Music Theorists

Many, if not all, of the above theories were not intended for music video. Indeed, in the first place, many of them, particularly that of Propp, were in fact noted as base plot devices in fairy tales and were developed back in the 1920's. However, due to the similar nature of many narrative sequences, I can see that the themes can easily be carried over, as can be seen by the results of my video research involved in this presentation. Some theories last better than others. Whilst Levi-Strauss' binary opposition theories are still very much used due to their versatile nature and range of possible subject matter, and ideas of equilibrium can still be retained, the nature of narrative now differs greatly in the modern day to that of fairytales, and many stereotypical character roles as specified by Propp are now often rejected in favour of more realistic narrative plots, or nonsensical entropy.

Of course, there are also theorists that have studied the music video specifically - Andrew Goodwin is a clear example. As aforementioned, Goodwin recognised that music videos can either illustrate, amplify or reject a song's meaning in its visual representation. He also identified several other key features of music videos:

• Record companies will demand a lot of close ups of the main artist/vocalist
• Voyeurism is frequently used, particularly in the treatment of women, but also more generally as a term of "looking" - e.g. mirrors, cameras, mirrors etc.
• There is likely to be some form of intertextual reference, referring to either other music videos, films or television programmes etc. which heighten the audience's enjoyment and involvement in the video

Applying the Theories

30 Seconds to Mars - Hurricane

Wanting to understand how these theories work in context, I've found the new music video for 30 Seconds to Mars' song "Hurricane". Breaking the modern standards of a music video (loose narrative, simply a visual accompaniment to a song), "Hurricane" is instead has a very strong narrative presence and, as in the video of Lady Gaga's "Telephone", the use of credits give it the representation of a short film rather than a music video and, indeed, at 13 minutes long, divided into chapters, it appears that "Hurricane" has been intended to be exactly that - a short film. Indeed, the music in the video seems to act simply as a soundtrack to the action in many places, overrode with voice-over narration in both French and English.

Though both Branigan and Todorov's theories can be applied to the narrative of this video, though I feel that Branigan's is more relevant - Todorov's theory requires an attempt to fix the disruption in the narrative, which doesn't clearly take place. Rather, there is an "emotional response" and "complicating actions" as percieved by Branigan. During the course of the video, we are shown an initial equilibrium, and introduced to the setting and characters: establishing shots, aerial and from the P.O.V of the motorbike that band member Shannon Leto is seen riding, and other shots of member Tomo Miličević make us aware that the video is set in a large American city and reveal to us the first to members of the band, whilst progressing shots to a bedroom reveal the sleeping/awakening frontman, Jared Leto. As the video continues, the "explanation of the state of affairs" is slowly revealed - Jared is presented with photos in a blackmail style before being pursed by a masked hitman, Shannon meets a mysterious woman and Tomo seems to rescue another, and we are able to note their emotional responses through frequent close-ups of their faces (a specification noted by Goodwin to appease fans and the record label). As these inital actions progress, their nature complicates - the "complicating actions" and the scenarios intensify in action. The outcome however, can be noted by Todorov as a "return to equilibrium", whilst Branigan would note it as the outcome: Jared is able to conquer his pursuer, and Shannon and Tomo 'get the girls'.

The voyeurism noted by Goodwin is very clear; cuts from the narrative to sometimes suggestive, and sometimes overtly sexual shots have caused the video to be heavily censored and, even now, is considered not acceptable to be played by MTV. The women in the video are very much sexualised and, whilst sometimes apparently empowered - e.g. when the blonde woman stabs Shannon - they are mostly represented as being submissive/bound and controlled by men.

There are also vague intertextual references, though only mostly to other 30 Seconds to Mars themes and songs - another song from the same album, "Escape", is heard near the beginning of the video, whilst the triangular 'triad' necklace Jared wears is the new symbol for the "This is War" album from which this song has come.

Exploring Auteurs

Analysis of Auteurs

Chris Cunningham

Aphex Twin

In the music videos produced by Cunningham for Aphex Twin, many of Cunningham's recurring themes, techniques and symbolism rise to the fore. To address this, I compared and contrasted two videos from within Cunningham's work with Aphex Twin.

More common with the auteur movement, both the "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" music videos note Cunningham as the director in the opening, and, as both videos open, it is clear that Cunningham has maintained an almost film-like approach to his videos (something which is then reinforced by the use of end credits superimposed over repeated, tinted clips of the video at the end of "Windowlicker").

At the opening of "Come To Daddy", Cunningham's use of colour filters are immediately obvious, a dark blue tint applied to all clips in the video. Indeed, he uses a similar technique in window licker, instead opting for a non-coloured, dark tint on what otherwise might have been a sunny day. The use of this technique in both sets a mood for the videos, the darkness connoting to the equally dark themes used within them.

Cinematography and editing are also key in creating the mood in these videos. "Come To Daddy"'s editing pace begins slowly, allowing the tone and scene to be established and giving room for the tense build up of the loose narrative and editing speed. In this, time is taken to construct feelings of unease. The long, establishing shots of the high rise flats are filmed at a twisting, canted angle, signifying the dysfunctional nature of the video, and there is a

sense that the old woman and her dog are being watched, built firstly by the low-angle shots, looking up at the woman as if from the possessed television's point-of view. It is then built by an additional shot/reverse shot sequence between that of a moving spectator (backlit and thus silhouetted, masking any features and causing the figure to be interpreted as dark and mysterious), and the reverse shot of the person's evident location, revealing nothing except an ominous dark space in the wall, heightening the feeling of unease and mystery. The editing then begins to speed up with the appearance of the strange children, and a sense of panic is conveyed through the use of quick, repetitive shots (the child running a stick along the fence, for example), an ever more shaky handheld camera technique, whip-pans and dark lighting, causing disorientation and an unsettling atmosphere, especially when combined with comparatively long shots of the demonic television, emphasizing and dominating the hellish themes.

The use of shots to enforce a theme is used to similar effect in "Windowlicker". Although it runs at a generally much slower editing speed (particularly at the beginning, where the dramatized opening

sequence is constructed of very few shots, all very long takes), time is still spent on establishing the dominant themes, in this case the transformation of women from the sexualised representation expected of videos (and noted as a norm of music videos by Goodwin), to the

grotesque. Indeed, once transformed, what might previously have been considered voyeuristic scenes in the limo are now made all the more repulsive by the time taken on the shots depicting romantic/sexual advances between the male artist and the strange women who also have

his face, using slowly zooming long shots and then a series of shorter shots to compile a series of images to shock and repulse and generally build a highly entropic theme. This is continued further by another transformation of a woman later in the video into a deformed creature which then breaks up long, sexualised shot sequences, at one point slowly gliding towards the camera, made-up and danced around in what can be interpreted as a mocking comment on how mass media is centred around the male gaze (as noted by Laura Mulvey - 1975) and how women are overly sexualised and glamourised.

In "Come to Daddy", similar use of post-production image warping (and the costume aspect of

mise-en-scene) is used for unsettling effect. Within the theme of juxtaposing innocence with the strange and demonic (the old woman and the demon, for

example), Cunningham includes children, normally a stereotypical symbol of innocence, with the grinning heads of the artist instead, menacing members of the public, and looking after the demonic television depicting, too, the warped image of the artist. It is notable that the use of

facial expression appears beyond Cunningham's partnership with Aphex Twin - Bjork's "All is Full of Love" includes a computer-animated robot imposed with the artist's face, giving what is generally a symbol of inhumanity emotion and feeling instead.It is also interesting that the technical skill extends to the physical embedding of Aphex Twin's demonic face trademark within the frequency spectrum of "Windowlicker", so, when viewed on a spectograph, the face will be revealed.

The final sequence of "Come to Daddy" reveals the video to be loosely illustrative, conforming to Goodwin's theory of video classification. In this, the small, man-faced children gather

around the demon, freed from the television, and still possessing the face of the artist, who gathers them close and appears to embrace them in a father-like role; effectively they have come to their "daddy", the lyrics of the song repeating incessantly "Come todaddy, come to daddy...". At the resolution of the video, this scene is also accompanied by a series of very quickly edited shots, with jump cuts of the demon taken from varying degrees of zoom, and accompanied with shots of black and flashes of light at a speed that is unsettling and disorientating. The illustrative quality of "Windowlicker", however, is apparent much sooner - "Windowlicker" is a rough translation of a French phrase back into English, and is similar to the term "window-shopper"; essentially, it means that a person wants something they can't have, illustrated in the video by the men at the start of the video who attempt to attract the women at the side of the road, only to be rejected. Later, when pursued, they suddenly become ugly and undesirable - whilst from a distance they were desired, but once close up and the truth was revealed, the "windowlickers" were instead disgusted. In this, it can also be understood that perhaps there is a comment on the superficiality of love and lust; indeed, even the lyrics seem to mock this: though they are in French, the apparent 'language of love', they translate into English as meaningless nonsense ("J'aime faire des craquettes/croquettes au chien" can be translated to either "I like to have sex with dogs" or "I like to make dog biscuits").

It can be notable that, whilst rejecting theorists such as Todorov and Propp, this video seems to closely link to the ideas of Branigan - the video begins by introducing its main characters - the men in the car, and understand the current state of affairs through their initial conversation and interactions with the women. We are then introduced to the artist himself, who begins to warp and complicate this initial introduction - this can be seen at the initiating event. The emotional response by the men to the warping of the women throughout the video is that of shock and repulsion, after the initial act of pursuing the women. The apparent outcome at the end is the twisting of women from sexual icons to warped, repulsive figures. Again, the two men appear repulsed, whilst the artist thoughout the video seems to thoroughly enjoy it, and, at the end, adds to the sexual imagery with the drenching of the women with a champagne bottle.

Genre and Classification

Redundancy and Entropy: Further Research

Following my initial research into music videos and their levels of redundancy and entropy, I extended my own research, looking at other types and genres of music video and see how their redundant and entropic aspects match up.

Pulp - Common People

Pulp's "Common People" is so redundant that it might also be understood as entropic, taking the literal to the point where it in itself is surreal. It interacts with the lyrics in a very illustrative way - the mention of "I" in the lyrics corresponds with Jarvis Cocker pointing, then framing his eye with his hand, and as the lyrics jump to the description of events at a supermarket, Cocker then appears in a huge trolley in a techincolour supermarket. And indeed, once moving on to the chorus, Cocker is then situated in a street, gliding past the "common people" as the camera pans. However, this interpretation of the literal is far from expected and, despite the over-the-top redundancy, it is clear that the approach is unexpected and anything but boring, re-working it to the extent where it can even be considered entropic. There are, of course, also entropic parts in their own right: women lip-syncing to Jarvis' voice, causing them to appear like they are singing with a male voice, and the aforementioned giant trolley.

The Parlotones - Push Me to the Floor

This video is highly entropic. Approaching the house at a canted angle and in through the door, it's clear that the mise-en-scene and characterisation is hardly normal and the cinematography often seems to be mirroring this. The objects in the house are twisted and strange - even the newspapers reporting on bizarre articles - and the costumes are often, particularly in the woman's case, odd and certainly not a normal fashion. The acting appears to be deliberately ironic and over the top in order to help convey the almost comical violence of the situations. When linked up the the lyrics, however, the video still makes sense. With lines such as "Your worth is worth nothing when it's at someone else's cost", it's clear that it has a basis in selfish relationships, the theme of the video. There are also other very clear links between video and lyrics, particularly with the line "Push me to the floor", the title of the song, which is visually enforced by Kahn, the main artist and male actor in the video, being thrown to the floor at various points in the video.

30 Seconds to Mars - From Yesterday

Whilst From Yesterday clearly uses a large amount of entropy, some of that which is utilised could be debated as being dependant on the cultural viewpoint, and seems to play up on the representation of ancient Chinese culture from the viewpoint of an outsider, so, what may be considered redundant to them, would be strange and confusing - thus entropic - to a modern western viewer, the main target audience of the video.The video is made most entropic through contrasts; it begins, after a "prologue" scene, in a very modernistic pure white room, with the band kitted out in white. Whilst this choice of mise-en-scene could be considered slightly abnormal, the behaviour of the band is relatively redundant, and seems to simply be depicting the band as backstage and bored, with drumming on the wall and vacant sitting, being instructed on where to go by a woman in black, business-like. However, this scene quickly jumps to that of the ancient China the viewer was first introduced to. Similarly, in the crowd of royals, the cameras fall briefly on one man clearly not belonging to that era or country, stood in a suit and bow-tie amongst the others in bright Chinese costume.

An Introduction to Redundancy and Entropy

Redundancy:

"...is that which is predictable or conventional in a message. Redundancy is the result of high predictability."

If something is utterly redundant, then it will be predictable, though not very informative. Though in excess this makes the product it is applied to boring, a degree of this is necessary in order for something to be understood.

Entropy:

"...unpredictability."

If something is entropic, it is portrayed in an unexpected and unfamiliar way. Whilst in small amounts it adds interest to a subject to to its unexpected nature, in larger degrees it renders a subject incomprehensible

Redundacy and entropy are utilised to achieve two things in music videos: to secure an audience and their understanding, and to confront the audience with the unexpected in order for a video to appear original and interesting.

An Introduction to Redundancy and Entropy in Music Videos

In order to confirm my understanding of redundancy and entropy in music videos, I then watched Lady Gaga's video "Telephone", taking notes as it played before forming a rough analysis on the redundant and entropic aspects of the video.

Redundant elements:

• The prison is stereotypically prison-like - heavily fenced, with barbed wire and a dull grey colour scheme. The movie-expectations of a prison are met: the guards are rough and fights break out
• Women prisoners are mostly represented as tattooed/muscled/masculine
• The police's retaliation to events is a normal reaction
• The presence of the sexualised representation of women, a common theme for music videos
• Contains normal "performance" scenes with artist and backing dancers
• Surroundings link up: drive into the western desert, encounter normal American diner

Entropic elements:

• The video opens in the manner of a movie, with titles, credits and scene subtitles, rather than a normal music video which would usually plunge straight into the video content
• Whilst the guards are uniformed in a normal, redundant fashion, Gaga and the other prison inmates don't wear prison uniforms, instead wearing a range of own outfits. Gaga in particular indulges in her entropic fashions: the wearing of chains and cigarette glasses, for instance
• The presence of acting scenes to build the narrative, but breaking up the music video
• During one of the acting scenes, characters began to communicate in subtitles, appearing in the language of the characters
• During one of the acting scenes, the video skips genre and apparently purpose, the scene in the kitchen evolving into a cooking programme

An Introduction to Music Videos

In accordance with my goal to utilise as many different types of media as possible, I've joined with the animated slide-show builder and viewer, Prezi, in order to present some of my research.

Video Skills Audit

In order to achieve a higher grade in media this year, I've evaluated my skills and made a list of some things I need to develop to made a key difference to my video coursework:

1. Understand the importance of Reconnaissance (Recce)

Having not filmed widely, and only ever inside college, I have not before had much experience of recce. To rectify this, I should learn how to compile a recce report and try and pay more attention to sets and surroundings and get into the habit of noting possible noises, hazards and public tolerance.

2. Consider all aspects of lighting

Again, I haven't had much experience of this, having only ever filmed inside. However, I will now have to look into the possibilities and tricks to filming outdoors and in different levels of lighting and consider how I would be able to affect the lighting.

3. Extend my knowledge of titling

I have scarcely used titling, and, though familiar with some of the basics on Adobe Premier Pro, I would currently not be able to produce a range of different types of titling. To combat this, I will take some time experimenting on the Premier Pro program and research on the internet desirable titling techniques.

4. Look into the range of transitions available on Adobe Premier Pro

I have only ever used normal cuts between shots on Premier Pro, but I'm aware of what other effects could be used. However, I will have to research further on how these can be achieved on Premier Pro and experiment with them in order to see exactly how they work and where it would be relevant to use them in an actual video.

5. Develop my SFX capabilities

SFX is an aspect that I'm particularly interested in, but know the least about. I very much want to use SFX techniques in my work this year, particularly video/visual effects. I'm going to extensively research this, looking at the SFX capabilities that Premier Pro possesses and looking into good techniques on the internet, looking at forums dedicated to this and similar topics.

In order to experiment with these effects and gather experience, I might find it useful to start posting video blogs to accompany my written work on blogger.com, because it would help me in various ways, and particularly in the areas of editing I've stated.

Post-Production: Digital Technology

Having gathered experience of Adobe Premier Pro when I undertook my preliminary task, I now had sufficient knowledge to begin editing my Busted video relatively easily.

Uploading the clips onto the side-bar, I began simply dragging and dropping them onto the timeline, detaching their audios and then taking care to align them correctly with the audio, getting timings and durations from both the original storyboard and referring back to the actual music video. Once they were correct, I cut them to the right length and deleted the excess footage. I found in this process that having more than one timeline layered one on top of the other really helped in this process, as I was able to import and edit shots without disrupting the rest of my already cut and placed material.

One of the initial problems I encountered was missing footage which had been lost during upload and also clips that were too long or short in duration. To overcome this, I discovered a way to change the lighting on a shot and, for example, where a shot of the teacher in the dark was missing, I simply used a similar shot from earlier on, this time darkened. In rectifying the timings on some of the clips, I found a "duration" option when right clicking a clip which then allowed me to alter the speed of the clip. In this way I was able to extend the clips of the animals mating shot from the real music video, and also was able to apply the slow-motion technique to the dropping pencil shot near the end of the video.

Completed Video - Busted - What I Go to School For

Production

The actual production process was entirely new to me. Choosing to be a director rather than starring in the video, I helped in organising those who were being filmed. I feel that I had to quickly adapt my organisation skills to fit this task - due to the waiting around as attention was paid to particular people, the group was initially slow to respond when needed. However, this was combated by the way we grouped the shoots - group/class shots being on one day, whilst outdoor shots and specific person shots were on other individual days.

I found that the storyboard we had made was extremely useful in helping us direct the shots, although lacked some detail, which meant we had to refer back to the original video for extra information, something I would rectify if the exercise was repeated. However, it generally gave us a good idea of durations and actions.

We managed to successfully lip-sync by playing the track back using an MP3 player and speakers, having made sure our main characters had learned the lyrics. We ran the song through with them during the shoot but before actual filming to ensure they were certain of the lyrics. This meant that we had the timings and the lip-movement exactly right so they were easily paired with the original track in the editing process.

We encountered a couple of problems during the shoot: the video depicts an old film projector being used, which then in turn showed various clips of mating animals. As we were unable to obtain such equipment, we had to improvise, using an overhead projector instead. We then had to combat the issue of the mating animal clips. Originally we attempted to find similar clips on Youtube, but they weren't to the likeness or quality we wanted. We resolved the problem by playing the actual music video, projecting it onto the board with the classroom's video projector (maintaining the idea the image is being projected). We then filmed the video as the clips of the animals were played.

Production: Digital Technology

During this task, my knowledge of digital technology was largely added to. I had never previously been confident in using a camera, but I managed to gain a better understanding of camera control whilst having a go at operating it in the preliminary task, using zoom functions and experimenting with the controls on the tripod which when proved helpful in getting smooth shots in the production of our final Busted video.

I had no experience with the editing program, Adobe Premier Pro, so I had to pick things up as I went along. Though initially it was hard to cope with managing multiple clips, accurate cutting and audio matching, the knowledge I gained from preparing my preliminary Lip-Sync task piece then helped me greatly in the production of the main Busted video, as now I had a basic grounding of the programme, I could further explore, adding slow motion or speeding clips up where appropriate.

I found posting the edited video to Youtube much easier this time, having previously forgotten in the Lip-Syncing task to correctly cut the length of the film, which resulted in a much longer upload. This time, however, was much simpler due to the much shorter length of the piece.

Over the course of A2, I want to further my knowledge of editing techniques in order to find interesting and quirky ways to compose my final music video.

Research and Planning

For my A2 summer project, we were required to remake approximately 40 seconds of the music video "What I Go to School For" by Busted.

For initial research, we undertook a lip-syncing task. Working in a group of 3, we chose to lip-sync the first part of "Livin' On a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. It was more time consuming than I'd expected, as we had to properly learn the lyrics and the timings, as well as actually singing it to make the performance look convincing when the real audio track was added.
We took turns filming the performance so we each had the opportunity to experiment with filming and lip-syncing, learning basic camera control. In order to keep ourselves in time, we used an iPod and speakers to play back the real audio to sing along to.
Having done this, we then used Adobe Premier Pro to cut between our different versions we shot. Never having used this program before, it was initially confusing having more than one video clip to deal with at the same time, and attempting to line up the soundtrack with the visuals was time consuming and tricky. We learned how to make title frames, though, and how to achieve basic cutting between shots.

Lip-Syncing Test:


Following this, we then began to look more closely at Busted's music video, watching both the real video for "What I Go to School For", and other successful remakes. After this, we broke off into groups and began compiling screenshots, shot durations and details into a coherent storyboard.



Using the storyboard, we then grouped the shot types, splitting our workload into our 3-Day shooting script, assigning roles and deciding upon props, suitable rooms and spaces and attaining video clips of the animals similar to those in the video.