Music Video Analysis Of Chosen Genre - Acoustic

The genre I have chosen for my music video is Acoustic which is a song played with just a single acoustic guitar all through the duration of the song. I am going to analyse a song by the same band I have chosen for my song. The song is called 'I will follow you into the dark' and it's also an acoustic song and will follow some of the same conventions of which I want to use.

Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into The Dark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbqtuFemMOE

Audience Research

Here I am going to ask for audience feedback on questions about what are peoples best features in a Music Video. This will help me with ideas and the completion of the video. I will ask 5 questions and then evalutate the feedback I will recieve and then use the feedback to help me finalise the planning and research for my music video.

Synopsis For My Music Video

The song I am using which is Death Cab For Cutie - A Lack Of Color, is about a man who has split up with his girlfriend and he's showing how the colour has left his life now that he has lost the one he loves. For my music video I am going to use a maximum of 3 people to be in the video, with the boy the songs about and the girl he has lost. I am also possibly going to use an extra boy which will portray the girls new boyfriend. My music video will show how much of an impact it has had on the boys life now his girlfriend has left and the video will show how he is missing her and still loves her. At the start of the song it has a few seconds of an acoustic guitar playing so during this time I am possibly going to show quick snapshots of photos showing the good times the couple have had until the first lyrics is sung. I am then going to have the boy seeing the girl whilst he is laid on his bed and then the girl will fade out to show it is only a daydream and that he wants it to be a real vision. The first lyric in the song is 'And when I see you, I really see you upside down' so I am going to show the boys vision of the girl as upside down. I am then going to show the same kind of image but the girl will then be turned the right way around as the boys brain has now realised what it is supposed to. The video will then follow the lyrics as I interpret them using different locations which alongside a bedroom, will be a park and various other locations which are showing flashbacks of good times. The video will end with the boy finally realises that he has lost the one he loves and it will never work out so he has to face facts that it is finished. It will end with the boy being in the same place he started which is his bedroom laid on his bed reminiscing the times he used to have and has now lost.

Music Video Analysis (Song 3)

Michael Buble - Just Haven't Met You Yet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AJmKkU5POA

This song was released on 31st August 2009 and is the first single of his latest album Crazy Love.

Music Video Analysis (Song 2)

Arctic Monkeys - Leave Before The Lights Come On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEukS2YN9B8

This song was released on 14th August 2006 and was the third song the band released in the UK. This video is about a woman who is on top of a building ready to jump of and end of her life, but when she drops her shoe of the edge it lands infront of a man who then sees her on the building and rushes up to save her which he eventually does then she seems to fall for the man but he doesn't feel the same which then leads to her being in the exact same place at the end of the song which she was at the beginning.

Music Video Analysis (Song 1)

With making a music video I want to analyse 3 different genres of music videos. By doing this it will help me to pick up different codes and conventions on how different specific genres of music are to others. I will then be able to pick up varied ideas and incorporate them into my music video.

Music Video 1 - Michael Jackson: Thriller (Cut Version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkjtctcuQ9Q

This music video was released on December 2nd 1983 and is regarded as the greatest music video of all time. Since its release it has sold 9 million units.To date this song is seen as the greatest song Michael Jackson sung in his amazing career. Due to the clip I've chosen being the cut version it starts with a long-shot of a full moon with the cloud drifting away from it, the sound in the background is a sort of movie sound which is building up the tension. It then cuts to Michael Jackson in a medium close-up turning into a Wolf as the full moon appears with the music getting more and more tense. It then shows 8 rapid shots one after the other changing from his girlfriend screaming as he's turning into a Wolf then back to Michael looking more and more like a Wolf. With each shot the shots are getting more close-up as the tension builds and builds

History Of Chosen Band And Song

The band I have chosen are called Death Cab For Cutie. They're an American Indie-Rock band which formed in 1997 consisting of four band members called Ben Gibbard (Main song writer and Main Vocals), Chris Walla, Nick Harmer, and Jason McGerr. To Date they have Released 6 Studio albums and 5 EP's. The band formed due to the success of the lead singer Ben Gibbard who was recording with a band called All-Time Quarterback. With this success Ben Gibbard decided to release a cassette titled 'You Can Play These Songs With Chords' and this became very successful therefore he decided to expand into a complete project which finally became the band they're known today as Death Cab For Cutie. Throughout their career they have released 14 singles and the single I chose to produce a video for is 'Lack of Color'. This song is from their 4th album which was released in mid 2003 and to date is one of their best selling albums. The reason I chose this song is because from the first time I heard it I wanted to listen to it again and again, and recently with doing media studies I have had many ideas on what to do for the video. Their musical genre as of late later side of their career has become more indie sided with many songs being acoustic. However, on their latest album Narrow Stairs they mostly sided with indie-rock songs. The song Lack of Color which I have chosen is an acoustic song about a troubled relationship possibly about Ben Gibbards own experiences however, that is not truly known. The lyrics throughout the song are emphasising the impact of the break up and how it's taken the colour from his life.

Chosen Song And Lyrical Interpretation

The song I have chosen to produce a music video of is a song by Death Cab For Cutie called A Lack of Color. By interpreting these lyrics It gives me a lot of ideas on how to transfer them into my music video.

Possible Songs For My Music Video

For my music video I began to think of ideas for what song I was going to use, the idea I had was that I wanted to choose a song that I could make a story behind the lyrics and branch of several imageries behind the lyrics. Three songs that I started to look into and see which one would work best are:



Paolo Nutini - Last Request

Last Request is a song sung by a singer called Paolo Nutini who is a Scottish singer/songwirter and this was the first single from his debut album These Streets. The song made it's release on July 3rd 2006 and peaked at number 5 on the UK singles charts. I chose this song because I thought I could do a very good video which would be suitable for the lyrics. This song is about a person who know's his relationship is over but wants to have one last chance at it.

Gavin De'Graw - I Don't Want To Be

The second song I thought to do was By a singer called Gavin De'Graw. The single is called I don't Want To Be and it was released in the UK in 2005 and was the first single to be realsed of his debut album Chariot. This is song became more popular when it was chosen to be used as the theme song for the hit US TV show One Tree Hill. This song is Gavin De'Graws biggest selling single selling over 200,000,00 paid downloads. I thought of using this song because it has a meaning behind the lyrics and it's about his own life experience and that gave me ideas on how to do a video about the song.

Death Cab For Cutie - A Lack Of Color

Finally this was the song I thought of which I felt I could get the best video out of. It's by an American indie-rock band called Death Cab For Cutie. The song is called A Lack Of Color and it was a song from the album Transatlanticism which was released in 2003. The song was never released as a single but the album it was on is one of the most popular albums by the band. I chose to use this song because I saw the band live in 2008 and this was a song they sang and it was amazing hearing it live, even then I was getting ideas on how a video could be made about it. The song is about a man (possibly the lead singer Ben Gibbard) who's relationship has turned bad and tells a story of how it's affected his life and taken the color away. Basically it's a song about a troubled love and I thought it would be a great song for me to get the point across which the lyrics is trying to show but adapt them into imagery.

History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film or video which is put out to advertise and sell a piece of music or song. Sound films and talkies were introduced in 1926, Vitaphone shorts which was created by Warner Bros, featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. A series entitled Spooney Melodies is arguably the first introduction into music videos, these videos lasted about 6 minutes featuring art deco style animations and backgrounds combined with the film of the singer singing their song. The first proper sign of a music video surfaced in 1940 which were called promotional clips, these were just one-song films which were made for the Panoram visual Jukebox. This device consisted of a jukebox played a close-looped 16mm film reel projected onto a glass screen. In the late 1950s the Scopitone was invented in France and this enabled French artists to use a video to accompany their song. In 1961 Ozzie Nelson directed and edited the video of Traveling Man by his son Ryan Nelson an featured images from around the world which were mentioned in the lyrics. In the 1960s, one of the earliest performance clips was the promo video for the band 'The Animals' hit 'House of the rising sun'. This clip was was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set which was in high-quality colour featuring the band lip syncing their performance which was depicted through an edited sequence of tracking shots, closeups and longshots. In 1964 the Beatles starred in their feature film 'A Hard Days Night' which was shot in black and white and was presented as a mock documentary. It had countless subsequent promo clips and music videos which had a huge influence on the style and visual vocabulary of the genre. This was a breakthrough for music videos as other bands started to base their ideas around the Beatles. For example Bob Dylan brought out a film documentary which was very similar called 'Don't Look Back'. In 1972-73 music videos became more advanced and important when David Bowie featured in a series of music videos which were directed by photographer Mick Rock. In 1974 Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds were significant in developing and popularizing the music video genre in Australia and other countries, and in establishing the importance of music video clips as a means of promoting both emerging acts and new releases by established acts. In 1981 music videos began to go mainstream with an American channel called MTV launched airing 'Video Killed the Radio Star' and this began an era of 24 hour-a-day music in television. Artists like Adam and the Ants, Madonna, and Mylene Farmer owe a great deal to MTV for the clever construction of the playing of their music videos which gave them audience viewing meaning they would sell more records. The two key innovations in the development of modern music videos were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy to use video recording. The advent of high-quality color videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era, enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. However, as the genre developed, music video directors increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video. In 1983 the most successful and influential video of all time was released (Michael Jacksons Thriller). The uncut version of the music video lasted nearly 14 minutes and at the time set new standards of production costing $500,000 to film. In 1985 MTV launched the channel VH1 and this featured softer music and catered to the older generation of music fans. In 1986 The Chart Show on the UK's channel 4 was launched and this is an important development in music videos as it was a programme that showed only music videos without presenters. In 2005 the website YouTube was released and this enabled people to stream music videos of their choice at any time.

Advanced Portfolio - Brief

In A2 Media Studies I have to produce a media portfolio comprising a main and two ancillary texts for my chosen brief. Secondly I have to produce a presentation of my research which will be updated constantly.

The brief I chose is to produce a promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the follow three options. For my two ancillary texts I chose to do a cover for its release on DVD and a magazine advertisement for the DVD.