music video. There is not a strong social message to the video as the meaning behind both the song and the video is very simple and not unusual to popular music.

Most of the shots focus on the lead singer and the other band members  and there are many close ups emphasizing her as the bearer of the message of the song. The cutting rate of the video of fairly fast and in time with the upbeat song keeping with the idea of enjoyment and excitement. The mise-en-scene is very colourful and bright with lots of pastel colours, cakes and candles giving the idea of a 'cuteness' and amplifying the ideologies of love. The settings are also very simplistic so the video is mostly focused on the performance of the artist.

The video is not unusual and does not break any molds and is very typical of a lot of mainstream videos suggesting that it is purely a commercial music video.

The star image constructed of this band is a generally positive and this is emphasised by the colour and action within the video. Not much is added to the meta-narrative of the band through this video.

The representation of social groups in this video does not deviate from the normal representation in most videos and reinforces dominant ideologies. The main representation of youth as rebellious can be seen in actions such as the bmx bikes inside the building but the rebellion is not outrageous so still projects a good ideology that is not shocking or dangerous.

This video differs to the norm in that unlike ideas media theorists such as Laura Mulvey, there does not seem to be any objectification of either gender within the video. The lead singer while being fairly typically good-looking, she does not necessarily have the artificial look  that conform to the myth of femininity as can be seen in many other media texts. While her image seems very 'feminine' throughout and the males are represented fairly 'masculine' neither are overtly sexualised and Laura Mulvey's idea of the 'male gaze' is hard to apply here.

 

It could be argued that some shots were from the 'male gaze' and that some filler shots that were unrelated to the events of the video, use just the appearance of the artist as something beautiful to look at. However it is hard to argue that she has been objectified in this video.

It is unusual for the lead singer of a band of this genre to be female so it is possible that this has had an affect of the image the band want to portray of women within their work.

Group: Concept Development

LB: Video Analysis - Genre & Narrative

Bastille - Things We Lost in the Fire

What are the forms and conventions evident in the video?Illustration or amplification? Or disjuncture? 

• The video is narrative and conceptual. The video plays on the idea of both light and dark as well as the video looking aesthetically nice. Using Goodwin's theory the video is more illustration because the video does not strongly link with the track however does take ideas and reflect of the track slightly. The narrative side follows a story which you cannot clearly tell after watching as it is jumbled so you see parts of the narrative at different times. There are also many different stories at once which makes it hard to try follow the story so the viewing isn't ambient.
• This video could be considered art because of the techniques and possible hidden meaning behind the video. The video contains many ideas of dis junction as the audience find themselves watching the video and not solely understanding the ideas conveyed and what meaning they have.

Disjuncture - barefoot walking in street

LB: Video Analysis - Institution & Audience

Imagine Dragons - Demons

How might this video be consumed? Channels? Ambient or focused viewing?

• For smaller and less mainstream bands the consuming of their video is solely relied on the use of "New Media Technologies" and "Web 2.0" The band itself gathered most of its hype because of their tracks being used in video game soundtracks. 

YouTube Search Bar

• The type of music is unlikely to be played constantly on the radio which gives the artists an unfair advantage against mainstream pop artists. They are also unlikely to have TV spots. The video has almost 14 million YouTube views. This is the best possible way the artists can be recognized and for them marketing can be based on word of mouth.

YouTube Band Music Channel and views of video

• The video is predominately performance based, which gives the video an ambient viewing ability, as people don't feel the need to fully watch the video as they do not find out anything else out about the track or the meta-narrative.

Think about the institutional context of this video. Record Labels Role.

• Imagine Dragons are both neither Pop/Mainstream or Independent. The record label would not have too much of an impact on the performance of the video. This can be shown by the final part of the video which shows the dedication of a fellow friend of the band. This shows how the band get an input on what they want to do in there video.

Dedication given to Bands Friend at end of video

• Dyer talks about the star system in Hollywood and the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers. Despite this video being 90% Performance based the idea of the "meat shots" is not exaggerated as it would be in a mainstream video. The star is not an image, the narrative constructs him as a real person. The record label has not sold him as a star.

CC:Genre Moodboard

• This Mood Board has allowed me to identify exactly what i want to be in my video.
• It also allows us, as a group, to match up our ideas from the different Mood Boards and put those ideas and themes into our music video.
• My Mood Board is the genre house music, however the ideas included in mine have overlapped with the other two members in my group, Liam and Joey such as....

JP: Genre Moodboard

As we are currently unsure on the track we will use and the genre of music, we have each looked at a different genre of music that we may consider a track from. Looking at the pop genre in more detail has made me consider other ideas that we hadn't thought of previously. The use of bright colour and filming in the studio is not something that we had thought much about, but after looking at different styles, it is something that we are now taking into consideration. The biggest problem that is clear from doing a track from the pop genre is that the videos have very high budgets and we have no budget so some of the ideas seen in these videos are very implausible, however there are a few aspects that may work without the ultra high budget with some simplistic studio filming that appears to be very effective.

LB: Genre Moodboard.

Creating a moodboard is helpful because it is a good way of putting down all your ideas in an expressive and easy way. As a group we decided to choose three different genres, so from this we could share ideas together. I personally created a moodbaord on "Indie Rock & Alternative" music.
Using "Prezi" was a great way to visualize my ideas as well as others being able to view it. Overall the task was helpful because as a group we are now able to move on.

CC: Video Analysis - Media Language and Representation

Of Monsters And Men - Little Talks

How are the band/artist represented? Their star persona constructed? Does this add to their 'meta-narrative' in any way? How does it help sell their product?

• Using Goodwin's theory it is clear that there is a slight link between the visuals and the lyrics because there is a lot of disjuncture. On the other hand, there is a narrative for the audience to follow even though the characters are animations. I think that this video slightly adds to the artist's meta-narrative because of the walking in the woods and the feeling of being lost. This has a link to the lyrics of the song where they say "Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right." Then the other band member sings "your mind is playing tricks on you my dear". After some research about this band i found out that this song is about one of the band member's loved ones being mentally ill, therefore it explpains why the visuals are of animations walking through woods because the band member feels that his loved one is lost. I think that the video does not necessarily sell their product because it is a personal message, however the audience may relate to it and feel that the visuals explain how they are feeling too.

How are the different social groups represented through the video?

What is the ideological discourse? Look at issues such as how gender is represented, as well as race, age/youth, and institutions like church, police. Think about whether any "dominant" values and beliefs in our society are being challenged or reinforced in this media text and ask yourself why the artist might do this.

• As this video is about one of the band member's loved one's mentally ill condition, I think that the video represents the feeling that the mentally ill person must be feeling, for example feeling lost and lonely by walking in the woods and also feeling scared and this is represented in the video with the beast like creature. Although this music video is hard to deconstruct and find the meanings behind it, the dominant ideolgies are the feelings that the mentally ill must face when they do not know what is happening.

CC: Video Analysis - Genre and Narrative

Bastille - Bad Blood

Using Goodwin, what are the forms and conventions evident in the video? Think about type (narrative, performance, concept) as well identifiable elements of a music video such as notion of looking, links with visuals, lyrics etc.

• Using Goodwin's theory it is clear that there is no relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, however there is slight link between the visuals and music due to the cutting rate increasing when the music tempo increases.
• This music video is narrative based.
• There is no voyurism over the female body in this video, not conforming to the conventional music video.

Is this an example of illustration or amplification? Or disjuncture? Why? (links with sound/visuals and lyrics/visuals)

• This is an example of disjuncture becasuse it is completly random and there is no link between the the visuals, lyrics or music.

Could this video be considered art? Does it present any challenging ideas? Or is it inherently commercial? Why is this postmodern?

• I do think that this music video is art because it does challenge all of Goodwin's conventional theories and ideologies.

CC: Video Analysis - Institution and Audience

Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

How might this video be consumed? Channels? Ambient or focused viewing? Be specific.

• Viewed through New Media Technologies (NMTs) is very important for non mainstream bands as other media platforms, such as the radio, would not play their music. NMTs like 'Youtube' would be very useful for Imagine Dragons as anyone can upload a video. They have gained 76.2 million hits for this one song on 'Youtube' allowing them to gain popularity.
• This video has a ambient viewing due to it being conceptial based, with disjuncture throughout. This means that people on 'Youtube' can just listen to it, rather than watching it as the visuals do not reveal more about the song or the meta-narrative.
• On the other hand, due to the disjuncture, there was a 'buzz' surrounding the visuals of the video when it was released, therefore increasing their audience stream on 'Youtube'.

Think about the institutional context of the video - considering the genre and artist, what role would the record label play in creating these promotional texts?

• Imagine Dragons are signed to the labels "Interscope Records/KIDinaKORNER". This label is large and has signed artists such as Rihanna, T.I, BoB and Nicki Minaj, therefore they will have a large budget, trying to promote the artist by having a narrative/conceptual based video to add to the artists meta-narrative.

Group: Update - 16-9-13

Checklist - What we are thinking.

LB: As a group we have started to make some progress, we are still undecided on a track, however we have managed to start thinking of different bands and gaining ideas while doing so. On Friday we had a look at the artist  "Of Monsters and men" however the animation and fairytale based ideas that is generally portrayed in their other videos, for us it would not only be very time consuming, but would be hard for us to portay the same stories. e.g. In their video "Little Talks" the story follows cartoon like chararcters in a fairtytale world with dragons and mythical creatures. This would be far too challenging for us to follow through their ideas.

 

Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks

We also had a look at "Imagine Dragons" and there style of videos, as a whole they do not follow a certain theme or meta-narrative. Some of their video are solely performance based, with occasional shots following a narrative of a different person. When others are a completely different and fully narrative based in which the artists rarely feature. One theme we were able to notice was this idea of the underdog and a sense of success at the end of the video. As a group we all thoroughly enjoyed the tracks and possibly have an Idea to use the artist song "Bleeding Out" but have not strongly thought about using it at the moment.

 

Imagine Dragons - Demons

Group: The Music Industry - Contextual Research

LB:Who runs the record labels?

Often a record label is also a publishing company that manages brands and trademarks. The biggest record label currently is Universal Music Group which is part of EMI's recorded music division absorbed into UMG.

What is involved in a record deal?

A record deal also known as a "recording contract" is a legal agreement between a label and an artist (or group.) This involves the artist creating music which the label then promote and sell. They are only allowed to record for that label exclusively, however artists are able to guest appear in music with permission from their label.

How are musicians promoted? Outline different types of marketing strategies/tools.

Different types of genres and musicians would be treated different in the music industry. Different genres have different target audiences, and the biggest part of marketing for music is achieveing and reaching your target audience.

There is a genral stigma attatched to the Pop/Boyband Industry, in which the artists are told exactly what they are needed to do, wether this is constantly appear on TV spots/radio shows or publicity stunts. They are there too make people as aware of them as they can. For example. Successful boy band "One Direction" have been criticised for replicating stunts which have previously been seen by older bands such as "N-Sync". Everything they do is monitered giving them the chance to be seen and loved by all.

However independant companies with a more alternative and not mainstream genre will be treated in a different way too get their product out to there target audience e.g. a rock fan would not expect to see their favourite band on a kids channel.
 

JP: Who is responsible for making branding/marketing decisions?   

The record label is usually resposible for the branding and marketing decisions however the artist sometime has some input in these decisions.

Why is a music video so significant?

Music videos are an important platform in the music industry, giving artists the opportunity to present the image they want to portray to their public through other formats. Music Videos are often considered as important as the song itself and are the tool used by promoters to sell the song of the artist.
Music videos can popularise unknown artists and become viral, reaching a wider audience that the music alone would not be able to reach. Since the increase of music television and web 2.0, artists need to use a variety of different media forms to reach the widest audience possible and music videos are one of the main formats for this.

What is the production process of a music video?

The production process of a promotional music video is made up of pre-production, filming, importing footage, editing, post-production and exporting the video.

Pre-production is the planning of the video involves organisation of all aspects of the video such as ideas, location, camera, actors, storyboarding, lighting and organising people.

The planned video is then filmed and the footage is imported into editing software.

  The raw footage is then edited into a finished piece, cutting shots together and creating continuity and organisation within the video

Post production involves any adjustments of the footage such as the colour and lighting balance and any visual or special effects

After post-production the video is exported to an appropriate destination