Sunday 31 October 2010

Chosen Song!

The song we have chosen that is Jackie Boyz train of thoughts. It falls under there genres RnB, Pop and Soul but the dominant genre is RnB

Jackie Boyz

For this A2 media coursework we have been told to find an unsigned artist or band and use their songs for our work because if we choose one of the top artists our work will always be compared to theirs and won’t be as high class as their music video.

We have been researching unsigned artists on unsigned.com we came across a group we all liked, they are called Jackie boys and they are one top unsigned group on this site. There are two group members in this band, Carlos and Steve Battey. As individuals, they started their music career singing at the pier on River Street in Savannah, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Their inspiration and love for music was instilled in them by their mother Jackie. The Jackie Boyz had a rough couple of years when their father died in 2003, and their mother died the year after. The loss of their parents influenced them to leave Savannah Georgia and pursue their music careers. The duo arrived in LA three years ago and have been producing music ever since. Singing isn’t the only talent these duo have they also write songs and have written songs for many of the top RnB artists. Some of the songs they have written are: Sugar- Flo Rida ft Wynter Gordon, Revolver- Madonna ft Lil Wayne, Eenie Meenie- Justin Bieber ft Sean Kingston and many more.


Sunday 24 October 2010

What The Audience Think

We went to the other media class and played our chosen song and asked them how they think the music video of this song would be, what are the thoughts that come to their mind when they listen to this song. We told them to give us feedback on what editing techniques they we should use, what locations we should film in, what the actors should look like and anything else extra they would like to add.

Editing:

  • On the beat
  • Fast cuts
  • Shots of people other than actors

Locations:

  • Club- lighting dim
  • Club scene
  • Urban sceneDark background

Characters:

Male:

  • Big Jacket
  • Craig David
  • Usher
  • Young black
  • Not street
  • Classy
  • Blazer
  • Straight Jeans

Female

  • Stilettos
  • Skirt
  • Tart

Others:

  • Dancing
  • Low angle shots
  • Camera sometimes at girl
  • Voyeurism
  • Mesmerised by beauty
  • Video all about to get girls attention
  • Close up girl every now and then

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Music Video Analysis- Let It Rock

This song, “Let It Rock” by Kevin Rudolf and Dwayne Carter Jr. (Lil Wayne) This song falls in the genre rock as well as hip hop and these genre characteristics are very vivid throughout the music video. The video starts off with flashing lights and a man with his hood up and holding a microphone on a Mic-stand on a stage. One of the basic genre characteristic of a rock music video is flashing lights and sometimes microphones as well. In addition to that the hooded top implies that this music video this is from the hip hop genre. When the audience see this, they can instantly tell which genre or genres this music video will fall under so they already know whether or not this music will be the type of they usually listen without even having to listen to the lyrics.

There is an illustrating relationship between lyrics and visuals. In the video there is a part where they sing “let it rock” there is a long shot of Kevin and Lil Wayne are on the stage with their hands up and people in the audience jumping up with the song. By “let it rock” they mean lets all have fun and party so the director of this video got people to jump up with the beat to illustrate people having fun and partying.

There is also a relationship between the music and the visuals of this music video. At some parts of the video, the shot changes with the drum beats, so each time the drum beats there is a different shot.

As this music video is the debut song for Kevin Rudolf the main aim of it is to promote and sell the artist. This is done by constant close up shot and low angle shots of Kevin showing him singing, playing a guitar/drum or just him stand showing what clothes he’s wearing. All directors do that when it is a debut video of an artist because people will now know who he is so these range of shots will tell the audience more about him, in this situation, the director is telling it’s audience that Kevin is a multi-talented artist, he can sing play the guitar/drums and his clothes suggest that he’s a hip hop artist. Even though the camera doesn’t focus on Lil Wayne as much he is the main promotion of this music video because in the music industry Wayne is one of the top artist and the reason why the music will sell. This technique is used by nearly all music directors, when they want to promote a new singer they put them in a music video with an artist that is on top of the music charts for that genre to attract more audience.

There is a frequently reference to notion of looking. Everyone in the music video is constantly looking at the singers as they are on a stage singing and everyone is following what they are doing. This is again done to show that the main focus of this video is the two artists. There isn’t as much use of female sex appeal like all hip hop and R&B videos but still there is some. Every time there is a shot of the audience jumping up or just dancing to the music, the camera always focuses of a female but this is done so quickly that you don’t even realise.

Thursday 30 September 2010

History Of Music

Soundies- 1940s
Soundies were an early version of the music video: three-minute musical films, produced in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood between 1940 and 1946, often including short dance sequences. The films were displayed on the Panoram, a coin-operated film jukebox or machine music, in nightclubs, bars, restaurants, factory lounges, and amusement centres.

Soundies covered all genres of music, from classical to big-band swing, and from hillbilly novelties to patriotic songs.

Beginning in 1941 Soundies experimented with expanding its format, and filmed comedy Soundies with Our Gang star Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Broadway comic Willie Howard, dialect comedians Smith and Dale, and silent-movie comedians The Keystone Kops. Most of these films were non-musical, and were not as well received as the musical Soundies. Soundies abandoned the comedy-sketch idea, but continued to produce filmed versions of comic novelty songs. They were regularly described and reviewed in the entertainment and music trade publications, such as Billboard.

Scopitone early 60s
Scopitone is a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. It was a prototype of music video. The Italian Cinebox/Colorama and Colour-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time.

Based on technology developed during World War II, colour 16 mm film clips with a magnetic soundtrack were designed to be shown in a specially designed jukebox. The first Scopitones were made in France.

Scopitones spread to West Germany, where the Kessler Sisters burst out of twin steamer trunks to sing "Quando Quando" on the dim screen that surmounted the jukebox. Scopitone went on to appear in bars in England, including a coffee bar in Swanage where Telstar was a favourite. By 1964, approximately 500 machines were installed in the USA.

1960s
One of the earliest performance clips in 1960s pop was the promo film made by The Animals for their breakthrough 1964 hit "House Of The Rising Sun". This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set; it features the group in a lip-synched performance, depicted through an edited sequence of tracking shots, close-ups and long shots, as singer Eric Burdon, guitarist Hilton Valentine and bassist Chas Chandler walked around the set in a series of choreographed moves.

1970s
The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. This was still experimental.

Early 80s
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV (Music Television) launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skilful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.

In 1983, the most successful and influential music video of all time was released — the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film. That video, along with earlier videos by Jackson for his songs "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", also was instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV. Earlier, such videos had been rare: according to MTV, this was because it initially conceived itself as a rock-music-oriented channel, although musician Rick James was outspoken in his criticism of the cable channel, claiming in 1983 that MTV's refusal to air the music video for his song "Super Freak" and clips by other African-American performers was "blatant racism".

Late 80s-90s
In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 (then known as "VH-1: Video Hits One"), featuring softer music, and meant to cater to an older generation than MTV. MTV Europe was launched in 1987, and MTV Asia in 1991. Another important development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many videos had on British TV at the time), without presenters. Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art computer graphics.

The video for the 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" established the use of computer animation, and helped make the song an international hit. In 1986, Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" used special effects and animation techniques developed by British studio Aardman Animation. The video for "Sledgehammer" would go on to be a phenomenal success and win nine MTV Video Music Awards.

In 1988, the MTV show Yo! MTV Raps debuted; the show helped to bring hip hop music to a mass audience for the first time.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Audience

There isn’t really a specific age group of target audience for music video. It is more about the people who listen to the genre of music the music video falls in. The music you listen to in some ways defines the person you are for example if a person listens to classical music people will instantly think they are well educated and sophisticated.

The genre that we have chosen is R&B and the main audience of this genre is teenagers to young adults, but some older generations like R&B too. This type of genre is closely related with glamour, money and drugs which is one of the main reason why teenagers like to listen to it.

The group of people that music video have the effect on is the youth. This is because the youth are the ones that get influence by what they see. What they see in the music video influences they way they talk, walk and the clothes they wear, as they try to copy the music artist and also because they see these videos almost every day seeing that there are loads of music channels ie MTV, Channel AKA and many more, which is why we want to make a music video in this genre.

According to Stuart Hall in his Reception Theory he said that, media "text" be it a book, movie, or other creative work, is not simply passively accepted by the audience, but that the reader/viewer interprets the meanings of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. This is why we need to keep the audience in mind through the whole process of filming the music video. For example, in a music video if a female artist is wearing clothes that is a little revealing, a six year old might find it disturbing but a male teen 15+ might find it ok or normal.

Audience use media text use media text for many reasons. Blumer And Katz’s Uses and Gratification theory suggests that audience use media for three main reasons. Firstly, Diversion, the audience might feel as if they can escape from their everyday problems and routine by consuming media text, whether it’s listening to music or watching films. Another reason why audience use media is because of personal relationship, they use media for emotional or other interaction. They get emotionally linked with the media. One final reason Blumer And Katz say is personal identity. People learn more about themselves through media; they reflect themselves to the media text and start copying what they see as they use media to define who they are.

Monday 27 September 2010

Sweding Task- Britney Spears

Skills: Storyboarding/Filming

By doing this task we learnt a lot about planning what we are going to film before actually doing it and the usefulness of storyboarding. Doing a storyboard before actually filming helped because we then knew exactly what to do when filming each shot; it worked as a guide line on what we had to do.One thing we came aware of when filming the dance routine is that, lip-syncing and dancing is quite hard because when dancing the facing movement are quite hard to see due to the quick body movements

By having to cameras shooting the same shot from two different angles made it easy to edit the clip and also gave us a range of shots to work with and we could play around with the angles.

To have a good crew manager is very important because they can then guide you on what exactly you have to do even after the aid of a storyboard. They can physically show you what you have to do.