This is a close up of the bass guitarist playing. This still is an example of the large performance element of our music video; this screen grab tells the audience that our bands image is very performance related and that the band is about the music, not just the star image. In order to make this clear we have made the whole video performance related rather than having a purely narrative video or even a narrative element to the video. Keith Negus has identified this approach as being typical of an organic ideology to creativity, which privileges the development of inherent musical talent.
This screen grab is of a Marshall amplifier poster. I chose to take this as an example because this screen grab captures the theme of our video, because our video is trying to portray a band’s rise to fame, and the transition from poor students living in a bed sit, to a successful band recording in a proper studio, which has three real Marshall amplifiers. The contrast between the poster in the bed-sit and the real thing in the studio represents the bands success and the dream becoming a reality which is the theme to our video. This section of the video in my opinion is not typical of other music videos because most others show bands when they have already become famous not on there rise to fame.
This wide freeze frame I took after the transitions between the two rooms and is of the band in their professional studio. I chose this wide shot because it shows the transformation that the band has undergone. We changed the band’s outfits to enhance the way that they have grown up and become successful, so we dressed them in smarter clothes than before, for example shirts and boots instead of trainers and t- shirts. This change of clothes we felt was essential to the transformation they undergo, which is difficult to portray in such a short space of time. We made the transition between the two rooms by using two swivelling spotlights, which we had shine at the camera to create a white out and in that white out we changed, between the different rooms. As our video is purely performance material we tried to really tell a story with the changing rooms and clothes to make the video more interesting without adding a narrative story, which would take away from the image we have tried to create for them. This section of the video I believe is typical of other music videos because other artists often use both performance and narrative. However, we have tried to combine both elements into a single series of sequences which is more unusual.
This is a still from the first shot of the video. I chose this still because it represents the emptiness of the room and how characterless it is, but when the boys move in it becomes a personal and creative place in a room which is not interesting or exiting at all. The development of the band’s image is mirrored by the changes to the room and this was a theme which we kept going throughout the video. It was very important to the video that we had at least 4 wide shots of the rooms 4 various states of change, because that is the main theme and story which runs through the video. we made the bands image very central to there talent of performance and the importance of this to them over an image. In Richard Dyer’s theory the band would have the values of creative/talent, youth, An anti-authoritarian attitude and Success against the odds these 4 traits and values are taken from Richard dyer’s Common views on music stardom. A successful star or band will embody some if not all of these traits in order to be a success, in dyers opinion. The idea is that the target audience will be able to relate to some of these values and still be abele to aspire to be like them and
slightly envy the star.
This screen grab is of the room in its messy lived in state which we show in the middle of the video. This shot was one of our essential four wide shots because it shows how much the room has changed after all of the stop motion shots, it also shows the band are still the same people playing their instruments and staying as a performance centred organic band. You can see in this that the band are still not stars yet from the lack of microphone and half of the drum set. We did this because we wanted to keep the illusion of their success of there fame as a dream. We felt that leaving out the microphone and half the drum set would still keep the feel that the band are still practising in their bed sit and can’t afford flash equipment yet. We did however want to show that the band have gained more success than at the beginning. We did this by adding some fans or “groupies” in the form of the two girls listening to them play. We also started with the drummer having no drum kit at all and just hitting the sticks on his legs, since then we have tried to show there rise to success by adding parts of the dumb kit at a time. We also changed the camera from a dark grainy one at the beginning to a high definition one half way through suggesting their lives are brightening.
This screen grab is from early on in the video. It shows our lead singer lying on the floor in a relaxed position singing while in stop motion magazines, beer cans, a rug and coffee mugs come in around him. We chose to use stop motion to fill up the room because it was our narrative element to our video which was much needed to stop the video becoming to repetitive or boring. We also felt that it gave the best effect for the suggestion that these changes took place over time rather than all at ones on the day they moved in to the bed-sit. We chose to use lad’s mags and music magazines as the magazines surrounding his head to show to the audience that they are just typical teenaged boys in a band who like women and music. We used the beer and cider to show that they are students and not used to drinking exotic alcohol like champagne. As the video moves on and they slowly become more sophisticated, we added wine bottles and a globe to show their tastes are becoming more sophisticated and cultured. Before the room begins to empty again. The stop motion is the element that holds the video together and is the theme that runs throughout. I think this is both not typical and typical of music videos because there aren’t many videos that use stop motion and especially not as there main narrative element. However the use of bear and cider cans to represent youth and rebellion is a typical trait of videos.
This is our poster that we made to promote our album ‘keep calm and carry on we chose to use in image of a mug of tea that we had taken to keep the theme of tea stains that runs throughout our ancillary project. The tea for us represents normality and the working class, which is the image that we have created for ‘the factory’ we wanted the band to seem ordinary and working class to embody Richard Dyers common traits of stardom, of success against the odds and his second paradox of being present and yet absent so the fans aspire to be like them. I don’t think that that our poster is conventional in comparison to most new bands first album promotional posters, most new bands tend to be on the front of the poster trying to promote themselves as an image together and to get there faces recognised.
This is the front cover of our album cover. Again we have placed the tea stain image over our photograph to keep the tea theme running throughout. We chose a photograph of the mess of shoes and clothes because we wanted to promote the bands youth and anti authoritarian attitude which our target audience of 15 to 25 would be able to relate to well. The most prominent part of the photograph is the big black boot. We chose to place it in the middle because we felt it looked like a typical working class boot and all of the other are trainers which our young target audience will hopefully be able to relate to. I don’t think this from cover is conventional to most bands first album cover because in nearly all cases the band appear on the front cover to promote there image.
Inside left of our digi pack is our only image of the band we have used. We chose this image of the band performing because we didn’t want to have a posing photograph of them as we don’t feel that, that would be in keeping with our band image. We have again used the tea stain for our running theme. We also made the photograph slightly grainy and lower quality to keep to the working class image. This image is both conventional and unconventional, it is conventional because it is an image of the band which many bands use in there own album cover packs, however it is unconventional because we haven’t used a posing shot of the band which is cliché we have used a performance shot which is not usually done.
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