For my A2 Media coursework I have chosen to produce a music video with two auxiliary texts. I put lots of thought into my song choice as I wanted something with lyrics that could be interpreted in many ways so that I wouldn’t be pinned for ideas and my final outcome wouldn’t be too predictable. I made the choice of “Honor by Atreyu” the song fits into the “Metal” genre of music and my first step was to analyse the conventions of this genre.
Metal as a musical genre is very diverse and can be split into many different sub-genres. Because of this the conventions can differ from band to band in metal as they each fit into different sub-genres each with their own slightly altered conventions. I will discuss the main conventions followed by most metal bands but will also discuss how these differ slightly throughout the sub-genres.
All Genres cater to what their audience wants. This is what creates conventions. Metal fans are typically teenagers or people in their early 20’s who want to rebel against the older generation. This has created an angry and very youth targeted genre and created conventions very different from other genres. Rebellion from the norm is essential to both band and audience. Metal bands are often seen are huge parties drinking, taking drugs and being loud and offensive like their music. This has been passed onto their fans, which now rebel in every way possible. The traditional instruments in a Metal Band are an electric guitar, a drum set and a bass guitar. These are often loud and heavily distorted which grab our attention and, unlike other genres, means the singer is not necessarily the focus in the song. Instrumental solos are common in metal music as showing skill on your chosen instrument is conventional.
(To see my analysis on conventions separate click here)
I tried to use and reference these conventions as much as I could. The convention of the drug reliant lifestyle is shown in the introductory extended narrative that represents her slipping into a bad hallucination. This is to do with the drugs she has taken. I brought this across with Sound, Editing Cinematography and Mise-en-scene. The sound through the extended narrative is skipping to give the feeling of lost time as she slips in and out of consciousness this is reinforced by the sped up shot towards the middle of the extended narrative.
In this clip here (Clip 1.) we can see lots in the mise-en-scene. There are prop pills and a razor as well as a line of salt made to look like cocaine. I chose these as these are the drugs most associated with metal stars. This clip also shows the close angle I chose to film her from at this point. This was to focus on her semi-consciousness and it gives the feeling everything is coming in on her and combined with the sound of her distressed breathing furthers the narrative of her slipping into unconsciousness. In the editing stage I overlaid images to confuse the audience and try to show them how everything is happening fast and at once inside her head as she slips into unconsciousness. Finally at the very start I used a blur effect to try and show the world around her is unclear. This all together I think presents the narrative of her slipping into a hallucination.
As we enter her hallucination with her we are shown a shot as it closes in on her eye this is to alert the audience we are entering her mind.
When shown to an audience all of them found this extended narrative a good feature and found it put forward the narrative without being a boring intro story section.
All of what I have mentioned here shows how this extended narrative shows the conventions and represents the drug fuels, rock/metal star lifestyle.
Here are the conventions and how I have stuck to or broken them throughout the rest of the video.
Cinematography
Metal music is usually much more violent and fast paced then most other genres, with loud instruments played at a fast tempo and violent lyrics that are shouted or screamed rather than sang. Because of this the cinematography in metal music videos is often fast and violent. There is a lot of camera movement and dramatic angles shot. This is to reflect and exaggerate the wild movements of the band and audience and adds to the voyeuristic quality the audience look for as they want to feel they are there watching the band. As my video differs from a traditional performance video I broke this convention as most of my camera angles where mid shots taken head on but I included some shots focusing on instruments to still give the feeling of a dramatic metal video.
Mise-en-scene
Costume in a video is one of the things that varies dramatically from sub-genre to sub-genre. It is nearly always dark or dramatically coloured clothes with lots of piercings and tattoos as this kind of wear would not be worn by an older generation and is therefore seen as rebellious and non-conforming. The scale of this costume is what differs. With post hard-core been seen usually wearing skinny jeans and band t-shirts all the way up to death metal which conventionally have long baggy dress which is nearly always leather and wrist or neckbands that have large protruding steel spikes. This extreme distinction helps metal fans to see the many different sub-genres and distinguish between them easily. Scenery changes less dramatically between the sub-genres. The band is nearly always put into a place where the older generation would feel uncomfortable or where the younger generation have more control. (Skate park, Gig, house party) with the exception of death metal and similar genre which sometimes have scenery with satanic connotations. (Graveyard, old church) I looked further into the sub-genre that my band fits into and paid careful attention to dress before deciding on my outfits. When looking at the wear of Theory of a Dead man a band close in sub-genre to my band I saw a green jacket of which I knew I could get a similar one so that became one outfit. The other outfit for the bassist was decided when I looked through the outfits of many bands and checked shirts seem to fit with many sub-genres so I thought this was a safe bet to go with.
Editing
Again the fast paced nature of the music determines how the video is created. Edits are conventionally fast with shots lasting on average under a second in some videos. The editing is in a linear form to follow the song and uses continuity editing to make it seem as if the band is performing the song in one take like they would live rather than in several small sections. My editing was different from conventional metal editing as it didn’t quickly change between shots but instead moved around one continuous shot to a fast beat. Such as in my chorus here (Clip 2.) You can see that instead of editing between 9 – 10 shots it moves along and into the same shot. The pace of the editing is still fast to suit the genre and aggression of the song.
Sound
The sound like in other music videos is the music track, but when diegetic sound is introduced it is often loud and heavy like the track its set around. The only other sounds in my music video and in the extended narrative I have already discussed the intro and in the outro there is birdsong which is unconventional and doesn’t have connotations of heavy metal but works as it represents her waking and coming away from the heavy metal and so the contrast help the audience realise the hallucination is over.
While starting to come up with shots and ideas I came up with the idea for a making of video, I thought this would be good as it would show the process of me creating my project and would help me to look back for when I started writing this evaluation. I chose the song “Wonderful Life” by Alter Bridge and watched the video of them performing this song multiple times making notes of the camera angles and editing style for my making of.
For most metal fans seeing your favourite bands and going to gigs to meet new people is very important, because of this and the convention of showing your skill on an instrument, most metal music videos are performance videos. This allows the target audience to feel like they have seen the band when it may not be possible. It also allows the band to show off the energy that comes from their songs.
So to appeal to my audience I had to make sure my video contained performance as without it, it wouldn’t appeal to my target audience.
The idea of the lyric video developed when I was thinking about how I could draw attention to the release of the video and the album. While browsing YouTube for new music videos I came across a lyric video for Shinedown’s new song “Bully” to advertise their new album and decided I could do one in Premier Pro. My skills with Adobe Premier Pro and also Adobe After Effects grew rapidly over the next few weeks as I experimented and practiced. I learnt how to manipulate and animate graphics in many different ways and learnt how After Effects has lots of pre-set animations to use that can look stunning if used properly. When my lyric video was finished I found my editing skills where far greater than I had hoped I could bring them up to. This made me think of using these new editing skills to improve my original footage that due partly to lack of time and a bad choice of actors was not of a brilliant standard. This original experimentation can be seen in the intro to my final lyric video version (Clip 3.)
This looked good but I got the feeling I could do more if it wasn’t resued footage but footage filmed purposefully in the green room with the correct lighting. Around this time I came across the Green Day video for their song “21st century breakdown” This was just the kind of video I had in mind of creating and was the foundation to the knowlage I have gained of how to create a graphical music video like the one I have and you can see some features in my video that where insipired by this video. My knowlage on editing was still based mainly on what I had done with the lyric video so to incorporate the lyric video into the main video seemed like an obvious choice as I know I already had a professional looking piece to work from and that I had the skills to make this work within the video. (Clip 4.)
Throughtout the video I wanted to sustain the idea that the girl in my video felt small and afraid about what was going on inside her head my representation of this comes throught in both the way she acts and how she is seen in relation to other aspects of the video. Such as here (Clip 5.)
She can clearly be seen cowering away from the lyrics which represent the music and hallucinations of her mind. She has very little screen space and is completely dominated by the hallucinations. This can also be seen (Clip 6.) when she is seen shrinking and fleeing from the guitarist who again represents the hallucinations going on in her head.
In the production of my axillary texts I used lots of new media technology I used two still cameras a Cannon 1000D and Olympus SP-600UZ to take the photos. The main software I used to edit these pictures and to create the effects was Photoshop Cs5. Although my technical skills with Photoshop where already good this gave me a chance to see the more creative side of Photoshop and I used a lot of special effects I hadn’t used before. While creating my CD front cover I found the layers feature in Photoshop useful and I also found the opacity tool to see through layers useful. My first draft of my CD cover (Pic 1.) had a very dramatic font that was slightly illegible and through audience feedback I found most thought that it was necessary to change this. I created a few more drafts with changed fonts and eventually found one my audience thought suited the genre and also was easy to read and eye catching.
To create my final finished Digipack example (Pic 2.) I again used Photoshop. Using a picture of a Digipack as a template
I altered the perspectives and used the warp tool to make the images fit and look correct. Finally I used an edited picture of a CD holder to make the Digipack look authentic. I think this meets the original conventions I set out to meet. The skinned face is very conventional of the obscene, extreme look that the metal genre aims for.
For my magazine advertisement I looked at The Stone Roses advert for their album release (Pic 3.) and then altered it to fit into metal conventions.
My album advert (Pic 4.) came out looking exactly how I had hoped. It fits into the conventions of layout and design for magazine adverts but has clear metal touches to set it apart. For example the stars are nautical stars I chose these as many fans of metal have these included in tattoos and they are associated with rock and metal. I tried to stick to the colour scheme that can be seen on my cd cover so that it would look as if they belong together rather than two different pieces of media. I used the HMV logo and band logo as well as common small print to make the page look busier and more professional. On top of these two media texts I also created a tour poster to further create the message that the videos and the auxiliary text create together which is to hype the new album and its release.
