Analysis of Institutional Practices

A History of Music Videos.
In 1984, 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 went aboutthis by projecting a series of still images on a screen simultaneously to the live performances, this soon became a popular form of entertainment known as 'illustrated song', the first step towards the music video.

In 1926, with the arrival of 'talkies'(a motion picture with synchronized sound), many musical films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Shorts were typically six minutes in duration, and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing.



Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball". Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney, such as the Silly Symphonies shorts and especially Fantasia, which featured several interpretations of classical pieces, were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films.

Blues singer, Bessie Smith, appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues (1929) featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. Numerous other musicians appeared in short musical subjects during this period. Later, in the mid-1940s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film Lookout Sister. These films were, according to music historian Donald Clarke, the "ancestors" of music video.

Another early form of music video were one-song films called "promotional clips" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of "soundies" were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also of torch singers, comedians, and dancers. Before the soundie, even dramatic movies typically had a musical interval, but the soundie put the music in the forefront; virtually all known jazz performers appeared in soundie shorts. The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.



Musical films were another important precursor to music video, and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl" (directed by Mary Lambert) which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark "Thriller" and the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad" which was influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story.

In 1956, Petrushka, directed by John David Wilson for Fine Arts Films aired as a segment of the Sol Hurok Music Hour on NBC. Igor Stravinsky conducted a live orchestra for the recording of the event. In 1957, Tony Bennett was filmed walking along The Serpentine in Hyde Park, London as his recording of "Stranger in Paradise" played; this film was distributed to and played by UK and US television stations. According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959. It is no coincidence that the rise of popular music was tied with the rise of television, as the format allowed for many new stars to be exposed that previously would have been passed over by Hollywood, which normally required proven acts in order to attract an audience to the box office.

Begin Date Changed.

I was going to begin filming on Wednesday Night. However I've been ill the past 4 days and couldn't make it. I Will hopefully begin filming at the start of next week as I need to catch up on my last bits of research I couldn't get completed.

Lyrics for Atmosphere

"Walk in silence,
Don't walk away, in silence.
See the danger,
Always danger,
Endless talking,
Life rebuilding,
Don't walk away.

Walk in silence,
Don't turn away, in silence.
Your confusion,
My illusion,
Worn like a mask of self-hate,
Confronts and then dies.
Don't walk away.

People like you find it easy,
Naked to see,
Walking on air.
Hunting by the rivers,
Through the streets,
Every corner abandoned too soon,
Set down with due care.
Don't walk away in silence,
Don't walk away."

I don't want to read too much in to the lyrics and relate my video to them as I feel that makes the video boring and predictable.

Eugene Riecansky

About two weeks ago Director, Creative Director and VFX Artist, Eugene Riecansky came into our 6th form to give us a presentation on how he went about his work, things he'd done and how he achieved them. Eugene has work with big name clinets, including Jim Carry, Madonna, Muse and The Prodigy.

He had a really cool work ethic, it reminded me of how I used to work before teacher's told me to plan more. Although he planned things a bit differently to how I used to. To finish off he gave us a brief and gave us two weeks to come up with a Music Video idea to a song by a band called Betty Curse. He asked us to pitch the idea to him and leave him with a treatment (a sumamry of the idea) to hand to the singer of the actual band and she would judge between them to decide the best brief.

One of the key things he told was to not listen to the song, just think out of the box and come up with a good, solid idea, so the video doesn't become trapped in the boring, generic style of whatever the current chart videos are doing.



For my idea for the Betty Curse song I didn't listen to the song, and still haven't. For my Production Music Video I have listened to the song, because I love the song, but before Eugene gave us the idea I still went about just thinking of an idea, then maybe fitting it to the song. I think the added touch of Ian Curtis's gravestone at the end will help which comes from band research. So it can help both ways.

Detailed Action Plan

Main Task (Music Video) Deadline - Friday, 28th January.
Ancillary Task (Digipack) Deadline - 18th February.

Planning & Reasearch (Including Prop gathering) finished by - 10th December

Begin Filming - 8th December.
Over next 4 and a half weeks will film at Weekends, Twilight hours (Sunrise & Sunset), in a variety of Weather Conditions, in further away, more Remote Locations and in places that would only normally be accesible during school hours.
End Filming - 2nd January

Begin Editing - 3rd January.
The next 3 weeks will include three screenings with audience research collected to improve the edit constantly. The First Screening hopefully the 14th January, the second on the 21st and the Final screening on the 25th. All of these should allow enough time to signifigantly edit the piece before the audience see it again.
End Editing 28th January.

Ancillary Task

Begin Collecting Shots and Ideas - 4/5th December.
High Definition photo taking of the scenes, acotrs and/or props linked with the video. Brainstorming with gathered photos to decide on a definite or collage effect of a few maybe. Experiment with fonts, graphic designs and drawing as either could be better than the photograpic counterpart or could be used in conjunction with them.
End Collecting Shots and Ideas - 28th January.

Begin Putting Digipack Together - 30th January.
Experiment until I achieve a look I like.
End Putting Digipack Together - 17th February.

Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn (born 20 May 1955) is a Dutch photographer, music video and film director.




Corbijn made his feature film debut with Control, a film about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. It premiered to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2007. The film is based on Deborah Curtis' book Touching From A Distance about her late husband and the biography Torn Apart by Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson's ex-wife) and Mick Middles. Although shown outside the Palme d'Or competition, Control was the big winner of the Director's Fortnight winning the CICAE Art & Essai prize for best film, the "Regards Jeunes" Prize award for best first or second directed feature film and the Europa Cinemas Label prize for best European film in the sidebar.




It could be well worth looking into some of Anton's other films and grasping a better idea of his directing style and trying to learn a few things from it. I have seen Control and it has already influenced my production, but I think I'll go back and watch it again and do a more in depth analysis on the more filming side of things as aposed to the Ian Curtis side of things.

Aswell as directing the music video for Atmosphere by Joy Division, Anton has also directed music videos for U2, Depeche Mode, Danzig, Nirvana Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, The Killers, Travis and Coldplay. He also directed a newly released feature length film, The American, which is definitely worth a watch as it will have his latest ideas on camera work, editing, etc.

Anton has just finished working on a big Hollywood picture called 'The American'.

Joy Divison & Ian Curtis - Lyrics & Death

While performing for Joy Division, Curtis became known for his quiet and awkward demeanour



Ian Curtis was the group's sole lyricist. Curtis would write frantically when the mood took him; he would then listen to the band's music (which was often arranged by Sumner) and used the lyrics that were most appropriate. Words and images such as "coldness, pressure, darkness, crisis, failure, collapse, loss of control" recur in his songs.



In 1979, NME journalist Paul Rambali wrote, "The themes of Joy Division's music are sorrowful, painful, and sometimes deeply sad."

The other band members later admitted they paid little attention to what Curtis was writing.
Morris commented: "We just thought the songs were sort of sympathetic and more uplifting than depressing. But everyone's got their own opinion."
The surviving members of the band in retrospect regret not seeing warning signs in Curtis's lyrics. "This sounds awful but it was only after Ian died that we sat down and listened to the lyrics," Morris said in 2007. "You'd find yourself thinking, 'Oh my God, I missed this one.' Because I'd look at Ian's lyrics and think how clever he was putting himself in the position of someone else. I never believed he was writing about himself. Looking back, how could I have been so bleedin' stupid? Of course he was writing about himself. But I didn't go in and grab him and ask, 'What's up?' I have to live with that."

Joy Division were due to begin their first American tour in May 1980. While Curtis had expressed a desire to take time off to visit a few acquaintances, he feigned excitement about the tour around the band because he did not want to disappoint his band mates or Factory Records. At the time, Curtis's relationship with his wife, Deborah Curtis (the couple married in 1975 as teenagers), was collapsing. Contributing factors were his ill health, her being mostly excluded from his life with the band, and his relationship with a young Belgian woman named Annik Honoré whom he had met on a European tour. The evening before Joy Division were to embark on the American tour, Curtis returned to his home in Macclesfield in order to talk to his estranged wife. He asked her to drop the divorce suit she had filed; later, he told her to leave him alone in the house until he caught his train to Manchester the next morning. Early on the morning of 18 May 1980, Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen; Deborah Curtis discovered his body when she returned around midday. Tony Wilson said in 2005, "I think all of us made the mistake of not thinking his suicide was going to happen.... We all completely underestimated the danger. We didn't take it seriously. That's how stupid we were."



A wall on Wallace Street in Wellington, New Zealand, had the words "Ian Curtis Lives" written on it shortly after the singer's death. The message is repainted whenever it is painted over. A nearby wall on the same street on the 4 January 2005 was originally emblazoned "Ian Curtis RIP", later modified to read "Ian Curtis R.I.P. Walk In Silence" along with the dates "1959 - 1981". Both are referred to as "The Ian Curtis Wall". On Thursday 10 September 2009, the wall was painted over by Wellington City Council's anti graffiti team. The wall was chalked back up on 16 September 2009. Following this, council spokesman Richard MacLean said "They [the anti-graffiti team] may turn a blind eye to it".



Curtis's memorial stone, which is inscribed with "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart", was stolen in July 2008 from the grounds of Macclesfield Cemetery. The missing memorial stone was later replaced by a new stone.
- This bit of information made me think instead of looking for a person, my main character could be looking for a place. Throughout the film he could be holding a parcel wraped in cloth so as to make you wonder what's inside then at the end he finds the perfect location and places it down to a close up shot of the inscribed message. Also it could be worth spray-painting a mock Ian Curtis New Zealand Wall.

Location Scouting

For my music video a lot of locations are going to be used as the setting changes very rapidly, for instance here are just around half of the locations I intend to use;
Roads at night, Parks, Buses, Trains, Stations, Shops, Fast Food Restaurantes, Norwich Market & Norwich's Royal Arcade, Tomblands (area of the city, DFS and likewise furniture shops, Staples, Banks, Fish & Chip shops, Music Stores, Model Shops, Clothes Shops, Petrol Stations, Factories, Warehouses, Fields, Foggy/Smokey Woods, Bridges, Underpasses, Galleries, Museums, Rooftops, Back Alleys, Cathedrals, Bathroom Shops, Pubs/Bars, Cemetery, Massive Car Parks, Underground Car Parks, Library, At A Gig, An Office, Cinema, Opticians, Car Show Room, Roundabout, A River, Police Holding Cells, Farm, Hairdressers, Printing Press, Tunnels, Electricty Transformer Sites, River Banks, Hills, Scrapyard, Docks, Drydock, Industrial Estate, Recording Studio, Road going into a Wall, Plant Shop, Old Greenhouse, Well, Old Mill, Under Wind Turbine, Fun Fair, Airport, Airstrip, In a Skip, A Fishing Lake, Swimming Pool, Card Shop, Forest with lights hanging from the Trees at night, Empty Football Stadium, Suit Shop, Art Studio, Bathroom, Train Station, In a Drawer, Fire Station, Old People's Home & The Apple Store.

I am going to go into the city on Wednesday and do some scouting as well as further research when I get back. I will use a DIgital SLR to take still of the locations and post them up on here in a slideshow. Also whilst taking photographs I will try and obtain permissions to use shooting locations that are not included under the Public Filming areas, i.e. private ground and business such as HSBC and The Apple Store.

Anti-Video

Anti-Videos are films made on a very low budget and often invole a lot of guerilla filming and large amounts of creativity. They often make lots of use of the reaction of the public and public spaces which are free to film in. I think this would be a helpful and interesting technique to utilise for my production peice, using locations such as; Roads at night, Parks, Buses, Trains, Stations, Shops, Fast Food Restaurantes, Norwich Market & Norwich's Royal Arcade, Tomblands (area of the city, DFS and likewise furniture shops, Staples, Banks, Fish & Chip shops, Music Stores, Model Shops, Clothes Shops, Petrol Stations, Factories, Warehouses, Fields, Foggy/Smokey Woods, Bridges, Underpasses, Galleries, Museums, Rooftops, Back Alleys, Cathedrals, Bathroom Shops, Pubs/Bars, Cemetery, Massive Car Parks, Underground Car Parks, Library, At A Gig, An Office, Cinema, Opticians, Car Show Room, Roundabout, A River, Police Holding Cells, Farm, Hairdressers, Printing Press, Tunnels, Electricty Transformer Sites, River Banks, Hills, Scrapyard, Docks, Drydock, Industrial Estate, Recording Studio, Road going into a Wall, Plant Shop, Old Greenhouse, Well, Old Mill, Under Wind Turbine, Fun Fair, Airport, Airstrip, In a Skip, A Fishing Lake, Swimming Pool, Card Shop, Forest with lights hanging from the Trees at night, Empty Football Stadium, Suit Shop, Art Studio, Bathroom, Train Station, In a Drawer, Fire Station, Old People's Home, Apple Store,

Joy Division - Atmosphere

Joy Division - Atmosphere Found at abmp3 search engine

Another Production Idea

Joy Division - Atmosphere

A bloke looking for his girlfriend in lots of locations with a repeating kind of open shot and he keeps finding the band members till they're following him from spot to spot then he finds his girlfriend but she keeps disappearing when he gets near (use after effects) 'till he finds her lying in sand and he joins her, shot of them going out of focus to the band

Audience Research

I need to look for people in my target age group (16-28) and ask them about their thoughts on the Arctic Monkeys and their previous videos and also about their musical divulgance along with how their video's have changed with them. Once I've done this I will totally finalise my idea and draft a storyboard.

Arctic Monkeys - Cornerstone

Arctic Monkeys - Cornerstone from Ain on Vimeo.

Richard Ayoade also directed this very simple but effective video.

Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning

ARCTIC MONKEYS - Crying Lightning from Framestore design on Vimeo.

This video, aswell as the song, is quite dark and mysterious.
The mise en scene is very ominous and and dark, and quite descolate. ALso quite cool and spooky with them all playing in this huddled little boat with lights for a sial and the microphone stand like the maiden head along with the fact that they can stand up totaly fine in this tiny little boat that looks like it will tip over at certain points. Pretty cool. The camra work is nothing particularly that special how ever it still works really well, especially the swooping over the water shot at the beggining, of course this whole video was done on green screen also so there were a lot of clever angles they could have achieved.

The music video for the single debuted on Channel 4 in UK on 24 July 2009.

The music video, directed by Richard Ayoade (who worked with the band previously on the video for "Fluorescent Adolescent", as well as their "At the Apollo" live DVD), shows the band performing the song on a boat on a rough sea. During a short instrumental interlude, a large figure rises up from the sea in the form of frontman, Turner. He falls to his knees where the boat passes between his legs before the other three band members (Cook, Helders and O'Malley) also rise up out from the water.

Richard Ayoade also Directed Arctic Monkeys Live At The Apollo DVD.

Arctic Monkeys - Teddy Picker

Arctic Monkeys : Teddy Picker from Hairol Fitri on Vimeo.

This video is very effective at making the viewer feel closer to the band by giving them an inside view to their life when they're actually in this big old expensive recording studio in London. The Mise En Scene is also very personal and interesting, showing the band placing personal items on their amps and them looking at old chart songs which they have covered. The Editing is very fast paced with lots of quick changes but also slow-paced with the out of the studio shots being slowed down a little. There are also a variety of shots used to make the studio environment look glamerous aswell with shots such as Alex dancing with a light behind him and them relaxing in the massive leather studio chairs. Some of the camera-work is really interesting too with shots revolving around them as they sing or play and close up shots of personal objects and the like.

Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm

Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm from jean portela frongia on Vimeo.

I'd like to have the jesters in my video dance in a similar way to the dancers in this video. Plus this video is awesome.
The Editing is very very fast paced to go with hte musicality of the song. The mise en scene is slightly commercial and slightly band like too with the dancers in front of a big LED screen and the band playing infront of them. But it also feels like the dancers are dancing to the music as they're facing the band or you could see it that the band are watching the dancers and playing as the camera shots come from both sides.

Production Idea

Music Video: Arctic Monkeys - Secret Door

Lead Character walking through the city and sees these strange looking jesters setting up for something. He stops to look at them and looks right down the camera close up of the jesters mouth as he says the first line of the song, then they all start dancing, and our main character walks on. Gets back and gets shouted at by his girlfriend straight away as he's late, they're going to a boring, middle class dinner party. He get's ready quite quickly and remembers glimpses of the jesters in slow motion. At the dinner party he seems out of place, out of mind and really doesn't want to be there. people keep trying to talk to him but he just ignores them and keeps singing the song. They leave him to hold his coat and his glass of champagne at the buffet table. A couple of the less popular guests start talking to him, well really talking to each other in front of him. Then a shot going through all the guests talking about business and all that rubbish up to his eyes then the camera turns back round and he's looking at the guests being the jesters, his fool's on parade. They do a big dance thing. Then the leader of the other jesters who he saw singing earlier sneaks around behind him and comes up and takes it's mask of, it's his old girlfriend we saw in pictures in his room when he was getting ready, they walk off arm in arm and before he goes he turns around and stops to think about the dancing guests/jesters and we see them behind him then he walks on again, out of the dinner party house and down the drive, holding his arm out and no one else is there.

Action Points

Analyze, mise en scene, camera work, editing and effects of a selection of whole short films on the BBC Shortfilms webpage

A2 Brainstorming

Music Video - The Metros. bmx based film maybe, live band video, short docu style band video of the the band rehearsing to recording to playing live, story to lyrics with slowed stop-motion live sequences, interesting stop-motion art type thing for an aphex twin video?
Short Film - some kind of story including de ja vu with lots of repetition, story about some kind of weird gang, story about someone who suffers from some quite entertaining sleeping disorder but then it starts to ruin his life, then it's not funny, and you will feel bad for laughing earlier.

What is Creativity?

The 4 characteristics of Creativity:
Imagination, Purpose, Originality, OfValue.
'Imaginitive activityfashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value'

Creativity Wheel

Originality
'I can think of unusual ways of doing things' e.g. In music we had to do a lifecycle story and instead of doing birth-life-death i went death-birth-life and wrote the piece around a pheonix. I composed a piece for Jack's AS work which was out of the norm music and helped bring another aspect to the piece, I just don't like to follow the heard along.
'I don't always believe things jsut because everyone else does' e.g. Miss said in media that NME sales were declining because physical print magazines are becoming more and more unpopular where as I really believe that it is jsut because the content of the magazine has become ridiculously unrelated to the music that it used to represent and is no longer a good music mag.

Value
'I can spot problems and ways of dealing with them' e.g. My band played a gig a few weeks ago and we had no keyboard stand so I suggested we used an ironing board instead, the others bands liked it so much they used it aswell.
'I can see how other people work differently to achieve their purpose' e.g. alot of people around me will plan their answers to things where as I will jsut go for it then go back and correct things and change them afterwards.

Imagination with a Purpose
'

Production Portfolio Briefs

At the moment I want to do the Music Promotion Package, it seems most appealing.
I also quite wanted to do the Short Film choice but 5 minutes doesn't really seem like enough time, but it'll be worth looking in to, perhaps more ideas could be put into it or a simpler idea much expanded.
The Documentary, Local Newspaper and Original Children TV Drama productions don't really appeal to me at all.

G325

Written paper sat in the summer. Synoptiv Paper (draws together all course learning). Section A devoted to production work - as/a2 (G324).
For Research tasks I watched numerous film openings on an online site about film openings and watched several films I had remembered opening in a imilar way. I looked into the effects of slowing the clips down and adding large amounts of contrast aswell as changing the levels of light in the camera menu. I asked people in a recorded interview about their preferences to film openings and how they associated them to the rest of the film.
My planning activities didn't really go that well at AS and having recognised this, it is something I intend to work alot harder on effectively getting done in time for the production.
Some of the challenges were that some of the footage moved slightly or was not long enough so I took to slowing the the footage and slightly layering parts over each other after they'd been cropped.

For A2:
Plan better - shots list, props list, location/time needed to be there.
Even more location shooting/wrecking
Plan the dialogue better, alot better.
Organise actors better.