For my Advanced Portfolio in Media I chose the brief of a
promotional package for the release of a new album including a music video, and
two ancillary texts which I chose to be a CD digipak and a website. I used a
number of programmes during the production stage; Adobe Premier Pro CS3 for
editing my video, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Microsoft Word and Paint for making the
digipak and WIX.com for creating my website.
Before I began creating my own video, I needed to address
the codes and conventions of existing videos so that I knew how to emulate this
and construct a conventional music video. We looked at many different videos in
order to establish the basic conventions of music videos as a whole. The videos
I looked at included:
From this I researched the different form of music video as
it was apparent that, among these examples, there were different narrative
forms that they can take.
Green Day's 'American Idiot' displays a perfect example of
what is known as a 'performance video'. This is arguably the most simple form
of music video in theory as it only features the band, or solo artist,
performing the song. The performance element of this video is clearly the focus
- as Green Day, in particular frontman Billie-Joe Armstrong, are huge stars
within the rock and punk genre they often feature heavily in their videos as
they possess 'star appeal'.
The Beautiful South's 1989 video for 'Song For Whoever'
represents a hybrid of two of the video forms; 'performance' and 'narrative'.
The narrative style of music video shows a running storyline throughout the
video akin to the song's lyrics or meaning. In this instance the narrative
shown is more of an abstract critical commentary on the music industry as a
piece of jelly becomes a superstar.
The final main form of video is in many ways the most
variable. The 'abstract' form is difficult to define, it features no
performance and no particular storyline however represents ideologies contained
within the song, this is often a political message. They often use non-typical
production styles or in many cases, animation. I Am The Walrus by The Beatles
shows examples of this throughout with the use of strange imagery which, such
as the policeman, carry some meaning of The Beatles political opinions. This is
another hybrid as, much like The Beautiful South, the band's performance is
intercut throughout.
Following looking broadly at music videos across all genres
I began looking at videos more specific to my genre - rock - in particular more
mellow, acoustic songs. Here are a few examples from which I drew inspiration:
One example hear which I found particularly interesting was Green Day's 'Macy's Day Parade'. This is an example of a performance video however is highly unconventional in that there are no edits throughout the entire video. This had the effect of having total focus on the performance and also a slow-paced and mellow mood - representing the feel of the song. I liked the idea of having a convention breaking video with edits initially however I released that with no dolly/track equipment this would have been far too hard to execute well.
[SEE 'CONVENTIONS OF ROCK MUSIC
VIDEOS' POST]
I decided to produce a video which is heavily dominated by
the 'performance' form as this is typical within the rock genre however I
wanted to incorporate more than just a performance. Two particular examples
from which I drew inspiration here was Biffy Clyro’s ‘The Captain’ and Green
Day’s ‘Macy’s Day Parade’. I liked how the lyrics of ‘The Captain’ are
reflected in the nautical mise-en-scene of the video – knitting the two
products together. This is also done, though more subtly, in ‘Macy’s Day
Parade’. The lyrics of this song are a negative commentary on modern-day
consumer culture and materialistic ideologies however the video featuring
Billie-Joe Armstrong walking around a desolate industrial backdrop contrasts
this – focussing on the emotion. I therefore wanted to reflect the lyrics of
‘God & Satan’ in my video [SEE INITIAL IDEAS POST] by having two opposite
sides of the same character – shown through costume changes – one representing
the good, ‘God’, and the bad, ‘Satan’. I decided to designate certain lyrics to
each character, those with positive meaning to the white costume and negative
lyrics to the black costume [SEE LYRIC TIMINGS AND SCRIPTING POST]. In the
production stage however this proved an issue as finding the different times in
the song and switching costumes because of locked camera positions proved far
too awkward and time-consuming and I subsequently opted to improvise with which
character sang which lyrics in the post-production/editing stage dependant on
which I felt worked best.
One key cinematography technique I noticed in all genres of music video and particularly in rock music videos is the use of close-ups. This assists two main ideas of the music video; it advertises the artist through ‘star appeal’ and also captures the emotions portrayed within the song. With rock music it is often for the latter of these as many rock songs hold deep and meaningful lyrical content and ideologies. I therefore decided to utilise the use of close ups. Some of the close-up shots near the alter have camera movements such as small pans and tilts – I did this my using the camera in hand held position and filming a take of the full song, improvising the movements as I filmed. The added movement gave a little extra flow and dynamisms to the video in contrast to the slow feeling static shots. I used more of these moving shots towards the end of the video as the song reaches its peak at around 2:30 (link to 2:30 of video?) as the increased pace and movement matched the increase in energy of the song. The static shots then acted as a fine contrast for the introductory, mellower parts of the song. Combined with a reasonably slow editing speed – around an edit every 2 or 3 seconds – really reflected the calm ambience of the song at that point.
Another instance in which I utilised close-ups was in the
first three shots of the video. Using almost a reversed traditional film syntax
I moved from a close-up to a medium-close-up and finally to a medium shot. I
felt this technique allowed me to introduce the main protagonist/artist stage
by stage, the rhythmic editing adding to the synced convention:
One other interesting use of cinematography which I utilised
was that of the extreme close-up of the blinking eyes at 2:43:
This highlighted the particular lyrics, ‘Blinking Eyes’ at
that point at the song; as reflecting the lyrics in the video is something that
I wanted to be integral to my production I was keen to carry this forward right
from the pre-production stage of my storyboard through to producing my final
video.
