Media Studies A2 - 2: October 2012

For our task we had to deconstruct and then reconstruct a music video.
The video we decided to use was A-Team by Ed Sheeran.
Our director, Jodie, had previously over summer storyboarded the first minute of the video - we had to film the later 30 seconds.
This helped when planning locations, timings and props, however we found it easier, as we was mimicking the shots, to have the original video up on our phones to compare the shots.

Pro's and Con's

As we only had a short amount of time to plan and actually create it was hard to maintain a decent level of continuity as we had to film on different days. It was also hard to plan when to film the shots outside of lesson if needs be due to timetable issues, but we managed to over come this by using our time in lessons effectively.
By being quite confident with Adobe Premier Pro (the editing software we used to edit our footage) it was easier, convenient and a quick editing process. We was able to alter the black and white brightness and contrast according to the lighting on the individual footage by copying and pasting the attributes of one scene onto another and slightly altering the number scale for the brightness and contrast.

Music videos are created in order to promote the artist/s.
However, music videos haven’t always been around. In the 1950’s artists had to make films in able to promote their music and themselves. The most popular artists to do so were Elvis and The Beatles. Elvis became popular worldwide with such films as Jail House Rock, Blue Hawaii and Love me Tender and overall starred in 33 feature films. These films were made cheaply and quickly to keep costs as low as possible, whilst at the same time keeping profits highall as his songs were written by professionals.
In the early 60’s attitudes towards young people changed. Teens became more rebellious and girls in particular didn’t want to be like their mothers, which was expected and ultimately they challenged their views and values. The teenager was invented. The Beatles in 1964 made the film Hard Day’s Night (directed by Dick Lester) which created their consistent image. It featured a great number of close-ups in order for their fans and viewers to familiarise themselves with the band and to promote themselves. This was because the majority of The Beatles fans were not able to see them on tour as there were not arenas big enough, so the film was a way in which the fans could be closer to them. They then made a colour film, ‘HELP!’ which linked in with their previous films.
Bob Dylan released a documentary called ‘Don’t Look Back’ (directed by D.A Pennabaker) in 1967 about Dylan’s 1965 concert tour of England. It has been regarded as the first ever music video even though it’s just on the beginning of the documentary. In the video Dylan was challenging people and their views as he was one of the first artists to write his own songs with lyrics with much meaning.
In 1967, just shortly after Dylan’s documentary, The Beatles made ‘I am the Walrus’ where their image became more ‘wild’. This is exemplified at the end of the video were there are vocals talking over the song to which it says ‘umpa umpa stick it up your jumper, everybody smoke pot’, which again illustrates their new ‘wild’ image but also creates a platform for when the ‘teenager’ began to get more rebellious, leading into the ‘Hippy’ 70’s.
David Bowie in 1972 released a ‘futuristic’ music video to his song ‘Space Oddity’. During the performance styled video we see lots of major close-ups and regular close-ups of Bowies face in order to promote him as a star and to create his ‘weird’ quirky image; now a convention of a music video. It was filmed in a recording studio and simply edited in post-production with a red-tint-wash to make it look futuristic and space-like.
1975 saw rock band, Queen, release ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ which was at number one for nine weeks and cost £5000 to make the video; which was very expensive in those days. Regarded as the first ‘real’ music video (opposed to Dylan’s where it’s at the start of his documentary) the band gives off a ‘glam-rock’ image in the performance element of the video, this is down to costume; big hair, out-there costumes and dry ice machines. Low angles are recurrent throughout the video as they make the artists look dominant and powerful; an image they wanted to achieve and remain constant, this now is a convention of the cinematography is rock music videos.
The development of the music video gradually got better and in the early 80’s Peter Gabriel released ‘Sledge Hammer’ which made videos become more vital for artists. Gabriel used imagery to interpret lyrics; there were also aspects of animation in there too.
As music video’s got better, bands and artists began to experiment more.
Michael Jackson made short film Thriller which made millions of dollars and cost a million dollars to create. It follows a narrative structure and uses horror conventions and codes (semiotics). It uses performance and dancing. It also has intertextual references and is self-reflective and aware of itself as a media text as at points Michael will look at the camera directly. Throughout the 80’s and early 90’s we saw the humorous, self-reflective video by The Beautiful South with ‘A song for whoever ’. The video is self-aware of itself as a media text which creates humour; it also has elements of performance and narrative but doesn’t have any link with the song lyrics. To be quite artistic it also features colour isolation, which was seen as advanced. A lot of artists began to use intertextual references for example Madonna and her video Vogue presented Madonna looking almost identical to glamorous Marilyn Monroe as the video is projecting the audiences desires. Also REM’s video to ‘Losing my Religion’ where it represented the fact that religion has been shattered so man is creating his own, they do this by showing angles losing their wings. In the 1990’s Fat Boy Slim changed music videos ultimately as he didn’t star in his own video to his song ‘Right here’. The majority of the video is comprised of CGI and it shows the process of evolution.
Radio head in the late 90’s used black and white in their video to ‘Street Spirit’ to give an abstract and artistic interpretation but it has no meaning however because its abstract we still enjoy it. Weezer ‘Buddy Holly’ in the late 90’s was very advanced and used clips from TV show Happy days in the video to look like they was actually there. It’s very humorous and enjoyable for the audience and fans because it gives you something to look at.

Genre is a category and conventions are what you expect from a specific genre. Music can be divided into many genres; this is due to the different purposes behind them and the different points of view from which they are made. Genres often overlap creating many sub-genres. For example ‘Indie-Rock’, which I am going to explore in more depth, is a sub-genre of ‘Alternative-Rock’. Alternative-Rock originated in the 1980’s and became popular in the 90’s bringing us music by artists such as ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’, ‘Nirvana’ and ‘Foo Fighters’. Indie-Rock also came about in the 80’s, however bands never really got any commercial success until the millennium as a result of the changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the internet. Independent music, ‘Indie’, is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels or their subsidiary. Independents have a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to recording and publishing which means they have a very little expenses and everything has to be done low-budget. Nevertheless artists have artistic freedom to be themselves therefore they are able to explore sounds, emotions and subjects limited to appeal to mainstream audiences.
As the Indie-Rock genre is so big, there are many sub-genres, however when anyone thinks of indie-rock as a whole certain elements come to mind such as all bands play their own instruments and bands are very male dominated. This is subverted with band Florence and The Machine. Florence Welch has been compared to other female singers such as Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, PJ Harveyand Björk. During an interview, Welch cited Grace Slick as her influence and "hero" Florence and the Machine's style has been described as "dark, robust and romantic. Their music is a mix of "classic soul and midnight-on-the-moors English art rock". Florence Welch stated that her lyrics related to Renaissance artists: "We're dealing with all of the same things they did : love and death, time and pain, heaven and hell".