Music Video Treatment

Hello, Hello, Hello!

     We spent the lesson finalising the idea of our video. We can't just leave it like a cloud on sticky notes. No no. We need to make sure that it's clear and well thought out. Most importantly, it MUST make sense. So here goes nothing.

     Outline of Ideas: Me and my group would like our idea to revolve around a party setting. We would have the main singer  travelling through different parties in search for the 'gurus'. We would have the spot the gurus in the first party then start looking for them. After finding clues the main artist would be lead to the gurus. Hopefully a circular narrative would be possible to complete. Meaning that at the end she would visit the exact same party that she visited first, though the colour scheme would be changed and this time she would actually be able to reach the gurus that she was looking for all along.

     What resources we need: We would need a female main performer, two supporting performers for the gurus and extras for the party scenes. For props we would need glow sticks, masks for the supporting characters, a wig, bright clothing, bright makeup and a pair of boots for the main performer. Hopefully we will be able to set our scenes in a black room or a theatre with curtains. Of course we will also need lighting equipment and a tripod to stabilise the camera.

     Justification of idea in relation to genre: Dance music videos usually include everyday scenes. Like parties and people coming together. Therefore having party scenes in our video will be justified. But dance music videos also tend to have an underlying story to them, this is why we will have the main girl looking for the gurus. We will be going slightly further away from conventions by having the main character actually perform in the video since usually there is no performance and the singers are not even present. We are doing so because our chosen song has lyrics throughout.

-Greta owo

Sticky Wall!

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     We sat down with the group and threw out ideas for the music video. In order to not be messy, we stuck the on sticky notes and stuck those on a page and took a photo of the page stuck to the desk. Was that sentence not a bit like Inception? I think so, hahah. Anyways apologies for the picture's reading quality.

-Greta owo

Picking a song

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     Time to get this show on the road. The groups are set and we sent the last couple of hours deciding on what we are actually going to do with our task of making a music video. As it seems so, we needed to pick a song first. It was an interesting task to complete and to make it more simple we chose a random song each and discussed pros and cons of each and this is what we all collectively decided upon.

Caravan Palace - Dragons

Pros: 

• Relatively unknown band.
• barely known musical style.
• Very upbeat song.

Cons:

• Song is way too long.
• Hard to put in performance.

Studio Killers - Friday Night Gurus

Pros:

• Unknown band.
• Dace music lets us take many approaches.
• Upbeat song.
• Performance opportunities.

Cons:

• The band is signed.
• Has one album out already.

Metric - Black Sheep

Pros:

• Unknown band.
• Rock music has easy to follow conventions.
• Plenty of room for performance.

Cons:

• Performers must know how to play instruments.
• The song has been featured in a film and is widely know because of it.

     After much discussion we decided that we are going to produce a video of Studio Killers - Friday Night Gurus. It had the most pros and our chat on what we could do for the video had the most ideas for the song.

-Greta owo

Narrative Structure Time

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     It's this time again, whoever reads my blog. Yes, yes time to learn things. Today we talked about narrative....the classical narrative I mean, so I would say it's time for me to relay the information here. The flood gates are open, the information is spilling out.......now!

     Narrative Structure is basically a framework in which the narrative is presented to a reader, listener or viewer, which ever applies in the context. The narrative structures include plot and the setting. Generally speaking narrative of any possible kind of work contains three aspects. They are plot, theme and resolution. This can also be divided into three sections too which would turn into the three-act structure: Setup, Conflict, Resolution. 

     Act One, the setup. Here all the main characters are introduced. This includes their personality, surroundings, relationships and what not, just the basic situation. But this only contains a primary and very shallow level of characterization. During setup, a problem is also introduced in order to more the story forward by giving the characters a sudden drive to change things and stop being passive. 

     Act Two, the conflict. This is usually the biggest part of the story. It begins when a catalyst forces the main characters to act out of their ordinary set days and this sets the whole plot rolling down the hill. Act two is also the part of the story in which characters undergo major changes in reaction to what is happening in the plot. Because of this the Conflict is also sometimes called Character Development or Character Arc.

     Act Three, resolution. The problem of the story boils over - forcing the character to face it. Think the epic battle towards the end of every more action packed film. In act three all of the elements of the story come together which inevitably leads the story to it's end.

     Of course not every narrative based piece follow this structure. Especially not music videos. Another quite popular narrative concept is the Non-Linear Narrative. It is a narrative that does not follow the story in a step-by-step fashion. For example it is often broken up. We might get to see the ending before even reaching the middle of the story. Though Flashback Narratives are often confused with true Non-Linear Narratives. The following ones are broken up in multiple sections, but in Flashback narrative  the audience starts by briefly seeing the end, but the going back to the beginning, experiencing the story in a linear fashion AND surpassing the previously seen ending. Music videos usually operate a non-linear narrative, moving back and forth withing the story line and rarely ever showing everything step by step, beginning-middle-end.

-Greta owo

Rock, Hip Hop & Dance. Convention time!

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     Time to talk about conventions of music videos of different genres. We cannot lie, conventions are a thing and they are quite often stereotypical. In the lesson we looked at three very different genres and a few videos from each. These were my findings of the conventions:

• ROCK
• Concert
• Band playing the instruments
• Performing.
• Dark, rather tight clothing
• Story to the music not on the same shots as the band
• Close ups on the band members, mainly the lead singer
• Extreme close ups on the instruments
• When an instrument comes to play, camera focuses on it.
• Usually dark with high key focused lighting.
• Band members – sweaty.
• Quick camera movements.
• Abandoned/empty places.
• A lot of tattoos, piercings, spikes, make up.
• CIEROSCURRO

• HIP HOP
• Expensive cars,
• Baggy clothes.
• Beautiful women
• Lots of money,
• Parties,
• Clubs,
• Night time,
• Night Life,
• Gold jewellery,
• Oversized sports clothing for men, tight, revealing clothing for women,
• Women dancing, in a way used as props
• Men surrounded by people and women.
• Expensive alcohol, like rum, whiskey, champagne.
• Limousines
• Las Vegas
• HEDONISM

• DANCE
• Street
• People getting together.
• Relevant storyline.
• House parties
• Street sport.
• Hope.
• Human life stories.
• Everyday
• Relevant to ordinary people.
• Hand held camera.
• Friendship.
• Freedom.
• LIFESTYLE

-Greta owo

Laura Mulvey!

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     Yes, yes, I am back, contain your excitement, please. I would personally like to say that I missed this place but also I'd like to dive into work as quick as possible.

     Today's lesson was rather exciting I would say. We got introduced to.........well the title says it but let me have my little introduction, please. We got introduced to Laura Mulvey and her male gaze theory. More about that later, because naturally I looked up the woman and this is what I found from my trusty companion that is the internet;

     Laura Mulvery was born on August 15 in 1941 and she is a British feminist film theorist! Exciting, I know. And currently this little lady is a professor of film and media studies in Brikbeck, University of London. Her most known essay is titled "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and if you are interested you can read more about it here. Mulvey is influenced by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan and states that she intends to use their theories and concepts as political weapons. And this is where the Male Gaze theory comes in. Laura Muvey used the concepts of Freud and Lacan on Classical Hollywood Cinema to argue that through the editing and shots the viewer was always put in a masculine position with females on screen displayed in appealing way to make them the objects of desire. In classical Hollywood the main characters were overwhelmingly male (they still are today) and of course the viewers were encouraged to relate to them. In the mean time, the women on screen, bared their main purpose of being pretty and being looked at. The women were mostly displayed in a voyeuristic fashion. Mulvey suggests that film and cinematography are centered on the ideas and values of a patriarchy. Within her essays she touches on several different types of spectatorship in film viewing. Viewing a film involves subconsciously relating to and understanding the male and female roles. The main idea that Mulvey brings out it that the action of 'looking' is generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of 'being looked at' is a female characteristic. Laure Mulvey argues that it's because cinematography  is usually tied to patriarchal expectations is the reason why the women in films are tied to desire and are present in their costumes to convey visual and erotic impact. With a male as a main character in a film female actresses are rarely ever meant to play characters that directly impact plot or keep the story going. They are inserted into the film to support the male character and be the sexually objectified since the male role cannot achieve that.

"It is said that analysing pleasure or beauty annihilates it. That is the intention of this article"

-Laura Mulvey

-Greta owo