Researching performance music videos.

Researching performance music videos.

Music videos; the same genre as our piece of music.

Music videos, that are a similar genre to our choosen piece of music; sunrise by shannon hurley.

I have choosen the videos below to analyse; Ellie Gouldings - The writer and Laura Marlings - Devil spoke. I chose these specific videos, because of the similarity in genre of music between them and my own choosen piece. Also both of them are female solo artists. In relation to target audiences,the target audience for both artists, are very similar, both having the same interests,following the same fashions, both artists also appear at many of the same festivals suchs as; lattitude, glastonbury, underage and hop farm festival.

Research into the use of split screens in music videos.

Split screen is when their is a visible division of the screen in a film or video production. Usually the split in the screen is in half, however it is evident that it can be split other ways. Before the arrival of digital technology in the 1990s, a split screen was previously achieved by using an optical printer to combine two or more actions filmed separately by copying them onto the same negative. The technique, also allows one actor to appear twice in one scene; as if they had been cloned or travelled through time. The easiest way to achieve this is to lock down the camera and shoot the scene twice, one version with the character appearing on the left, the other on the right, the seam between the two shots is invisible, which makes the duplication seem realistic.

Split screen has become very popular, due to several studio made films during the 1960s using split screen, within their films. These films include; John Frankenheimers, Grand Prix (1966), Norman Jewisons, The thomas crown affair (1968), Richard Fleishers, The boston strangler (1968), Airport (1970), Woodstock (1970) and More american graffiti (1979).

The 1964 New york worlds fair, was very influential for split screen movies, Ray and Charles Earnes has a 17 screen film, they created it for the IBM`s "Think" pavillion, and the 3-division film "To be alive", by Francis Thompson; it won the academy award that year for best short film. The pavillions success, then ifluenced the 1967 Unviersal exhibtion in Montreal, also reffered to as Expo 67, the multi screen highlights included "In the Labyrinth, which was reffered to by Time magazine as "stunning visual display".

The split screen technique, can also be commonly used to portray both characters in a telephone conversation, or a long standing convention which dates back to early silents, which is hsown in Lois Webers triangular frames in her 1913 film "Pillow Talk".

In 2002, "The rules of attraction", by Roger Avary used an unusual and revolutionary use of the split screen, where two seperate halves of the split screen were folded into a seamless shot through the use of motion control photography.

Split screens have aslo been used to show twins in films such as; Wonder man (1945), The dark mirror (1946), The parent trap (1961 original + 1998 remake) and Adaptation (2002).

Abel Gance, a french director, used the term "polyvision", to describe his three camera, three projector technique to both widen and divide the screen in his 1927 silent epic, "Napoleon".

Sugar Water by Cibo Matto (1996), is very famous for its use of split screen. It shows elements of what we want to achieve in our own music video, because of the similarities of the use of two characters, within our video the boy is ahead of time, whilst the girl is behind, this then allows us to avoid the characters meeting within the video, and so they do not meet back up in the video, therefore similar to "sugar water", we are using two different time frames, but the use of the split screen allows us to show both characters at the same time.

As well as split screen being used in movies, it also has an extensive use in the television show 24. Split screen is also used in sports on tv, because it shows the instant replay, highlights package or a featurette all on one screen.

Sugar Water - Cibo Matto video.

Research and inspiration for my music video.

We have taken all or parts of the following videos as research into our own music video,although they are not all music videos, we have chosen various aspects of the following videos such as lighting that we would like to encorporate into our own video.

(500) Days of Summer - Expectations/Reality from Julius Santos on Vimeo.

The above clip is from the 2009 film (500)days of summer, directed by Marc Webb. We decided to use this as research, because of the use of a split screen, showing the reality and expectations. We could apply this technique to our own video because of the plot, by using the one half of the screen to show what is really happening within the realationship and the other half to show what the realationship was previously like.

Your secret from Jean-Sebastien Monzani on Vimeo.

The above clip is a short video/animation, i found on a blog. We have decided to take inspiration from this video and apply it to our own by the use of captions and cut out letters to spell a word and within the editing make the letters move to form a series of words, which represent the couples feelings about their realationship. We also like the colours and camera techniques that have been used within the video. This video links to the music video, because of the colour scheme and tone and also the use of notes to express feelings, which we shall use within our video, but write the lyrics on them.



The above video is the full music video for Daniel Powters, Bad Day. This video is very similar to the one from (500)days of summer, because of the use of the split screen technique, and because the plot is about a realationship. This video links to our music video because of the use of the split screen where it shows a girl and boy in one shot and a boy in the other, and also the use of clocks at the start of the video, which is what we shall start our video with, in order to show they are on different time zones.



The above video is the full music video to Grapevine fires by Death cab for cutie. We decided to use this for our research, because of the use of captions and images. We are intending to use images and captions within our video to help tell the story. This video links to our music video because of the use of captions and images, we are going to use captions and writing to show the lyrics in various ways and are going to use stills images to show the break up of the couple and are going to play it back in a flashback in the video.

Analysis of Afrika Shox by Leftfield.

Afrika Shox by Leftfield.

The choice of images that have been used in this video give the impression that the genre of the music is that of RnB and Hip-hop. It also follows the genre of street dance. The video leads us to believe this because of the dull colour palette, the location being in a big city, the characters and the subject matter. The fast pace editing also leads us to believe this, because it matches the beat of the music. The video backs up Goodwins theory of a link between the lyrics and the visuals within the video. The Afrika shox video represents this theory by; they sing "the rhythm of afrika" which represents the title of the video and the rhythm in th song and also the the way in which the visuals are shown at the same sort of pace as the song, this reiterates the lyrics. The title of the song automatically represents nationality and race, however the artists name `Leftfield` represents the left and right sides within society and government. The use of a big city as the location for a song entitled `Afrika shox`, shows the contrast between a large urban city and africa, it also shows the contrast between those who live in the different locations.

The lighting in the video is ambient as it is located outside, however within some of these outdoors scenes, the taxis have their headlights on which creates a spotlight effect, it also defers the audience away from the various things that are going on around them. Non ambient lighting is used several times during the video in the forms of signs and the lighting in a car park. I think the purpose of the video is to show the african culture and the way it differs from the british,american culture. Special effects and CGI`s have been used in this video, they have been used in order to show the male characters limbs falling off.

The video does not include any performance from the band/solo artist themselves, however it follows a narrative based structure, where it tells the story of the male character in a big city, who is losing his limbs. The narrative structure is linear.

Narrative Structure Powerpoint

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Narrative Structure Powerpoint

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