http://efrase2314.wix.com/suburbantypo
Friday, 22 March 2013
MY WEBSITE & DIGI-PAK PHOTOGRAPHY SOURCES
SOURCES FOR MY WEBSITE PHOTOGRAPHY
* The photographs of the x4 young boys are meant to represent 'Suburban Typo' as youthful preadolescents, wild, playful and eager to grow up into the world of music. I used my younger brother and three of his friends (Joe Fraser, Oliver Hammond, Joshua Masterson & Alfie) as the young band & received parental permission before photographing them in order to make sure their mums & dads felt comfortable with my work. I really aimed to capture a rebellious portrayal of their childhood, having the boys pretend to drink beer, smoke, pee on cars, and generally mess about. I photographed them on my nikon slr & a disposable camera & use my polaroid printer to develop some of the shots. With the variety of cameras I attempted to create a homemade, authentic feel. As most festival goers use disposables for convenience & effect. I aimed to parody
their style & make 'Suburban Typo' seem rooted in history & a
magnetism towards the alternative lifestyle. I edited all the photos
using filter effects on iphoto / instagram, in order to make them seem
more arty / aged.
*The Photographs of Bing & his friends - or fellow band mates. We photographed Bing on Grace's SLR camera when we were filming the 1st & 2nd performance pieces. The river backdrop provided an urban, nature, holistic feel and aided our portrayal of the artist. The photographs of the fellow band mates were taken on other occasions when we met up socially. The photographs I then edited to make them feel more 'indie', sourcing - through the use of social networking sites (facebook,tumblr,flickr,instagram) & noting the effects used in the photography by people who I felt were quite 'indie' / 'alternative' & mimicking these. 'The Vaccines' use only monochromatic imagery on their site, which does make their site look extremely edgy and sophisticated - in a uniquely rocky way, their images seem lifeless, curious and extreme - appealing to their demographic and exciting a viewer who quickly clicks through their site.
* INDIE ETHOS
My site (using the photos of the boys) tried to mimic the discrete star image of an indie rock band. 'The Vaccines' most recent album What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? used images of x4 surrogate band members - all female. These females were almost Metamorphasized versions of the group, echoing their video for 'Teenage Icon' and blurring the gender stereotypes of rock music. Therefore i chose to make the band out of there younger selves rather than women & copied the classic band formation in one of my digi-pak stills.
I also used photos my friend & I had taken last year at Reading Festival on a disposable camera - trying to capture a hedonistic, musical vibe within their present life as well as youth.
* My DIGI-PAK
For the front cover of my DIGI-PAK (as aforementioned) i have manipulated a selection of images in order to create a bricolage of ideas which can mean as little or as much as the viewer wants them to. I used power point to 'Remove the background' of the images in order to layer the parts of the photographs i wanted without any white backgrounds or distant objects. Though some of the images were ones i had taken for example the boy blowing up a condom (Joe) or the Olympics post box. Indie albums often revert focus from the artist and onto the music. Star image has seemed to drown music in its glossy facade, and groups like 'The vaccines' "XX' 'Two door cinema club' 'Bombay bicycle club' reduce this forced merchandising and voyeristic reception, by using graphology / art based album covers, photographs which connote their songs, albums, music or group, or photographs of people other than themselves. Therefore i aimed to use this style for my own artwork, including references to 'The Beatles', drug culture, disco, British heritage, Disney, and The Queen, Andy Warhol to create a mad collage of inter-textual imagery. I used a similar style for my back cover as well cropping out different images / cartoons / sketches / paintings of arms in order to create a chain of collaboration.
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Editing continued.
Today we continued to finalising our editing. We are now in the penultimate stage of the process and working on the little tweaks & tying up all loose ends. There have been many things which have unfortunately been unachievable to complete, i really wanted to film the 1970's for example - finally deciding that we could use a wig wham i own & have our protagonist emerging into a world of 'free love' with people grouped round an acoustic guitar, wearing tie-die, long patterned skirts, loose shirts, and having their hair loose, long, wavy, and decorated with flowers. I felt this era would be able to give the piece that flash of colour that it desperately needed.
Yet though this would have been aesthetically pleasing due to others exams & the robbery slowing down our filming availability (not to mention the lack of help for fellow students due to their own coursework deadlines & stress!) we were unable to orchestrate this decade. Another issue is the quality of our footage, the school cameras we used for most of the music video were extremely outdated, and naturally the clips (once imported) weren't as sharp as we'd have liked them to be. For our performance pieces however Grace's camera - top end piece of equipment, was available for use (It was being mended prior to these filming sessions) which made a huge impact on the visual worth of the images. These aspects were unfortunately out of our hands, and today we felt it was important to just stop for a minute & work out strategically all the steps we needed to take in order to complete the deadline & exceed our expectations.
1.) We needed to overlay a picture of a clock onto the start of each era, fading the image & dimming it out in order to establish overtly the fact she was traveling back in time. We were aware that music video doesn't have to establish itself in the same way as film, rigorously using master shots & close ups to link each action & reaction into a linear narrative (or at least one that will help you to connect the actions - or feel distanced & confused if aiming for an enigmatic feel). However we also knew that though some people would pick up on our historic references, others wouldn't, and we needed to exaggerate our ideas. The 'clock' thus has been embedded in order to display a passing of time & distance Rhianna from Bing. Adding to the intensity of the piece by elongating the gap their is between their locations - years / decades.
2.) We needed to colour correct all our clips - Making the current day shots a better quality of image (hoping to fix some of the problems posed by the camera quality), and making the earlier decades reflect the style of film used in those eras. We researched into the progression of colour filming & altered the saturation of the 1920's to nil. This monochromatic effect was aided by adjusting the backlighting, thinning the edge width, adding a striped effect, and a flicker effect. Overall we aimed to mimic the projected b&w films of the roaring 20's & clearly display to the audience that Rhianna was in another time frame - as although they may not be able to connect all of the iconography commonly associated with the era, they would be able to link the use of black & white to the past.
We also edited the 1940's sketch in order to make it sepia tone & are going to increase the saturation on the 1980's to parody the neon brightness of the decade. 
3.) what we were going to do about our fake band, we still haven't been able to group together 3 more boys to form 'Suburban Typo', so we are now most probably going to have to individually photo graph people in order to create the bio pages for our website (as our digi-paks /imagery used on our websites is mostly either of Bing or uses images unconnected to the band, seeing as most indie rock album covers tend not to use the actual band / artist and rely on images which connote their hedonistic life styles & anti authority ethos).
Yet though this would have been aesthetically pleasing due to others exams & the robbery slowing down our filming availability (not to mention the lack of help for fellow students due to their own coursework deadlines & stress!) we were unable to orchestrate this decade. Another issue is the quality of our footage, the school cameras we used for most of the music video were extremely outdated, and naturally the clips (once imported) weren't as sharp as we'd have liked them to be. For our performance pieces however Grace's camera - top end piece of equipment, was available for use (It was being mended prior to these filming sessions) which made a huge impact on the visual worth of the images. These aspects were unfortunately out of our hands, and today we felt it was important to just stop for a minute & work out strategically all the steps we needed to take in order to complete the deadline & exceed our expectations.
1.) We needed to overlay a picture of a clock onto the start of each era, fading the image & dimming it out in order to establish overtly the fact she was traveling back in time. We were aware that music video doesn't have to establish itself in the same way as film, rigorously using master shots & close ups to link each action & reaction into a linear narrative (or at least one that will help you to connect the actions - or feel distanced & confused if aiming for an enigmatic feel). However we also knew that though some people would pick up on our historic references, others wouldn't, and we needed to exaggerate our ideas. The 'clock' thus has been embedded in order to display a passing of time & distance Rhianna from Bing. Adding to the intensity of the piece by elongating the gap their is between their locations - years / decades.
2.) We needed to colour correct all our clips - Making the current day shots a better quality of image (hoping to fix some of the problems posed by the camera quality), and making the earlier decades reflect the style of film used in those eras. We researched into the progression of colour filming & altered the saturation of the 1920's to nil. This monochromatic effect was aided by adjusting the backlighting, thinning the edge width, adding a striped effect, and a flicker effect. Overall we aimed to mimic the projected b&w films of the roaring 20's & clearly display to the audience that Rhianna was in another time frame - as although they may not be able to connect all of the iconography commonly associated with the era, they would be able to link the use of black & white to the past.
3.) what we were going to do about our fake band, we still haven't been able to group together 3 more boys to form 'Suburban Typo', so we are now most probably going to have to individually photo graph people in order to create the bio pages for our website (as our digi-paks /imagery used on our websites is mostly either of Bing or uses images unconnected to the band, seeing as most indie rock album covers tend not to use the actual band / artist and rely on images which connote their hedonistic life styles & anti authority ethos).
FINAL PLANNING
In our final planning stage we started to brain storm all of the loose ends we needed to tie up. We were unsure at this point of which other x3 boys we were going to use for our band & were debating weather to photograph boys at school against the green screen, use our friends out of school and meet up for a quick photo shoot or use Facebook photographs which we had already taken on other occasions. This was the bane of our project, we had found it so hard to find people to use for our band, partly because we were too fussy & partly because of peoples lack of time commitment, reliability & availability. We also needed to work on colour correcting all of the eras in order to signify their time frame to an audience who weren't as overly familiar with the narrative we had created. We have now transformed the 1920's into black & white, adding the 'stripe' effect & lowering the tolerance & thinning / feathering the edges the parody the project style from the time. Furthermore we made the 1940's a dull sepia tone, added a pink / red tint to the 1940's by adjusting the RBG balance & saturation, and brightened the 1980's altering the saturation, hue & contrast.
Monday, 18 March 2013
Star Image - Theory - Heidi Peeters
Exploring Heidi Peeters theory - that essentially music video is the reflection & amplification of a stars image...
…The Semiotics of Stars: It must Be Written within Music Videos
Music videos often have been characterized as the ultimate medium of the postmodern world. Fast. Empty. Lascivious. At least that is how the majority of the academic and educated world perceives them. Using Frederic Jameson's terms, music videos have been defined as a schizophrenic string of isolated, discontinuous signifiers, failing to link up into a coherent sequence, as a string without a center. Andrew Goodwin talked about "semiotic pornography", "electronic wallpaper" and "neo-fascist propaganda" and Michael Shore defined the medium by its so-called "decadence", its "surface without substance", by its "clichéd imagery".
The critical condemnation of the music video object and the reduction of the medium to shallowness and superficiality however have in no way reduced the influence of the phenomenon, as its omniscience and penetration into capitalist society have been protruding steadily over the last few decades. The fact that MTV has become the ultimate forum on which youth culture is both expressed and constructed has transformed the music video not only into the most effective tool for promotion within the music industry, but also into a powerful ideological force. On a visually artistic level, the cult around music video directors as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham proves the medium to be transcending the stigma of dull commerciality, entering the realm of culture, if not art. Far less than being a mere training ground for feature film directors as Jonze himself, Tony and Ridley Scott or David Fincher, music videos have become a legitimate field and established photographers like Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Herb Rittz and David Lachapelle have proven all to eager to enter the new medium. Music videos are also infiltrating at film festivals all over the world and even claiming independence by the recent phenomenon of music video festivals. In short, music videos have become a center of commercial, popular and artistic interest.
Considering the artistic, commercial and ideological potential of the medium, it becomes necessary to investigate both the semiotics of the clip text and its function within society at a deeper level. For the investigation of an object of study as multidimensional as the music video, using signifiers from different sensorial domains, the field of cultural studies with its interdisciplinary approach can provide tools for interpretation. At this preliminary stage, the main concern of investigation should be the discovery of a pattern within the "hysteria" of sensorial dimensions, maybe even of a common denominator around which all the different clip elements could be centered. I claim that such a center does exist. This base, this center around which all visual, auditive, kinetic, narrative, commercial, social, communicational and artistic dimensions circle, turns out to be the star of the music video. The star is the one that lends the video world its splendor, that gives the audiovisual elements their enchanting attraction and that illuminates viewers all over the world from the Olympus of the screen. This may seem rather obvious, but one would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. There is no need to say that I strongly reject the jamesonean view on music videos. While they may seem discontinuous on a syntagmatic level, the shots are highly connected through the image of the star.
Before going into the semiotic analysis of the clip text as such, a brief investigation of the technological, institutional and artistic influences that culminated in the medium as we have come to know it would be useful, although within the limits of this article, any history will have to be reduced to a crude sketch, merely an outline. More importantly, investigating the semiotics, the universals of the music video at this stage implies focusing on the most central instances of the medium. As much as I adore some 'experimental' videos, investigating them at this stage would be trying to run without being able to walk. Before being able to define why some music videos may strike us as alternative and experimental, we need to focus on the mechanism of videos in the center of the medium, popular videos of popular stars. The MTV Video Music Award nominations seem to be fairly representative for the popularity of both stars and music videos, so they have been the guideline in the selection of my corpus.
…The Semiotics of Stars: It must Be Written within Music Videos
Music videos often have been characterized as the ultimate medium of the postmodern world. Fast. Empty. Lascivious. At least that is how the majority of the academic and educated world perceives them. Using Frederic Jameson's terms, music videos have been defined as a schizophrenic string of isolated, discontinuous signifiers, failing to link up into a coherent sequence, as a string without a center. Andrew Goodwin talked about "semiotic pornography", (the study of signs/symbols – signs which propose sexual pleasure / connotations & denote pornographic tendencies) "electronic wallpaper" and "neo-fascist propaganda" and Michael Shore defined the medium by its so-called "decadence", its "surface without substance", by its "clichéd imagery".
The critical condemnation of the music video object and the reduction of the medium to shallowness and superficiality however have in no way reduced the influence of the phenomenon, as its omniscience (infinite knowledge) and penetration (breakthrough) into capitalist society have been protruding (extending above the surface) steadily over the last few decades. The fact that MTV has become the ultimate forum on which youth culture is both expressed and constructed has transformed the music video not only into the most effective tool for promotion within the music industry, but also into a powerful ideological force (social aspirations). On a visually artistic level, the cult around music video directors as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham proves the medium to be transcending (extending, greater power / independent of) the stigma of dull commerciality (mass market – advertising – industry production for profit), entering the realm of culture, if not art (effectively advertising disguised as cultural entertainment). Far less than being a mere training ground for feature film directors as Jonze himself, Tony and Ridley Scott or David Fincher, music videos have become a legitimate field and established photographers like Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Herb Rittz and David Lachapelle have proven all to eager to enter the new medium. Music videos are also infiltrating (penetrating this market) at film festivals all over the world and even claiming independence by the recent phenomenon of music video festivals. In short, music videos have become a center of commercial, popular and artistic interest. (for example the LAMVF)
Considering the artistic, commercial and ideological potential of the medium, it becomes necessary to investigate both the semiotics of the clip text and its function within society at a deeper level. For the investigation of an object of study as multidimensional (several dimensions) as the music video, using signifiers from different sensorial domains (sensory areas – eg: through eyes, ears & sexual pleasure), the field of cultural studies with its interdisciplinary (involving x2 of more academic disciplines)approach can provide tools for interpretation. At this preliminary stage, the main concern of investigation should be the discovery of a pattern within the "hysteria" of sensorial dimensions, maybe even of a common denominator around which all the different clip elements could be centered. I claim that such a center does exist. This base, this center around which all visual, auditive, kinetic, narrative, commercial, social, communicational and artistic dimensions circle, turns out to be the star of the music video. The star is the one that lends the video world its splendor, that gives the audiovisual elements their enchanting attraction and that illuminates viewers all over the world from the Olympus (mountain) of the screen. This may seem rather obvious, but one would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. There is no need to say that I strongly reject the jamesonean view on music videos. While they may seem discontinuous on a syntagmatic level, the shots are highly connected through the image of the star.
Before going into the semiotic analysis of the clip text as such, a brief investigation of the technological, institutional and artistic influences that culminated in the medium as we have come to know it would be useful, although within the limits of this article, any history will have to be reduced to a crude sketch, merely an outline. More importantly, investigating the semiotics, the universals of the music video at this stage implies focusing on the most central instances of the medium. As much as I adore some 'experimental' videos, investigating them at this stage would be trying to run without being able to walk. Before being able to define why some music videos may strike us as alternative and experimental, we need to focus on the mechanism (interactive system) of videos in the center of the medium, popular videos of popular stars. The MTV Video Music Award nominations seem to be fairly representative for the popularity of both stars and music videos, so they have been the guideline in the selection of my corpus.
A new medium is born, and born again
When building a theoretical matrix (A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained) into which a crude historical sketch of the music video could be drawn, we first need to position the phenomenon in the landscape of contemporary media. It would not be unthinkable to regard the music video as a sub-genre of the medium film, as a sort of commercial, as visual radio or just as television entertainment, but none of these approaches would take into account the basic purpose and specificity of the medium, namely the creation of stars. Their specificity, and the fact that music videos can reach their audience through different bearers such as television, the Internet, pellicule, video, DVD and compact disc show that they should be regarded as an independent genre or an independent medium.
The notion of cultural form by Raymond Williams enables us to situate the clip as a dynamic and flexible phenomenon, adaptable to the historical and cultural context in which it is viewed. Although Williams takes the apparatus to be part of this context, the producers, the public and the experience are just as important in defining the medium. The apparatus of music videos involves both the technical means of production, with different sorts of cameras and digital postproduction devices, and those of consumption, ranging from television screens over the Internet to DVD-players. The producers are just as diverse, since the star itself, as well as directors and technicians, music mixers, make-up artists and pr-managers from both film and music companies are involved. As far as music video consumers are concerned, they could of course be anyone, but the target group op the medium is the ever renewing MTV-generation, a group of youngsters between fourteen and twenty-five, still in search for the right identity and willing to spend money on it. The most difficult item to define remains the clip-experience, an extremely variable concept, depending on the psychological and cultural background of the viewer and on the moment of watching, but most of all on the text itself,as one should not underestimate the level to which production teams are able to manipulate stimuli and to guide viewers into the desired affects. As a response, viewers in stead of changing the channel, should stay tuned, buy the cd or imitate dance moves,style and consumption patterns of their admired star.
Added to the notion of cultural form, Stanley Cavell's concept of automatism can bring in the video's specificity, namely its mechanism of star creation . Cavell has defined automatism to be the basis of a medium; a structural formula that has been created within a certain oeuvre, but proves so productive that it automatically starts reproducing itself in other stances, hence creating the medium. Cavell's medium concept could at first sight be just as easily exchanged for the more common notion of genre, but as genre usually is conceptualized to be a subgroup of a larger medium, that notion would eclipse the specificity of the music video mechanism.However, before analyzing the mechanism internally, it seems useful to explore the external factors, historical, technological, social and economical, that produced the medium as we know it.
The concept of the second birth of a medium by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion can help to structure the history of music video as a cultural practice, although that history will within the scope of this article necessarily be limited to a crude sketch and the account will contain a fair amount of teleological thinking. The main idea behind the second birth is that in order to be institutionalized as a real medium, a cultural practice will have to eliminate certain aspects of itself, hence go through a partial suicide and be born again with well-defined aims and a well-structured mechanism. In the case of the music video, this means that from the wide range of short films to visualize a song or a piece of music, only those that actually were meant to create a star image for the musical performer, would remain within the scope of the medium. I propose to pinpoint this second birth of the music video, which in reality of course happened rather as a gradual process, to the 1 st of august 1981, the day that the music channel MTV started broadcasting in America with the clip "Video Killed the Radio Star".The channel would probably not have been founded if clips did not already exist in the first place, but the worldwide institutionalization of music videos as a medium of promotion, entertainment and art, and the clip mechanism as we know it today, would not have been possible unless something like music television came into being.
Before MTV saw the light, clips had already been shown on television, but the line between what were music videos and what were just filmed performances was not very clear at that time. In the process of medium reincarnation this stage would be termed the first birth. The success of TV-shows in the 1960's such as Bandstand or The Ed Sullivan Show, where popular artists performed their new songs, have been a major impetus for the production of clips, as the most famous performers would soon not be able anymore to attend all the shows. The production of video clips seemed the most convenient solution. Clips turned out to have a broader range of artistic possibilities than the staged performances, as they were not bound to the limits of the spatial and temporal reality on stage. The Beatles' song "Paperbackwriter" is credited for being the first music video ever broadcasted on television.
Before these first clips were shown on television, however, the sixties had already witnessed the hype of the Scopitones, "coin-operated entertainment machines featuring visual accompaniment for a musical number".The origin of these visual jukeboxes dates back to Edison's invention of the Kinetograph, but it was only after the Second World War that the French company Cameca developed the Scopitone-machine. These peephole-devices were to entertain the public in cafés and clubs with music films of about three minutes length and proving to be highly successful, the first machines would be exported to America in 1963. The Scopitones did not necessarily have to feature famous artists singing and could just as easily show exotic tribal dances, stripteases to music or jazz band choreographies. Promotion of a musical number or creation of a star image were at that time still secondary to the attraction, to spectacular entertainment or to satisfying the peepshow desires of the club audiences. It seems to be the case that those priorities would be inversed in later music videos, where spectacular entertainment and striptease allusions would only be linked to the spectacular divinity and the glamorous sex appeal of the star.
The Scopitones that did feature artists, however, already constructed these artists as the central element of the clip with both filmic and pro-filmic devices. The mise-en-cadre (FRAMEWORK) was so designed as to guide the viewers' attention towards the star, making him/her the center of the world within the frame. Also the costumes, the lightning and choreographies were intended to put the artist in the spotlight, with contrast as the key notion, making it advisable for the star to wear different outfits than the backing vocalists, to perform different dance moves and to be the only one to address the camera. Anyhow, the audience was likely to link the voice they heard to the person whose lips were moving, whereas instrumental music would more easily be taken for granted as an indication of the appropriate emotional effect. In this way, the artist in Scopitones could not only be identified as the visual, but also as the auditive center of interest in the clips.
Some cultural practices introduced elements that, even though important for the development of the clip mechanism, did not emerge from protoclips themselves. These practices could be grouped together to form the phase before the first birth of the medium, a so-called prenatal phase (before birth).Of course, almost everything could a posteriori (devirved from observed facts) be said to have influenced the birth of the medium and of course the different birth stages cannot be separated as strictly as one would have it. Still, music television would not have been developed if it were not for the influence of youth culture, a phenomenon popping up during the fifties by which music became the basis of peer group identity. Films as The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando or the various Elvis films helped to spread the early youth culture and lifestyle of Rock'n'roll.
Also within the world of film, the flamboyant musicals of dance director Busby Berkeley with their swooping aerial photography, their kaleidoscopic lenses (continually shifting or rapidly changing), the highly expressive camera movement and the sophisticated montage techniques were influential for the music videos to come, as they turned dance sequences into "experimental cinema of abstract impressionism" (A style or movement in painting originating in France in the 1860s, characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, esp. in terms of the shifting effect of light and color - seeking o capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction ( description / representative image or illustration ) rather than resembling "traditional narrative film." Also the mickey-mousing process of frame-by-frame synchronization, by which early Disney films achieved to combine "sound and image in an expressive manner impossible (…) in live-action narrative cinema", is echoed by the structuring role music seems to have in music videos of today.
Even the editing practice of directors of Russian Constructivism for whom expressiveness and symbolism were far more important than just telling a story, seems to have been more influential within the music video mechanism than it has been within narrative film. Trough the fast succession of spectacular visual stimuli and a manipulative "montage of attraction",Sergei Eisenstein wished to develop a symbolic, metaphoric and poetic Filmgestalt in the mind op the beholder. This Gestalt (An organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts) was to build an ideal image of the struggle of the collective or individual Soviet hero (the Proletariat, Lenin), a fictitious image that would picture the real essence of communism. Music videos could rightly be argued to do pretty much the same thing, that is, build an ideal and fictitious image of the pop hero in order represent his true essence through means of a manipulative and nonnarrative montage of attraction.
In some ways, music videos also seem to be a return to the cinema of attractions, a term introduced by Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault to topically describe the early cinema.This sort of cinema aimed at showing itself exhibitionistically as a spectacular and stunning curiosum??, rather than at telling a story and absorb the voyeuristic audience into it, as would be the case in the later practice of narrative cinema. The nec plus ultra of today's exhibitionistic medium practices seems to be exactly the music video, where it is not so much the medium itself that arouses excitement anymore, but the eye-catching appearances of the star as visual spectacle. Even though the fast clip editing seems miles ahead of the often static tableaus (A GROUP OF PEOPLE ATTRACTIVELY ARRANGED) in early cinema, narrativity remains inferior to the importance of showing the divine capacities of the star.
The notion of cultural form by Raymond Williams enables us to situate the clip as a dynamic and flexible phenomenon, adaptable to the historical and cultural context in which it is viewed. Although Williams takes the apparatus to be part of this context, the producers, the public and the experience are just as important in defining the medium. The apparatus of music videos involves both the technical means of production, with different sorts of cameras and digital postproduction devices, and those of consumption, ranging from television screens over the Internet to DVD-players. The producers are just as diverse, since the star itself, as well as directors and technicians, music mixers, make-up artists and pr-managers from both film and music companies are involved. As far as music video consumers are concerned, they could of course be anyone, but the target group op the medium is the ever renewing MTV-generation, a group of youngsters between fourteen and twenty-five, still in search for the right identity and willing to spend money on it. The most difficult item to define remains the clip-experience, an extremely variable concept, depending on the psychological (characteristics/biology) and cultural background (location, religion, upbringing, political background etc) of the viewer and on the moment of watching, but most of all on the text itself, as one should not underestimate the level to which production teams are able to manipulate stimuli and to guide viewers into the desired affects. As a response, viewers in stead of changing the channel, should stay tuned, buy the cd or imitate dance moves, style and consumption patterns of their admired star.(gangman style! CLEAR EXAMPLE!!)
Added to the notion of cultural form, Stanley Cavell's concept of automatism can bring in the video's specificity, namely its mechanism of star creation.Cavell has defined automatism to be the basis of a medium; a structural formula that has been created within a certain oeuvre (The works of a painter, composer, or author regarded collectively), but proves so productive that it automatically starts reproducing itself in other stances (position / forms / shapes / attitudes?), hence creating the medium. Cavell's medium concept could at first sight be just as easily exchanged for the more common notion of genre, but as genre usually is conceptualized to be a subgroup of a larger medium, that notion would eclipse (destroy) the specificity (specific) of the music video mechanism( machine) .However, before analyzing the mechanism internally, it seems useful to explore the external factors, historical, technological, social and economical, that produced the medium as we know it. The concept of the second birth of a medium by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion can help to structure the history of music video as a cultural practice, although that history will within the scope of this article necessarily be limited to a crude sketch and the account will contain a fair amount of teleological thinking.
The main idea behind the second birth is that in order to be institutionalized (established) as a real medium, a cultural practice will have to eliminate certain aspects of itself, hence go through a partial (half suicide - only partly committal) suicide and be born again with well-defined aims and a well-structured mechanism (machine). - based upon already existing material in order to gain establishment & popularity - but then have it's own rights? recycled? based upon other mediums? inter-textual?
In the case of the music video, this means that from the wide range of short films to visualize a song or a piece of music, only those that actually were meant to create a star image for the musical performer, would remain within the scope of the medium. I propose to pinpoint this second birth of the music video, which in reality of course happened rather as a gradual process, to the 1 st of august 1981, the day that the music channel MTV started broadcasting in America with the clip "Video Killed the Radio Star".The channel would probably not have been founded if clips did not already exist in the first place, but the worldwide institutionalization of music videos as a medium of promotion, entertainment and art, and the clip mechanism as we know it today, would not have been possible unless something like music television came into being.
The main purpose of music videos has been defined to be the creation of a star, a mixture or human familiarity and divine glamour and in order to achieve the desired star effect, production teams have a whole range of filmic devices at their disposal. It could be rightly claimed that music videos try to create a utopian world (idealised perfection) of which the star seems to be the instigator (the cause). Richard Dyer's Entertainment and Utopia hands over some very useful tools to explain the utopian mechanism in musicals and with some adjustments, these tools could be rightfully applied to the mechanism of the music video. First of all, Dyer argues how in musicals, the development of the narrative is postponed in order for a utopian dance act to break through. When for example Maria in the Sound of Music starts singing about confidence, lonely goaters and other favourite things of hers, utopia seems to emerge. The song is a marker for the opposition between narrative and "utopianact", between the normal world and something of a different order. Dyer indicates that the notion of utopia in musicals rather indicates a feeling, an effect of utopia rather than an ontologically (the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being) or theoretically sketched out world with rules and laws. In both the character in the film and the viewer in the audience, entertainment will achieve imaginary escapism rather than real changes and Dyer makes clear that escapist needs and their proper fulfillments are to a large extend created by the dominant system in which the entertainment operates.
Stars seem to have always been around in one way or another during western history. Ancient Greece had its Olympus, the Middle Ages their saints and later kings were introduced as loci of divinity. They all functioned as incarnations (A person who embodies in the flesh a deity, spirit, or abstract quality) of the ideals of their time, of braveness and power, devotedness (feelings of love) and abstinence (The fact or practice of restraining oneself from indulging in something) or bienséance (propriety - The state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals.) and courtoisie (courtesy) and hence served as role models for identification. The star system that developed in the twentieth century would not be very different. Film and pop stars were taken to be typical of the average citizen and at the same time superior and special, raised above the masses. They would serve as role models to identify with, but also as sites of escapist dreams about glamour and success. Both types of star phenomena, that of the music star and that of the film star, would in a certain measure come together in the medium of music video, a medium that would not only be a result of the star phenomenon, but that would also become an important mechanism in its creation.
…The Semiotics of Stars: It must Be Written within Music Videos
Music videos often have been characterized as the ultimate medium of the postmodern world. Fast. Empty. Lascivious. At least that is how the majority of the academic and educated world perceives them. Using Frederic Jameson's terms, music videos have been defined as a schizophrenic string of isolated, discontinuous signifiers, failing to link up into a coherent sequence, as a string without a center. Andrew Goodwin talked about "semiotic pornography", "electronic wallpaper" and "neo-fascist propaganda" and Michael Shore defined the medium by its so-called "decadence", its "surface without substance", by its "clichéd imagery".
The critical condemnation of the music video object and the reduction of the medium to shallowness and superficiality however have in no way reduced the influence of the phenomenon, as its omniscience and penetration into capitalist society have been protruding steadily over the last few decades. The fact that MTV has become the ultimate forum on which youth culture is both expressed and constructed has transformed the music video not only into the most effective tool for promotion within the music industry, but also into a powerful ideological force. On a visually artistic level, the cult around music video directors as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham proves the medium to be transcending the stigma of dull commerciality, entering the realm of culture, if not art. Far less than being a mere training ground for feature film directors as Jonze himself, Tony and Ridley Scott or David Fincher, music videos have become a legitimate field and established photographers like Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Herb Rittz and David Lachapelle have proven all to eager to enter the new medium. Music videos are also infiltrating at film festivals all over the world and even claiming independence by the recent phenomenon of music video festivals. In short, music videos have become a center of commercial, popular and artistic interest.
Considering the artistic, commercial and ideological potential of the medium, it becomes necessary to investigate both the semiotics of the clip text and its function within society at a deeper level. For the investigation of an object of study as multidimensional as the music video, using signifiers from different sensorial domains, the field of cultural studies with its interdisciplinary approach can provide tools for interpretation. At this preliminary stage, the main concern of investigation should be the discovery of a pattern within the "hysteria" of sensorial dimensions, maybe even of a common denominator around which all the different clip elements could be centered. I claim that such a center does exist. This base, this center around which all visual, auditive, kinetic, narrative, commercial, social, communicational and artistic dimensions circle, turns out to be the star of the music video. The star is the one that lends the video world its splendor, that gives the audiovisual elements their enchanting attraction and that illuminates viewers all over the world from the Olympus of the screen. This may seem rather obvious, but one would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. There is no need to say that I strongly reject the jamesonean view on music videos. While they may seem discontinuous on a syntagmatic level, the shots are highly connected through the image of the star.
Before going into the semiotic analysis of the clip text as such, a brief investigation of the technological, institutional and artistic influences that culminated in the medium as we have come to know it would be useful, although within the limits of this article, any history will have to be reduced to a crude sketch, merely an outline. More importantly, investigating the semiotics, the universals of the music video at this stage implies focusing on the most central instances of the medium. As much as I adore some 'experimental' videos, investigating them at this stage would be trying to run without being able to walk. Before being able to define why some music videos may strike us as alternative and experimental, we need to focus on the mechanism of videos in the center of the medium, popular videos of popular stars. The MTV Video Music Award nominations seem to be fairly representative for the popularity of both stars and music videos, so they have been the guideline in the selection of my corpus.
…The Semiotics of Stars: It must Be Written within Music Videos
Music videos often have been characterized as the ultimate medium of the postmodern world. Fast. Empty. Lascivious. At least that is how the majority of the academic and educated world perceives them. Using Frederic Jameson's terms, music videos have been defined as a schizophrenic string of isolated, discontinuous signifiers, failing to link up into a coherent sequence, as a string without a center. Andrew Goodwin talked about "semiotic pornography", (the study of signs/symbols – signs which propose sexual pleasure / connotations & denote pornographic tendencies) "electronic wallpaper" and "neo-fascist propaganda" and Michael Shore defined the medium by its so-called "decadence", its "surface without substance", by its "clichéd imagery".
The critical condemnation of the music video object and the reduction of the medium to shallowness and superficiality however have in no way reduced the influence of the phenomenon, as its omniscience (infinite knowledge) and penetration (breakthrough) into capitalist society have been protruding (extending above the surface) steadily over the last few decades. The fact that MTV has become the ultimate forum on which youth culture is both expressed and constructed has transformed the music video not only into the most effective tool for promotion within the music industry, but also into a powerful ideological force (social aspirations). On a visually artistic level, the cult around music video directors as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham proves the medium to be transcending (extending, greater power / independent of) the stigma of dull commerciality (mass market – advertising – industry production for profit), entering the realm of culture, if not art (effectively advertising disguised as cultural entertainment). Far less than being a mere training ground for feature film directors as Jonze himself, Tony and Ridley Scott or David Fincher, music videos have become a legitimate field and established photographers like Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Herb Rittz and David Lachapelle have proven all to eager to enter the new medium. Music videos are also infiltrating (penetrating this market) at film festivals all over the world and even claiming independence by the recent phenomenon of music video festivals. In short, music videos have become a center of commercial, popular and artistic interest. (for example the LAMVF)
Considering the artistic, commercial and ideological potential of the medium, it becomes necessary to investigate both the semiotics of the clip text and its function within society at a deeper level. For the investigation of an object of study as multidimensional (several dimensions) as the music video, using signifiers from different sensorial domains (sensory areas – eg: through eyes, ears & sexual pleasure), the field of cultural studies with its interdisciplinary (involving x2 of more academic disciplines)approach can provide tools for interpretation. At this preliminary stage, the main concern of investigation should be the discovery of a pattern within the "hysteria" of sensorial dimensions, maybe even of a common denominator around which all the different clip elements could be centered. I claim that such a center does exist. This base, this center around which all visual, auditive, kinetic, narrative, commercial, social, communicational and artistic dimensions circle, turns out to be the star of the music video. The star is the one that lends the video world its splendor, that gives the audiovisual elements their enchanting attraction and that illuminates viewers all over the world from the Olympus (mountain) of the screen. This may seem rather obvious, but one would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualizations of a song. There is no need to say that I strongly reject the jamesonean view on music videos. While they may seem discontinuous on a syntagmatic level, the shots are highly connected through the image of the star.
Before going into the semiotic analysis of the clip text as such, a brief investigation of the technological, institutional and artistic influences that culminated in the medium as we have come to know it would be useful, although within the limits of this article, any history will have to be reduced to a crude sketch, merely an outline. More importantly, investigating the semiotics, the universals of the music video at this stage implies focusing on the most central instances of the medium. As much as I adore some 'experimental' videos, investigating them at this stage would be trying to run without being able to walk. Before being able to define why some music videos may strike us as alternative and experimental, we need to focus on the mechanism (interactive system) of videos in the center of the medium, popular videos of popular stars. The MTV Video Music Award nominations seem to be fairly representative for the popularity of both stars and music videos, so they have been the guideline in the selection of my corpus.
A new medium is born, and born again
When building a theoretical matrix (A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained) into which a crude historical sketch of the music video could be drawn, we first need to position the phenomenon in the landscape of contemporary media. It would not be unthinkable to regard the music video as a sub-genre of the medium film, as a sort of commercial, as visual radio or just as television entertainment, but none of these approaches would take into account the basic purpose and specificity of the medium, namely the creation of stars. Their specificity, and the fact that music videos can reach their audience through different bearers such as television, the Internet, pellicule, video, DVD and compact disc show that they should be regarded as an independent genre or an independent medium.
The notion of cultural form by Raymond Williams enables us to situate the clip as a dynamic and flexible phenomenon, adaptable to the historical and cultural context in which it is viewed. Although Williams takes the apparatus to be part of this context, the producers, the public and the experience are just as important in defining the medium. The apparatus of music videos involves both the technical means of production, with different sorts of cameras and digital postproduction devices, and those of consumption, ranging from television screens over the Internet to DVD-players. The producers are just as diverse, since the star itself, as well as directors and technicians, music mixers, make-up artists and pr-managers from both film and music companies are involved. As far as music video consumers are concerned, they could of course be anyone, but the target group op the medium is the ever renewing MTV-generation, a group of youngsters between fourteen and twenty-five, still in search for the right identity and willing to spend money on it. The most difficult item to define remains the clip-experience, an extremely variable concept, depending on the psychological and cultural background of the viewer and on the moment of watching, but most of all on the text itself,as one should not underestimate the level to which production teams are able to manipulate stimuli and to guide viewers into the desired affects. As a response, viewers in stead of changing the channel, should stay tuned, buy the cd or imitate dance moves,style and consumption patterns of their admired star.
Added to the notion of cultural form, Stanley Cavell's concept of automatism can bring in the video's specificity, namely its mechanism of star creation . Cavell has defined automatism to be the basis of a medium; a structural formula that has been created within a certain oeuvre, but proves so productive that it automatically starts reproducing itself in other stances, hence creating the medium. Cavell's medium concept could at first sight be just as easily exchanged for the more common notion of genre, but as genre usually is conceptualized to be a subgroup of a larger medium, that notion would eclipse the specificity of the music video mechanism.However, before analyzing the mechanism internally, it seems useful to explore the external factors, historical, technological, social and economical, that produced the medium as we know it.
The concept of the second birth of a medium by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion can help to structure the history of music video as a cultural practice, although that history will within the scope of this article necessarily be limited to a crude sketch and the account will contain a fair amount of teleological thinking. The main idea behind the second birth is that in order to be institutionalized as a real medium, a cultural practice will have to eliminate certain aspects of itself, hence go through a partial suicide and be born again with well-defined aims and a well-structured mechanism. In the case of the music video, this means that from the wide range of short films to visualize a song or a piece of music, only those that actually were meant to create a star image for the musical performer, would remain within the scope of the medium. I propose to pinpoint this second birth of the music video, which in reality of course happened rather as a gradual process, to the 1 st of august 1981, the day that the music channel MTV started broadcasting in America with the clip "Video Killed the Radio Star".The channel would probably not have been founded if clips did not already exist in the first place, but the worldwide institutionalization of music videos as a medium of promotion, entertainment and art, and the clip mechanism as we know it today, would not have been possible unless something like music television came into being.
Before MTV saw the light, clips had already been shown on television, but the line between what were music videos and what were just filmed performances was not very clear at that time. In the process of medium reincarnation this stage would be termed the first birth. The success of TV-shows in the 1960's such as Bandstand or The Ed Sullivan Show, where popular artists performed their new songs, have been a major impetus for the production of clips, as the most famous performers would soon not be able anymore to attend all the shows. The production of video clips seemed the most convenient solution. Clips turned out to have a broader range of artistic possibilities than the staged performances, as they were not bound to the limits of the spatial and temporal reality on stage. The Beatles' song "Paperbackwriter" is credited for being the first music video ever broadcasted on television.
Before these first clips were shown on television, however, the sixties had already witnessed the hype of the Scopitones, "coin-operated entertainment machines featuring visual accompaniment for a musical number".The origin of these visual jukeboxes dates back to Edison's invention of the Kinetograph, but it was only after the Second World War that the French company Cameca developed the Scopitone-machine. These peephole-devices were to entertain the public in cafés and clubs with music films of about three minutes length and proving to be highly successful, the first machines would be exported to America in 1963. The Scopitones did not necessarily have to feature famous artists singing and could just as easily show exotic tribal dances, stripteases to music or jazz band choreographies. Promotion of a musical number or creation of a star image were at that time still secondary to the attraction, to spectacular entertainment or to satisfying the peepshow desires of the club audiences. It seems to be the case that those priorities would be inversed in later music videos, where spectacular entertainment and striptease allusions would only be linked to the spectacular divinity and the glamorous sex appeal of the star.
The Scopitones that did feature artists, however, already constructed these artists as the central element of the clip with both filmic and pro-filmic devices. The mise-en-cadre (FRAMEWORK) was so designed as to guide the viewers' attention towards the star, making him/her the center of the world within the frame. Also the costumes, the lightning and choreographies were intended to put the artist in the spotlight, with contrast as the key notion, making it advisable for the star to wear different outfits than the backing vocalists, to perform different dance moves and to be the only one to address the camera. Anyhow, the audience was likely to link the voice they heard to the person whose lips were moving, whereas instrumental music would more easily be taken for granted as an indication of the appropriate emotional effect. In this way, the artist in Scopitones could not only be identified as the visual, but also as the auditive center of interest in the clips.
Some cultural practices introduced elements that, even though important for the development of the clip mechanism, did not emerge from protoclips themselves. These practices could be grouped together to form the phase before the first birth of the medium, a so-called prenatal phase (before birth).Of course, almost everything could a posteriori (devirved from observed facts) be said to have influenced the birth of the medium and of course the different birth stages cannot be separated as strictly as one would have it. Still, music television would not have been developed if it were not for the influence of youth culture, a phenomenon popping up during the fifties by which music became the basis of peer group identity. Films as The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando or the various Elvis films helped to spread the early youth culture and lifestyle of Rock'n'roll.
Also within the world of film, the flamboyant musicals of dance director Busby Berkeley with their swooping aerial photography, their kaleidoscopic lenses (continually shifting or rapidly changing), the highly expressive camera movement and the sophisticated montage techniques were influential for the music videos to come, as they turned dance sequences into "experimental cinema of abstract impressionism" (A style or movement in painting originating in France in the 1860s, characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, esp. in terms of the shifting effect of light and color - seeking o capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction ( description / representative image or illustration ) rather than resembling "traditional narrative film." Also the mickey-mousing process of frame-by-frame synchronization, by which early Disney films achieved to combine "sound and image in an expressive manner impossible (…) in live-action narrative cinema", is echoed by the structuring role music seems to have in music videos of today.
Even the editing practice of directors of Russian Constructivism for whom expressiveness and symbolism were far more important than just telling a story, seems to have been more influential within the music video mechanism than it has been within narrative film. Trough the fast succession of spectacular visual stimuli and a manipulative "montage of attraction",Sergei Eisenstein wished to develop a symbolic, metaphoric and poetic Filmgestalt in the mind op the beholder. This Gestalt (An organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts) was to build an ideal image of the struggle of the collective or individual Soviet hero (the Proletariat, Lenin), a fictitious image that would picture the real essence of communism. Music videos could rightly be argued to do pretty much the same thing, that is, build an ideal and fictitious image of the pop hero in order represent his true essence through means of a manipulative and nonnarrative montage of attraction.
In some ways, music videos also seem to be a return to the cinema of attractions, a term introduced by Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault to topically describe the early cinema.This sort of cinema aimed at showing itself exhibitionistically as a spectacular and stunning curiosum??, rather than at telling a story and absorb the voyeuristic audience into it, as would be the case in the later practice of narrative cinema. The nec plus ultra of today's exhibitionistic medium practices seems to be exactly the music video, where it is not so much the medium itself that arouses excitement anymore, but the eye-catching appearances of the star as visual spectacle. Even though the fast clip editing seems miles ahead of the often static tableaus (A GROUP OF PEOPLE ATTRACTIVELY ARRANGED) in early cinema, narrativity remains inferior to the importance of showing the divine capacities of the star.
The notion of cultural form by Raymond Williams enables us to situate the clip as a dynamic and flexible phenomenon, adaptable to the historical and cultural context in which it is viewed. Although Williams takes the apparatus to be part of this context, the producers, the public and the experience are just as important in defining the medium. The apparatus of music videos involves both the technical means of production, with different sorts of cameras and digital postproduction devices, and those of consumption, ranging from television screens over the Internet to DVD-players. The producers are just as diverse, since the star itself, as well as directors and technicians, music mixers, make-up artists and pr-managers from both film and music companies are involved. As far as music video consumers are concerned, they could of course be anyone, but the target group op the medium is the ever renewing MTV-generation, a group of youngsters between fourteen and twenty-five, still in search for the right identity and willing to spend money on it. The most difficult item to define remains the clip-experience, an extremely variable concept, depending on the psychological (characteristics/biology) and cultural background (location, religion, upbringing, political background etc) of the viewer and on the moment of watching, but most of all on the text itself, as one should not underestimate the level to which production teams are able to manipulate stimuli and to guide viewers into the desired affects. As a response, viewers in stead of changing the channel, should stay tuned, buy the cd or imitate dance moves, style and consumption patterns of their admired star.(gangman style! CLEAR EXAMPLE!!)
Added to the notion of cultural form, Stanley Cavell's concept of automatism can bring in the video's specificity, namely its mechanism of star creation.Cavell has defined automatism to be the basis of a medium; a structural formula that has been created within a certain oeuvre (The works of a painter, composer, or author regarded collectively), but proves so productive that it automatically starts reproducing itself in other stances (position / forms / shapes / attitudes?), hence creating the medium. Cavell's medium concept could at first sight be just as easily exchanged for the more common notion of genre, but as genre usually is conceptualized to be a subgroup of a larger medium, that notion would eclipse (destroy) the specificity (specific) of the music video mechanism( machine) .However, before analyzing the mechanism internally, it seems useful to explore the external factors, historical, technological, social and economical, that produced the medium as we know it. The concept of the second birth of a medium by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion can help to structure the history of music video as a cultural practice, although that history will within the scope of this article necessarily be limited to a crude sketch and the account will contain a fair amount of teleological thinking.
The main idea behind the second birth is that in order to be institutionalized (established) as a real medium, a cultural practice will have to eliminate certain aspects of itself, hence go through a partial (half suicide - only partly committal) suicide and be born again with well-defined aims and a well-structured mechanism (machine). - based upon already existing material in order to gain establishment & popularity - but then have it's own rights? recycled? based upon other mediums? inter-textual?
In the case of the music video, this means that from the wide range of short films to visualize a song or a piece of music, only those that actually were meant to create a star image for the musical performer, would remain within the scope of the medium. I propose to pinpoint this second birth of the music video, which in reality of course happened rather as a gradual process, to the 1 st of august 1981, the day that the music channel MTV started broadcasting in America with the clip "Video Killed the Radio Star".The channel would probably not have been founded if clips did not already exist in the first place, but the worldwide institutionalization of music videos as a medium of promotion, entertainment and art, and the clip mechanism as we know it today, would not have been possible unless something like music television came into being.
Before MTV saw the light, clips had already been shown on television, but the line between what were music videos and what were just filmed performances was not very clear at that time. In the process of medium reincarnation (AN AGENCY OR MEANS OF DOING SOMETHING, NATURE, INFLUENCES, ENVIROMENT) this stage would be termed the first birth. The success of TV-shows in the 1960's such as Bandstand or The Ed Sullivan Show, where popular artists performed their new songs, have been a major impetus (stimulus / forward force - inspiration) for the production of clips, as the most famous performers would soon not be able anymore to attend all the shows. The production of video clips seemed the most convenient solution. Clips turned out to have a broader range of artistic possibilities than the staged performances, as they were not bound to the limits of the spatial and temporal reality on stage. The Beatles' song "Paperbackwriter" is credited for being the first music video ever broadcasted on television. - (OutKast parody this performance with their song 'Hey Ya')
Before these first clips were shown on television, however, the sixties had already witnessed the hype of the Scopitones, "coin-operated entertainment machines featuring visual accompaniment for a musical number". These peephole-devices were to entertain the public in cafés and clubs with music films of about three minutes length and proving to be highly successful. The Scopitones did not necessarily have to feature famous artists singing and could just as easily show exotic tribal dances, stripteases to music or jazz band choreographies. Promotion of a musical number or creation of a star image were at that time still secondary to the attraction, to spectacular entertainment or to satisfying the peepshow desires of the club audiences. It seems to be the case that those priorities would be inversed (functions reversed - one goes up so the other goes down) in later music videos, where spectacular entertainment and striptease allusions would only be linked to the spectacular divinity and the glamorous sex appeal of the star.
The main purpose of music videos has been defined to be the creation of a star, a mixture or human familiarity and divine glamour and in order to achieve the desired star effect, production teams have a whole range of filmic devices at their disposal. It could be rightly claimed that music videos try to create a utopian world (idealised perfection) of which the star seems to be the instigator (the cause). Richard Dyer's Entertainment and Utopia hands over some very useful tools to explain the utopian mechanism in musicals and with some adjustments, these tools could be rightfully applied to the mechanism of the music video. First of all, Dyer argues how in musicals, the development of the narrative is postponed in order for a utopian dance act to break through. When for example Maria in the Sound of Music starts singing about confidence, lonely goaters and other favourite things of hers, utopia seems to emerge. The song is a marker for the opposition between narrative and "utopianact", between the normal world and something of a different order. Dyer indicates that the notion of utopia in musicals rather indicates a feeling, an effect of utopia rather than an ontologically (the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being) or theoretically sketched out world with rules and laws. In both the character in the film and the viewer in the audience, entertainment will achieve imaginary escapism rather than real changes and Dyer makes clear that escapist needs and their proper fulfillments are to a large extend created by the dominant system in which the entertainment operates.
Stars seem to have always been around in one way or another during western history. Ancient Greece had its Olympus, the Middle Ages their saints and later kings were introduced as loci of divinity. They all functioned as incarnations (A person who embodies in the flesh a deity, spirit, or abstract quality) of the ideals of their time, of braveness and power, devotedness (feelings of love) and abstinence (The fact or practice of restraining oneself from indulging in something) or bienséance (propriety - The state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals.) and courtoisie (courtesy) and hence served as role models for identification. The star system that developed in the twentieth century would not be very different. Film and pop stars were taken to be typical of the average citizen and at the same time superior and special, raised above the masses. They would serve as role models to identify with, but also as sites of escapist dreams about glamour and success. Both types of star phenomena, that of the music star and that of the film star, would in a certain measure come together in the medium of music video, a medium that would not only be a result of the star phenomenon, but that would also become an important mechanism in its creation.
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Information to be included on an album
The Cover
The Band/Artist's name - Suburban Typo
Album title - Splintered Youth - although not all album's have the name on the cover.
Artwork/pictures - collage
Parental Advisory Explicit Content notice (if applicable)
The Spine
The Band/Artist name - Suburban Typo
Album Title - Splintered Youth
Record label (if applicable) - GEAR PRODUCTIONS
UPC code numbers
Back Cover
Track numbers, song titles and length of songs - 1-10
*Credit
Most likely for the producers, but may also be for the artist, songwriters, musicians, producer, engineer and others who helped put the album together.
Songwriter credit should be given for each song, unless the same artist or the entire band wrote all of the songs, in which case “All songs written by [artist].” should be sufficient. Make sure to include this information for cover versions and samples as well. - The Vaccines?
*Publishing information “© [year] [publishing company name] ([ASCAP, BMI, etc.])” - 2013 / GEAR PRODUCTIONS - Copyright notices - CR OF GP
“© [year] [artist name]” = The copyright in the lyrics and music on the album.
“(P) [year] [artist name or record label]” (the P should be in a circle just like the © symbol and denotes a copyright in the sound recording) –
If the copyright in the lyrics and music and the sound recordings belong to the same person or entity (which is often the case), the following should be put on the album “(P)(C) [year] [artist name or record label]”
“All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.”
“Manufactured in...Country - UK
Artwork/pictures – Be sure to give credit to the artist(s). “[Artwork or Photographs] by:[artist]” or “[Artwork or Photographs] © [year] [artist]”
Website information
Bar code
Contact information (especially if this is a demo or you have a fan club)
Contact information (especially if this is a demo or you have a fan club)
Thursday, 14 March 2013
Editing the Performance
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Theorists - SVEN E CARLSSON
Sven E. Carlsson took part in research in order to see whether a music video is Audiovisual poetry or a commercial salad of images.
Sven E Carlsson stated that music video has many faces within an extensive phenomenon which is presented through the TV screen and its speakers via different carriers of information - music, lyrics and the moving images. Carlsson believed that music videos mainly fall into two key catergories : performance clips - Where the video mostly shows an artist (or band) singing or/and dancing to their song in order to promote it; and conceptual clips - Where the video shows something else (or someone else) often with artistic ambitions.
A music videos that more or less contains a filmed singer blended with inserted images. A standard clip is meant to be dynamic and has many variations. The vocalist may actively participate in the story while simultaneously standing outside the video offering self-reflexive commentary; he may have an alter ego e.g. a cartoon character.
'He or she is a monger of their own image selling everything to be in the spotlight - selling voice, face, lifestyle'
- PERFORMERS ARE RESTRICTED, A PRODUCT OF THE INDUSTRY,
There are three pure forms of visual tradition in music video:
Performance Clip
If a music video clip contains mostly filmed performance e.g. a video that shows the vocalist in more than one setting, then it is a performance clip. The performance can be of three types: song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance.
In some types of performance music video the artist is made into a materialization of the "commerical exhibitionist" (we want to gaze up this artist in an inappropriate manor & this is being provided for us by the style of 'marketing' used in music video), this is where the performer is made into almost a selling item; someone that fans often aspire to be and these scenes will be extremely high in quality and have a gloss to them, for example most main stream pop artists like for example Rhianna are heavily materialised in their videos, EG: Rhianna S&M - a video which youtube put age restrictive bans upon! The exhibitionist wants success and tries to evoke the charisma of stardom and sexuality & model their character upon that of the artist.
Another type is the "televised bard" (lyrical poet) the singing storyteller -who uses on screen images instead of inner, personal images - acts the songs emotions.
The the third and final type is the "elctronic shaman" (A person having access to, and influence in, the world of spirits), sometimes the shaman is invisible and only his/her voice that anchors the visuals and they often shift between multiple shapes.
( A televised bard is basically like a singing storyteller who uses actual on screen images)
Narrative Clip
If a music video clip is understood as a silent movie to a musical background it is a narrative clip - based around acting a story which corresponds to the lyrical message, rather than being incongruous to it or representative of certain themes explored. A narrative contains a story which is generally extremely easy to follow and may not contain any lip-synchronisation at all, for example Ed Sheeren's 'A team' is mainly a narrative based song in which a female impoverished prostitute evokes the audiences sympathy as she displays her life of sorrow - using a monochromatic effect to amplify her actions.
Art Clip / Conceptual
If a music video contains no interpretable visual in the narrative and contains no lip-synchronisation singing then it is a pure art clip. These are normally associated with more modern, experimental music, EG: Radio head no surprises - where the lead singer is lip syncing but the style of the video illuminates the illusion is actually performing willingly. Conceptual videos force the audience to watch something other than the artist throughout the video. They contains no visual narrative and no lip-synchronisation, this means that it is pure art.
Sven E Carlsson stated that music video has many faces within an extensive phenomenon which is presented through the TV screen and its speakers via different carriers of information - music, lyrics and the moving images. Carlsson believed that music videos mainly fall into two key catergories : performance clips - Where the video mostly shows an artist (or band) singing or/and dancing to their song in order to promote it; and conceptual clips - Where the video shows something else (or someone else) often with artistic ambitions.
A music videos that more or less contains a filmed singer blended with inserted images. A standard clip is meant to be dynamic and has many variations. The vocalist may actively participate in the story while simultaneously standing outside the video offering self-reflexive commentary; he may have an alter ego e.g. a cartoon character.
'One of the most common methods of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes. Almost everything is perceived as opposites - trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or female, naturalism or antirealism'. - BINARY OPPOSITES DRIVE THE PROGRESSION OF THE NARRATIVE WITHIN THE VIDEO. When this kind of opposite method is shown throughout a music video then the video slot itself into one the two categories.
'He or she is a monger of their own image selling everything to be in the spotlight - selling voice, face, lifestyle'
- PERFORMERS ARE RESTRICTED, A PRODUCT OF THE INDUSTRY,
There are three pure forms of visual tradition in music video:
Performance Clip
If a music video clip contains mostly filmed performance e.g. a video that shows the vocalist in more than one setting, then it is a performance clip. The performance can be of three types: song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance.
In some types of performance music video the artist is made into a materialization of the "commerical exhibitionist" (we want to gaze up this artist in an inappropriate manor & this is being provided for us by the style of 'marketing' used in music video), this is where the performer is made into almost a selling item; someone that fans often aspire to be and these scenes will be extremely high in quality and have a gloss to them, for example most main stream pop artists like for example Rhianna are heavily materialised in their videos, EG: Rhianna S&M - a video which youtube put age restrictive bans upon! The exhibitionist wants success and tries to evoke the charisma of stardom and sexuality & model their character upon that of the artist.
Another type is the "televised bard" (lyrical poet) the singing storyteller -who uses on screen images instead of inner, personal images - acts the songs emotions.
The the third and final type is the "elctronic shaman" (A person having access to, and influence in, the world of spirits), sometimes the shaman is invisible and only his/her voice that anchors the visuals and they often shift between multiple shapes.
( A televised bard is basically like a singing storyteller who uses actual on screen images)
Narrative Clip
If a music video clip is understood as a silent movie to a musical background it is a narrative clip - based around acting a story which corresponds to the lyrical message, rather than being incongruous to it or representative of certain themes explored. A narrative contains a story which is generally extremely easy to follow and may not contain any lip-synchronisation at all, for example Ed Sheeren's 'A team' is mainly a narrative based song in which a female impoverished prostitute evokes the audiences sympathy as she displays her life of sorrow - using a monochromatic effect to amplify her actions.
Art Clip / Conceptual
If a music video contains no interpretable visual in the narrative and contains no lip-synchronisation singing then it is a pure art clip. These are normally associated with more modern, experimental music, EG: Radio head no surprises - where the lead singer is lip syncing but the style of the video illuminates the illusion is actually performing willingly. Conceptual videos force the audience to watch something other than the artist throughout the video. They contains no visual narrative and no lip-synchronisation, this means that it is pure art.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)