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.
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.
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.
Many directors of music videos begin with the genre as a way of developing their technical and creative skills, sometimes then progressing to direct full length films. However, the videos they create for the songs sometimes become iconic when they are well made and creative.
On many lists of the "Greatest Music Videos of All-Time", such as one from NME, one specific video kept appearing at number one. Hurt by Johnny Cash (2002) was described by the magazine as "A fitting audiovisual epitaph." after the famous artist died 7 months later.
The video was directed by Mark Romanek, a renowed music video, advertisement and feature film director who has won a toal of three Grammy Awards for Best Short Form Music Video, more than any other director. His credits include the critically acclaimed and contraversial video for Closer by Nine Inch Nails and the modern film Never Let Me Go. The video uses haunting imagery of decaying fruit and montages of Cash from his earlier years, amking it a poigniant reflection on his life past and present, just before his death.
Another video that everyone appears to remember is Michael Jackson's Thriller. In fact, many of the pop icons videos have posthumously and his lifetime become iconic. Thriller was one of the most expensive, and longest, music videos made of it's time, and is often refered to as changing the concept of music video. Directed by John Landis, it won a Grammy award for the Best Video, Long Form and had a total budget of $500,000.
Landis wanted to create a video that really told a story and thats exactly what was produced. The video has often been called a "mini movie" in itself and remains one of the most recognisable songs of all time.
To create an authentic vidoe, we need to really understand how they are constructed. To do this, we turned to as many examples of videos across various genres and looked at key features that ran through all of them, compiling a list.
Low angle shots, giving the artist power over the audience
Tracking Shots
Extreme Closeup
Fluid or just genral continuous camera shots
Artist featured in the video
A narrative is featured within the performance, or it's just narratively based
Instruments being played
Lyrics matching visuals
Slow Motion
Sound matching visuals - eg the drums matching the flashing lights in a video
All these things can be found in the two videos we looked at to give us this list. Adele's Chasing Pavements and McFly's Five Colours in Her Hair. Despite both being entirely different styles of music, along with the videos that were created for them.
A theory by Firth in 1998 states that all music videos can be placed into three seperate catorgories: Performance, Narrative and Concept. Whether on not this is now true remains to be seen but elements of each can be found in nearly all the music videos of today.
Performance
Perfomance type videos contain mainly elements of, obviously, permorming. This means that they often feature the band or the artist that performs the song, or else and actor or dancer that portrays them. Commonly, they contain frequent shots of the instruments being played or of the miming of lyrics, meant to feel as if the artist is performing the song for the video.
Pure Performance Examples:
Parachute - Kiss Me Slowly ... A pure performance based music video, focusing on the band playing the song. Perhaps it is meant to replicate a concert experience or possibly create more of a personal connection between band and audience. Many close up shots are used, along with sweeping panning shots to capture the full band with all memebers. However, another convention of music video, slow motion, is notably absent here.
Beyonce - Single Ladies ... A music vidoe that is slowly becoming quite iconic. The whole video is singularly of the artist plus dancers performing, with only a few subtle nods in the routine to the lyrics. It's also in black and white, making it look even more simple. Interestingly, no slow motion is used here either, leading me to believe that perfomance based music videos often don't use it, a possible reason for this being the directors intentions of keeping the performace as "live" looking as possible.
Narrative
Videos such as these follow a set storyline that usually match directly to the lyrics and follow set characters. These character may either be the artist or actors portraying others ky to the story line. They tend to use many slow motion shots along with slow pans and close up shots, once again features many music video conventions.
Pure Narrative Examples:
Taylor Swift ft. Ed Sheeran - Everything Has Changed ... This works perfectly as an example of a narrative based music video, containing no element of performance at all. The children in the video either represent the artists at a younger age or, as revealed in the end of the video, play young relatives or their children. It captures the idea of the songs title whilst also fitting to many music video conventions, re introducing slow motion.
Jay Malinowski - Life is a Gun ... A music video we looked at in class. The story is highly related to the lyrics, a key convention of narrative based songs and videos and contains no performance element. It also follows the same black and white colour style, an idea that can later be linked to the lyrics.
Concept
This refers to a random idea which often does not relate to lyrics or song meaning. Concept videos often make the audience question what they are really about and fit to the sound of a song. Pure Concept Examples:
OK Go - Here it Goes Again ... This was by far the hardest to find are video for. Many concept videos often contain some performance at the very least, an example of how the lines between these genres are slowly becomning blurred. The Treadmill idea is part of the video simply for the reason that it is interesting to watch. The idea itself has no real link to the lyrics but perhaps it can be fitting to the sound of the song.
The blurring of the lines between the types...
Firths theory was originally developed in 1998, a time when the idea of music videos were still developing and boundries ahd yet to be pushed. Whilst in the early years of vidoes these types were certainly kept to, artists striving to be creative and innovative began merging the three to create something entirely new. Now, it is resonably rare to find a video that does not contain at least two of Performance, Narrative and Concept and it is extremely hard to find pure versions of the video types.
For example, I Want Crazy b y Hunter Hayes uses a little of all three. Whilst the majority of the video is based around a narrative, there are frequent scenes of the artist performing the song, guitar in hand. There are also vague concept ideas placed within the narrative that have little to do with the lyrics or song. This type of video has become the norm these days and the lines can only continue to blur further.
Music Videos are, in essence, a supporting feature to a song from a certain band or artist. This means that the visuals have to represent the song or the feeling it presents in an effective way with the limited amount that they can do in the songs timeframe.
The sound of a song is a culmination of many aspects of music. Instrumentation, key and timbre all play a role in how we as an audience perceive a song. The composer often makes these creative decisions in order to convey a particular mood to the listener; everything is intentional. This is simultaneously reflected in the visuals chosen by the creator of the video.
One of the key things we have to think about is fitting to the conventions of the genre so that what we produce is authentic as possible, yet despite this, there is also the option of going against some less prominent conventions to make our creation unique.
The Importance of Sound to Music Video
Sound in a song often dicatates an audiences perception of it. It creates mood, emphasises emotion and reinforces any lyrics in the piece. The mood of the song firstly helps to define the visuals. It gives them a direction and a feeling in what they are doing, no matter what type of video it is for. The visuals usually match the the sound or the genre, in instrumentation and lyrics, unless you are juxtaposing the two against each other an creating the opposite of what people expect to see for a valid reason. Idividual interpretations of these sounds working with visuals create the songs meaning to a person and therefore heavily influence their opinion of it, still taking into account their past experiences and conventions of the genre.
The Importance of Lyrics to Music Video
In my opinion, lyrical content plays a huge role of defining what a music video is. Without lyrics and meaning, the song would have no real definition to base its sound upon and in turn, nothing to develop a music video from. Lyrics make a song what it is. In modern commercial pop music, the lyrics tend to be nothing more than fillers, something to pronounce when singign the melody line and I think that songs develop fat more meaning and cnnection with the audience when they contain lyrics that mean something. Crucially, direct links can be made between lyrics and visuals, such as props as seen in the Life is a Gun video, or even narrative.
Both sound and lyrics combine to help influence the visuals in a music video. Without both, a song seems to lose its identity and for me, that means it no longer appealsto a wider udience.
