Music Video Analysis - Home

Track Title: Home
Artist: Gabrielle Aplin
Album: English Rain (2013) (Previously featured on the Home EP)
Genre: Pop/Folk
Release: 9th June 2013

Gabrielle Aplin is a a British singer and songwriter whose music can be most accurately described as a blend of pop and folk ballads, began her career through YouTube. Making cover videos at at home in Bath, she gradualy gained popularity on the site and began touring and self promoting. She released several sucessful EP's before signing with Parlophone Records and releasing her debut album English Rain.

The song Home is her fourth single from the album released in June 2013, following the huge sucess of her cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love. It wasn't original to the album's track list, being one of her previous EP's stand out tracks and it is for this reason that it became another single.


Genre Characteristics
One of the first things to note about this song is that it is very hard to define in terms of it's genre. Many people would say that it is primarily folk, due to the soft guitar acoustics and Aplin's soft, almost whimsical voice. However, in my opinion, there are also elements of pop music and some of rock hidden in the melodies, such as the structure nd lyrics, and also the build up of dynamics approaching the end. The music video reflects the sentimental and melancholic feel of the songs and incorporates many common genre charcteristics.
The focus purely on narrative is one of the most prolific. The music video begins without any of the track playing at all. The first minute seen is solely a build up of the narrative, establishing the main focus on the artist, which creates a sense of identity for the artist and hence gives the viewer a feeling of personal connection with the vocalist. This feeling of intimacy is common among the folk genre, with low key and meaningful performances and videos being the norm. Following this, the genre also often contains elements of instrumental performance, which can be seen at the end of the video

Music and Visuals
Laid back and gentle when it begins, the music gives me the feeling of being closed in under and open sky, perhaps because of the contrast of queit and intimate music against the vast open spaces seen in moments of the video. There is also a distinct seperation throughout the video of music and visuals, save for the matching of vocals, which leads to a build up and union of the two at the end of the video. This could perhaps symbolise a kind of harmony in finding her own path and doing what she loves and what she travelled to do. The visuals tend to follow where the music leads you, such as at 3:30 when the beat becomes more apparent, lending the song more power. The shots begin to match the pace and rhythm of the song for a period of time, a separate shot for each beat. This adds emphasis to the people that she begins to meet here and connotes to me the idea of things getting better with time. She finds friends in unexpected places and this helps to progress her physical and emotional journey from the tone and build up of the song. It gives the listener a sense of hope and the idea that maybe this is where Home is - with the people who understand you and support you.

Lyrics and Visuals
Aplin's songs tend to be very lyric based and for this reason, I feel that the video has echoed this to a certain extent. The song explores what the idea of a Home really is and in essence, gives those listening and watching a strong conclusion by the end. Home to many people, is often symbolised by a place - a country, a town, a house - but here, we see a deviation from that idea. The lyrics softly juxtapose with the visuals through Aplin constantly moving forward, destination to destination, perhaps trying to find a new place to call her home.
One of the key lines I picked up on here was "With every small disaster, I watch the waters still." as I think this is perhaps the purpose of her journey throughout the video. The video commences with Aplin losing nearly everything she has, a disaster in it's own right. But she perseveres, moves forwards and gains perspective, allowing her to get back those things she lost and more.
Along with this, there is a direct link between lyrics and visuals in the chorus, on the line "It's not just where you lay your head, it's not just where you make your bed." in which she is seen to be laying on the bed in a hotel room, clutching a pillow. Interestingly, this adds an element of comfort and homeliness to the video, as having a bed to sleep in can often be symbolic of safety, something that she is obviously lacking in the feeling of from the beginning of the video. The repetition of Home at the end of the song as the music returns to it's warm acoustic origgins also links in ewith this idea, as if she is returning to safety through finding a place in which she can belong.

Notions of Looking and Voyeurism
There doesn't appear to be any obvious examples in the video that would be considered voyeuristic. However, shots are often directly placed in a way that bring attention to Aplin, such as the scenes in the hotel.

Artist Identity
The video is entirely focused on Gabrielle Aplin and her characters story, with no deviation to any other charcter throughout the song. It is mainly narrative based, which I believe echoes most of her songs and in particular this one. A connection between artist and viewr is established almost instantly through the quiet opening and the brutality of what occures, possibly sparking sympathy or even empathy within the viewer. The shots are mostly long to allow more focus on Aplin and there are moments in which she looks directly at the camera, reinformcing the close intimacy felt before. She portrays the same style as is seen in her albums and previous EP's, visually and musically and in some ways, the video id reflective of her own journey to fame, not losing her own sense of identity along the way.

Intertextual References 
Whilst there are no direct links to any other works outside of the video, it's style does seem reminincent to me of a few American roadtrip films. This may be due to the iconic settings that are used - diner's, bar's, wide open spaces etc. and also because of the events that take place. Following on from the wide spaces theme, I am reminded when I look at the setting of Phoenix, Arizona, interesting when you consider the lyrical line "I'm a phoenix in the water." The phoenix idea may have also be carried  on to the design on Aplin's jacket, symbolising to me her independance and need to be free, both traits of the mythical creature.

Type of Video 
I would say that the video is mostly narrative throighout, with instances of performance becoming more noticable and crucial towards the end of the song. The narrative is obvious, as it follows the lyrics of the song quite precisely, and the theme is translated from the music to the video. The last section, in which Aplin is performing at a bar, could certainly be considered performance, yet it aslo fits in as part of the narrative and stands for the moment where she finds something like Home.

Consistantly Used Shots
There are a lot of close up shots used throughout the video, especially to show the emotions conveyed from the protagonist of the video and to establish conection between the artist and audience.
Establishing shots of the town and the desert are used to show when she is in a different place, so that the audience can keep up with her travels whilst also being reminded of her constant search for a home. Along with this, long shots are used to show where she is travelling to, these shots are all used to keep up with the artist and help them to form a connection with the artist and hopefully have an interpretation of the meaning behind the video.
Interestingly, there is little to no slow motion used in the video (a common feature of other works), possibly to reflect her fast paced life.

A final note... It is interesting to compare this video to the one she produced before English Rain was released, when the song was the lead single from her EP of the same name. I noticed that the older video was far simpler, yet contained many of the same themes as this one. The narrative however, is less prominent, instead focusing more on performance with narrative acting as an underlying theme. It also has a less cinematic feel and approach to the lyrics.

Getting Permission

After talking things over in our group, we decided to push ahead with two songs in mind. The first of which, called "This Beauty" by American singer/songwriter Amanda Rogers, filled us with many ideas that we thought could be easy to produce on screen. Our second choice was by British singer/songwriter Gabrielle Aplin and was called "Alive". Both songs were similar in style yet evoked very different feelings for us when we began to scratch the surface of the lyrical meaning in them.


We decided to contact we both artists in order to ask for permission to use their songs for our project. Amanda Rogers had direct contact details and we there for sent an email to her straight away. Gabrielle Aplin was harder to reach, as she is currently rising in fame and popularity, meaning we had to go through her management.

The day after sending these emails, we got a response from Amanda Rogers, in which she gave us permission to use her song. She said that she was "okay with giving permission for use of my song... as long as this video project is not sold or distributed without my knowledge." 
Along with this, she would like to see the final product and, if she likes it, would like to post it on her website with our video credits.

We are of course thrilled by this and have now started to further draft some more ideas for the song. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for any reply from Gabrielle Aplin's management, but will hope to hear from them soon. Following this, we want to develop more ideas and started looking for possible locations that we feel will be useful in our initial ideas for the music video.

Representation - Female Artists in the Music Industry

Often, in the media and in particular, the music industry, the way a person looks highly influences what we expect of them and how we see them. Many artists and acts alike have people on their team to deal with their 'image' along with how they appear in the media, which makes most of our decisions as viewers or listeners somewhat dictated by those who model the stars. Talent shows, to give one example, are a common place to see how people with talent are immediately judged by an audience.

Along with this, Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory is seen throughout many of the music videos and photo shoots of these artist and is a perfect example of the way in which they can be presented. By looking at female artists through the view of males, we see a much more objectified, "perfected" version of the people we revere.

By listing what we think of when we consider certain celebrities, we came to the conclusion that often, the media can influence what we believe to be true. This is such a list:

• Avril Lavigne- Rock chick, rebellious.
• Adele - Powerful and Inspirational.
• Beyonce - Iconic and exceptional.

A good example of how appearance influences peoples views and likes is that of my favourite artist and inspiration, Taylor Swift.

For many years, the country superstar was the very essence of the american 'girl next door' - curled, gold locks, polite, clean lyrics and mannerisms. For this reason, many people, especially music critics, made snap judgements about her music and criticised it, even though she has now one six grammys and is a highly successful songwriter with a lot of talent. In fact, still today, a lot of fans of artists such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna still maintain the usual comments: "She's so annoying and girly and innocent! Her songs to too young!"
With the release of Taylor's latest album, RED, she also adopted a new look, changing her iconic hairstyle and with it, some of her musical style.

From this...

...To this.


Interestingly, her latest single, 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' has been her biggest hit to date, and many people have suddenly changed their opinions of her. Is it because she no longer embodies country music? Or maybe people would say they've only just discovered her.
Still, appearance obviously does impact us largely in in the media and perhaps this is starting to become more apparent in a society that is now more focused than ever on looks and appearance.

Research - The History of Music Video

The formal definition for a music video is this:

"A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes." -Wikipedia

But what does that mean to us when we will be producing our own? To me, a music video is a way of visually reprecenting a song, capturing it's meaning, essence or narrative in a creative way. It's how we as an audience get an insight into the artists personality and their kind of music and is often one of the main pormotional devices for a record company. So keeping the definition of what a music video should be, and more crucially, has been before, fresh in our minds as we go into this process.

Music videos are often entirely dependent upon an awareness of genre, whether you are going to fit to the conventions of the genre or not. The main genres are thus:
Pop and Chart music
Rock
Indie
R'n'B
Soul
R'n'B and Hip Hop
Jazz and Blues
Dance Electronic
Country

How Music Video Began

Talkies and Soundies
With the arrival of talkies in 1926 (films with synchronised sound), many more musical short films. Early cartoons are an example of this, such as Loony Tunes.  Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were also distributed to theaters. Soundies were invented around the 1940's and were another early form of music video. Soundies were one-song films made for the Panoram visual jukebox. People would be able to watch the sequence created for the song that was chosen in black and white, usually in diners or bars. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, showing that it had been staged for a viewing purpose.

Bessie Smith - St. Louis Blues (1929)
As a dramatised version of the hit song 'St Louis Blues' in 1929 by the blues artist Bessie Smith, this is classed as the first ever music video ever made. The 'film' was two reels short and featured a dramatised performance. It was shown in theatres in America until 1932.

In 1940, Walt Disney released Fantasia, an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music. The Sorcerers Apprentice is probably one of the most well known from the film and could be classified as a music video for the classical pieces used, as the film sets the moving image to previously produced music.

Musical films were also an important influence on what we now know as music video. Old Hollywood musical numbers from the 1930's and 50's heavily influenced later music videos, an example of which is Madonna's Material Girl.
In the 1950's, music films became popular, featuring performance clips of the artist. Elvis Pressely's Rock Around the Clock is a notable example of these types of films.

Music videos as we know them today began to be produced for music programmes such as Top of The Pops in Britain and Hullabaloo in the USA. These were used as promotional clips for groups, in particular for The Beatles in the 1960's with their song Yellow Submarine. It was after this that other acts began to follow their example, and music video promotional clips were soon produced for others.

The Start of Music Video Television

In 1981, the US music channel MTV was launched - ready for an era of 24-hour-a-day music viewing.

The first music video to be featured on the channel was The Buggle's 'Video Killed The Radio Star', which really provides a strange sense of irony and perhaps now truth.

Surprisingly, many of the first music videos came from Great Britain. Music videos by Duran Duran (who ended up creating very visually interesting videos for the time), were made because their songs had not been aired on the radio and the band wanted publicity. They recieved popularity after their music videos were aired on the new music channels.
Many artists besides Duran Duran, such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and U2 recieved promotion and created their career after their videos were featured on MTV.

Now, with the popularity of music video, MTV has many varying channels that are solely for separate genres. These include Classic, Base, Rocks, Dance and Live variations of the channel, whilst the original MTV shows mainly current chart music.

Music Video in the Online Age

Downloading of videos off the internet is now common and this is seen as a threat to the dominance of MTV, because more people are watching music videos on YouTube and converting these to an MP4 format that they can view on their Ipods or tablets. This can result in the artist not getting the right amount of money for their troubles and are losing out on their income, because their jobs rely on people paying to view and listen to the music/videos.

Despite this, in my view and I think many others, YouTube has meant that people now have greater access to a large range of music videos that they have never previously heard. This means that artists are reaching a far wider audience and are gaining more potential fans through the websites suggested videos format. It also generates a whole new source of revenue for acts through YouTube's advertising models and allows the bands and solo acts alike to reach out to their fanbase in an interactive and almost personal way.

Research - Artist and Song Choices Update

We've spent a long time discussing various different artists and, along with that possible choices of songs for those artists. We want to choose a relatively unknown band or artist so that we don't have to go against or conform to too many preconceived perceptions, which will give us the most creative opportunities as possible. Further to this, it will be easier to contact the artist to get permission to work with the song. So far, we've thought of a few songs to consider, sticking to a few ideas:

Pitter Pat - Erin McCarley
Keep on Walking - Gabrielle Aplin
This Beauty - Amanda Rogers

As we are stil deciding upon which to choose as the song for our music video, these will almost certainly change between now and the beginning of our planning stages, meaning we have plenty to take inspirations from.

Research - Shot Types

Music Videos are rather different in style to the usual short film. Each employs a set of conventions of the genre to the way in which it is made. The most obvious of some these are the types of shots that they are used. Whilst they are quite similar to those found in normal film, the style is often more themed around the genre and look of the main video.
A small series of different shot styles were all found in the videos we have watched so far. Some of these are explained below:

• Slow Pan - A shot that is frequently used to show the artists performance. The camera very slowly moves around the subject, focusing on one part of the subject, perhaps in close up or in a wide angle. This is often used when it comes to filming vocalists.
• Slow Motion - A key feature of music video that is used in nearly every single music video with some form of narrative. It involves slowing the frame rate of the footage down by a considerable ammount to achieve an almost dreamlike effect or one of moving underwater. Often, it is used to draw emphasis on the certain narrative points or for dramatic effect. Pretty much the biggest convention of music videos.
• Close Ups - Used on artists or on their instruments, close ups are a good way of establishing artist identity and persona. They can als draw emphasis to specific emotion (since there is only a short ammount of time to do so in a music video) or the instruments on which a crucial melody line is being played.
• Tracking Shots - Often used to follow the artists "journey" throughout the song, tracking shots can once again be useful for establishing band members or for capturing an artists style.

Of course, this isn't to say that these are the only types of shots used in music video today. The range of shot types used is as wide and as imaginative as in film, yet subtle differences in this kind of composition are what essentially make music videos recognisable as what they are.

Recreating Another Music Video Shot

Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve

 

We took this still shot from the opening 30 seconds of the music video for Bittersweet Symphony, which we were asked to recreate. We discussed how we could be as accurate to the original as possible through replicating the mise en scene, colour, costume and other key features.

 

For this we thought props played a key role in the look of the shot. The urban location is crucial to the main themes within the song and so we considered trying to get this as one of the most accurate aspects of our shot. We also studied the way in which the camera moved since it's all one continuous shot. Tracking its movement, we found it began at the feet, tracking, before moving back slowly into a mid shot, then long shot. We realised we'd need to use the steady cam if we wanted to achieve the same sense of stability.

 

We hope to film the shot with the same style road crossing with another road the the right of the frame, meaning we'll also have to shoot at a time when it is safe for us to cross frequently. This will be tricky to achieve, as really we also want a few crowds to create the sense of going against the flow.