Blink 182 music video analysis

     

  This video is Blink 182 'Up all night', the video is both performance and narrative based. This video definately lives up to Blink 182 reputation, the song appears to be about peoples downfallls, 'everyone lies and cheats', the burning fire and graffitti reflects this anger. The bands outfits are very well suited to their song and location, hoodies are commonly known for violence and trouble and this video clearly displays alot of that. By using a performance as well as narrative it helps to make the song more personal to the band, everytime is cuts back to the band it reminds the audience that this is about thier struggles and mistakes. The narrative of the song is very well constructed throughout, although the lyrics dont match the specific lyrics, it still reflects a very troublesome life.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers music video analysis

      

This is Red Hot Chilli Pepper's 'The adventures of raindance Maggie', the video is performance based, the band are singing infront of a large crowd on top of a building. Thier outfits are very 'rock n roll' which doesnt suprise their audience, this emphaises theiir performance based video as if any other band were to perform infront of a crowd topless, the audience would probably think that they were too confident, however the Red hot chilli peppers have an edgy reputation. The fact that the band are stood on top of a building also tells us its performance based and that they are a superior band, they have attracted a mass crowd. The camera angles circle the band from the air, this is very effective in showing their performace as it highlights all of their equiptment, it also shows the huge crowd.

Laura Marling music video analysis

                    

  This is Laura Marling's video called 'Sophia', compared to many other artists laura Marling has decided to take a different approach when creating her music video. It is perfomance based which means that she is sat down singing to the camera without an audience, which makes the video more personal.

Regina Spektor music video analysis

                      

Regina  Spektor's 'Us' video follows both a conspetual and performance based theme. I think that the conspetual idea was very effective in demonstrating her ideas throughout the video, for example 'they'll name a city after us', Regina Spector then sprinkles magical dust that creates mini cities on her living room floor. Another good example of this would be when she does not understand about thieving and says that its 'contageous' then the video shows her grabbing at other countires to signafy how contageous it is. The perfomance side of the video was also a good way of portaying her views, throughout the video Regina Spektor lip sinks to the lyrics, it entices the audience to listen deeper into the lyrics of the song. Regina Spector's costume and make up also signafies to the audience that it is performance based as they are all perfectly done, if the video was a narrative it may be that there were a varierty of costumes and different style of make up.The fast paced editing is very effective as I think it reflects how confused she is about the worlds situation, by choosing this type of editing it also confuses this audience as the whole video is a bit of a montage, there are clips of newspapers, cartoons and random famous cities poping up everywhere!

Ben Howard music video analysis

                                                                             

Ben Howards, 'Keep your head up' is a conceptual music video, this uses simple lyrics that have a powerful meaning, by deciding to create a conceptual video it has emphasises this idea, the fact that he is out in the courtyside building a waterslide represnts to the audience that he is keeping 'his heart strong' by having fun. Ben Howards uses acoustic sounds in the majortity of his songs, for example 'The Wolves' is a slow and acoustic song, so it was no suprise that 'Keep your head up' used acoustic sounds too. I really like that this music video follows a conseptual idea, Ben Howard has followed through with this idea with the misenscene, again the song is very simple so outfits for him and his freinds were very casusal, this emphasises the lyrics to 'keep your head up' because his music video is something that anyone can do, it would make no sense for them to all be dressed smartly and go to a formal event, I think the casual theme that seems to flow helps the audience relate to the song and almost become attatched to the lyrics. The lyrics relate to the movements in the video, for example when he is by the lake 'the sun so hard upon my side' the camera turns to out of focus to emphasise this. Lastly in the end of the music video when they are coming down the water slide a hand held video camera has been used, this is a brilliant idea as the jerky movements capture the essense of the mood, which again empasise the lyrics to 'keep your head up'.

Analysing our coursework in relation to genre

As part of our first years coursework we had to make a music magazine, I feel that my magazine conformed to my Indie rock genre in many different ways. The color was important in capturing our specific audience so I created a color wheel that enabled me to analyse colours in depth, I looked at colors such as puple which showed connotation of mystery, confusion and it wasnt aimed at a specific gender. The other colors were black, white and red, I found that these colors were very suitable for my genre. However I did look at colors such as yellow and I didnt think that these would conform to my genre as it is normally associated with happiness and sunshine. Font was also a important convention to capture our audience, throughout the magazine I used a gender free font, so it could relate to everyone. The banner which was the most striking font was quite plain but also had a slighly edgy side so that it would enhance the magazine, most importantly to capture our specific audience. As our genre was indie rock it was important to advertise products and events that suited, I advertised Reading and Leeds festival on the front page, as everybody who reads this magazine would be interested in going to these festivals. By advertising these festivals it also enabled me to create sub texts in relation to the festivals, for example I had an article on Festivals Top Tips. The image that I displayed on the front of the magazine was the most important factor for me, it would be the first thing that our audience would look. I chose to convert my image into black and white so it would reflect a very mysterious look, also the effect enhanced the magazine as it made the colors and text blend together to make it look realistic. When taking the pictures we decided to use amps, guitars and microphones so that the images would look like a real band, I feel that by using these props it also helped to emphasises our genre.

The music magazine did appeal to the fragmented audience, however the main reason why we chose to do this genre was because it was growing in popularity. From our questionairee resluts we found that everybody reading magazines such as NME and KERRANG are all very interested in music and like to keep up to date with every gig and every festival, so as part of our topics we created a page on  top festival tips and also where bands were going to playing in upcoming weeks, by doing this it emphasised our genre as all the bands were part of the same category and everybody could relate to the article.
A big part of our research was looking at magazines such as KERRANG and NME and this really helped us to look at the style of magazine and how we wanted ours to look. We tried to look at thier ideas but construct them into our own as our genre was very simular. I reesearched many of their images on google, all of them were very influenctial, I based my double page spread on one of their additions, I liked the way they had used the images and text, but especially the banner as it was very captivating. When beginning looking at how I would write my interview, I struggled for ideas, however looking at NME and KERRANG really helped me as they had a very interesting style that captured the audiences attention, I wanted to use this style on my double pag spread but add a few of my own ideas.

Questions on conventions

1.) Which were the most influential conventions for you? How did your study effect your decisions and outcomes?

When making my music magazine I felt that there were many conventions that influenced me. Budget was very important during the task, as we were not a proffesional company we were very restricted on our props and the software that we used, so the budget was very important when considering how we would take our pictures and where. Due to our budget we borrwed the schools equiptement, this was everything from lighting to guitars and amps. The budget effected the outcome of the magazine as we could have used different software and perhaps chosen a location that would have fitted in with the genre of the magazine, for example we could have booked a stage room, which would have made the images more realistic. The color scheme of the magazine was also very important as it had to fit in with the style, to help me with the colors I researched into colors and made a powerpoint presentaion, this was extremely helpful for me as I was able to narrow down the colors to purples, blacks and reds, which were all associated with the genre. This research helped me to produce many mock ups, all including the different colors but using them in different areas, which enabled me to produce my final piece. The layout of the magazine was also very important for the outcome of the magazine as it had to fit in with the genre. We had looked at other magazine covers such as KERRANG and NME so we had a good idea of what we wanted it our final outcome to be. Also we had produced many mock ups of our magazine which enabled us to experiment with different layouts.


2.) Did you subvert any conventions that you studied in your music magazine?