Category: Music Video

Star Image – The Performer

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To gain a better understanding of the conventions for a stars image within our genre I created a moodboard of different aspects of a stars image from within my genre to understand where their values lie and what their attitudes are like.

To further understand the conventions of my genre and how that would link back to the stars in my own music video, I looked at Nirvana as a band. I looked at the metanarrative that they created throughout all of their media appearances in their own music, interviews, albums, etc and how this metanarrative showed what they were like and what they stood for / believed in. This was done through finding photos of the band, pictures of the band from different live performances, digipak’s from the bands albums, newspaper articles about the band and looking at them on spotify.

In future, I will take the skills I’ve learnt about star image analysis and put that towards my own work to develop a star that is true to the genre they perform in by using a repertoire of elements such as a more edgier outlook on life and a more alternative approach to music and also to use this star image and take it into other aspects of my media course work by creating a metanarrative for my star that fits within the boundaries of my genre.

Initial song ideas for a video – Mini Pitch

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In order to decide what song would be best for my music video, I have decided to listen to a handful of songs and then create a mini pitch based on the one I thought would make the best narrative.

The song I’ve chosen is ‘Take Control of Your Own Life’ by Sven Karlsson ft. Easton. I’ve chosen this song as I believe it has some good potential for a narrative of someone stuck in a cyclical life, as if everyday is just a loop of the last and having said person manage to break free from this lifestyle.

Thinking forward, I will take the ideas I have created for this pitch in order to try and create greater pitches for more media products in future, as well as taking into account how well I can create a unique and creative narrative from a song.

Narrative Overviews

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In order to get a better understanding of music videos core ideas, I’ve taken a look at 3 different examples of music videos and then summarised them in one short sentence to see what these videos actually are about on a base level.

Summary: Man runs away from people with completely black eyes.

Summary: Man goes around the city giving away money and buying people things.

Summary: An elephant travels across the world to get back to his band.

 

To expand upon this I’ve also created some of my own basic summaries that are down below:

  1. Man gets incredibly excited for his birthday but he gets stood up by everyone invited.
  2. Athlete throws a game and is forced to train to prove everyone wrong.
  3. Nerd burns down a library after failing a test at school.

In future I will use the knowledge I’ve gained about the simplicity of many music videos narratives, in order to try and create a simple narrative on my own, and then expand upon that idea within the video and the events within it.

Previous Student’s Work

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In order to gain a better understanding of what my work will need to look like, I’ve taken a good example of a narrative based music video from a past student and deconstructed it based on it’s MES, Camera & Editing usage to see what actually makes the video good.

Camera:

The camera use in this part of the video is extremely well done as there is a montage of different shots showing her taking her pills at a variety of angles and distances but then after showing her swallow them we see her chucking them on the floor, showing how despite this being apart of her daily life, she want to quit it and move on in her life

Editing:

The use of editing to display everything in monochrome other than the pills, then going on to have everything turn to colour after she swallows them shows how to her, the pills make her life joyful, even if she has to take them constantly. This edit displays the core theme of the narrative being substance abuse clearly and effectively so the audience can understand what’s happening to her.

MES:

Within this montage we see various clips of the woman in a plain room doing a lot of random, sporadic movements, typically being near the walls, signifying that this is the state of her mental health, where due to the impact of the pills on her life, she’s struggling to stay in a normal, healthy state.

Focus Forward: This has helped me understand what is required for me to achieve a good grade for my music video as I can see many good instances of MES, Camera & Editing (particularly editing to the beat) being used to their fullest within this video, so as to enhance the experience of the video itself.

Music Video Form and Conventions

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Here we have 3 different music videos that are apart of different genres and from different artists. I’ve decoded these three videos in order to better understand the conventions of music videos, how they can be split between narrative, performance or be a mix between the two, as well as the video being either illustrative, amplified or disjunctured from the song itself and what these attributes add to our perception of the star’s image along with the song that goes with the video as the main purpose of the music video is to sell the star and get people hooked on who they are and what they’re like.

 

In future, I will take what I learned about music videos forms and conventions in my own music video to try to sell my star as legitimate and worthy of the audience’s time, attention and money, as well as to make a video that clearly displays a narrative that links back to the music in some way.