Carol Vernallis Theory Analysis

Carol Vernallis is another music video theorist that says there are four stages that make up the creation of music videos and that they can all be broken down into these stages. The four are, Narrative, Editing, Camerwork and Diegesis.

The Narrative of a video is essentially the story that takes place throughout the course of the video. There are several other elements that also factor into the narrative.

-The Structure of the narrative may not always be clear, it might be out of chronological order or cut away to the performance. This is done often by bands that want to put an emphasis on the performance of the song over the story.
-The music video must fit in with the genre of the song and the overall style. It should be presented in a manner that fits with the established "look" of the band/artist.
-The story is not always what moves the video forward, this can be done by the performance as well as the music itself.
-The story might have an open ending that lacks a clear resolution to pose questions to the viewer.
-The video should be a visual response to the song.
-The narrative of the video may be presented through a montage, rather than a more continuous compilation of shots to make the story.


 The editing is what pulls the video together and can have an impact on the overall style of the video.
-The editing can help give the video it's own style. This can be through use of colours imposed on the footage as well as a unique way of cutting.
-Some edits can be much more "in your face" and draws the attention of the viewer to make it more obvious than standard continuity editing.
-A convention of music video editing is to break the rules of continuity editing.
-Music videos can be edited to mach the beat of the music, i.e. cutting on the beat.

Camerawork in a music video is also something done in different ways to more traditional styles of films. The overuse and under use of particular shots don't line up with how other types of videos prioritize shots and the framing too is also different.
-The particular style of how the shots in a video are framed may be used specifically for one video to give it a certain distinct look,
-The camera may move around in time with the melody, beat or lyrics of the song.
-Extreme shots are used very frequently in music videos, both extreme close ups and wide shots.

The Diegesis of a video is what is shown on screen to the viewer.
-What is on screen, be it the performers, characters or items may move around to be in time with the music, especially true of performers or dancers.
-Sometimes the diegesis might be revealed to the viewer slowly so that the viewer doens't always have a clear understanding of what is being shown in the video.
The viewer may also not understand what is on screen due to gaps in the performance or the narrative.

What Music Means to Me

This first song is called "Road to Nowhere" and is the first song I can remember knowing the lyrics to. It was released in 2005 and this was a time in my life when a lot changed, moving schools and parents breaking up. During that time the album this song was from was played a lot around me and for some reason this song was the one I picked up on the most, perhaps picking out on the meaning of song's lyrics for the first time, as opposed to just mindlessly listening to the melody.

This second song is "American Idiot" by Greenday and although it came out earlier even before my first song, it only became a song that I listened to properly years later. This was the first song I began to learn when I got a guitar and so it has quite a lot of significance to me in terms of music.

The much more recent song that I feel a particular attachment to is "Seasons Die One After Another" by Amarazashi. This is a Japanese song and really the first foreign song that I would listen to on a regular basis. In a sense this is the song that helped me appreciate music for more than just the words and melody I heard in passing. 

Dry the River- Video breakdown

Today in class we listened to the song, "No Rest" by Dry the River and had to write down notes on how we imagined the video would like as well as the genre, and whether we thought it was by a band or a solo artist. In groups we swapped our notes around and together came up with a basic idea for a video narrative that could be paired up with the song.

We came up with a narrative idea that centers around the lyrics "I used to be a King" and "I loved you". And we thought it would make sense for the narrative of the video to follow a King and his fall from power and perhaps the loss of someone he loved. This both fits with those lyrics and pieces together a coherent plot for a video.

The props and setting for this video idea would be medieval and would have lots of costumes to make the setting more apparent or exaggerated. Due to the somewhat slow pace of the video we thought it would be appropriate for the video to have a mixture of slow moving shots as well as stationary shots. I had the thought that it would make sense to have several outdoor landscape shots, setting the tone and theme of the video.

This idea for the video would be much more narrative focused but would have some performance. How I thought the performance would work for this video would be to have the characters in the narrative singing the lyrics, as opposed to cutting away to the band performing the song on a stage or something similar to that.

After that we watched the actual video to compare our discussed ideas to the actual video and found that it was quite different. The official video was much less narrative driven than ours and had a very big emphasis on star image, showing the band members prominently throughout the video. This exercise showed how lots of different ideas for a the same song are possible and that the song doesn't limit the video that can be made for it.

Cuts in a music video

In comparison to the film opening I made at AS, a music video has a lot more cuts as it has to keep up with a music track. To really compare the two I looked at the first 30 cuts of a music video to see how long it took to reach that amount. I have taken a screenshot everytime a cut was used in the music video for the song, Chelsea Dagger, and it reached that number in 44 seconds. This is a drastic change from a film opening which rarely reach that number of cuts through the entirety of the opening.

The video uses a mix of close up shots of the band, enforcing a star image to the viewer. There also a few wide shots, showing the instruments being used, letting the viewer know that the music is being played in the video, as opposed to over the top of it. There are also examples of voyeurism in the video as there are girls shown with less clothes on than the male performers as well as close ups of them, despite not being part of the band and having no star image to convey.

Radio Head Music Video Analysis

In class we watched the music video for "Street Spirit" by Radiohead. While watching it, we took down notes for it and then broke the video into sections that we could use to look at each aspect in detail.

Mise en Scene
- The video was set in a trailer park in what appeared to be an American desert.
-All the clothes worn by the band were fairly plain, boring and unmemorable.
-The video was shot in low key lighting.

Camera Angles
-There were some shots that had high angles and low angles
-The majority of the frames we midshots with a flat angle.
-Most of the shots of the band were also front facing the band.

Movment
-The shots in this video were stills of the performance.

Transitions
-The transitions were all either straight cuts or dissolves and fades.

Special Effects
-Slow motion shots
-Some shots are overlapped and made to look like one shot with half the screen moving at a different speed to the other side
-There is a greyscale filter used throughout this video.
-Certain shots have a black background overlayed.
-The lead singer's arm was removed for no obvious reason.

Order of Narrative
-There is no continuety editing in this video.
-The video has a mix of narrative and perfomance.
-No clear link between some of the shots exist, making it appear random.

Pace
-The video uses a lot of shots that make give it a very slow pace.
-Slow motion shots are used to emphasize this.

Framing
-The lead singer in the band is often framed to be bigger in the shot than the rest of the band, promoting a specific star image.
-The frame is also divided several times into three, following the rule of thirds to split up the band.

GoodwinTheory of Music Videos

Godwin has a theory about music videos that says that there are various conventions that they follow

-The will be a relationship between the lyrics of the song and the visuals on screen. This can either compliment or contrast the lyrics to emphasize points.

-Thought beats are the relationship between the music itself and the visuals on the screen to illustrate, amplify or contradict the music.
You can look at the music and interpret it by looking at the verses and chorus. The voice within the song can be unique and easily recognizable. The song should also be telling a story and the video should help to illustrate what that story is.

-Genre related style or Iconography present in the video

-Multiple close ups to create the start image that will promote the artist's brand image

-Voyeurism often plays a part especially in the relation to females (female gaze)

-intertextextual references to other media texts may be present, especially in humorous videos

-Narrative and Performance: The music video should avoid the common narrative as their role is more to advertise than become a story. The artists should become a participant as well as a narrator to increase the authenticity. Lip syncing and other actions can help to increase the verisimilitude. Narrative of a music video will not always be linear and most videos today tend to be fragmented into a broken linearity.

Music Videos I like - Angus and Julia Stone - The Beast

This is video is different because it is animated and features no performances whatsoever. There is a very striking aesthetic to this video, due to it being hand drawn and making use of colour very well. The majority of the music video is all black and white, giving the narrative a very bleak look and following the down lyrics of the song. At the end of the video a large flourish of colour is used to give an impact to the ending of the narrative and enforce its importance. Despite being animated, this video does follow the thought beats theory. There are many cuts throughout the video that cut in time with a verse or chorus shift in the song.

Music Videos I like- Panic! At the Disco

I like this music video because it's a mix of concept and narrative. The narrative itself is directly related to the lyrics of the song as it shows a wedding taking place, and the song talks about a wedding. This makes the video very easy to picture when listening to the lyrics through association. There are also abstract elements of this video that stand out and break the illusion an narrative only video would have. Through the unusual clothing used as props and the makeup of the people in the background, it gives an odd tone to the video and changes the narrative drastically when they all start dancing.

Music videos I like - The Hoosiers- Goodbye Mr A

This is a music video from six years by the Hoosiers but has always been a music video I have remembered due to how it's put together. It follows the thought beats theory, having a very distinct beat and very often cuts in time with the beat. It shows a mixture of performance and narrative, incorporating the performance into the narrative by having the band carry out the story while performing. 

Audience: How and why do people consume Music?

How do you consume music? 

Most people now, consume music through storing songs on either their phones or Ipods. Due to the abundance of these, and how portable they are, people have access to music all the time, making it one of the most easily accessible form of media around. Songs make small file sizes, allowing lots of them to be stored on phones and they can be streamed now from a wide array of platforms online. Due to the potential audience for music, there is a large variety of genres to suit the tastes of different people. 

I listen to music mostly at home while doing work. I have most of the music I listen to stored on my laptop, either downloaded from Itunes or ripped from CDs. I also like to listen to music while drawing as blocking things out with music helps me focus and think about what I'm doing and I feel it makes me more productive and less easily distracted.

Features of a Music Video

Several Features of a Music Video

-Variety of shots, and a lot of them with fast paced editing

-Thought beats; transitions that go in time with the music

-Tells a narrative that might  be alluded to in the song

-Genre of the music video will match the genre of the song

-Features the artist of the song performing it

-Overlapping videos and lip syncing

-Choreographed dancing or acting in place of performance

-A professional look, polish and editing

-Colour editing and correction to give a consistent look

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Music Video Analysis

The music video opens with a shot of a dog's shadow, something that is used repeatedly throughout the video. The shot lasts for six seconds, keeping in pace with the slower build up of the song's opening.

The video cuts in time with the beat of the music to the back of the dog's head to show the red van driving past. This is the first red object to be seen in the video and this colour is a subtle theme all throughout the rest of the video.

There are several similar shots here of this character in the video that shows his importance to the narrative of the video. Again the colour red is used.

Here is a n example of thought beats being used in the video. At this point in the song the bass drops and this is done perfectly in time with the ice cream man taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

As the pace of the song picks up the amount of cuts used increases, showing multiple shots of the ice cream truck from similar angles. Even though the same thing is being shown, the increase in the number of cuts is used to ensure that the pace of the video keeps up with the song.

Again, keeping in pace with the song a lingering shot is used here as the music slows down briefly. This shot is also an example of the lyrics matching what is being shown on screen. The way the kid is moving his hand implies that he's touching something and this matches up with the lyric "feel" being sung at this time.