Thursday 9th/ 13th October lesson write up

Andrew Goodwin - 1992

Argues that in music videos 'Narrative relations are highly complex' and meaning can be created from the individual audio viewer's personal music taste to sophisticated intertextuality that uses multidiscursive phenomena of western culture.

Many are dominated by advertising references, film pastiche and reinforce the post-modern 're-use' tradition.

Sven Carlson - 1999

Have a performance, Narrative, Abstract

In one type of performance the performer is no longer a performer anymore he or she is a materialisation of the commercial exhibitionist.

Theoretical Evaluation of Production

David Chandler - 2001

Argues that the word genre comes from the French word for 'kin' or 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric, media theory to refer to a distinctive type of 'text'.

Barry Keith Grant - 1995

all genres have a sub-genre

Allows audiences to identify them specifically by their familiar and what became recognisable characteristics.

Steve Neale - 1995

Stresses that 'genres aren't systems' they are processes of systematisation - i.e. they're dynamic and evolve over time.

Artist Logo's

Tuesday 7th October lesson write up - Audience Theory

Blumler & Katz

- Uses and gratification theory

- We are an active audience we control the media

- We are an active audience

- All watch the same things but interpret in different ways

The Theory;

• the uses and gratification model represented a change in thinking as researchers began to describe the effects of the media from the point of view of audiences.
• the model looks at the motived of the people who use the media, asking why we watch the TV programmes that we do, why we bother to read newspapers', why we find ourselves so compelled to keep up to date with our favourite soap, or consume films.
• The theory makes the audience active as they choose what they want to consume, they aren't forced into consumption for e.g. you only watch they films you watch as you're in control of your choice, the media simply supply it.

The Surveillance

- The surveillance's need is based around the idea that they know what;s going on.

Personal Identity

- Personal identity need explains how being a subject of the media allows us to confirm the identity and positioning of ourselves within society.

Personal relations; two parts;

1. Relationships with the media
2. Media within relationships

Diversion

- The diversion need describes what's commonly termed as escapism,watching the TV so we can forget about our own lives and problems for a while and think about something else.

Monday 6th October lesson write up

Bartess - 1977
Suggests that narrative works with five different codes and the enigma code works to keep up setting problems or puzzles for the audience - His action code is based on our cultural and stereotypical understanding of actions that act as a shorthand to advancing the narrative.

Adrian Tilley - 1991
Used the buckling of the gun belt in the western genre as a means of signifying the preferred reading of an imminent school out, and this works in the same way as the starting of a car engine etc.

Claude Levi-Strauss - 1958
Ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stories operated to certain clear binary opposites e.g. Good V Bad, Black V White or Rich V Poor etc.
The importance of these ideas is that essentially a complicated world is reduced to a simple either or structure. Things are either right or wrong, good or bad. There is no in-between.

Michael Shore - 1984
Argues that music videos are;
Recycled styles, surface without substance, simulated experience, information overload, image and style scavengers, ambivalence, decadence, immediate gratification, vanity and the money, image assaults, adolescent ,male fantasies, the death of content, speed, power, wealth, classical story telling, motifs.

Weezer - Buddy Holly - 1994
- Happy Days - 1970's sitcom
- Set in the 1950's
- 1950's prep uni costume (Band)
- Mixing characters from 1970's show with the modern 1990's show.

"I'm Buddy Holly and you're Mary Tyler Moore"

- Get our vision of a 1950's sitcom in the1990's.
- using a format of sitcom e.g. to be continued.
- Recreated the style of footage e.g. badly chosen stunt men.

Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle
- Beginning of a 1960's film

"Saturday night, Sunday morning"

- Beginning is a working class factory.
- Social realism shows binary opposites.
- bike & Motorbike.

Wednesday 1st October lesson write up.

Bordwell & Thompson - 1997
They offer two distinctions between story and plot which relate to the diegetic world of the narrative that the audience are positioned to accept and that which the audience actually see. They based this on Russian film theory.

Pam Cook
The standard Hollywood narrative structure should have;

• Liteanity of cause and effort within an overall traiedory of enigma resolution.
• A high degree of narrative closure.
• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

Tzveton Torodov - 1977

Stage 1 - A point of stable equilibrium, where everything is satisfied, calm and normal.

Stage 2 - This stability is disrupted by some kind of force, which creates a state of disequilibrium.

Stage 3 - Recognition of a disruption

Stage 4 - It is only possible to re-create equilibrium through action directed against the disruption.

Transition task evalution

As a whole I feel out music video was very good. We managed to successfully replicate the original video with very few errors and we didn't need to go back and re film anything.

I  worked well to overcome problems such as pinning up backdrops and creating smoke for the shot with the smoking clock. As a team we tried to collect and replicate the props and mise-en scene that matched the original video, such as the floral bedding and dressing gown to a leather skirt and black wig.Also made sure there was nothing in shot that wouldn't have been there when the original video was made such as laptops and mobile phones. We also took care when framing each shot in order to get it as close to the original as possible. We also worked well as a team in post-production editing the footage so that the shots were in time with the music and of similar length to the shots in the original video. Although we did take separate roles within the filming which meant that group member Katie was the main editor. We also managed to edit an image of a crowd at the end of the video which we figured out and edited and it made the video look better than seeing an old cupboard full of dusters and an old hoover.

However, we could have made this video better by taking more time to set up proper lighting, we should've filmed the darker scenes in the light and edited them to be darker, but we did not do this meaning that the quality of the video was poor and not crisp. We could also have improved by spending more time finding locations, as the locations used were not the same as in the original video. But overall our team worked well to plan, shoot and edit the video, and the result was a video which is similar to the original and well put together. We were very pleased with the end product.

Lesson write up - Wednesday 10th September 2014 - Wednesday 17th September 2014

Music videos were originally called promotional films one promotional film was;

Don't look back 1967 - Documentary, this film included;

• Medium long shot
• Hand held camera
• They use the rule of third to emphasise the lyrics written on the card
• No editing
• Diegetic soundtrack
• Casual clothing
• No London icons were shown because it was in an alley way.

• This was the first music video yet it breaks all conventional
• The pop stars that were in these types of promotional films played a character not their real selves

Cliff Richard 1965 - Summer Holiday; this music video featured

• Many medium close-ups & close-ups
• Continuity editing
• Lip syncing
• Beréts as they were 'on a summer holiday' in France

Cliff Richard 1961 - The Young Ones

• This music video was very much about rebelling and not being obedient
• This was also based around the 'Mods & rockers' and how they rebelled.

Queen 1975

• Their song Bohemian Rhapsody had already been released when the band decided to release the music video for it, it was going down in the charts and the video made it go back up in the charts and it spent a further 9 weeks in the charts. They used the setting as if they were doing a live performance.

People didn't have TV's before the 1960's and if they did they were in black and white, they had to go to the cinema to see a promotional film as music videos didn't exist. they also used radiograms which were eventually taken over by portable radios.

The Beatles 1960's

• The Beatles were initially only popular in the UK when they appeared on the BBC every Saturday morning.
• It was on the Ed Sullivan show they had a number one.
• They the became popular in America after touring there
• 85 million people watched the show
• They took over the top 5 places in the charts
• They started producing short promotional films rather than full length films.
• The did the 'Magical Mystery' tour which offered alternative imagery as the lyrics 'oompalumpa, stick it up your jumper' changed through out the song to say 'oompalumpa everybody smoke pot' this song was banned in several places.

Peter Gabriel - Sledge Hammer

• This was ground breaking footage as it used animation in the video.
• The video was literally doing what the song was singing about, he was using the video as an art form.
• We were becoming voyeurs 

Michael Jackson - Thriller

• This music video was and still is the most expensive music video ever made.
• There were three levels of diagesis within the film. 1- The girl dreaming 2 - Her reality 3 - Michael actually being a ware-wolf type being.