Analysing Music Videos: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

Artist: Gnarls Barkley "Crazy"
Genre: R 'n' B
Director of Music Video: Robert Hales
Category: Performance/Concept


Genre Characteristics
After having explored a general number of \r 'n' \b music videos, it's fair to say Gnarls' Barley's music video does not follow the typical conventions used in most videos of this genre. To begin with, idealization and reference to the notion of looking are very popular conventions amongst the genre, usually due to the explicit song topics explored throughout the lyrics. This music video does not use very much sexualization to intrigue the viewer, but makes use of a more concept based music video to this instead. This in my opinion is what makes this music video so successful is the fact that it breaks stereotypical conventions but somehow manages to still encapsulate the feel of the song and genre. From another perspective you could say that for the exact reason that this video differentiates itself from others is what makes it fit in with the genre. One thing I think makes it work is the black and white filter which gives the video a very stylized look, common amongst R n B music videos.

I think that what Robert Hales was trying to do is to link this idea of going "crazy" that Gnarls Barkley explore in the song with the Rorschach inkblot test. He cleverly constructs his music video with a variety of images using the aesthetic of an "ink" medium with hidden images inside said pictures.

Above are visual examples of the Rorschach ink blot tests that Rorschach himself conducted as a method of discovering mental disabilities amongst his patients. 

Relationship Between the Visuals and the Music

• Ink drops start falling to the introductory beats of the song. Instantly establishes a relationship between the visuals and the music. The drops then spread into the first image or illustration in which Gnarls' Barkley's lead man can be seen miming to the song. At this point you could say the performance aspect is introduced, whilst being incorporated into the conceptual visuals. The ink continues spreading and there's a subtle change in movement within the inkblot on screen. The occasional ink drop will fall on an important beat
•  

Analysing Music Videos: 21 Guns - Green Day

Artist: Green Day "21 Guns"
Genre: Punk/rock
Director of Music Video: Marc Webb
Category: Narrative/Performance/Concept

My Interpretation
This song (as any other) can have many interpretations. In the context of the album, 21 guns is talking about a sudden loss in faith when you realise everything you've been fighting for has been for nothing  and realising what is actually worth the fight.

However in context of the album, the following quote pretty much says it all.
In a very broad and simplistic interpretation, 21 Guns' lyrics are about 'giving up the fight' and surrendering to an unwinnable or worthless conflict. When taken on its own out of the 21CB story-arc, the song's lyrics can be interpreted as anti-war, however when applied to the story of Christain and Gloria, its meaning is far less global, instead they're referring to their relationship and all its conflicts. Up until this point on the album, Christian has been the angry, self-destructive, disenfranchised, left-behind rebel that's trying to fight against 'the system' of post-Bush America, while Gloria has been his rock and stabilising force; a guiding light of rebellious femininity at the end of his own dark tunnel. This song is the tipping point for the pair's already rocky relationship; Gloria is questioning Christian on his beliefs, values and feelings (the first verse), and ultimately trying to get him to stop walking down the path of martyrdom - she's trying lay down to rest the soldier within him with a 21-gun salute.

Relationship Between Lyrics & Visuals

Conventions Used

• Features full band 
• Performance aspect combined with narrative 
• Dark/punky colours 

Location

It's interesting that this entire music video takes place in the space of a single room. The song is discussing standing back and thinking about what it is you're fighting for, and so it fits the idea perfectly. Two people are stuck in a room together, fleeing the police- they have no where else to go. So in this small space, there's nothing left to do but stop and think. This is reflected in the way the man (Christian) is symbolically rolling the bullet between his fingers at the beginning of the song- he is contemplating what the bullet is worth. 

Narrative/Concept/Performance?
It is impossible to give this music video simply one label since it fits into all three. The song was taken from a concept album. The concept involved the story and struggle between these two characters shown in the music video-Christian and Gloria. They are the icon for the album from which this single was released. In fact at one point- the image on the front cover is replicated in the 350 shot where Christian and Gloria kiss. Therefore they are the concept. The performance aspect is self-explanatory and involves the entire band of Green Day performing in the same space where Christian and Gloria are hiding. The narrative apparently involves these two characters who are fleeing the police, for what purpose- is not clearly obvious through the music video. But the again- perhaps this is part of the message. If we do not know why they are fleeing and what they are fighting for and they're having doubts themselves, what is the point of the fight? Throughout the music video, subtle hints are made to what the characters are experiencing. An obvious example would be the shot of the broken glass reflecting Christian's conflicted spirit on the verge of surrender. A link I found interesting was the low angle shot of the phone ringing during the lyric "when your mind breaks the spirit of your soul". I interpreted the phone as a symbol for Gloria's thoughts calling out to her and talking her heart out of the pointless conflict hence "her mind breaks the spirit of her soul". 
There is obviously a parallel between the performance aspect of the video and the narrative aspect. Both seem to be occurring at the same time (you can tell by the time the guns start shooting through the walls) and in the same space yet in different places. It makes the performance and the performers more linked to the reality of the characters and as the lyrics are sung the characters are experiencing those very emotions.

Music Video: Chosen Artist

This song was written when I was 13 years old. It is about finding the strength to not be affected by the media and magazines that portray "beauty" as something unattainable. This is an anthem-like song to help others find and embrace their own beauty. I rerecorded it for my latest record Heartwood because to me, this is an important song. Who gets to decide beauty anyway? We are all so different and the differences are where beauty lies.

                                                                               - Amanda Rogers on writing This Beauty
             

Artist: Amanda Rogers 

Genre: Piano/Pop/Indie

Song: This Beauty

Album: Heartwood 

Amanda discovered her passion for music in her teens, chanelling the turbulent emotions through her lyrics and what has been described as "aleatoric music". 

Aleatoric Music - Music in which some element of the composition is left to chance (Wikipeidia) 

Her style is anything but unoriginal combining soft piano with pop, indie, jazz and blues influences. The previous recordings are very much rougher sounding acoustics and her musical arrangement has developed and been explored with time. Having made eight albums in total, a change of image is unavoidable and the refinement of recent albums is evident when compared to earlier recordings. The album from which we'll be using the song is one of the most recent, leaning more towards the refined end of the spectrum. The development of her self-image is evident not only through the music but also in web design, professional photos, the development of a clothing line and graphic design. I would say Amanda Rogers's image has simply been enhanced, rather than gone through a drastic image change.


Representation
                                           
Whilst coming up with ideas for our music ideas, we thought quite a lot about how exactly we would be representing Amanda visually and what was key to include, as well as what wasn't part of her self-image. Through exploring her website, we concluded that featuring a natural location somewhere was absolutely KEY as her role in sustaining and caring for the environment is quite a large part of her self image. Most of her photos feature in woods, or in some sort of natural location, and she is known to be quite the tree fanatic. This love of nature ties in with her signifying natural beauty. Her fashion sense and general visual self-representation doesn't involve much artificial make-up and trendy clothing. She seems to wear almost hippy-like clothing and colours, however in a fashionable way. Headbands seem to be a recurring accessory in most of her photos. Whatever photos there are of Amanda in natural locations, the rest seem to mostly contain her performing her songs live. We aim to incorporate a similar (as possible) costume in our video as well as a significant amount of trees and other natural locations. Similarly, natural (looking) lighting is what we intend to use for our location as opposed to some of the harsh and dramatic lighting pop music videos tend to use. 


In the process of planning our shoot we drew inspiration from some of the photos posted on Amanda's website and even considered replicating a couple photos taken for the album "Heartwood".

We thought the best way to contact our artist was directly via e-mail from the contact information given on the website. Seeing as she manages her own music, we assumed she would hold most of the copyrights for the requested track. Below is an image of our e-mail to Amanda and the reply.

Editing in Music Videos

When editing for cinema, music is extremely important, but not as essential as establishing a relationship between the music and visuals in music videos. Contrasting to film, in music videos the visuals are created to fit with the music. Music videos are a form of film at the end of the day, and the key is to make subtle connections between what is going on in the musical track and in the film to establish the difference between a film with music put to it and a music video.

Whilst exploring some articles on what people recommend on how to edit a music video, I came across this post- http://www.thevideogenius.com/how-to-edit-a-music-video/. Later in the article, the following is mentioned:

Play the song until you feel an edit. I learned the method of feeling edits from Walter Murch‘s book “In the Blink of an Eye” He teaches to play the clip until you feel an edit and hit pause when you do. Keep doing that until you pause on the same exact frame 3 times in a row. I’m not usually that strict about it, I’ll usually do it until I hit the same frame twice or I’ll split the difference if it’s close and play it a couple times to feel it out. In my opinion timing is something you feel based on the music and the footage.

The feeling of where an edit lies is mostly how our group have been editing our music video and our film opening at the end of AS. This is a very important skill to have in editing any video, because it demands your eyes to read what's on the screen, if the viewer watches the video and an edit isn't cut in the right place it will be obvious and as a result disconnect them from the song. The importance of this skill is heightened in the editing process of music videos as the music isn't just a part of the film but partnered with the visuals, meaning both need to "fit" with the other (or rather the visuals need to fit with the music). Mostly, I would say it's about feeling an edit rather than working it out systematically, and where an edit needs to be depends on the genre of music/style of song. Through the music video research I have conducted so far I would say the quicker the tempo of the song the more cuts are in the music video. 

Our group, for example, explored an artist similar to ours (pretty much in the same genre) and analysed the editing whilst considering the following points:

Go Back by Marketa Irglova

1. How many cuts were in the video?

Around 49 cuts in total. Quite a few were faded into the following shot, but most were straight cuts. Although there aren't an abundance of cuts, this is compensated for by the pace in each shot maintained through the movement within each shot e.g the flow of water, which fits perfectly with the instrumentation. Although the tempo isn't upbeat there is still momentum in the instruments (particularly in the instrumental). 

2. Was the editing shrinking or expanding time?

Because the music video didn't tell a full narrative it doesn't evoke a strong sense of shrinking or expanding time because of the variety of shots. On the other hand it's possible that due to the variety of locations shot at different points in time, there was a sensation of time being shrunk. Each shot individually was slowed/sped up (depending on the shot) backwards to show the action reversing in reflecting the idea of going back on one's actions in the song. Most shots were slowed down, however all increased in speed as the music gained momentum from the moment of the instrumental (1:38). 

3. At what points were the cuts mostly made?

As in most music videos, the cuts during this video were made to the beat of the song or a change in one of the musical layers. I think it's important that a music video maintains a balance between timing the visuals to the music, to the extent where a video will fit naturally to the audience's visual expectations, however be ever so slightly varied from time to time. A shot doesn't necessarily need to stay in sync with the obvious tempo all the time, as I mentioned before, a cut may occur when another instrument kicks in or a motif begins to maintain the relationship with the visuals but at the same time differentiate a bit. 

Analysing Music Videos: In These Arms - The Swell Season

Artist: The Swell Season "In These Arms"
Genre: Folk/Acoustic/Pop
Director of Music Video: Unknown
Category: Concept/Performance

My Interpretation

Chronological Analysis

• Shot of a hand turning on an analogue player of some sort. At the precise moment the hand turns the music begins.
• The video is mainly shot in Black and White. A technique not uncommon to this kind of genre of music. Many "artsy" (I don't mean this in a pretentious way) music videos employ the use of Black & White often to portray the seriousness of their music/song and set a profound tone to their video. Some artists have used this to greater effect in their videos than others and have successfully managed to encapsulate the feel of the song whilst enhancing the appeal. Meanwhile other artists seem to have used this as a shortcut to grasping the audience's heart strings and used the cliché in the wrong fashion. This music video does come across as artistic but in a way fits the genre and artists and isn't over done- it's very subtle. In some cases (as this one) you could argue also the low-budget artistic look of the video brings the viewer into a closer realtionship with the music and the visuals. Sometimes when an audience is observing something glamourous and far-fetched, yes it can appear as visually pleasing and stimulaing, however the relationship with the music isn't as emotional because the line dividing reality and the "hollywood" world hasn't merged. 

Shooting Journal

One thing I discovered during the production of our music video is how different the approach is to filming a narrative film. The editing to production importance is 50:50 in a narrative film I would say, however in a music video probably 40:60 in a music video. For this reason it was hard to say what shot would work and what shot wouldn't, particularly also since there was a significant amount more of jump cuts in our music video- the editing of which will come together in post-production. The editing of our film opening did "happen" in post, but we kind of knew the sequence of shots and I certainly had a clearer vision of how the final product would turn out, compared to This Beauty. To be honest, we all agreed that we felt less prepared with this so we cleaned up our research and planning and did everything as we did in AS but it still didn't change the feeling of unpreparation.

Production Day - One
I didn't really feel prepared like I knew what to expect from shooting on the first day and we unfortunately got off to late start. Not only did we arrive two hours later than planned but once there, the location had to be dressed for our first scene which was shot at the Heartwood tree. We decided to film in the wooded areas first before the lighting became impossible to shoot in- something you consider but don't actually realize the effect of until you shoot in such conditions. The way that we decided to organize our shooting was to do certain sections from the song to certain areas in the parks. The problem that we realized with this was that an idea would arise later or we ran out of rushes and we'd need more. After this experience we discovered the term "full song run-through" and found it very useful in future post-production. On the second and third day we made sure that no matter what we shot we'd shoot the entire song to ensure we got as much coverage as possible and to save time re-`shooting in the future. Unless of course, it was a specific part of our narrative, like the discovery of the heart for example, which we managed to shoot very quickly, also since our vision for this scene in particular was very clear and we knew what we needed.

The image below is the positioning of the cameras during the Heartwood scene. We thought the best way we could increase our productivity was to shoot from different angles- it is also a convention of music videos to contain different perspectives of the same artist or scene, particularly during still shots to give a sense of movement to the music video.

Production Day - Two
After very severe weather warnings and a post on the Langley park website mentioning its closure, we were expecting to cancel the shoot due to the severe damage done over night and in the morning. We started to come up with alternate locations, similar to Black Park where we could shoot the same footage. Luckily, half-way through the day, the park reopened after clearing out the damage done by the storm. As we were delayed because of weather restrictions, we had to move quickly due to loss of light. We tried to be more productive this time round, with two cameras operating at the same time, shooting two different scenes. Whilst I shot a couple scenes with Lorna walking through the woods, Keeley and Cary were shooting the filler nature shots not too far from us. The productivity was a lot better than the previous shoot, however as expected, the lighting started to change drastically. Following this we decided to shoot the red thread on the branches before we ran out of time. One minor fault in our plan we didn't consider were the branches on the floor. After the storm there had been a significant increase in fallen trees and twigs making it harder to hold the camera steady and resulting in shakier shots. According to our storyboard we were making very slow progress and started to realize the quantity of footage we actually needed.

Shots Complete: Red thread track, roaming through woods, "and those greens and those blues" shot, nature shots,

Production Day - Three
This shoot only took up a short amount of time, since we were two team members short, including our lead performer. Our aim was to collect any extra nature shots and get them all completed during the two hours of shooting so we wouldn't waste time during future filming days. It was a real shame our team mates couldn't make this production day (or production evening) since the sky was the clearest it'd been since and the sunset was beautiful. It is also unfortunate that the day our members were missing there is perfect lighting for once during this week. Funnily enough, these few perfect shots we managed to capture contrast to the previous poorly lit shots and therefore will need to be adjusted in post-production.

Shots Complete: silver lining shot, red thread track, nature shots

Production Day Four
After many attempts at organising a day where we could conclude our shoot, we were all eager to finish this project and were at the height of our productivity during this final day. The preparation and planning for this final day of the shoot was as precise as it could be- we ensured we had plenty of time to shoot in appropriate lighting conditions, wrote out a shot list in order of priority and operated using three camera this time instead of two. Of course the temperature wasn't any warmer than the previous days which restricted the time we would spend shooting Lorna due to the inappropriate summer clothing which was our one major flaw in preparation- although there's only so many hand warmers and snuggies you can carry into a forest on top of camera equipment.



The photo above shows our camera positioning for the first scene of the shoot- the Heartwood tree. We planned on shooting this scene first for the same reasons as last time- lighting and set dressing time. The filming of this scene was more productive with three cameras in getting as much footage out of the scene as possible so then we'd have more to work with and chose from. After shooting various still shots of Lorna in the tree we then moved onto more dynamic tracking shots around the heartwood area. Once this was completed, "the photo tree" was the next shooting location.

This was a lot harder to shoot than anticipated, and as always we were losing lighting quicker than expected. It would've been useful for us to have visited the area before with Lorna and rehearse how we would film this scene. Perhaps also cutting out double the number of photos we had would've allowed us to film multiple times, but as we only had a limited number of photos we had to spend time trying out different positions to capture Lorna tearing down the photos metaphorically. Meanwhile, the wind picked up and the thin paper of the magazine photos meant they were flying about everywhere, which took time to adjust. Typically, this occurred when we were filming still shots.

The final problem we had to overcome was the limited amount of battery life available. Despite the fact that we had four batteries for three cameras, all of which were fully charged, by the time we finished the photo tree scene and moved onto the walkway scene, our batteries were running on their last drop of fuel. We had to work around this as best as we could, filming in snippets and turning off cameras in between shots. Although it was tough going, we all grew as a team- cooperating and working quickly and efficiently. By comparison to the film shoot, this was the most challenging and tiring experience that tested our flexibility, creativity, productivity and ability to adapt and make the most of a situation with limitations.