Section
|
Summary / Questions
|
Videos Referenced
|
Own videos from research
|
Modern Mythic Embodiment
|
Performance
types. 3 main modern mythic characters/forces.
|
n/a
|
n/a
|
Commercial Exhibitionist
|
·
Monger of own body image
·
Evokes charisma of stardom and sexuality.
·
Wants to be admired, an icon.
·
Sells voice, face, lifestyle, records etc…
|
Cher-
Believe
‘’She
scavenges on feelings of teenage unhappiness, using these
feelings as
a commercial commodity. Cher aims to evoke the charisma of stardom and
sexuality. Older now, she takes advertising help from the images of young
healthy bodies. Thus she can be also seen as commercial exhibitionist.’’
|
Madonna-
like a prayer
In like a
prayer Madonna is wearing a revealing black dress in a church. This
sexualises her image. Her style also could be argued to set a fashion sense
and therefore she becomes admirable and an icon for specific audience types.
|
Television Bard
|
·
Sings typical lyrics
·
Uses TV as a medium
·
Singing storyteller who uses images to portray plots.
·
Transform banal (ordinary) stories using visuals.
·
Focuses on life/death, unfulfilled desires.
|
Cher-Believe
‘’It is also
possible to see Cher as a televised bard, singing a story about life after
love. An unhappy girl in the discotheque watches her ex-boyfriend against a
backdrop of happy dancing people. Cher is a singing story-teller who visits
this narrative world. She actively participates in the story only at its
conclusion, when she changes places with the young girl.’’
|
Taylor
Swift- white horse
Swift’s ‘white
horse’ focuses on a girl’s heart break after she discovers that her boyfriend
cheated on her. She uses flashbacks of their time together, and of the time
when she discovered him with another girl, in order to make the story clearer
for the audience. The beginning even has an ‘introduction’ before the song
starts.
|
Electronic Shaman
|
·
Sometimes invisible in clips- only uses voice & rhythm.
·
Shifts between shapes, animates objects, cartoons, time jumps.
·
Has hidden meaning in everything.
|
Cher-Believe
‘’It is
possible to view Cher as an electronic shaman in Believe: she is a modern
sorceress using the electronic magic of visual special
effects. The
spiritual journey begins with concentration, her eyes
glow in the
dark, the fog rises, and people walk in a slow-down,
dreamy way,
etc.. The spiritual journey concludes with a magical green surrounding Cher
as a soul exchange happens between the young woman and her…’’
|
Aha- Take
on me
The music
video incorporates and switches in between two styles. One is simple real
life video while the other is made up of pencil sketches. Sometimes both
styles are used at once e.g. when shapes with rl footage overlap the pencil
image (the mirror).
|
Cher’s ‘Believe’
|
Cher’s video
‘Believe’ incorporates all three types of the modern myth forces.
|
n/a
|
|
Audio-Visual Flow
|
(the crude
map)
Music, Image
and text interact together in order to create a complete ‘whole’ which is
created by both the ears and the eyes.
‘’A music video
is a form of audio-visual communication
in which the meaning is created via carriers of information such as; (1) the
music, (2) the lyrics and (3) the moving images.’’
|
n/a
|
n/a
|
Images to Music
|
·
Moving pictures are added to an already existing tune.
·
Images bound by beat & other musical features
·
Movements (e.g. footsteps) are often synchronized with the beat.
|
Cher-Believe
In Cher’s
music
video
Believe there is a synthesized cymbal-rattle sound which is sometimes
synchronized
with effects of lightning, and which sometimes amplifies body movements.
|
Florence
& the machine-heavy
Some images
change rapidly on the first beat of a drum (e.g. at 0.57 or 2:10)
Also in the
first 15 seconds there is an effect which appears and goes in tune with the
musical beat.
|
The Lyrics
|
·
Images and lyrics interact to create meaning.
·
Metaphorical Joining- images and lyrics differ
in meaning, make it harder to interpret context.
·
Visual imagery- lyrics simply
illustrated by images.
|
Cher-Believe
‘’In the
first verse of Cher’s Believe to phrases "I can’t break through"
and "so sad" there is a kind of visual
echo made by
special effects. I interpret this feature as a text-image metaphor. A
text-illustration appears
for example
when the girl sits drinking as the lyrics intone "Sit around and wait
for you".’’
|
Madonna-
like a prayer
Madonna’s
like a prayer:
Metaphorical
joining:
‘’Just like
a prayer, I’ll take you there, I’m down on my knees’’
^imagery-
she literary prays for him, lyrical interpretation- she’s offering oral sex
Visual
imagery:
’’ I close
my eyes, oh God I think I'm falling
Out of the
sky, I close my eyes’’
^She’s
literally shown as falling and the backdrop is a sky.
|
The Images
|
·
Creates context via colours, motives, setting, clothing
(mise-en-scene)
·
The concepts rearrange visual motifs to create a whole.
·
Visual motifs- performance or narrative track.
|
Cher-Believe
‘’In the
video there are two main visual motifs: one is Cher’s performance track, the
other is the narrative
track about
the unhappy girl. Visual motifs are lightning effects from the
discotheque
and especially the light that is traveling between the girl and
Cher.’’
|
Madonna’s
like a prayer incorporates both performance and narrative track visual
motifs.
She uses
both religious and sexual imagery to create an overall context.
 |
Perceiving music Videos
|
Video
interpretations are instinctive, inter-subjective and subjective depending on
the depth of the layer of the music video. Often memories and opinions can
affect how a video is perceived by a peer/social group or an individual.
Interpretations
are based around 3 traditions of moving images.
1) singing
performance- sometimes called ‘concert performance’ is when a popular signing
performer is placed in a setting implied by the lyrics or a movie setting.
2) Visual
story telling- this is used if it is possible for the audience to follow a
story without text or aural cues (sound).
3)Non
narration of modern art- ‘’ In a music video clip collages, paraphrases, animated abstract art
computer graphics, and unexpected combinations of pictures may appear.’’
|
Singing
Performance:
Al
Johnson sang Oh Mama 1927
Visual
story: no reference
Non
narration of modern art:
Fernand
Leger and Dudley Murhpy’s Ballet Mecanique
|
Singing
Performance
X
Visual
story:
Taylor
swift- you belong with me
Non
narration of modern art:
Aha- take
on me
|
Style: Standard Clip
|
Consists of
three visual traditions:
*Performance
clip
*Narrative
clip
*Art clip
|
Queen-
Bohemian Rhapsody
Cher-Believe
|
Many videos
by the likes of Lady Gaga and videos made for ‘popular’ songs will have this
standard formula of a music video.
|
Style: Performance Clip
|
If a music
video clip contains mostly filmed performance then it is a performance clip.
3 types of
performance:
*song
performance
*dance
performance
*instrumental
performance
|
n/a
|
Pasangrs-
Let her go
|
Style: Narrative Clip
|
When the
video looks like a short silent movie with a song track. It contains no lip
singing.
|
Bruce
Springsteen- I’m on fire
|
|
Style: Art Clip
|
‘’If a music
video clip contains no perceptible visual narrative and contains no
lip-synchronized singing
then it is a
pure art clip.’’
|
n/a
|
‘can’t find’
|
Monday, 17 June 2013
Steven E Carlson theory
By Renya Szczodrak
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)