Casting For Lead Male Role

Scouting for Actors- Narrative

Eds Storyboard

This was a story board submitted by a member of the group. It shows 2 people flying across the coast then going to a house and by the looks of it one of them dying.

My Storyboard

I decided to do a storyboard with the idea there was no budget and anything was possible.

The story behind this is that a couple are walking across the coast they decide to go for a swim in the ocean and start swimming out. They start swimming out into the ocean and come across a school of fish. As the school of fish come over the main chorus comes in then as the final verse comes in the girl swims off the screen with the fish and the man is left there depressed.   

Post Modernism In Video Games

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Coast To Coast Ep 4- Equipment

Coast To Coast Ep 3 Mise En Scene

Gratification Theory

What is Gratification Theory?

Gratification Theory is when we watch something because it feels good, this could be watching a music video with action in more recent pop music videos for example. Hip-Hop does this often but the fans of this music gratification is riches showing how the artist came from nothing and now has everything.

What is the Gratification Theory for Indie Rock? 

The kind of video that normally satisfied Indie Rock is all in the location a calming beach or a forest next to a lake its all in the scenery for these kind of videos this is something we will need to heavily focus on when producing our music. To get a better understanding of the gratification factors for this genre it would be a good idea to evaluate a music video for this genre.

Mumford and Sons Hopeless Wanderer is a good example of the gratification for this genre as you can see the background is a open field with a calm atmosphere to go with the music this satisfying the audience. It is to do with the lifestyle getting closer to mind and soul and taking a break from modern times.

Influence of Social Media in the music industries

Target Audience

I did this post on Prezi about target audiences.

Working Out The Target Audience

Coast to Coast Ep 2- Deciding on the song we are doing!!

Cultural appropriation and Cultural Misappropriation the difference

Cultural appropriation is when someone of another culture adopts they style or elements of another culture. Cultural appropriation is often framed as cultural misappropriation which is framed as harmful and violating collective intellectual property rights of the originating culture. 

A good example of this is Rachel Dolezal she is a formal American Civil Rightest her self identification as black came under speculation in June after Dolezal was asked by reporters about a photo of a African American man on her Facebook she was asked if this man was her father she said yes but refused to confirm if she was black and left the interview abruptly. Her parents later exposed her saying that she "disguised" herself as an African American. They produced a copy of her birth certificate with german and Czech heritage with a very distant African link. She now describes herself as transblack.

Seeing Coast Live!!

To understand the atmosphere and Coast performing live I thought it would be best to go and see them live. This gave me an opportunity to see who Coast fans how they look and how they act. I went with a few people I know. To show the atmosphere I decided to use peoples social medias such as Snapchats and Instagram's to get videos and photos of the night to try and show the view of a fans of the band a first person perspective of the night.

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Asking for permission

We emailed the owner of the record company who own the song "Oceans" asking if we could use the song for our video we got a reply in less than a minute giving us permission.

Oceans Lyrics

Lyrics for the song we are doing.

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

And from the tips of your fingers
Down to the soles of your feet
A glimmer in your skin
That I can't believe
And take a trip to the sea
Let your hair run, run free
You're a rebel in disguise
Is that the devil in your eyes

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

Wider smiles than I've ever seen
Your little arms hug your body
This is more than I can take
You're the fruit that I can taste
You only seek what you give away
You'll only speak what you wanna say
You ululate like a warrior
I'll make you shake like your bed girl

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

This is our garden girl
We live in a fractured world
Willing to be the same
Same as it always was
We're in a rapture girl
We live in a lonely world
Willing to be the same
Same as it always was

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

We fell in love
Right by the ocean
Made all our plans
Down on the sand

Advantages and Disadvantages of Oceans by Coast

When discussing the choice of what music video to choose we got stuck between 2 choices Oceans by Coast and the song Distant Past by Everything Everything we discussed on a podcast that the best way to decide this would be to look at both songs and point out the advantages and disadvantages of both.Then have a discussion in another podcast for the final decision of what song to make a video for..

Coasts song Oceans has many advantages for us to produce as our music video one of the clues for one of the advantages is in the name of the song the advantage of living on a peninsular is that we are surrounded by ocean so this gives us plenty of opportunities for filming videos relevant to the song.




Another advantage for this is that the song is not to fast so it will be easy to lip sync and to for the person who has to learn the lyrics and the editor. This will help us out a lot as it will save us time what we can invest into more different ideas for the video rather than investing into editing lip syncing. Another advantage of doing this song is that it is in the love genre which is a big market with many stereotypes we can use the stereotypes as a blue print to follow and go against.

There are a few disadvantages of this song as this is a song about love to make our video stand out and not clash with similar videos for this kind of song we will have to make our video unique to stand out.

Distant Past-Everything Everything

To evaluate the this songs pros and cons for using this as our sing I used Prezi to view this click the link below.

Everything Everything- Distant Past Pros and Cons

Coast to Coast Ep 1-Song Selection

Weekly Blog what it will contain and why I am deciding to do it.

I feel like a weekly podcast will be a good idea to keep the blog updated as I can discuss what has happened with the group and how I am developing the music video. The first episode will be the 4 members of the group discussions the song selection this will just be audio only with a stock image behind it. A problem that could occur with this is that it could get stale to counter this I am going to try and keep it different by bringing different members of the group in maybe sometimes I might have 1 member or 2 members depending on what I am discussing. Also I will be getting different people in that I know who have a opinion on subjects depending where we are up to in the project that can give a useful insight.

Overall I am excited to get started with this podcast as I am intrigued to see what I can do with it.   

Performance vs Narrative music videos

To compare the music video styles of performance and narrative first we need to understand what each of them mean.

Performance

A performance based music video is simply that it is the band or the artist singing/playing there instruments for the whole song although this can sometimes cut to the crowd is is mostly the band/artist with little story behind the video. This makes these simpler to produce and also cheaper. These do have there advantages though as the buzz of the crowd can give you video a high tempo.




Narrative

A narrative music video attempts to tell a story it is mostly footage. The story is usually linked to the lyrics in one or another. Narrative music videos are very popular in the pop genre as this allows the audience to feel with the artist and get a deep connection by using relatable topic and subject matters.


The difference between narrative and performance is narrative allows the artist to tell a story and make the audience feel like they have a connection to the artist while with performance you can make the listener feel excited and buzz when listening to the music. Also a narrative will be a lot harder to film and cost a lot more while with performance you could just video a gig the band or artist is playing.

Katy perry Roar

We watched the music video Katy Perrys music video "Roar" while watching this I made notes on this and split it into different categories in this post I will make these notes more readable in by typing it up and clearing a few of them up. Katy Perry says her style is "painting with broad strokes".

Setting Considerations: There where 2 main settings in this music video a jungle that they made in california and a cave they made out of foam. They used a place in california where a lot of trees are grown and made it out to look like a jungle and the second scene was the cave this was easy to move around as it was light because it was made out of foam.

Equipment: There was a lot of equipment used to produce this music video they had camera and lights on a dolly. Large lights where used to light up certain stages to make the production of the music video better. Sheets where also used to control shadow as well as less glare one of the last thing I noticed was the camera on the crane for the shot where she would swing across the vine.

Props: One of the main props used in the music video where the animals they had a monkey that would climb around on her. They also brought in a trained elephant that would spray water on her during the video for one of the final scenes in the music video they had Katy Perry face to face with a trained tiger the final animal where multiple tarantulas on her body.

CGI Post Production: One of the main CGI effects was when the boyfriends dragged away for this they tied a wire on him with a harness and dragged him onto a mat onto the scene and they later added a tiger using the CGI to make it look like the tiger has took him out and eaten him.

Costume and Make Up: The costume in this took a change from a normal style of Katy Perry before this she is going from a "cupcakes and sweet girl" to a strong independent woman. Another bit of makeup they did was the layers of foundation on her face with all this makeup they still had to do soft focus close ups on her to make sure you can not see  any blemishes.

Time Period: The filming took 3 days but there where problems with timing such as the elephants eating the scenery of the jungle.

Narrative: The story of this was a couple was in a plane crash the boyfriend starts going for a walk then getting eaten by a tiger. Katy then has to make friends with jungle animals to survive with friends such as a monkey and a elephant. At the end she then has a face off with the tiger and releases her inner tiger to prove she is the queen of the jungle.

Mood Board about Indie Rock genre

Analysing Rock Indie music video Firestone

The first scene we see here is what looks like to be an abandoned hospital with a stereotypical attractive man and woman walking over to each other and kissing the woman then walk away tempting the man and leading him to walk on.

The woman has lead the man to a door and when he has opened it it leads to a forest area this has gone from a stereotypical white clean building to a forest which is natural which can give the vibe of no rules and freedom.

The man then proceeds to chase the woman through multiple doors going in and out of buildings and the wilderness as the woman teases him making sure knowing that the man knows where she is and where to go but not close enough to get hold of her.





The woman has led the man to a festival where the dance sequence of the music video starts the song is being played on instruments, the man and the woman then dance in the rave. This scene is common in indie rock music videos they are raving while the band are playing.





The woman then runs away from the man and he cant find her so he goes into a rage and starts smashing up his garage in anger until the woman comes back and the man chases her with determination not to lose her through multiple doors which led to different raves.

The music video ends with the man opening one final door and the woman is there waiting for him. The narrative of this music is a love story a man chasing a woman it is not meant to be seen as real rather a story and make you think.

Codes and Conventions of Taylor Swifts song

	Codes and Conventions
Clothing	White dresses with jewellery real diamonds to show off how rich she is. Bright red dress. Glittery show outfits.
Setting	Graveyard showing her rebirth. Throne room to show she is better than everyone else.  In a bird cage to symbolise her being trapped and now escaping. Everyone looking at her it’s all about her.
Lighting	Bright flashy sparkling lots of artificial looking lights. Lighting makes her look good.
Performance	Bright and Flashy to represent Taylor Swift
Narrative	Telling the story on how her old attitude is dead and this is a new her
Intertextual Reference	All the different Taylors that have gone before saying goodbye to all the olds hers

Postmodernism What is it?

All music videos are postmodern so we need to understand what post modernism is.

To define postmodernism would violate what postmodernism is. It pushes all normal boundaries by having none no rule set no conventions by this logic anything can be postmodern by this logic anyone can be or produce postmodernism work this doesn't make much sense but neither does postmodernism when you really think about it. In this post whatever I say about postmodernism will largely be down to opinion as that's all anyone can give on this subject just there opinion.

A lot of postmodern pieces are seen as art but by others they are just nothing a good example of this would be the work Tracey Emmins. The post modernistic "art" work known simply as "My Bed" will cause much controversy when discussed as some do not see a bed that someone has jumped out of as art these are the people that believe that art is classic paintings or sculptures but this sort of idea such as My Bed is a new wave of art postmodern art. The argument that can be put that this is art as art gives a message and make you think "My Bed" makes me look at it and see how Tracey Emmins sees life messy and uncoordinated with things in places that don't belong but if you put the time and effort in you can make the bed and you can make life back to the way it was tidy and normal.

Attributes of postmodernism are in most music videos such as parody pastiche intertextuality and many more. A good example of this is when a artist plays multiple different characters in the video this shows hyper consciousness and reminds the audience that this isn't real or mean to look real. In many pop music videos it shows a playfulness where they are having fun another attribute of postmodernism. Also a lot of parody can be seen in music videos by overhyping stereotypes. Although no music video will show all attributes of postmodernism all will show at least one or two.

Pop music genre and conventions

Pop music has a many conventions in it as it is a big genre this genre is split up to target 2 different groups your tweens (9-12) and your teens (13-19). The tweens favourite style of pop is boy bands such as JLS and One Direction the boy bands then proceed to sell a lot of merchandise a good example off this was JLS they would put there name on anything to get money as they knew it would sell. There music is made to be catchy all the boys in there are good looking for the female gaze and most of there songs are about love for example the JLS song "Everybody In Love".

A typical example of a teen pop sterotype would be a artist like


Justin Bieber he is seen by most people as a attractive young male who's song are catchy that sticks into your head he has evolved. He is Canadian singer who' stays relevant with drama this another stereotype of pop artist they will create drama then while they are in the spotlight sell there music or other merchandise for money

Disstracks how they have changed. For better or worse?

One of the most famous disstracks was 2 Pac against Biggie Small with the most iconic line of the song "You claim to be a player but I f**ked your wife" This track was made after Pac realised that Biggy betrayed him and tried to get him shot. This disstrack was a serious retaliation towards Biggie exposing him and returning the knife that was put in his back by having sexual intercourse with his ex wife.



When a member splits from a group this can cause a lot of controversy this happened with the group N.W.A as Ice Cube left the group to perform and make a name for himself this lead to the rest of N.W.A making remarks and insulting him. Ice Cube responded to this with the track "No Vaseline" With bars such as "Looking like straight bozos I saw it coming that's why I went solo" and "Ni**as with attitude who ya foolin" this track was good enough that N.W.A didn't have a response in his words No Vaseline knocked N.W.A down "like bowling pins".






A prodigy of Dre from N.W.A was a white rapper known as Eminem like his teacher the student also had "beef" that he decided to solve with a disstrack a good example of this was his beef with Mariah Carey this disstrack was not done because a friendship had ended or that a member had left a group this was done over love. According to Eminem a him and Mariah had a relationship. She denied this and said on the Larry King show that she just "Spoke to him a few times". Mariah takes the mic out of Eminem by making and having a Eminem puppet on her show. This beef went on for a few years until it was ended by Eminem's disstrack The warning which could be argued as one of the most brutal distracks off all time with bars such as "Oh did i say wh*re Nick?I meant a liar to" He also leaked personal information about there sex life as well as private voicemails.

The disstrack has took a turn for what could be argued for the worst depending on your age and if you are a fan of the rap scene. A group of Youtubers who are known as the Sidemen started to make disstracks about each over the key difference between the "new" wave of disstracks compared to the classic style is that there is no real disagreement here it is fabricated controversy for monetary gain behind the camera these are all friends and there are no real disses in the so called "disstracks" with bars such as "You evolved into the first male with t*ts".These disstracks are widely listened to a good example is a Youtuber called Jake Paul released a disstrack called "Every Day Bro" which ended up getting more downloads than well known rapper Kendrick Lemar. This style of fake distracks will have a negative effect on future disstracks as they may not be taken seriously and assumed to be fake which will make people look at there music in a different light they did not want there music viewed in.



In summary a disstrack used to be if a artist had a problem with another artist this song would have hard hitting lines which where there to insult the person and destroy there image now a days the most popular disstracks are fake "beef" with no intetion of the real insult or meaning when you really think about it.

Male Gazing

The “male gaze” invokes the sexual politics of the gaze and suggests a sexualised way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, woman is visually positioned as an “object” of heterosexual male desire. Her feelings, thoughts and her own sexual drives are less important than her being “framed” by male desire.

The male gaze is used to gain the interest of the male the women who are used for the male gaze are normally given a complex backstory to make them more then a mere sexual object. 

Goodwin's Theory

The Goodwin's theory is that a music video should follow the same pattern as the music for example if a music is about dark genre then the music video should be about the same dark genre.


There are 6 main aspects of Goodwin's theory.




1) Genre Characteristics
Goodwin argued that for a music video to be successful then the music had to have the same genre as the music video.




2) Relationship between music and videos
If a song is upbeat then the music video would be upbeat to amplify the song using the music video.




3) Relationship between lyrics and visuals


4) Often due to the demands of the record label, artists videos will include many close ups of the artist and will often develop motifs that recur across multiple videos
This allows the record label to promote a set image for the band, which will help target audiences empathise with the band.


5) Emphasis on 'looking'
 The 'male gaze' is often used to attract a male audience. The male gaze is a focus on presenting things that appeal to men. This often means a voyeuristic view of, and an objectification, of women. The emphasis on looking also includes the artist looking directly into the camera helping the audience connect with the artist.


6) Intertextual references.
Music videos reference other forms of media, most commonly film, but can also be television and other music videos.

Reggae The history of it How it is presented today and How we could use it for my music video

Reggae was is a music genre that began in Jamaica in the late 1960s, most music in Jamaica comes from a reggae style. The music has regular chops on the back beat. These are called skank and are played by a rhythm guitarist. The bass drum hits on the second and fourth beat of each bar there can also be a keyboard a organ and horns. When people think of reggae they speak of Bob Marley he is was the face of reggae with timeless songs such as buffalo soldier and I shot the sherif. People listen to reggae songs as they are relaxing the smooth calm beat lets you chill out with very light lyrics.


Reggae music could be a possibility for a our music video as the music can easily be done on a computer and the lyrics would not be as hard to write as rap for example.

Hip Hop The history of it How it is presented today and How we could use it for my music video

When making a music video we need to decide what genre of music video we will do so the best way to look at this and decide is to go into each genre and evaluate which one would be easier on this blogpost i'm going to look at rap and the potential of using this for my music video as well as the history of it, how it works and how/why it has become so popular.

Rap is rhythmic speech while with most music a music video is needed to tell a story. Rap has 3 main components "content" (what is being said) "flow" (rhythm/rhyme) and finally the "delivery" (how it is said). Rap is performed with a instrumental track behind it.

More than a century before rap exploded onto the American scene West Africans would tell stories rhythmically with just the beat of a drum for help. As Well as music raping is also considered a form of poetry and expression  these rhymes often addressed provocative subjects such as sex and violence also political issues. Rapping gained popularity in the 1970s as a form of street art it was highly popular amongst African American teenagers. In 1979 Rappers delight was brought out by The Sugar Hill gang this is a song I listen to a lot as it is on my playlist it has a smooth flow you learn and understand new parts of the song everytime you listen making it a enjoyable song. A large amount of people seemed to agree with me as the success of this single mad record companies realise the importance of rap. Throughout the years rap is no longer a just a african american piece of music it is now for all people a good example of this is Eminem he is one of the most successful rappers and he is white. By the 1990s rap had changed style from a simple lyrics to a louder more complex lyrics. Rappers such as Tupac Snoop Dog and Dr Dre this new style of rap added more of a message. For a while rap was never seemed as high up as other genres of music but recently this has changed JayZ was recently added into the Music hall of fame becoming the first rapper ever to be in there.

Rap would be hard to do a music video in if we where to do a rap music video it would be a older style of rap with simple lyrics and a slow beat. This would be one of the hardest genres of music as rap is heavy on the lyrics with some genres you can rely on the music but not with rap.

Timeline of music videos

1932
One of the earliest examples of music videos is Bessie Smith with St.Louis Blues this music videos was brought out in theatres in 1932. We are able to see so many music videos everywhere this shows the change in times compared to back to then when the first music video came out.

1956

Tony Bennet made a music video that was filmed in Hyde Park was shown across the UK and the USA he claimed to have made the first music video. Although this could be argued it was the first music video on TV that would eventually lead to stuff as Top of the pops.

1964
The Beatles where big in the music video history the style they used for the music video A hards days night is now used in most modern music videos used by contemporary artists.

1967 

The Beatles steeped it up a level with there next music video with Penny Lane the conventions used here that are now often used in post modern productions with unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing.

1970

The Jackson 5 once again changed the style of music videos with I want you back the song here portrayed more of a story this was a "cross cutting" style . The video does not focus on just the artist it cuts between different scenes allowing a more intriguing interesting video if the video is a story then you can watch it again and learn more.

1980

Queen started a new era with music videos and the introduction of "Top of the pops" which was the first time there would be a rivalry between artists.

                                      1981

At this time we had the introduction of MTV and with that the music video "Video killed the radio star". This was a high budget video and was a breakthrough in the evolution of the music video development of editing such as overlaying was first used in this video.

1982

Michael Jackson's song Thriller has been called one of the best music videos of all time it was almost a mini movie.This took high budget videos to another level you can see a clear story in the video and was easily rewatchable.


Present Day

In the generation we are in now music videos use womens sex appeal to get attraction rather than traditional methods although this is not the case for most it is the case for most. It is very hard to predict the direction in which music videos will go so i am going to assume it will stay like this for the foreseeable future.

Digipak's the history of them.

Digipak's became popular in the early 2000s amongst the record labels and the record artist as a alternate to jewel cases.It is often used for premium/ special CDs. The downsides of a digipaks compared to a jewel case is that they show signs of wear very quickly compared to jewel cases.
The original owners of the digipak was IMPAC after being sold then folded the rights to the term digipaks was sold to different companies world wide. Digipaks are custom made out of cardboard that can hold more than one disc which are held in place with plastic trays that are glued to the cardboard. Although digipaks are not commonly used anymore they still give the product a expensive professional look and feel. A 6 panel digipaks allows a lot of space to express a art style or mood on the digipak with embossed text also to give it a unique different feel.