Timeline of Iconic music video moments

1925 - Bessie Smith - St. Louis Blues

This is one of the very first music videos and was first shown in theatres in 1925 and is filmed completely in black and white. The video solely features the musicians playing their instruments, like someone is just recording the song being played live. As we can see, music videos have changed a lot since the 1920s.

1956 - Tony Bennett - Stranger in Paradise
This music video was filmed in Hyde Park, London and was the first music video to be broadcast on TV stations across the UK and the USA - this would then lead to the creation of TV stations specifically designed to broadcast music, e.g, MTV and Top of the Pops. 

1964 - The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night

This is one of the first music videos to feature a narrative, still being filmed in black and white. This song is also iconic because it features in a film, as well as a music video and is one of the main influences on the creating process of other music videos to come. 

1967 - The Beatles - Penny Lane 

The Beatles started changing the ideas of music video production with their next video. They  started using the codes and conventions of videos that are used by big modern post-production companies nowadays. Some of these techniques included dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing. 

1970 - The Jackson Five - I Want You Back

The 1970's saw the music video scene change with more emphasis being put on just the artist singing. This lead to the develop of the 'cross-cutting' technique in which the music video will cut between shots of the artist singing and a complementary narrative. 

1972 - Devo - The Truth About De-Evolution

This music video started off the idea of self-produced music videos, beginning the genre of the 'experimental' music video genre. 

1980 - Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

This year started a whole new style for the music video, as well as the introduction of the TV show 'Top of the Pops' - which would promote an artist's music and create a competition between them for the best song. 

1981 - The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

In 1981 it was the introduction of MTV and the first video aired was 'Video Killed the Radio Star, it was a real break-through in the evolution of music videos and as you can see it was a very high-budget video in which we can see more development in editing such as 'over-laying'. MTV was responsible for the success of artists, like Madonna, as it played a central role in their marketing.

1982 - Michael Jackson - Thriller

This music video began the idea of having a storyline music video that follows a narrative, almost like a mini movie. The video contains sophisticated visuals, taking the music video production industry to a whole new level. From then on music videos were seen as big promotional techniques and were beginning to be made with very big budgets.

1985 - A'ha - Take On Me

This comic book/live-action combination is known as 'rotoscoping' and meant the music video took 16 weeks to complete. Because of this unique-styled music video this got the artist a lot of promotion for their work, showing that technology like MTV and Top of the Pops was important for advertising new music in the 20th Century. 

2012 - Emeli Sandé - Next to Me

Most enthusiasts often like the aesthetic appeal of music videos. Many modern artists feel the need to create aesthetically pleasing music videos to show case their songs.

2013 - Iggy Azalea - Work

In the current music video era that we live in today the adoption of the 'sex appeal' of female artists has monopolised the music industry, as these methods tend to get more attention from viewers and so makes the artist more money.

Song choice & importance

Song choice is massively important for a music video. This is because the song of choice will represent the video and vice versa, so they need to work together for the product to be successful. I believe that the music video should represent the ideas within the song. So if lyrics are about a certain time, place, or narrative, then this should be shown within the video.

For our video, we decided upon a battle scene. From here, we ended up choosing the fast paced rock song 'Barbarian' by The Darkness. We chose this video because it has strong supporting lyrics that will work with the video, the heavy genre supports a battle scene, and because it is a song that most of us listen to all the time, so it will be fun working with it.
For most heavy songs, whether this be rock, metal, etc, the video will often be fast, exciting, and full of all the logos and artwork of the band. This is because the high energy level of the video is a perfect companion to the high energy level song.

Character research

How important are characters/performers in music videos/short films?

I think that characters are the second most important aspect of a film, following on from narrative. Characters can help the audience to better understand a narrative through the use of body language and emotion. If the character is looking sad then we know that the narrative is unlikely to be comically based and that it probably has a more serious meaning behind it.

Existing character profiles -
The Joker is an American villain in the Batman films and in this series he is played by Heath Ledger. He is a violent psychopath that chooses to kill innocent people for his own entertainment. He could be considered to be quite a lonely character as the audience is never told about his family or past and we always see him by himself in the films. It could be said that Batman is Joker's only 'friend' in the sense that the Joker needs Batman to keep him mischievous and depriving Gotham City from its joy and happiness. So, without Batman keeping things in Gotham in order, I don't think the Joker would be around to mess things up with his elaborate plans.
Overall I think that the Joker is a great asset to the Batman films and Heath Ledger's portrayal of him makes the character even more amazing and enjoyable to watch.

The Joker is one of the main characters of the series and so the audience will pay a lot of attention to him. In some cases the audience may feel like they are involved in the scenario and so feel frustration or anger at certain things that the character does. He is an iconic character as he is portrayed by a very talented actor, Heath Ledger, some saying that he did the best portrayal of the twisted character.
With this character Ledger was also able to mimic any personality or behaviour perfectly. For instance, in a scene in The Dark Knight we see the Joker dressed up in a nurses attire whilst he talks to Harvey Dent (the video below).

Eddie the Head is the mascot of the British heavy metal band, Iron Maiden. Eddie is an iconic character that features in some of the band's music videos. This is a memorable music video character because it is unique and not many other bands have a character that frequently features in their music videos.

The video above is of Iron Maiden's song 'Speed of Light', in which we see the character of Eddie travelling through different iconic games.

 

Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), from Memento, is an ex-insurance investigator, who left his job after suffering an attack from the rapists and murderers of his wife, which left him with brain damage and the incapability of creating new memories, with the last thing he remembers is the death of his wife. The film situates him on the hunt for the killer of his wife, but his amnesia is a massive obstacle that he struggles to get over throughout the film.

 

 

 

 

Leonard is a very smart character, and figured out a system that allows him to send messages to his future self, who will soon forget that moment had ever happened. He does this by taking polaroid photos of people and places of interest for his investigation, and as for clues to his wife's killer, he tattoos himself in order to have permanent notes that he can't lose. These acts show his intelligence, and we can see that his has gotten use to losing his memory every few minutes or so, and that this system is a clever way of keeping up with his own journey.

Wuffa Re-enactment

After contacting many re-enactment groups, We have finally found one that are willing to help us by being the Vikings in our music video. The Wuffa re-enactment group are a Gorleston based group that specialist in Viking vs Saxon re-enactments. They have asked for £100 for us to have a group of 5 Vikings and 5 Saxons for the day. We agreed on this amount and will soon be organising a day to film.
Here is their website:
http://wuffa.weebly.com/

Settings in film

A setting is a time and a place in a moment of film. This could be anything from a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, to someone's bedroom. I believe that setting is incredibly important to making a successful film because it helps to set the scene for the audience. A poor or fake setting would make a story less believable.

Stereotypical settings in the common genres:

Genre	Typical Setting
Comedy	In my opinion, comedy is the only genre in which the setting options are not limited. This is because a setting can be chosen for the characters, mise-en-scene, or to create comedy itself. From the comedies that I have seen, the most common setting is one that is familiar, whether this be a school or a small town. This will be a common setting because it allows a connection between the characters and the audience.
Horror	Haunted houses, the woods, a familiar place (used to scare the audience, cause them to feel unsafe and unsure), or a very unfamiliar place (to make the audience feel lost and scared with the characters).
Romance	In teen romances, the most commonly used setting is probably schools and small towns. This is because it is a relatable setting for the typical audience, which will be teens and young adults. For older romance stories, the setting could be anything as it may be telling the tale of new love at an old age or how young love has aged over a couple’s life together. I think a suitable setting for this could be a small town during the build-up or end of a world war. This is because the war will be a very powerful equilibrium that could be used to separate or bring together the couple, and an older audience could relate to this story and setting.
Drama	In a period drama, the setting is very easy to depict and decide upon, as it has to be sensible and suit the time period. This could be a manor, a small town, or a city. Other dramas will often use normal settings that suit the time period such as a modern day city. This, such as in with many other genres, is done to create a connection between character and audience.
Documentary	The setting for a documentary is often easy to predict if given the focus of the documentary. This is because they use real footage, so the setting will be focused around the subject. For example, in a wildlife documentary, the setting during real footage would be a habitat dependent upon the species being filmed. Or for another example, a documentary on drug users would have a setting based around their homes and the streets in which they live.

Settings within our area options:

• In a kids TV show, the typical kind of setting that we would expect to see is a school. This is because it is a relatable setting to a very large majority of the target audience, which makes it more enjoyable for them to watch. While this is true for many kids TV shows, some will still try and break conventions by choosing a far more abstract setting.
• In a music video, there is not very often a common setting throughout, however most music videos will use the setting of a recording studio/stage for part/all of their video. This setting, when used, is usually used for the lip synchronization parts of the video, in which we will see the band/artist performing. The rest of the setting will usually be part of a story that may follow one or more members of the band. For our music video, we plan to use just a story and no live performance. This is because the song is only 3 minutes and we would prefer to use this short time to tell the story and show some brilliant cinematography.
• In a short film, there are an infinite possibility of settings, and these will depend upon the genre of the film. This makes genre a very important part of setting, because if you do not successfully match the setting to the genre, it can be difficult to know which genre you are trying to achieve. For example, in a horror short film, you would expect to see settings such as haunted houses or dark alleys, so if you were to create a horror film with a light and 'happy' setting, this would not work for the genre, and the film would appear to be mocking a traditional horror film. However, as I have said in previous posts before, conventions can be broken, and it may be that the setting of a film is changed to shock the audience.

With regards to the mise-en-scene, setting is very important as it allows the characters, props, costumes etc. to work together in an environment that helps to portray the time period in which it is based. For example, a Victorian style film with Victorian costumes, props, and character names would be unfinished without a fitting Victorian era setting.

Auteur Theory

Here is our presentation about our chosen director Edgar Wright. This is all ours from the group (me, Dan Saker, Luke Bates and Becca Stimpson).

Rough script:

Edgar Wright was born on April 18th 1979 in Dorset. He is a director and writer know for Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and The Worlds End. His interesting style of fast editing,  whip pans and crash zooms have made him a well respected director. He also mainly work with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as well as using deadpan humour in fast-paced moments. I’m going to look at his different films and show the effects and styles of Wright that I might want to use in my music video or short film.

The first film we will look at is the first is Shaun Of The Dead, which was released in 2004. A parody of zombie horror films, it put the normal Simon Pegg in an extra-ordinary scenario. The film was mainly influenced by George A. Romero, who is a director of lots of zombie films like Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead, which this film’s name comes from. Wright also references Romero’s films a lot. Shaun Of The Dead uses a lot of whip pans and crash zooms to move from one shot to the next, and also display time moving on quickly. With the whip pans in Shaun Of The Dead, the director of photography was David M. Dunlap, who worked on Goodfellas, was able to do the whip pans on set instead of speeding them up in the editing. This made these kind of shots more realistic and less digital. He also likes having the same shot but the time of day moving on very fast, to keep the fast pace of the film going. In Shaun of the Dead, there are lots of fast action style editing for the simple things like Shaun getting dressed. I like this type of edit and want to use it for our short film or music video, as it can move small things like this on really quickly. Edgar Wright said that the trick with Shaun Of The Dead was to pull it off that “it’s a zombie film which isn't really about the zombies. That you could go through the script and replace all the zombie elements with any other obstacle, be it traffic jam, power cut of thunder storm.”

The next film we will look at is Hot Fuzz, which was released in 2007. Like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz was another parody but this time a parody of police action films. Wright is a huge fan of action films, so this film is packed with all the same effects and shots he used in Shaun. He very much liked quick crash zooms to show a set up, like when Pegg was loading up with weapons. All these shots are very short and snappy, and move the story on. A very clever thing that Wright does in Hot Fuzz is his ability to story tell in a minimal amount of time. Normally if a director is moving from one scene to another he will have a shot of buildings and cars with music in the background, but Wright does things differently, as shown by this scene [show scene of Pegg moving from police station to the small town]. Wright does something completely different to the norm, turning the normal music you would hear completely down and the sound effects up, which adds to the comical aspect of the film as well. It’s all very inventive and different. Lots of times in Hot Fuzz (and Shaun Of The Dead, but mainly Hot Fuzz), Wright will take the simplest of scenes and find new ways of doing them, as well as things popping up or leaving the frame in funny ways. Martin Scorsese always said that “Cinema is a matter of what is in the frame and what is out of the frame”, and Wright uses this quote in lots of his films. Hot Fuzz also takes the most boring bits of police work and montages it in a funny, exciting, Michael Bay style. Wright also likes close ups in his films, taking influences from Scorsese who he has quoted as being the “king of the close ups”

The last one of Edgar Wright’s films we will look at is Scott Pilgrim vs The World, which is a very different style to Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead. In this film, Wright has taken loads of references from the comic itself, as well as many other video games and comics like Mario. He  also uses many of his previous styles like smash cuts, whip pans etc, but as well as this uses a lot of comic book style special effects like POW’s on the screen when someone has been hit, or lives in the corner of the screen, since this film is based off a series of comic books. This makes the film unique and appealing to all sorts of different types of fans. One cool transition effect that Wright does in this film is have the lights completely turned off to pitch black, to then come back on to reveal a different setting. He did this by turning off the actual lights on set, to make it more authentic. This also keeps the pace of the film up and engages the audience. His use of same scene transitions of time, as well as fast paced shots in simple scenes like conversations or getting changed, adds to the excitement of the film. The editing of Scott Pilgrim especially shifts reality, and moves the element of time really quickly. This way Wright is able to have better content in the film, as well as some comical content too.

So that's almost everything we like about the Edgar Wright style, most of which we hope to incorporate into our music video. Thanks for listening

Presenting our ideas to a panel

To obtain a larger opinion on our music video plan, we pitched our idea to 4 people who we had not before. This was done to hear the thoughts of more people, and to ask if they have any ideas of how we could improve our idea. Below is the video.

 

I think that the pitch went very well, and we received some very positive and useful feedback. After the pitch, we have been less overly ambitious with our idea, removing some ideas that we had (such as the video featuring the band), because we came to the reality that this is very unlikely. This pitch has made me determined to show that as much as our idea may be ambitious with some factors, such as a Viking group, I believe we can achieve it.

Narrative within genres

Narrative is obviously one of the most important things about a short film - it is what the entire project is based around!

 

Depending on the genre chosen for the short film dictates the possible narratives that could be made from this.

• action - a narrative in this genre typically explores the ideas of good vs bad and the 'battle' between the two sides. It may be adrenaline-filled like a gun fight or car chase, or a simple dispute between two opposing sides.
• horror - a stereotypical narrative of a horror short film involves helpless female character(s) that become under attack by aliens or by a psychopathic murderer. One of them usually ends up dying and the other survives, escaping from where they encountered the 'bad'. There may not be a resolution to this narrative and we may not find out who or what caused all this.
• comedy - obviously the narrative to this genre has some comical aspects to it, but it can also be combined with romance to create a romantic comedy. A typical narrative to a 'rom-com' features a woman and a man and we follow their relationship. Although it's not actually a short film, Friend's With Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, is a very good example of a romantic comedy.

• romance - a romance short film usually features the narrative of a young woman and man. Within this narrative we will see their relationship and the memories they get to share with each other. A typical aspect of a narrative in this genre is that, for whatever reason, the couple may temporarily split, but they usually find their way back together in the end.

 

Narrative in a music video can sometimes be less common, as some music videos may tend to focus solely on performance rather than narrative.

 

An example of a music video like this is Listen to the Man by George Ezra. There is no narrative to his music video, we simply just see the artist and famous English actor Sir Ian McKellen. Another example of a narrative-less music video is Here It Goes Again by OK Go - they simply just drive around in a car singing.

 

 

There are many examples of music videos that feature narrative, one of which being Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects.



Ideas update

Since the last post, we have decided to create a music video and not a short film. This decision was finalised when we got a reply from Viking re-enactment group 'Wuffa'. They told us that they would be willing to bring 12 members of their group (fully dressed and trained with weapons) to our filming day to star in our music video. Usually they will charge £200 for the day, but because we are students, and because our location is close to theirs, they are only charging us £100. At less than £10 for each Viking, we think that this was a great opportunity and accepted without hesitation. Next to do is much more planning towards our video. This will include storyboarding, planning shots, organising props etc.

Idea for video

Me, Luke, Becca and Dan have thought of a few ideas for A2 coursework. At first we thought of doing a short film with a big battle set in medieval times, to then cut at the end to children playing in a playground. We took this idea from the preliminary task that me and Becca created last year, which we made for our AS Media coursework (video below).

We now are thinking of doing a music video to Barbarian by The Darkness (again, video below). We are still thinking a medieval battle of some sorts, with the ending 30 seconds being shots of kids playing the scene with stationary instead of the battle, symbolising the battle to all be fake and their imagination. Then ending shot will be of the headmaster turning away with a sword or something that was obviously in the battle behind his back.

All of this is not at all planned but will be in the future. We are also hoping that The Darkness themselves will be able to appear in the music video, maybe one of them taking the role of the headmaster at the end. We think this would add a really nice twist to the "story" of the video. We have contacted The Darkness to try and arrange this. We also are going to try and get in contact with the narrator at the start of the song, to also have him cameo in the video.

We still need to contact a few more people to really get moving with this idea. Hopefully this idea can let us be creative with our camera techniques, and use styles of film directors like Edgar Wright (whom we have been researching), and Spike Jonze.

The actual video for Barbarian by The Darkness, including the person who we want to narrate at the start of the battle.

Our preliminary task from last year, from which our idea sparked into life.


We are hoping that our music video (or short film depending on what The Darkness say) can be an improvement from our AS coursework last year. I would like to include more advanced style shots and have better editing. Obviously the whole idea is bigger than it was last year, so hopefully with a bigger story plan it will mean a bigger story.