Music video theories 2/4

The Carol Vernallis Theory

2) Diegesis

Diegesis in music videos is known as the "world" inside the video. It is always revealed slowly allowing interventions, and a story to develop over time. Repetition is key in a music video because it allows the artist to get a message across through the concept of quantity, it means that they can create a world for their song through the video An example of this:

While we are exploring the "world" of the video, we see how are protagonist (Jared Leto) feels, reacts, and does. The theme of war is the point of the video and the message is to stop war, Jared Leto acts as a solider in this video. 

• Movements may move to the music, this can be character movement or object movement, i have used this in my own music video and it  can be seen in the video above too.

• There may be times when the audience does not understand the Diegesis - Gaps in time and space, music, performance, and narrative.

Using this theory, I understand the need to focus on music, and time progression and movement along with the music. I have learned that i need to openly and slowly show the story of my video to the audience.

Read more

Music video theories 1/4

In the last few days I have been analysing theories of Music Videos. One of the theories I am going to cover is the Carol Vernallis Theory.

I read part of Carol's research which was titled - The Kindest Cut - Functions and meanings of Music Video Editing. Carol Vernallis's theory revolve's around four different and important concepts.I am going to break them down. They are: 1. Narrative 2. Diegsis 3. Camera Movement and Framing 4. Editing (I will be submitting a detailed post about this) I am going to analyse each of these concepts and I will establish what they mean, and how they can benefit my music video since this is research for it.

1) Narrative

• A music video is a visual response to the song and lyrics, not the other way around. The video should be support the lyrics meanings and song, but the artist/star will remain dominant, this is to appeal to an audience.
• There does not need to be a  balance between narrative and performance. A song can have a full video of narrative, or full of performance or a mixture. Most of the time performance takes prominence in order to to show of the star and song more

• A example of a music video that is purely performance is Martin Garrix - Wizard

The video is 95% percent performance, its only real focus throughout the whole video is Martin Garrix and him entertaining his crowd. This is just one example of how a video can be focused on performance rather than narrative, I may use this theme in my own music video. This video is the same it focuses on performance but it has a narrative with it and this gives me more ideas for my own music video.

This video is Fall out boy - Dance Dance

• Carol Vernallis says that there at the end of the music video it may not give a real ending or clear closure for the audience. The narrative is not always finished, It can be a fragment, the story does not have to be finished

• The narrative may appear disjointed - There is no need for continuity in a music video, this would make the audience focus on the video, not the song, trying to follow the story. If the video is jumping from performance to scene repeatedly, the focus remains on the stars and song since it makes the audience aware of the artists.

• Something still needs to drive the video forward, however, it's usually not the narrative, this may cause the video to ask questions it doesn't actually answer, it leaves the audience guessing, and wanting more from the artist.

• There many indeed by a narrative theme running through the video, but usually in a montage theme, throwing it together since continuity is not needed for a music video.

Read more

Mood Board

I have now been placed in my group and we have decided on using the genre of  'Dance' for our own music video. In our group we each discussed our own personal taste in music and what we favour, me and john both love dance music and instantly put this idea forward, Liam also enjoys this genre but wanted to do something around the theme of RnB. We discussed the possibilities of both genres and finally decided on Dance music. 

I have decided to create a mood board which relates to my favourite genre dance music/EDM. The mood board consists of many known Djs and some underground ones. The mood board contains artists such as Hardwell, Tiesto, Calvin Harris, Armin Van Buuren and Blasterjaxx. 

Here is my mood board - 

Read more

Three Artists

In lesson we had to choose three songs/artists we really liked so we could start creating some ideas for our music video and get some inspiration. My favourite genres of music are mainly dance music and rock music. 

Firstly my favourite artist is the dutch sensation  - Armin Van Buuren 

Armin van Buuren is a Dutch music producer and DJ. He is known for mostly playing progressive trance. Van Buuren has won a number of accolades, including the #1 spot on DJ Magazine's Top 100 DJs fan poll a record of five times, including an unprecedented four consecutive years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and again in 2012. He is currently the #3 DJ on DJ Magazine's Top 100 DJs poll for 2014.

Armin Van Buuren has been a inspiration on my personal life as his music really inspired me to create my own music and want to learn more about the genre of dance music. Armin's music videos are always fun to watch and have a deep meaning in each one. If my music video is based around dance music he will be the first source of inspiration for me. 

My second favourite artist is the rock band - Enter Shikari 

Enter Shikari are an English four-piece rock band formed in 2003. They are well known for their crossover style incorporating post-hardcore and various heavy metal with elements of various electronic genres, such as industrial, dubstep, trance, and occasionally drum and bass. Their debut album, Take to the Skies was released on 19 March 2007 and reached No. 4 in the Official UK Album Chart.  Their third studio album, A Flash Flood of Colour was released on 16 January 2012 and was positioned at the top of the UK Album Chart for almost its entire week of release.

Enter Shikari are a very unique band and their style of music is clever. Enter shikari are the first band I seen live and since then I have not stopped loving their music. I have been fans of the band for six years and have kept up with all their songs and music videos throughout them six years. Enter shikari have very unique music videos and I believe they are great research for my own music video.

My third favourite artist is the DJ - Hardwell

Robbert van de Corput, better known by his stage name Hardwell, is a Dutch progressive and electro house DJ and music producer. He was voted the world's #1 DJ on DJ Magazine's annual Top 100 DJs poll in 2013 and then, again in 2014. Hardwell is widely known for his live sets at major music festivals such as Tomorrowland and Ultra. The video streams of his performances on his personal YouTube channel have collectively garnered more than 100 million views.

 Hardwell has been one of the biggest artists in dance music for the past few years, his music is enjoyable for alot of audiences. Hardwell produced around five music videos in 2013 this is alot for a dance music artist. I believe hardwell has the best music videos for any other dance music producer and this is why i believe he is good inspiration for myself and my group.

Read more

Update

Blog update 22/10/2014

On thursday I traveled to Amsterdam to take part in its yearly event of 'ADE' (Amsterdam Dance event). During this week amsterdam celebrates its ever growing culture of dance music and over 2000 Djs take part in events over 5 days. I stayed in Amsterdam for three days and for the three days I took part in events, interviews and I took many videos of my time there. The city was full of posters, videos and more which was very nice for my research in media as it has opened me up to another culture and I have begun to think about new things which I could implant into my own work.

The city was full of advertisements for events and gigs, there was near enough five posters per street, compare this to england you are lucky to see one poster every ten streets. The promotion of music in the city was very big. Here is a example of a few posters I spotted as I arrived in the city - 

Over the week Amsterdam had many buildings dedicated to listening to music, browsing the internet for events and updating yourself on what is going on in the city. I thought these were very clever and useful especially since they helped me get information on what is happening media-wise in the city.

This is a picture of one of these buildings. 

My trip to amsterdam has helped me alot and opened my mind to many more ideas for my own media work. I have many clips and images of my time which I will be uploading to my own personal blog. The trip to amsterdam has shown me the difference in how music is celebrated and promoted compared to in England,

Read more

Group Blog

We have created our Group Blog which will be for all our updates and research on our music video. I am in a group with Liam . You can find my group blog here -  

. Group Blog 2 .

The first thing we are going to look at as a group is different types of filming we can potentially do. We want to have unique shots and scenes in our music video so we have decided to experiment with different things. John and Liam have begun trying filming things in a time lapse and even underwater. I have put forward the idea of doing a aerial shot from an airplane. 

Here is a example of my experiment of filming from an airplane to create an ariel shot - 

Read more

Style Choices - Martin Garrix / House Music

On tuesday we created our groups for our music videos, I am in a group with John and Liam I was in a group with them last year and because I have experience with them already I believe we will have an advantage when completing our music video. We had to create a mood board on the different styles of music we could do for our video. I decided to put forward the idea of Dance/Progressive house music as I believe it has a lot of potential in music videos.

A song that stands out for me which I believe could be used as our song is Martin Garrix - Golden Skies. This song is a progressive house song and has alot of vocals in it. I like the idea of this song since its vocals can be shown very easily visually and a narrative can be built around them.

Im going to be highlighting the artist Martin Garrix as he has had a lot of success in his dance music videos.

Martin Garrix is an 18 year old DJ who rose to fame quickly in 2013 with his hit single 'Animals' which hit number one in more than ten countries. Martin Garrix reached the status of #4 best DJ in the world in DJ mags top 100 this year. At 18 he is the youngest successful DJ of all time.

This poster is an example of one of Martin Garrix's tour posters for America. The poster is pretty simple as it lists the location and dates of his shows on the right side in clear writing with a picture of him next to the locations. The poster is white black and green, these colours would stand out to anyone walking past. I believe the poster is simple and gets to the point which is to promote his gigs.

This is the cover album of Martins first album 'Animals'. The cover features a white lion on a black background. The lion is related to the name of the album which is 'animals'. This album is really basic as it only displays a picture of a lion and the artists name and recording label. The fact the cover album is so simple shows that he does not need it to stand out since it will be successful just from word of mouth.

This is a picture of Martin Garrix performing at a live show. A picture like this would most likely be used on his social networks to show the fun and energy at his gigs. This will promote more people to want to go to his events if they see the crowd and artist having fun.

This is Martin Garrix's music video for his song 'Wizard'. The video shows the artist traveling and performing his song in front of crowds. I believe the purpose of this video is to show people how fun his gigs while showing off his new song. The video is full of energy and happiness with people dancing. The video has no narrative or meaning it just promotes his new song and makes people want to go to his shows. 

This is a short documentary on the 18 year old DJ.

Read more

Individual Lip Sync Progress

I have been practising my iMovie skills this past week and have been trying to remove a green screen from my lip sync video and then place a image over it instead. I have used the song Linkin Park - Numb as my lip sync song. The first step I took to replace the greenscreen with a image was importing the clip of my lip sync into the iMovie project tab. After my lip sync was in I drag the image I want behind me over the video and select the option 'green screen'. By doing this it replaces the greenscreen with my image. 

Lastly I need to import the song and then put my video in sync with it, I am currently having trouble with this and may need to redo my lipsync video since I have missed some lyrics out. I will post my finished video here -


This is my first draft of my lip sync -

Linkin Park - Numb

This is the background I have used to replace the green screen - 

Read more

Lip sync presentations

Today in class we had to present our lip sync task to each other and then comment on each others blogs regarding what we thought of their lip sync. I commented on each of my classmates blogs and told them what I thought of their attempted lip sync. I will be uploading my lip sync on friday I have not had access to the green screen. In this blog post I will update it with the comments I have received on my video.

Read more

Blog Update

My blog has not been updated the past week due to personal reasons but I will be posting a lot over the weekend to keep my blog up to date with the rest of the class. I have been informed about what I have missed out on.

Read more

Lip Sync Practicing

 Before creating my lip sync I need to practice replacing a green screen with a video/image. I have created a mock up of what I will be creating here -

The process I have went through to create this is here -

  - Adding a title, to my clip.

  

- Putting the Greenscreen video over.

- Putting credits in.





Final product

Read more