Evaluation Question One

    I took a lot of inspiration from many different media texts throughout the project; in order to create the music video that I did. I wanted to take a post-modern approach to the project by taking influences from a wide variety of both music videos and film as I thought that this way the aspect of inter-media would in turn make my own project original and unique. Though music video production doesn’t have as-strict guidelines to it than other media products - such as TV and Film - I still wanted my video to; firstly look like a music video and for this I took into account many theories developed by professional media theorists. Secondly I wanted my video to be recognisable to my chosen genre ‘Indie’ by my target audience.

Fight Club - Directed by David Fincher

Trainspotting - Directed by Danny Boyle

    The first thing that was on the agenda for me in creating this music video, was creating a strong narrative.I wanted that narrative to conform to aspects of narrative that Todorov explain within his theories, as well add in links to the lyrics within the story as one of Goodwin’s music video principles is to ‘link lyrics and visuals’. I wanted my video to have a strong message, and within the lyrics of the chosen song (Float On, by Modest Mouse) the overwhelming feeling was about optimism. I wanted to almost create a short film for my narrative as I felt this would work better for delivering the message, but then I still desired a visual piece that looked and felt like a music video. For the narrative I took inspiration from films such as Trainspotting, Fight Club, Wanted and many more, in order to show my protagonist’s break away from society’s ‘expectations’ and the typical ‘9-5 job’ but in my own unique way with a twist. Theorist Tzvetan Todorov, says that for a good story their must be an ‘Opening Equilibrium’ at the start where the lives of the person(s) in the story is at a stable point, and then as the story progresses there is one or many ‘disruptions’ to this equilibrium. There are then attempt(s) to solve this disruption to which the story ends in the ‘Ending Equilibrium’. 

'Just' by Radiohead (Performance)

My story follows this structure a great deal as I have my protagonist working in his office at the start - opening equilibrium - which is then quickly disrupted by his boss firing him, there are many more disruptions and solutions after this point until the end where the character finds himself at the coast, away from the busy city life, and is at peace once more - ending equilibrium. I believe my music video’s narrative is much more like a film’s rather than other music videos, but this is representative of the Indie genre as music videos such as Just by Radiohead and Breezeblocks by Alt - J both follow the same concept of telling a story comparable to ones seen in films through the medium of visual but more so music. 

Andrew Goodwin's five main music video principles

  Once I had decided on what kind of narrative I wanted for my video the next thing was to work out how I was going to construct the video to make it look Indie and to make it actually look like a music video and not just a montage from a film. For this I took into account two music video theorists Andrew Goodwin and Sven E Carlsson. Goodwin has five main principles to which a music video should be constructed by (as seen in the picture above on the right). For the construction of my video I focused on three of the main five and these were: 'Thought Beats', 'Narrative and Performance' and 'Technical Aspects of Music Video'.
The 'Thought Beats' principle of a music video is Goodwin's theory that the what the audience sees on the screen should have been impacted massively by the song's rhythm and structure and consequently the two (audio and visual) should have a constant relationship with each other throughout the music video. For any music video I knew that this was the fundamental aspect that made it what it was and what makes a music video so much more artistic compared to other media texts such as TV shows; and this was the same for mine too.

'Little Black Submarines' by The Black Keys

  For inspiration and research I focused on two main music videos that were in the same genre as my music video to see how they structured their visuals in relation to their visuals. Seeing as my music video is comprised of both a performance and a narrative, I firstly looked at the music video Little Black Submarines by the Black Keys to find inspiration for my performance shoot. The video, alike to many other indie videos, doesn't focus so much on one of the band members as the Star Image and rather it presents the audience with more artistic shots such as a fisheye shot of the band members working the instruments, as well as long, wide-angle shots from the audience and many close ups of each band member and their individual instruments. Every blunt sound from the drums triggers the next shot and it is this relationship that is very apparent in many music videos and shows the 'Thought Beats' concept exceptionally. For my music video I took a similar approach but changed the way it was structured depending on whether it was the narrative or the performance. For my performance instead of every drum beat I chose many different methods such as the end of a lyric, or the end of a guitar strum because I don't think (compared to Little Black Submarines) the drum beats are that prominent, due to the pace and the different level of sounds through each microphone. However when I was constructing my narrative I did end up editing the clips to the drum beat. The reason for this is because I knew that for the narrative the concept of 'Thought Beats' had to be much more implemented into the video to represent it as a music video. However I think that the more significant reason to why I edited it like this was because if I edited the performance also due to the drum beat it wouldn't be a solid relationship throughout due to the fact that when the audience watches the performance part and the band playing it is the guitar and the lyrics that are more prominent and have more impact, and subsequently that was the reason I chose to edit it in accordance to them. The way I edited it differently to a typical indie music video like Little Black Submarines I believe shows the non-strict guidelines perfectly, as every song is different and every affect and effect you put to the video of that song will be different to every other video already out there.

'The Scientist' by Coldplay

    
   So the next principle I was vitally aware of when researching and just starting the planning for my music video was the 'Narrative and Performance'. Goodwin says that music videos should present repeatability and that narrative and performance collaborate together in order to not just appeal to a target audience, but to show an 'implied' story without giving away every detail. This very much links to my music video, but on the other hand I think in many ways my video and others within the indie genre challenges this theory to an extent because of how much the 'message' means to the video. In a lot of indie music videos it is clear to see that a lot of the time the message that is trying to be told in both of the song and the video is a lot more prominent than other aspects such as the 'Star Image' and attempts to advertise the song. 'Just' by Radiohead and 'The Scientist' by Coldplay both show this a great deal within their music videos. They both still incorporate aspects of music video that Goodwin talks about - thought beats etc. - but instead of advertising their album excessively through artistic attributes, or dancing etc. they focus on the meaning of the song as a lot of the time that's what is more important to the artist/band. This was our primary approach to the construction of the video but the main influence was the video 'Just' by Radiohead, as we liked the fact of having a performance part to the video whereby the band acted as storytellers for the narrative that went along side.

'Just' by Radiohead (Narrative)

   
 Sven E Carlsson also talks about performance within his theory, arguably more specifically though, as he talks about in relation to there being only two categories that music videos fall into: Performance and Conceptual. Within the performance category there are three types of performers to a music video, and within my music video, the band act as Televised Bards - whereby the band members act as singing story tellers that tell a story to visual images (narrative).

   The last concept of Goodwin's that I most probably took into account more thany others was how I used 'Technical Aspects of Music Video' in order to entice my audience, and present my video to be an 'Indie' video. I was inspired by a lot of different bands and their videos for this project and I was also inspired by a lot of films too, and therefore the production of the video (camera angles, Mise-en-Scène, lighting, editing and effects) had many shots or looks to it that referenced other media texts in my own stylistic way by using them and developing them.

Here is a list below of all the music videos, films and TV shows I researched into in order to produce my own unique intermedial, intertextual product. 

   All of these different products of media inspired me in one way or another; whether it was a film's strong narrative, a music videos creative and artistic performance, or a TV Show's/Film's artistic directorship for different types of shots and looks. Below is both a mind-map of all of the texts and how they link and a video to show the comparisons between my music video and other existing media texts that I looked into.

Colour Palette showing the colours mostly used in 'Indie'-type media products.

Test from Kristian Coomber on Vimeo.