Research - MORAL PANICS

The following bullets are specific examples of music videos which may have cause 'moral panics'

• A performance by Rihanna on The X Factor in December 2011 attracted 4,500 complaints to Ofcom.
• I Like the Way She Do It (sexually explicit language)
  
• If I Can't  (strong language)
• PIMP 50 Cent (offensive images of women)
• What's My Name Rihanna (body thrusting, striptease)
• Express Christina Aguilera (burlesque)

I find it somewhat concerning the boundaries which are being pushed by the music video genre today. Out of all forms of media, music videos have always strived to be the most controversial, the most shocking - but I think they have reached a point that if boundaries are pushed much further within the next few years boundaries will not exist at all.

If this is for the better or the worse is mostly up to an individual's personal preference. However my opinion is that boundaries exist for a reason; of course, to be pushed and tested, but not eliminated. 

Planning - PREVIOUS VIDEOS

I have previously made two music videos in my own time, completely unrelated from any academic purposes. The first, on the 20th April 2011 - a song a good and talented friend wrote herself two years previously - and the second in December later that year ('Skinny Love' by Bon Iver) performed by two also talented friends from outside of school. 

'Perhonen' (Perhonen is 'Butterfly' in Finnish) by Hannah Ventisei, April 2011

And the cover of 'Skinny Love' performed by two friends outside of school

Both videos were shot in a day, with a very point-and-simply-shoot attitude. Obviously my A2 music video will have more thought put in, and I plan for it to be more visual effects intensive. 

Research - DIY MUSIC VIDEO RESEARCH

As part of my research, I began looking into how other film-making hobbyists have gone about making music videos with little or no budget. These are the results I found:

By the Finalcutking (on Youtube)

By Filmriot (Also on Youtube)



And the Music video which Film Riot created (on Youtube again)

Research - A HISTORY OF MODERN MUSIC: GUARDIAN TIMELINE

From the Guardian website, an interactive music timeline found below

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/interactive/2011/jun/11/history-modern-music-timeline. 

Planning - YOU KNOW MY NAME - CASINO ROYALE THEME BY CHRIS CORNELL

What appears to be the official You Know My Name music video. Footage of Chris Cornell singing spliced with various cinematic clips from the film the song was written for - Casino Royale.

The song was also used as a regular rock track in Chris Cornell's album Carry On. As the song has been turned into a rock music video already, I know it is eligible for the project as the purpose of a music video is to sell an album. Obviously You Know My Name was such a large hit that Chris Cornell made a video to promote his album. 

USES OF BLOGGER

I am using the website known as Blogger to record my journey as I go about making the music video and auxiliary products. 

The blog's format allows me to easily create pages to contain my evaluation questions, and create blog posts to jot down my thoughts and progress. Furthermore, the blog also allows me to upload images to the blog - as I have done above with a screenshot of blogger - and embed videos from Youtube.


The video embedding is especially useful as when my music video is uploaded to my Youtube channel, which currently has 35,000 hits, I can make it so that moderators can watch the video without ever needing to leave Blogger.com

Research - MUSIC VIDEO BRIEF

I have decided to do the music video brief, which will contain a music video as a final product, and a music magazine advertisement and digipack (CD album complete with album artwork) auxiliary products. 







I made my choice to do the music video brief due to my hobby as a filmmaker. This choice was made a few months before I began my A2 year - so having had a lot of time to think about my choice of song, I deliberated between Muse's Resistance, Uprising and Bliss. However, after re-watching the 2006 James Bond movie Casino Royal, I decided to turn the opening song - You Know My Name, by Chris Cornell - into a music video. 

Research - MUSIC VIDEO PREZI

Music Video Research on Prezi

Research - DIRECTOR'S LABEL

Muse's live concert Album HAARP was released with a DVD composed entirely of music videos to each track. The music videos were pre-produced, directed, and edited by Thomas Kirk.

The music videos in the HAARP album are only few of the many I studied; also looked at were music video auteurs Mark Romanek, who did Red Hot Chili Peppers' Can't Stop (a bizarre arty video which was based on a photographic exhibition by Ewrin Wurm. Flea )




Also watched and studied were Nine Inch Nails Closer; Jay-Z 99 Problems); Chris Cunningham (Bjork All Is Full of Love; Portishead Only You), Michel Gondry (Bjork Human Behaviour), Jonathan Glazer(Jamiroquai Virtual Insanity) and Spike Jonze( Fatboy Slim Praise You; Daft PunkDa Funk) 

Research - 30 FPS - THE VISIONARY ART OF THE MUSIC VIDEO

Thirty FPS(Frames Per Second): the visionary Art of the Music Video is a lavishly produced paean to music video that is half overheated cultural defence and half résumé book of the medium's most celebrated practitioners.

The music video has to be densely textured to that it can hold up over repeated view sings. it has to be edgy enough to be noticed, but palatable enough to satisfy the often divergent demands of the performer, the record company and the public (A.K.A he lowest common denominator).

A plot driven narrative usually gets boring ... knowing their music videos are meant to be seen repeatedly. Most music video directors prefer a denser, more abstract  style as opposed to telling a simple story with a narrative-styled video.

For Jim Farber (the 100 top music videos, Rolling Stones, October 14th 1993), 'Video directors proved what reprove what good film directors knew all along - that visuals can also be music. When executed with élan, an edit becomes a backbeat, a crane shot a solo, a close-up a hook'

Research - HEIDI PEETERS - NARRATIVE AND MUSIC VIDEOS

Heidi Peeter's opinions on music videos disagrees with the opinions of Andrew Goodwin, who in 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' argues there are six defining features to the music video.

She writes 'One would be surprised at how the majority of theorists still consider music videos to be visualisations of a song. While they may seem discontinuous ... The star promotes the phenomenon of identification, a process by which viewers become attached to a star'

Research - MUSIC TELEVISION CHANNELS

In 1985, Viacom bought Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, which owned MTV and Nickelodeon, renaming the company MTV Networks and beginning this expansion. Before 1987, MTV featured almost exclusively music videos, but as time passed, they introduced a variety of other shows, including some that were originally intended for other channels.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, MTV placed a stronger focus on reality shows and related series, building on the success of The Real World and Road Rules. The first round of these shows came in the mid-1990s, with game shows such as Singled Out, reality-based comedy shows such as Buzzkill, and late-night talk shows such as The Jon Stewart Show and Loveline.

With backlash towards what some consider too much superficial content on the network, a recent New York Times article also stated the intention of MTV to shift its focus towards more socially conscious media, which the article labels "MTV for theObama era."^[87] Shows in that vein included T.I.'s Road to Redemption and Fonzworth Bentley's finishing school show From G's to Gents.

The original incarnation of Kiss TV was created by Guy Wingate, who, as an original co-creator of London's Kiss 100 (in its pirate days) was brought back in to head up EMAP's fledgling TV division by the more-widely known Kiss chief, Gordon McNamee (Mac). The channel ran for one hour a night on the Mirror Group's L!VE TV cable circuit and after a year moved up to the Granada satellite and cable platform, taking a similar slot in the evening.

Although the original idea for the channel was proposed in 1993 (three years after Kiss FM launched as a legal station), it took many months for Wingate to convince UK television regulators to permit the extension of a brand name over to television. When permission was finally granted, Kiss had once again innovated by becoming the first "Masthead" TV project in the UK.

Within one year, the station was beating MTV in its time slots, and quickly gained a cult status for its low-budget edgy coverage of the UK dance music scene. The channel's presenters included legendary DJs such as BBC Radio 1's Judge Jules. By the time the channel was one year old, it had attracted major sponsorship from blue-chip brands such as Levi's, Sony consumer products and The Guardian newspaper.