Representation (Andrea)

What is Representation:

At a basic level we can say that all media are forms of representation. The people involved in making the representation. The people involved in making the representation are all governed by the their own beliefs, values and attitudes. This means that no represnation is obejective . Most media products reproduce dominant ideologies in the way they represent the world, which has led to many minorities complaining that they are misinterpreted in the media.

What stereotypes of gender exist:

There are many stereotypes realting to gender across different genres. As seen in many music videos there are many stereotypes, for example, 'the gossip', 'the tart with the heart, 'the hard man' and the 'hopeless romantic'.

In our own music video the band is portrayed as very rebellious teen spirit type, they are very relaxed- not taking life very seriously. They like to perform together and have a laugh. Although they come across as very confident they are all very individual. The love story between the male protagonist and female protagonist is very stereotypical, at the end they will be together no matter what they have been through. The female protgaonist throughout the narrative keeps rejecting the protagonist, for someone who she thinks is better at the time. However, in the end she comes to terms with reality and realises he was right for her all along. Although they have both been through a lot, they are seen together in the end happy.

Beat Sheet

This is our beat sheet, which is going to be very useful when it comes to the editing, althought we are far away from tht stage, it will also help for the filming itself.

Storyboards

  The storyboards and notes below are our brainstormed ideas which we would like to include as part of our performance and narrative in our music video which we will create.

 

 

These are the first ''brainstormed'' ideas for the storyline:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planning

     

                                Planning

    In this stage of creation, we will plan carefully every step ad detail before starting to shoot. In our opinion, organisation is a key factor to efficient work, as precious time is reasonably used. We have both noticed that in previous projects we might have gotten away with the ''trial and fail'' method, but this is about to change as we are trying a safer approach, which involves more planning. As you might have seen, our action plan is very brief and lacks any detail...however; you can still see that we are a bit late on our shooting schedule, as it was meant to start last week. We will be doing intensive updating and posting on this blogger this week...everything from cast to treatment sheet and possible locations. The plan so far is to finish most of these things till' Thursday as we will be starting the shooting process then to be able to make up for the lost time.

Summary of Research

  So far we have done all the research needed for the creation of our music video. We have learnt a lot about genre, codes and conventions, gender representation and sexuality. This research also gave us an insight on the different types of music videos: performance, narrative, concept based or a combination of two or more. We looked back at the best videos of all time and what made them such, as well as creating our own list of favourite videos and the various reasons which made us choose them. The textual analysis helped us notice details in the videos which we normally would not pay attention to, same goes to the analysis of other students' media projects, which also gave us many interesting ideas on how to use what we have to create an almost professional looking video. For more details of our ideas for the shooting, please return to previous posts, where we have evaluated and described what we would like to use, why and where we got the idea from.

So, this is the end of our research and now it is time for planning! ^^

Digipak research

Digipak-style packaging is often used or CD singles or special editions of CD albums. It usually consists of ''gate-fold'' (book style) paper board. Digipaks are used to describe all sort of soft packaging and were first created by MeadWestvaco, after time became so popular and began to e used by everyone.

Mood board for Digipak

These are some already existing front covers of digipaks of some of our favourite bands. This will be an inspiration as we are planning the creation of our digipak. Some of them are very simple, but most are colourful, complex and trying to take an idea across, more than just showing the artists, using animations and locations or just creativity and that is exactly what we are planning to do.

Music Industry And The Punk Genre

Music videos have initially been created to allow a freedom in artistic expression. Then the music industry realised that they can also be used to sell records and begun insisting on their creation, which received a negative reaction from the side of the artists as they thought that the videos focus too much on image, not on the music itself.

Today music videos play a huge role in the music industry and they are often used  for several purposes:

1. To help a music track to be heard globally.
2. To help promote the band.
3. To endure people remember the song more easily.
4. To give the audience a better understanding of the song.
5. To provide the audience with more insight of the band's life.
6. To lead to more sales and extend income.
7. Create a base or give ideas for film makers.
8. Entertainment purposes.

Today music videos are mainly made for commercial purposes, they become a promotional material. However there are still some videos that might be called art, they tend to be more concert based.
The creation of a music video is very simple to the one of a movie:

• First a director is chosen.
• Then budgeting and deadlines.
• Development of the ideas.
• Costumes, locations and shooting schedule.
• Rough-cut.
• Everyone agrees on the rough-cut.
• The finished product is passed to label for release to TV stations.

The record company:

• A record company signs up an artist and plays him/her/them in advance.
• The music video is funded by sales of the record they release.
• A video commissioner is employed, and he makes all the important decisions concerning the video, director, ideas, budgeting and so on. 
• The track is sometimes supplied by the artist's  management company or the artist himself.

The video production company:

• This company represents the director within a particular territory.
• Unlike the agent, the production company also produces the video and takes a production fee not and agent fee for the job.

Then the director listens to the track and brainstorms ideas and possibly creates an animated storyboard. Then the budgeting and deadlines are decided. After the shooting of all the footage needed, the video is edited and delivered. Delivered means that the production company invoices the record company for the job.
Finally the video is exhibited on the music TV channels. The spaces for music videos have increased rapidly, because of the larger number of music channels and also because of the potential to release promos as VCD on singles and even on DVD collections. In this way a greater fan base is created and the popularity of the video increases significantly- ''A video is likely to reach the national audience more quickly than  radio play.

Audience Theory and the Music Video

Two areas and focuses on the effects of media on individuals:

''Hypodermic Syringe Model'', which presents ''The Media'' as a drug that we take and then act as expected: consume.
This model links to the ''Sit Back and Be Told'' theory of David Gauntlett, where the audience has no chance of offering feedback.

Lasswell's formula:
Who?>>>>>Says What?>>>>> In Which Channel?>>>>>To Whom?>>>>>Whith What Effect?

Oppisite idea- enables us to involve in the media.
''Uses and Gratification theory'' - active use of what the media offers.

The media meets the needs of the individual in 4 ways:

1. Diversion: A form of escaping from your everyday lives, even for a short period of time, into someone else's, more interesting, life-style.
2. Personal Relationships: The viewer gains companionship, either with the television characters or through conversations, about the media, with other people.
3. Personal Identity: The viewer is able to compare their life with the lifes of characters and the sItuations on TV.
4. Surveillance: Where the media are looked upon for a supply of information about what is happening in the world.

Some theorists believe that the severityof the problems walking hand in hand with the influence of the media on individuals is overated and we have become mor selective when choosing on what to spend out time. We have grown up from the ''Sit back and be told'' state of mind and started to respond and engare in the media more frequently.

Top 100 Music Videos Documentary

Top 100 Music Videos Documentary:

In class we watched a documentary from channel 4 of the top 100 music videos.

96- 21 Seconds
So Solid Crew

Tornado, breaky glass, storm, clouds, beautiful girls, aggressive image.

95- The Cardigans - Favourite Game
Jonas Akurland

car rac, smashy cars, bright colours-red

94- Bonnie Tyler
Total Eclipse of the heart

ideas borrowed from thriller, dark colours, people look like ghosts.

93- We love you- Mick Jagger/Rolling Stones
Peter Whitebread

the 60's MTV reluctant to play vidoes with black people.

92- Herbie Hancock 'Rock It'

Robotic body parts, unrealistic and creepy.

91- The Specials- Ghost Town

90- The Pet Shop Boys 'Go West'

89- Smashing Pumpkins 'Tonight Tonight'

88- Elton John 'I want love'
Features: Robert Downey Jr. fresh out of rehab.   Later Elton John featured other stars such as Justin Timberlake and Liz Taylor

87- Toni Basil Co-Director
Talking Heads 'Once in a lifetime'

86-The Streets 'Fit but you know it'

85- Sid Vicious - My Way

84- The Boomtown Rats 'I don't like Mondays'
Directed by David Mallet

The first video to have a narrative to it.

83- Shakespeare's Sister- Stay 1992
love story, reference to death.

82- 50 cent 'In Da Club'
Philip E Atwell

81- Ultravox 'Viena' 1981

80- Radiohead 'Just'

78- Godly and Creme 'Cry'

Face morphing, which has also been done by Micheal Jackson.

According to the NME the 100th best music video of all time is Billie Jean - Micheal Jackson. The video was released back in 1982 and is still popular till this day.

Having listed these very popular videos, we have decided to add our own Top 5.
As our video is going to be based on the Punk/Rock genre, our Top 5 is going to meet these requirements.



We have chosen this video as No 5 in the Top 5 chart, becouse of the profecionally made close ups of musical instruments and the combination of performance, stage performance and ''behind the scene'' footage. The concert footage makes the audience feel more involved and almost enables them to share the emotions of the artists. This is also supported by the ''home made'' looking shots of behind the scene, which makes us think about using held hand camera during some of the scenes of our project, leting the audience feel closer to the situation.


5.


4.Sum 41-Walking Desaster


''Walking Desaster'' goes 4th place on our list, because it is not directly related to our plan for the music video-performance and narrative (love story). However, it does give an interesting idea of presenting the narrative part- using a human-like object, in this case a robot, to present the actual person and their actions. We find this interesting because the lyrics describe a very sad reality that the artist is living in, also the use of an object instead of a human softens the severity of the situation and gives a hint of humor.

3. A Rocket To The Moon- ''Ever Enough''



The reason why the video of ''Ever Enough'' is on 3rd place in our list is that althought it is mainly narrative based, and the emphasis on the live story is very strong, which we are thinking of using in out own project. The scene with the main character playing the guitar may be considered as a performance. The other idea thatwe are thinking of using is the ourdoor locations, as it looks more casual and realistic. The light and edditing effects are very appealing, we would try to create that gloomy, dreamy light that makes the love story look very cute and fantasy-like. Althought the song is not exactly within our gente, the video has deffinitely given us interesting ideas.

2. All-American Rejects- "Dirty Little Secret"



The reason why we have chosen "Dirty Little Secret" to be 2nd on our list is that it contains both narrative and performance based, which we are considering for our own music video. The music video also  uses cards which contain lyrics on them which describes the narrative, this shows intertextual links to other bands which have considered this in the past. This is a very interesting idea which we may consider for parts of our music video when describing the complicated love story.

1. Panic! at the Disco - I Write Sins, Not Tragedies 


Although this video is not very similar to our ideas as it has a more concept based motive, the costumes and the facial expressions of the lead singer grab the eye. The video is colourful but also very sad and creepy, using, what most people refer to as ''the happiest day of their lives''- the wedding day, the director has managed it into a very confusing and maybe even frightening scenes. We are considering using this moody effect at some point in our video.

Looking at students work (Kalina & Andrea)

This is a summarise we made of the qualitative data collected after watching the first 4 videos of the MMagazine's competition on students' videos. We enjoyed viewing them and collected some very interesting ideas to use in our own project (of course after developingthe further and making them our own).