CONVENTIONS OF A NARRATIVE/PERFORMANCE VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRM70Jw7F4M

Above is the link to the Kelly Clarkson's - My Life Would Suck Without You music video.

I hope to have the mixture of narrative and performance aspects within my music video as this video portrays.

CONVENTIONS OF A NARRATIVE MUSIC VIDEO:

• Usually follows the story that the song its self its trying to portray
• Generally has a relationship narrative with a boy and girl falling in and out love
• Although is showing a story still has short snappy shotsjust like in a classic music video
• Often involves miming so that it doesn't come across as a short film but is part of the story so won't generally be on a stage or with a band and microphone but integrated into the video
• Doesn't usually include more than 2 or 3 main actors because the story shouldn't need it too and the consumer doesn't won't be able to create a relationship with too many characters with the short amount of time there is

CONVENTIONS OF A PERFORMANCE MUSIC VIDEO:

There are generally two routes a performance music video can take. On path they could go down is when the band/artist is infront of a croud, sometimes using footage from one of their past concerts, and blasts out the song. This is done to make the consumer really think they are part of the event and really want to be there.

The other thing they can do is a bit more intimate. This is when the band/artist is usually a small room or blacked out area with a series of lighting effects and just sings and performs to the camera. There is no audience. This makes the consumer feel like the band is playing directly to them and creates something personal

For both types of performance music video lighting plays a major part in creating the atmosphere that the artist is trying to get across



PROS AND CONS OF MAKING A NARRATIVE MUSIC VIDEO

PROS:

• You can often take into account what the song is about to help choose what you want your video to be about
• The script/storyboard doesn't need to be as tight and clear as it would have to be on a short film
• Acting can be a bit looser (direction can be less specific) 
• Song will tell the actors how to act
• Pop songs are simple to interpret (for example nearly always based on a simple break up/relationship storyline)

CONS:

• You have to write a script
• You can end up just portraying what the song is about without any interesting ideas
• You need a good, able-bodied cast to make sure it looks less armature
• You have to have a clear storyboard
• It may end up looking like a short film (if you don't include things like lip-syncing)
• Choosing one song and sticking to it

GENRES

MUSIC VIDEO

ORIGINS:
Due to the fact that moving image video cameras weren't invented until around the 1920s, and music has been around since anyone can remember its not a surprise that music videos are quite a new aspect of music in the long run of things.
The first time we saw the premature ideas to what has lead to todays music video was in 1894 when  a sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song The Little Lost Child.
Thomas projected, using a magic lantern, a series of still images onto a screen simultaneous to live performances. This later became a popular for of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step towards today's music video.
In 1902-1917 was the Phonoscene era. Phonoscene was a big development within the sound film industry. It was a combination of a chronophone sound recording with a chronograph film shot and actors lip-syncing to the sound recording. The recording and film were synchronised by a mechanism patented by Leon Gaumont in 1902. The first phonoscenes were presented by Gaumont in 1902 in France.
Next came the talkies, soundies and shorts during 1926 to 1959. In 1926 many musical short films were produced thanks to talkies. Then a technology called shorts was produced by Warner Bros. which featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. These finally lead to the Spooney Melodies in 1930 which was the first true musical video series. Shorts usually last 6 minutes and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing.
Another form of music videos were one-song films called "promotional clips" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were just short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of soundies were made.
Other important aspects of todays music video was musical films. Several well known music videos have been based of come straight out of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to 1950s.
The 1950s were a big year for music videos. A segment was aired on NBC which showed a live orchestra for the recorded event. In 1957 Tony Bennett was filmed walking a long Hyde Park in London as his recording of Stranger in Paradise played; this film was then distributed in UK and US television stations. 1959 is the year that it is thought the phrase "music video" became used as a defining term of what was yet to come.
In the late 1950s and into 1960s the Scopitone (a visual jukebox) which was invented in france. It displayed a short film by the artist and was then accompanied by their song. This idea then spread to several other countries like the Cinebox in Italy and the Colour-Sonic in the USA.
For the next decade several directors and producers experimented with videoing artists lip-syncing to their songs in studios and other different locations and then editing the audio and video together.
One of the earliest Videos of a Top 40 hit was Jan & Deans's Surf City which was produced in the summer of 1963 on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. This video is still available for download and viewing on YouTube.com.

After all this music videos started to finally take shape and a huge turning point for music videos was when The Beatles started making a series of films. They started off with a quite simple idea and then onto make more lavish videos. After making several videos they started doing promotional clips (known as insert films) for distribution and promotion in other countries (mainly the USA) to promote their new music. You can also get a DVD with several of The Beatles music videos on today.
1967-1973 brought the growing importance of promotional clips. Then from 1974-1980 was when we first saw the signs of music television. Australia was an early adopter of the music video format as was New Zealand. The United Kingdom had the long-running British TV show Top Of The Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s although the BBC had strict limits on the number of "outsourced" videos TOTPs could use. After this bands started realising promo videos for new singles and long running shows produced and aired videos. In the United States american alternative punk rock group Devo created many self-produced music videos which were released on video cassette. These were arguably some of the first true long-form videos productions. Their videos "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise" was the first to use computer and traditional animation.
Music videos became mainstream during 1981 to 1991. The US video channel MTV launched in 1981 airing the ever popular "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning of an era of 24-hour-a-day music television. With this new outlet for videos, by the mid 1980s it played a big role in popular music marketing.
1992 - 2004 brought the importance and rise of directors. In december 1992 MTV began listing directors of the music video with the artist and song credits. After 2005 the internet played an even bigger part to the development of music videos. After years of improvements and developments to music videos we are finally left with lyrics videos. In 2010 after the major move to internet, we've seen the official rise of the "lyrics video". This is just based on having the song playing, with the lyrics coming up on the screen in time, similar to the class sing-a-long kids game.

REVIEW

SCRIPTING:
As we did a music video me and my partner decided against scripting to some extent. Tis was because we felt that out music video would have almost no dialogue other than the miming to the song. Instead we decided to print of the lyrics of the song we had chosen and around each part of the song write what was going to happen/be shown.

STORYBOARDING:
Like the scripting, we decided against this as well. We instead decided to draw around the lyrics what we wanted the shot to show. However these quick sketches included very little detail as it was pointless and we only needed to give a quick outline of what we wanted to show.
With my final product I will probably make more use of storyboarding and doing it in more an affective, more visually attractive way so it is easier to understand.

LOCATION:
For the location of our video due to time restrictions we had to make do with the environment in our school and area around offered. However as this was only mainly a learning task, using each location we did used up using gave the basics we needed. We had to be realistic of what we wanted to show because we had limited facilities.

PLANNING/ORGANISATION:
My partner and I didn't find planning that much of a problem. What we needed to do in the time that we were given on most occasions just came to us. We often discussed at the end of each lesson what we were going to get done the next time we were working on the video. Without doing this I doubt we would have finished.

TEAMWORK:
Without my partner I don't think we would have got the project finished. Other experiences with working as a team with one or several people in the past has taught me that people can be unreliable. However I believe me and my partner worked well together. We always let the other knew well in advance if we weren't going to be in one of the lessons and we both contributed ideas. I also think we worked well together because a lot of our ideas ran parallel to each others and we often found ourselves finishing off each others ideas. At times I got became very unmotivated and if my partner hadn't kept me focused at points, I would have given up entirely.

EDITING:
When it came to editing our footage we seemed to do this as we went along rather than doing all the filming and putting it all together at the end. The main challenge we faced was trying to syncronise the miming of the talent in the footage, and the actual music. This, felt like it took a lifetime to do. We found ourselves replaying over and over parts of the music to make sure both mediums were exactly in sync, but seeing the final product made it worth it.

FINAL PRODUCT:
Seeing the final product made all our hard work and time that we had put into it worth it. I would say, that it did look extremely ammature and blame this on the fact that it was the first time either me or my parnter had done anything like this. However it did teach me a lot and I hope to use the things I learned I did wrong and and things I did well in my final project. Hopefully my final piece will look a lot more professional.

3 JULY 2012

PUDDING BOWL 

WHAT KIND OF NARRATIVE IS USED?
I have applied what I know about Todorov's narrative theory to the short film PUDDING BOWL.

1. A state of equilibrium at the outset- both the little boy and girl are playing quietly by themselves and the mum is in the kitchen doing her own thing.
2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action- the little boy puts glue in the girls hair and she gets in trouble.
3. A recognition there has been a disruption- the girl gets her hair cut and goes to the mirror and sees it for the first time.
4. An attempt to repair the disruption- she puts tights on her head as a wig and lipstick on so that she looks glamorous and steals the boys bike whilst he is playing
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium- the girl is happy again as she imagines her self when she is beautiful and older.

HOW IS TIME STRUCTURED?
The time in this short film plays out as though it would in normal life. There is a few elipses within the film, and also there is a flash forward at the end. Other than that thee is no other different time structures.

9 JUNE 2012

PRELIMINARY TASK
WHAT TYPE OF VIDEO IS IT?
We are doing a music video. The type of video that it is mainly narrative, as it the story follows what the song is singing about. It also has aspects of a performance video as it will contain a girl miming along to the song.

WHO IS THE VIDEO AIMED AT?
I feel our video will have aspects of the reformer and the struggler within it. Its looking for enlightenment because she's kind of having to accept something. But also looking for escape because although she's trying to accept it she can't seem to get away from it either. People of these stereotypes will then be more likely to watch it as they can relate to it. Although a young girl could watch this video and follow somewhat, it would take a bit of life experience to understand the deeper meaning of it and so I think the age of the people watching it would range from late teens to late twenties.