Advanced Portfolio: May 2013

Music video are only a recent concept (in the grand scheme of things), the first was released in 1964 in the shape of the Beatles' movie 'A Hard Days Night'. The movie was created in an attempt to push advertising for the Beatles' music without the band having to travel the world promoting it. At the time director Richard Lester did not know he was creating the very first music video, so he shot it as if he would a documentary. At this point music videos did not catch on due to the lack of mediums that they could play on, with only a few channels and no YouTube.
When the channel MTV was first broadcast on Saturday 1st August, 1981, playing 'Video Killed The Radio Star', the music video became something that all artists wanted to be part of, artists such as Duran Duran and Michael Jackson,who realised that having there music on TV would make people more willing to buy their records. Of course with serious music videos come parodies, with people such as Weird Al Yankovic making sillier versions.
It is likely to find homages or pastiches to classic music videos more recently, for example Shania Twain's 'Man, I Feel Like A Woman' payed homage to Robert Palmer's 'Addicted to Love' but switching gender roles between the videos.

There are 3 main types of music video:

Parody based- This is where an artist would parody or make fun of another song or the music video and re-make it with their own altered words or lyrics, this is a way for the parody artists to in their own unique way to pay some sort of homage to the original artist.
Performance based- This type of music video pretty much explains what it is, it’s an artist or a band performing their music live toward a camera, it has no narrative it’s just the band putting their music as if they were playing a live gig.
Narrative based- Where the video has a clear storyline.
Abstract- This is a rarer type of music video but it happens, it is when a music video has no correlation to the song or the lyrics but instead mean nothing really it's just meant to profound the audience as most of the time it means nothing it's just trying to be weird...

Music Videos

Artist: Needtobreathe

Genre: Rock

The music video for 'Keep Your Eyes Open' by Needtobreathe has no obvious narrative, it is simply a group (the band) watching a music video of their own song from an old movie prejector. The song is sung towards the camera, and the singer looks straight down the lense when singing, there are also clips of the band playing as a whole to no audience, which we could assume is to the camera. There are no other characters in the video, other than the band.
Throughout the video there is a semantic field of old fashioned things, the band wear old fashioned waistcoats, there are old eye testing equipment, an old telephone and an old chalkboard within the video. These along with the film projector that the video is supposed to be being played through, with a lot of vertical wiping transitions give the video the same feel all the way through.
There was no animation within this video.
Editing wise, when we are seeing what the film projector is showing, there is a black and white filter on everything, and the occasional negative filter, again, to keep with the old fashioned vibe. There is nothing fancy about the camera work, there is no tracking or panning, just simple straight shots on the subject except at the end, the camera falls over, revealing that the room the band were in is simply a set, showing that it is all fake.

Title: I Wanna

Artist: The All-American Rejects

Genre: Rock

The music video for 'I Wanna' by The All-American Rejects depicts a man (the lead singer) who is at a party when his ex-girlfriend arrives on the arm of another man, you can instantly tell that the man still has feelings for this girl through the sadness in his face. As the party goes on the girl's new boyfriend gets drunk and passes out, causing her to seek new company in the form of the lead singer, they reconnect and they all live happily ever after. Amongst the narrative there are shots of the band playing at the party, to the guest, as well as to the camera, although the words are directed at the girl in the narrative. In the casting; the main character is the lead singer, the rest of the band are amongst the party guests, the girl, her new boyfriend and the rest of the randomly assorted party gust extras.
All characters are wearing clothes that fit the casual party scene, just everyday clothes. For the props there are the band's instruments, copious amounts of alcohol and mobile phones. The mobile phones are used in a rather clever way in the video, we see many of them put together to tell the story of what happened between the main character and his ex-girlfriend. For example, we see the girl walking down a street, she will walk off the edge of the recording on one phone and appear on the edge of another, as if walking through them.
There is a lot of quick cutting between shots in this video, to emphasise the tempo of the song, as well as the tempo of the party. There is also a lot of hand held camera work, to immerse you in the party, and make you feel as though you are there.

Title: Sugar, We're Goin' Down

Artist: Fall Out Boy

Genre: Rock

The narrative in the video for 'Sugar, We're Goin' Down' by Fall Out Boy is strange, there is a boy with deer antlers, who kids make fun of, who finds love, although the girl's dad does not approve of him as he does not except his differences. After the dad is angered too much, he attempts to kill the boy with a bow and arrow, yet gets run over in the process. The boy sees this and walks over to the girl's dad, who is revealed to have deer hooves. After the boy accepts the dad for his differences they all live happily ever after. There is a message through the narrative, although given in a satirical light, to accept people of all creeds, beliefs and deformities.
Within the narrative there are clips of the band playing in a room to the camera, the band do not appear in the narrative however, there is only the boy with antlers, his girlfriend, her father and the kids that mock the boy.
People in the story wear hunting gear, checked shirts and body warmers as the video is set in deer country. The props within the sotry are the boy's antlers, the dad's hooves and the bow and arrow that the dad uses.
There is no sound heard but the pre-recorded song. We see a point of view shot through binoculars when the dad is hunting the boy, and when he is watching the boy and his daughter being all lovey dovey.

Title: The Pretender

Artist: Foo Fighters

Genre: Rock

A performance based music videos with some almost story elements (with the riot police), the video starts with an establishing shot of an empty air hanger, with a red square in the back of the supposed stage, as the lights flicker on we see Dave Ghroll walking towards a microphone and his guitar, the camera then changes to a shot directly behind him as he puts his guitar on, the camera cuts to an extreme close up of Ghroll wrapping a bandage around his guitar strumming hand, an arguable match on action angle as he wraps the bandage round his hand, the camera then cuts around his back again.

The camera cuts to a long shot of the band walking toward their instruments, and cuts to close up’s of the musicians put on their instruments, the main angles of the video are close ups and quick sweeping shots of the band playing, with the occasional longshot of all of the band playing together, the camera also cuts to the riot officer, this cut happens throughout the song as more and more riot police start to surround the band.

‘The Pretender’ is an example of a performance based music video the only real moments the song tell a story are through the use of the actors playing riot officers and the big red square breaking and crashing into the officers as they charge toward the band, this is red and represents revolution as the band revolts against the officers and win the fight. This is performance music video because there is no real story elements the main focus of the video is the ‘Foo’s’ playing this can attract a good audience as it gives the music video the look of a live event, this makes it seem the fans could be there watching the band.

Title: Good Riddance

Artist: Green Day

Genre: Rock

The Video starts with an establishing shot, this is a long shot of Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day's front man) sat alone on a matress on the floor in an empty room, the lighting is dark through curtains still giving the scene a dark yet warm atmosphere, everything in the room (possibly an appartment) is dirty, broken and bare, the only things on the wall are a few sheets of crumpled up pieces of paper possibly song lryics or love letters? We don't know, the pieces of paper could even be from an old relationship, and Billie Joe wants to say goodbye and 'Good Riddance'.

As the video progresses the camera fades into shots from the appartment and into a city (possibly Califonia) as the shots transition into the city we see car lights pass as we go giving us a sense of traveling from one place to annother making the audience move on as the characters in the song are having to do, the shots go into close up's of expressionless and blank faces, looking into nowhere watching as the day seems to pass them by, the one thing about the video the is consistant throughout is that no one looks happy everyone looks miserable or even lost all of them possibly having the same thoughts in their heads.

There are no real impressive shots in the video there are a few tracking shots as the camera follows and zooms into the characters faces and a few transitions, the video is mainly consisted of close up's and some medium long shots (Billie Joe sat on a sofa during one of the transitions) the main purpose of the video is for the band to say 'Good Riddance' to the 'Punk' genre as they turn to a more pollitical rock band. The reason for the band's change into rock is because Punk was about being indipendent and as 'Green Day' became much more successful they had more record deals and more offers for their music to be played in large telivision shows in America at the time, for example 'Good Riddance' was played during the finale of the American sit-com 'Seinfeld' imediatly bumping up the songs popularity to American audiences. The music video is classed as a narrative music video, this is because it tells a story as well as gives a few shots with performance by Billie Joe, so it has elements of a performance based music video, because we see the lead in Green Day playing guitar and singing, performing to the camera making the narrative based story with performance based elements

Conventions of Music Videos

Range of camera angles and editing techniques.
The speed of cutting between shots goes along with the tempo of the song.
The costumes used match the narractive being told, nobody looks out of place (unless purposely)
Intersesting appraoches to story telling (such as the mobile phones in 'I Wanna').
A narrative that follows the theme of the song in some way, or sends a message of sorts.