Group 23: September 2012

Sunday 30 September 2012

Laura Mulvey on representation

My understanding about Laura's theory is that she is saying that music video's create a split between male and female and objectifies the female as something good to look at, revealing and shaping them into the perfect woman every man dreams of, as the men glaze upon them ever so casually. To show this we can see it being done as body parts are dismembered and focused on as individual objects in this music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CL6n0FJZpk

Summary Of Vernalis's Theory

Carole Vernallis observed and noticed that edits in music video's are much more frequent than in film and stand out as disjuncture and the editing seems to have a rhythm.

The main points of her observations is the breaking of continuity editing and implication of many jump cuts. A frequent re occurring base track to show structure for choruses or what not. Scene cuts in time with the beat to match rhythm. Also edits may be really obvious to draw attention to themselves by adding wipes and special effects. A good example of this is this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58IM48-EU9E&feature=player_embedded

Summary of Andrew Goodwins Theory

Andrew Goodwin feels that traditional narrative analyses dont really apply to pop videos as there are different conventions needed to make a good pop video to a good film.

He proposed it can be said that there are three types of relations between songs and video's, this is: Illustration, amplification and disjuncture.

Illustration is when the music video tells the story of the lyrics said in the song, for example if the artist said "i walked down the park" usually we would see them walking down a park. An example of this could be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVELTxKRoHA&feature=player_embedded

Amplification is when the video amplifies certain meanings said in the lyric without illustrating it as a story. A great example of this is 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4'

Disjuncture is where there is little connection between the lyric and the video or where the video contradicts the lyrics. A great example of this is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovdm2yX4MA&feature=player_embedded

Student Video Analysis

http://vimeo.com/32961505#at=0

This is a dub-step music video and a genre of similarity to what me and my group intend to make as its got an upbeat, good tempo and rhythm.

This video takes some attributes from Carol Varnalllis's theory as it breaks the continuity editing heavily as we are constantly presented with jump cuts and with every shot it grabs our attention. We are presented with a few master base tracks that keep re appearing and gives the video structure despite its disjuncture and amplification, the editing cuts in time with the beat and the camera movement is not static.

This video goes against Laura Mulvey's theory as there is no male gazzing upon our female artist, in fact our female artist is not even portrayed in a sexual manor as she would suggest happens in every video.

The video's main strengths for me would be the continuity of the black and white flashing effect, as it gives the video an edge and helps speed the video up through visuals to match the actual song rhythm. Also the amplification used was very effective as it was only used where they wanted us to actually notice a lyric said and one that has meaning, so they did not overuse that method.

For me personally there is no weaknesses of this video as there is nothing about it i would say doesn't look good in it.

Technical skills developed during AS Course

Technical skills i developed was heavily learnt through using the MAC computers, final cut pro.

Editing
- Match cuts
-Jump cuts
- special effects e.g screen blur
- slow down speed/ speed up
-transitions e.g dissolve

Sound
- Foley sounds
- Recording digetic sound
-Making instrumentals with instruments

Music Video Remake

Strengths

- One technical strength of this music video is its continuity, as i would say the use of match cuts was exquisite and gave the video wonderful continuity.

- Another strength displayed in this music video is the camera movement. It was all shot free hand but it maintained its steady fluidity throughout.

-Lastly, the performance was great as the main actor representing the artist bounced around jollily.

Weaknesses

-Lighting, there was some shots of the video where the video went very dark as there was no lighting present.

-Lip syncing, id say for a first attempt on a music video the lip syncing was not dramatically bad but there is alot of room for improvement as it did not match up too well as i did not use markers because i was taught it at a later date.