FS- Music Video Ideas

 My kind of Woman- Mac DeMarco

·       One single smooth shot illustaring a story with a following hand held camera with Mac, as the central focal point motivating camera movement and is given prevalence in the narrative.

·       The mise-en-scene in the video is very intricate and although at first viewing it looks messy and all over the place but in fact the lettering at the beginning is a jumbled up version of his name, Mac DeMarco.

·       The fact he is wearing makeup and dressed as a woman in an ironic way giving reference to the lyrics.  

·       His comedic personality comes through in the video in his body language and the nudity at the end is one of the things he is a custom to when performing live so is not is a part of his star image to some extent.

·       Meat shots compile the majority of the video whether its Mac holding the camera himself, or passing it off to someone else in order to complete an action relevant to the narrative.

Warned You- Good Morning

·       Vintage 50s styled filming showing a ‘rocker’ styled man chasing a girl.

·       Him on a motorbike and her on a bike connotes her as an innocent girl the reaction shots of her looking distressed connotes that she is feeling violated.

·       As the narrative develops the girl on the bike develops a sexual desire for a different man who seems far more mature than the first man.

·       The xcu’s of separate body parts and expressions connotes the sexual tension between the pair.

Homeshake - Give it to me

·       Disjunctive video, showing the band on holiday somewhere, no relation to lyrics.

·       Slow motion shots of sea gulls composed next to holiday styled montage breaks up the video making it less corny to a certain extent.

·       Hand held shots on the rides in a self taken frame give it a light hearted feel which adds to the relationship between the music as the music is light and quite happy.

FS+FP Group: Synaesthesia Pitch – The Getaway – Red Hot Chilli Peppers

FS Digipak Cover Analysis: Noah and the Whale - First Days Of Spring

FS: Using Goodwin to deconstruct Wu Lyf- Dirt

 Writing frame - Applying Goodwin (Wu Lyf - "dirt")

Andrew Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory (1992) carried out research into mainstream music videos and identified typical conventions.  Applying his critical framework to music videos such as “Dirt” by Wu Lyf, directed by ‘the Lucifer youth’ (2011) determines to what extent the text is conventional.

Firstly he stated that music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.  This video could be categorised as being in the alternative rock genre.  It is conventional in that it has an extremely fast cutting rate where it looks almost stop motion as there is a cut on almost every drum beat and as the drumming is quite ferocious it gives it a strobe feel, this is conventional as a fast cutting rate is common across most genres especially faster alternative rock. Iconography is also something that the Goodwin discussed as he found that the iconography of a band and their star image is very important to their perceptions from their audiences. In this particular video the group have dropped their iconography to speak for a larger, more selfless cause to which they believe in. theyre speaking for themselves the world unite Lucifer youth foundation and showing clips and extracts of riots with the lyrics printed over the top it gives you more insight into the cause that theyre talking about. This is unconventional as there are no shots of any of the group at any point. Goodwin says that close ups are crucial in music videos and are part of his framework, however this is not the case in the video. There is very intense post production that has gone into this video with the fast cutting rate and the changes in filters and font colour with the very intense cuts and the change of lyrics and the wu lyf symbol appearing and disappearing at very fast rates. The amount of post production is conventional for an alternative rock group however it is done in an unconventional way with the constant black and white and grainy filter used.

Goodwin discussed the relationship between lyrics and visuals.  In relation to the lyrics it is clear that they have a clear message but due to the frontmans voice we need the visuals with the lyrics to understand what the song is really about. The visuals are amplifying the whole ‘rising up’ viewpoint that the band seem to have. This example of amplification allows the audience to home in on the point that the group are making, this is apparent throughout.

He also considered the relationship between music and visuals to be an important convention.  In the whole video we can see the scenes of rioting and fighting against the police, and along with the heavy drums and the distinct guitar I would imagine the cutting rate to be quite frantic. However it is conventional in the way that it cuts with the beat and does this very successfully along with the lyrics being flashed on the screen.

Music videos are a postmodern form which implies that they often borrow and rework ideas from other texts and forms.  Wu Lyf uses intertextuality in the form of the common idea of rebellion shared between alternative rock artists themselves and the music they produce inflicts rebellious connotations. And the ideas have come from other artists such as the clash who very irreverent in their music making.

Therefore the video could be seen as conventional  in that the cutting rate matches the beat and is very in time, with very precise and accurate cutting and use of filters.

However the video is unconventional in that there is no performance or narrative it is simply delivering a message.  The video employs an artistic/creative approach to conventions in that it uses intense cuts with multi-coloured text lay over it, flashing with just enough time so we can see it properly.  A possible reason as to why the theory cannot be applied to this video is the lack of meat shots and any shots containing the group and even without any narrative, however the lyrics tell the story enough.

FS: Music Video Analysis

FP: Music Video Ideas

My kind of woman- Mac DeMarco 

Strengths:

• Very professionally shot, smooth camera movement- Steadicam?
• Strong comedic presence- reflective of artist’s comical star persona
• Lots of work gone in to set designs
• Controversial idea (mainly with costume-i.e male artist dressing as woman, reference to David Bowie/Tricky?
• Frequent costume changes-keeps audience interested
• Constant ‘meat shots’
• Frequent changes of audience placement, e.g. handheld front facing camera.
• One long take for whole video

Weak become heroes- The Streets

Strengths:

• Meaning is amplified through clubbing/party scene
• Large proportion of video is performance/meat shot
• Artist takes prevalence of the whole video-contributes to star persona

The view from the Afternoon-Arctic Monkeys

Strengths:

• Shot in black and white (possibly black and white film?)
• Unusual aspect ratio
• Complete absence of band- mysterious metanarrative, leaves audience wanting more

FP: Track Ideas