First Music Video Idea

First Music Video Idea

Fast Car- Tracy Chapman

The lyrics to this song tell a narrative tale, which is based around poverty. It tells the story of an unknown person who suffered from poverty. There a clues in the lyrics about the plot of the story and I thought of the idea of: 

A family of three, a mother, a father and their young teenage daughter. They live in a small rented apartment, that is unclean and not fit to live in. The mother of this teenage girl divorces her jobless, alcoholic husband, forcing this young girl to have to quit school in order to take care of her dad. This girl grows up into an adult, and leaves her hometown with her partner in the hope of making a better life. The girl falls into the cycle of poverty, as her life begins to mirror her mothers: her partner is unemployed and becomes an alcoholic. She is left alone in the house while her partner spends time drinking with friends. Overall, she has to come and face poverty instead of chasing empty dreams that aren't possible. 

It's a tragedy portraying poverty, and the idea of this song is to try and raise awareness, but unfortunately its hard to get out of poverty. 

The music video for this song definitely has a performance within the video. The setting should be set in an old abandoned house/apartment, where there are only a few basic rooms, with dirty surroundings and not much food or water. The film should start by showing the young teenage girl walking down a desolate long street, portraying her being alone in the world, although she can't escape from her misery and metaphorically showing that the world keeps on going on which seems like forever and she cannot take another route, she is stuck on the same road till the end.

At the beginning of the music video, I think there should be an establishing shot of a young woman playing the guitar in an empty, desolate room, with nothing but her sitting on her chair. They'll be close ups of her fingers playing the guitar, and close ups of her face. As well as the idea of the young woman playing the guitar, I think there should be a story to go with it as well and should keep cutting back and fourth to the woman in the room and the family in poverty, as though the young woman in the room is the narrator. 

The costume should consist of natural colours, to convey the misery of poverty. The clothing of the family should be worn out clothes, to show they are poor and only really have the clothes that they are wearing.

The props will consist of the guitar that the woman plays, the alcohol bottles showing the dad is an alcoholic.

Keith Negus' Theory

Keith Negus

We have been looking at Keith Negus, he believe that there are two ways of thinking about artists from within the music industry.

Organic Ideology

Or

Synthetic Ideology 
 

 Dependent on which ideology they follow shapes the type of career they will have.

An organic artist is someone who is natural (hence organic). They tend to have a longer life span in the industry. The emphasis made my the label is album sales rather than singles. They are often aimed at the older audiences, because they are more mature.

A synthetic artist is someone who is essentially created and molded into what the label wants them to become. They are only given a very short time to prove what they are made of, sometimes they succeed and go on to be massive, and sometimes they fall at the first hurdle. The emphasis this time is on the single sales, aimed at the younger generation.

In order for a big label to work, they must have a good balance of synthetic and organic artists. The profits from the organic artists, ensure that they can take risks on smaller synthetic artists

 

 An example of Organic Ideology- Jake Bugg

• Jake is 19 years old from Nottingham. He was discovered by Mercury Records at the age of 17
•  He was nominated for the 'British Breakthrough Act' award at the 2013 BRIT Awards, he lost to Ben Howard. Before the awards he stated "its great to be nominated but I don't really need an award to inspire me to keep writing my music"- this is a prime example of how he is an organic artist 

•  Jake Bugg is known for a singer-songwriter, not just a solo singer. This proves how organic he is because he is talented enough to write all his own music 

 An example of Synthetic Ideology- One Direction

• One Directions image of five boys has been created by their label (Syco) to attract various teenage audience 
• The band was formed on X Factor when all five boys auditioned as individuals, only to be put into a group together- this makes them synthetic as they didn't come together naturally they were created by the judging panel
• The band do not write all their songs, and if they do they are in collaboration with other writers- a lot of their success is due to their look rather than their own ability to write songs

Our Literal Video Lyrics

Marlowe, Testcard and Roja album covers

Literal Videos

Some examples of Literal Videos



'Stans-Eminem' - Evaluation

The Evaluation of the music 'Stan' Eminem.

 

 

The music video follows a close narrative structure. It is all based around the star image, which is Eminem. 

The hero/villain image is not so clear in the sequence as we follow a variety of ideas to identify who we feel is a obvious villain or an obvious hero.

There are 3 different conflicts being shown in this sequence:

1. the conflict of the boyfriend character with himself,

2. the conflict of the boyfriend trying to write to Eminem, and

3. the conflict between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.

The music video portrays a very disturbed character who has a clear obsession with Eminem. We see him dye his hair; become aggressive when listening to his music , destroy things and hurt others etc. The narrative is about the character who idolises Eminem. We see a clear structured beginning, middle and end.

At the beginning we see the girlfriend who is played by Dido who is tossing and turning (she is also pregnant). We then see the boyfriend dying his hair blond which is creating the idea that he is copying the 'Eminem's look'. Throughout the narrative we see the frustration of the boyfriend writing to Eminem about his life, relating it to Eminem's like the fact he has a father/son bad relationship as well. He gets angry with the girlfriend repeatedly and treats her awfully by abusing her. There is a clear dramatic irony in that we, the audience, see that the letters the boyfriend is trying to get through to Eminem don't arrive to him because they either don't get sent out properly or Eminem himself is just too busy to read the letters. This results the boyfriend crashing the car with the pregnant girlfriend in the back and killing her.

The conflict is never resolved because it results in the boyfriend never getting an answer so he kills the girlfriend, and the letter Eminem finally writes to the boyfriend is written to late. We follow the boyfriend mainly throughout the sequence as the lyrics suggest what he is feeling. We are led to relate to this character because we see that he is extremely troubled, but there is slight sympathy for him. We see iconography being used in this by seeing the posters of Eminem all over the fan's basement walls. This actually shows that Eminem's production company/management and Eminem himself do not think highly of fan 'obsessing' over him as it can have disastrous consequences, like is shown in this video when the obsessed fan kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving off a bridge when Eminem does not reply soon enough to his message.

Iconography, sound, mise-en-scene and music are all so important throughout the video. Discussing imagery as iconography in this way implies a critical "reading" of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used within film studies to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism.

Iconography in this music video is used in resembling the obsession the character has for Eminem... we see him in his creepy den, which is covered in Eminem posters. The mise-en-scene helps set the mood in the video. It is very dark; this is reflected through the lighting, which in the house is dark, a sickly yellow colour, and lots of silhouettes of windows etc. They have also put in thunder and lightning and rain in the video. The music itself is key as the lyrics contrast the feelings of the characters; the sound creates an atmosphere and it also adds to the mood such as lightning- pathetic fallacy .

Compare and Contrasting Album Covers