As well as looking closer to my given genre, I decided to look at the works of some famous music video directors though the songs perhaps steer a little bit away from the kind of music I'm looking at however. I decided to focus on Mark Romanek, though I also looked at works by the likes of Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Anton Corbijn and Jonathan Glazer.
Mark Romenek
Mark Romenek is an American filmmaker whose directing work includes music videos, feature films and commercials. Some of his most notable music videos include "Hurt" by Johnny Cash, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, "Jump They Say" by David Bowie and "99 Problems" by Jay-Z. These videos have received numerous awards, including over 20 MTV VMAs, three
Grammys, a Country Music Association award, and three Billboard Music Awards.
A compilation of Mark Romanek’s work, edited by Nino Del Padre – which I found on YouTube.
After watching lots of his music videos, and a few documentaries about the way he works I'm getting pretty excited, actually, to make my own video (though I know obviously I won't have the budget or skills he does) whether I liked the artist/song or not I could tell he completely creates a distinct image of the musician and creates a complete moment within the video; I really like him. :)
Also, in a documentary about him, he says he doesn't always know exactly how the video will be, or what order he'll edit things into, just to film a lot, and see how it fits when editing. Which is a little relieving to hear. I made a small presentation on Prezi to look briefly at some of his work:
I've been looking at lots of music videos this week but whilst I look to find specific bands (by going through different genre tags and 'similar artists' pages on last.fm) and videos to more closely analyse, I've been thinking about the colours and imagery which would suit this kind of sound. I'm not sure if I'm trying to make this more industrial than it is but I recently came across the short film Doppelherz by Marilyn Manson and the imagery is just really amazingly dark and interesting, I think that -along with David Lynch films- could be a lot of inspiration for my video, if that's possible. :)
What I really like about this video is the repetitiveness of it: the instrumental track Thaeter is repeated as he talks a bizarre drone-like thought track which is both funny and actually quite thought provoking. More importantly, aesthetically I think that it kind of suits the music scene which I'm looking at with things like the colour scheme and idea of blues and cold colours mixed with dirty, grungy faded coloured imagery. The art director was hyper-realist artist Gottfried Helnwein.
When closer to making my music video, if still going in this kind of direction, I'll look at in more depth.
Okay, I've at long last decided on which song to use: track 19. I think it might be slightly easier to make and bit darker, which might be cool. :)
I'm trying to find bands with a similar soud to this before looking a videos that don't exactly match; I'm thinking at looking into Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack, Radiohead and Tool videos, I'm not too sure yet. So far I've seen a lot of concept based videos with CCTV/static on televisions, a little bit creepy/dirty imagery. The colour schemes seem pretty high contrast; ususally a lot of cold and stony kind of colours as of yet.
In class we were given twenty two tracks to choose from, varying from all kind of sub genres; our task is to make a music video and two of the three options:
a website homepage for the band;
a digipak for the album’s release;
a magazine advertisement for the digipak
So far I've narrowed my choices down to track 16 and track 19. Track 16 has a dreamlike mysterious intro, breaking into a trip hop kind of sound, whereas 19 has quite dark, deep vocals steering more towards an industrial sound (but actually still quite trip hop, i'm not sure), I tried to add them on Soundcloud, but the copyright issues wouldn't allow me to. :(
Though I'm reasonably familar with both genres, I want to explore the aesthetics of their videos before choosing which to go with. My initial ideas for track 19 would be kind of inspired by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Korn or Marlilyn Manson's visuals - quick shots to "shocking" imaged, snarled faces and dark make up, with mainly performance (not live) rather than concept. For track 16, I could use a lot of cold colours, ambient visuals and slow editing, with possiby both concept and performance involved in the video or kind of black and white, jazz imagery maybe.
Yeah - I'm definitely looking forward to this now. :)
In his book Dancing in the Distraction
Factory, Goodwin writes about what he defines as the characteristics of music videos:
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band).
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (illustrative, amplifying, or contradicting).
3. There is a relationship between the music and visuals.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for
lots of close ups of the artists and the artist may develop motifs which reoccur
across their work (a visual style).
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking
(screens within screens, telescopes etc. and particularly voyeuristic treatment
of the body).
6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV
programmes, other music videos etc.).
Applying the theory For homework we needed to apply Goodwin's theory to a music video of choice; which was kind of sad as apparently lots of the music doesn't have official videos for their songs, then after settling on Purity Ring for their beautiful yet admittedly kind of confusing videos, I realised that it would be hard to apply Goodwin's idea of genre characteristics and motifs as they are relatively new. :( Eventually, I decided to apply Goodwin's theory to Marilyn Manson's cover of Tainted Love (originally by Ed Cobb, made famous by Soft Cell).
Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
Marilyn Manson is a popular industrial metal band, they play on a lot of the features of that genre; Marilyn Manson and the people in his car arrive with dark, alternative clothing, heavy make up and visibly paler skin than other people. Often in metal the videos are based almost purely on performance rather than concept as in Tainted Love the video gives a more pop vibe by doing this, possibly refer back to its origin as a pop song. Also, a characteristic for this genre in film, is alternative or "gothic" sub-culture not fitting in; they break this stereotype by taking over the party in the video, which taps into the anger among the excluded.
There is a relationship between the music and lyrics The lyrics of this song is regarding a relationship in which he loves the other person but they've hurt him in some way and now their love is tainted with something bad. This loosely relates to the video as it possibly gives more meaning to the original intention. We see Marilyn Manson dancing with a girl, then later, he leaves her, in a room with the sign: 'Keep out!' written on it, this might relate to the lyrics "Run away I've got to - Get away" and Don't touch me please,I cannot stand the way you tease, I love you though you hurt me so" in a notion of trying to get away from a girl he loves. The video is shown to be dark intergrating with light could be a literal interpretation of love being "tainted" or almost poisioned.
There is a relationship between the music and visuals
Though the visuals don't have have a direct relationship to the visuals; at the beginning Manson taps the steering wheel as if to to the beat of the song; the editing is put together on a similar tempo as the music, you can see this specifically at 3:10 - 3:12 of the video as the drum speeds up the video flashes from images of his teeth, back to him singing on a bed; when the tone of his voice raises we see an extreme close up of him singing. As well as this the overall sound of the music is heavy and Manson distorted vocals make it feel dark, this is accentuated by the dark imagery of the video.
The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artists and the artist may develop motifs which reoccur across their work
Marilyn Manson's logo is a 'MM', the typography varies between albums, but is almost always shown in their videos as a memorable motif of the band, similarly the use of the gothic font is used both in the intro: 'not another high school party' and on the front of their car: 'goth thing'; the record label also advertise the band's merchandise with one of people at the party wearing their top which says 'ain't nothing but a goth thing'. Over the years, Marilyn Manson himself has became a recognised icon within modern pop culture, he always keeps a similar image, thus continuing to make himself easily recgonisable; he is known for having one white lens, shaved eyebrows, dark lipstick and silver or gold grills, adding to his star image.
There is frequently reference to notion of looking
Though there is not much use direct mode of address used within this video, we see a lot of voyeuristic treatment and fetishisation of the female body, dancing or in very little clothing which is popular in music videos and could be seen as the Male Gaze, and a scene which uses an over-the-shoulder shot to show someone looking into a mirror. In contrast to what is the common use of sexualised imagery of women in the media, Manson opposes what would be the typical use of male bodies -which are usually expected to be muscly and tanned- by being tattooed, pale and reasonably skinny, kind of warping what would usually be expected in a music video while still using a notion of looking.
There is often intertextual reference This song is in the soundtrack to the 2001 comedy filmNot Another Teen Movie and the characters and settings from films are used to create more popularity to the film and song and a better understanding of the music video. It also makes a subtle reference to teen films, a much used scene in which a "geeky" character takes off their glasses to become "beautiful" or "sexy" they use this idea in their own way by turning the quiet, bookish looking girl into one of Marilyn Manson's crew, gothic and dancing with him. Within in the video guest stars Joey Jordison, in his mask, in the party crowd, a member of the metal band Slipknot, which helps enforce the idea of the metal scene "infultrating" a party. As well as this I've noticed, particularly in the beginning, that it somewhat resembles a "dark" version of an RnB or Rap video, fitting in with a lot of their genre characteristics such as an expensive looking car, shots of its grill and even shots of lowrider car. Also, shots of a lot of jewellery, sunglasses and a silver grill. As a reference to another genre, though not all musically fitting in with it seems to be creating contrast, or a countertype; mixing what could be seen as a popular, normative persona with the specific subculture of "goth" keeps the audience interested.
By applying this theory, I have looked in detail why each of these points are important to a music video; it has helped me further my understanding of what I will need to do in making my own music video! :)
Back again, and looking forward to media this year! Instead of short films now, we're doing music videos, which I think I prefer as I'm more interested in the music industry than I am film! :)
I think I'd prefer to do a music video for an alternative genre, just as they have videos less based on performance, rather concept, which sounds a little more fun to make, perhaps a little more difficult though.
edit: looking at some videos by Tim Pope for The Cure, performance videos can still be pretty interesting. :)
