Music Video Ideology

During a lesson we discussed ideology, which is a system of meaning inherent to a specific culture that allows us to define the world and make value judgements about it.

We also discussed the idea that this ideology allows us to 'normalise' media texts, accepting the behaviour or values it holds as part of its conventions. An example of this is the media representing social interaction and social institutions. Because these representations are repeated they are reinforced into broad social definitions.

For example, a video I put on here for 'Headbutt' by The King Blues has a very 'British' style to it, due to low production values and being filmed in grimy/run down areas, which are conventions of British cinema. It is also reminiscent of communist principles, especially those of Vladimir Lenin, due to the video showing that the people in it are happy living in run-down areas, and that it is good to be a part of the lower classes. While it is easy to tell the style of music is linked to punk, it is only loosely related, as there are more links to other genres such as folk, by singing about love. There are also influences from rap music, such as the type of hat the singer wears and the way he moves his hands while singing. This shows that while there are many ideological conventions taken from other genres, the feel for this type of music is very low production values and simple video styles.

A different viewpoint in this genre could be shown with the video for 'London Is The Reason' by Gallows, which leans more towards the heavier side of the punk genre

This video is again based in grimy, run down areas, however it has lost the folk aspect, as the song is not about love, with the chorus being:

We have no fear, we have no pity

We hate you, we hate this city

 

This shows that the song is not about love, its about anger, which is more in line with punk ideology. The lyrics are also sung with a much deeper tone, which makes it sound more violent. The video itself is based around the normal people rising up against a police culture, showing the police as animals such as pigs to dehumanise their actions of attacking people in the streets. This sort of view on the authorities is definitely in line with a punk ideology, which makes this video far more simple to assess, as it doesn't fuse genres like the King Blues one does. The video for this song still uses conventions of British cinema, but there is very little influence from anywhere else but punk music videos.

One Take Videos

While looking at various types of music video I came across the One Take video. TVTropes.org explains a "Oner" as it calls them as:

One very long continuous shot. The camera moves, the actors move, things happen, the camera keeps shooting. Difficult. Expensive. Rarely makes it out of the editing room intact. It's also an expensive pain in the ass on film cameras, many of which hold no more than 5 minutes (if that) of film for a shot.

While this is very colloquial it does have a truth in it, it is difficult to create an effective one take video, as it requires a great amount of precision and timing. There are a few artists in my genre that use One Take video.

Perhaps the most well known One Take video is Ok Go's video for 'This Too Shall Pass', showing a very complicated process across the whole video

While this is very impressive, it is not representative of all One Take videos. For example, a singer in a similar style to my artist, Jonny Craig, has created a One Take video for his song 'I Still Feel Her Pt.3' which is a very simple video, just following him around a house.

While this is very simple, there are more complicated One Take videos used in this genre. For example, a band I have previously made a post about, Motion City Soundtrack, made a One Take video for their song 'True Romance' where the first half is filmed in reverse, and the second half is shown in reverse

While this is a technically impressive type of video, I feel I would not be able to create a video in this style as it takes a large amount of precision and planning to get correct, and any mistakes ruins the entire take, and has to be restarted from the beginning. As much as I would like to create a One Take video I doubt it would be possible unless it was very simple.

Plans for Digipak design

For my digipak I am going to create an actual version of it rather than using a computer software, as I feel this would present what I make better than just using an image manipulation program. I am going to use cardboard to make the case, and will probably make it with 6 panels, but the number of panels could be increased if I can find enough stuff to put into the digipak. So far I have decided that I am going to use one of the panels as a holder for a booklet, one to hold the CD in place, one for a front cover and one for a back cover with a track listing. This gives me 2 panels yet to decide what to do with, which I may fill using images from filming.

For the track listing I will probably use songs from the same album my song is off, Poetry of the Deed, but could use songs from other albums, or covers he has performed as bonus tracks. For the front cover I will use one large image, while for the panel containing the booklet I will use multiple photographs, as I intend to have the holder cut diagonally from corner to corner.

Bad Religion - True North

I thought I would post a video that is in my genre that shows a similar style to what I want to do, to show that it is done inside my genre. I want to create a video where there is little or no lip-sync, and the action is not focused on an artists performance of the song but on a single event. For this reason I have chosen Bad Religions song 'True North

As you can see, this video has no interaction with the band, instead focusing on a person listening to the song on a record deck while they're getting ready to go out. I think this style is quite good as there is minimal amounts of detail to distract from the song, which is the main reason that a video is made, to sell an artists music

Motion City Soundtrack - L.G. FUAD

Yet another music video post, this time the song 'L.G. FUAD' by Motion City Soundtrack. Motion City Soundtrack (MCS) are a rock band from Minnesota who use a very definitive sounds that is easily recognisable to fans of the genre

This is the video for their song 'L.G. FUAD' which features many different people lip-synching to the song as they go about their daily life, starting with the singer and ending with the band performing the song. The use of multiple people lip-synching the song is an easily replicated video, as long as people have the timing to get it right. The video itself is very straightforward, as I have shown this genre normally is, however this also uses animations as part of the transition from person to person, making it more complex than other videos I've shown While this is a very 'simple' video concept, I am unlikely to use this style throughout the entirety of my video, due to the difficulty of finding several people who know the song well enough to do this.

Specific target audience

The style of acoustic music my artist uses is very difficult to quantify into a single target audience, being very generic and open to differences of opinion. However, some of his songs are a bit more 'rocky' than others, such as 'One Foot Before The Other'

This shows that there are definitely songs that can be put into a genre and had a target audience analysis on them, but overall the artist has a very middle-lane style, and is approachable from all directions of music.

For my analysis of the specific target audience I am going to break it down into 5 sections: Socio-economic group, Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Lifestyle.

Socio-economic group
This term defines the income of an individual household, as well as their professional background. The professional background of people who listen to this music is generally within the C1 group (supervisory/clerical roles) and below. I would say that due to the younger age of most of this audience it would drive the overall group down so I would think that the group associated with this style of music is C2/D.

Age
This style of music is more likely to be listened to people of a younger age, and as such I would expect the age range to be between 16 and 30. This also affects the overall socio-economic group by bringing the overall professional background down, as people of this age are less likely to have more professional careers

Gender
This style of music has been known to be preferred by more males than females, but the more acoustic style in my artists other music would attract a wider audience, so for my artist I would suggest that it is a fairly even split, but for the genre as a whole it is more males who are attracted to it.

Ethnicity
This style of music does not have much representation in minority groups, as the area these groups traditionally live in are more heavily urban, and as such have different music coming from the area. However, this doesn't exclude the entire group from a genre, as there would be a few people who listen to this music from ethnic groups not expected to listen to this style.

Lifestyle
Many fans of this genre are likely to be found with items that show support for their particular favourite band, musician etc. Most do this by wearing T-shirts and official merchandise of the group, but there are quite a few others who get tattoos linked to a artist, and are highly likely to actively seek out a chance to see a musician at a concert

Contacting my artist

As we are supposed to gain permission from the original creator of the song we are using I emailed Frank Turner yesterday to gain this permission. I found his email from his website, http://www.frank-turner.com. On the 'contact' page of the site he posts his email, which is shown here:

 I received a reply today saying:

hey chris
thanks for the mail. sure thing, if it's a non-profit scheme then I'm always fine with this kind of thing. a credit would be nice. good luck with it.
ft

 

This means that I have been given permission by the artist himself, which is pretty cool if you ask me.