Monday, 17 June 2013

Steven E Carlson theory

By Renya Szczodrak

Section
Summary / Questions
Videos Referenced
Own videos from research
Modern Mythic Embodiment
Performance types. 3 main modern mythic characters/forces.
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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.
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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.’’
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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- like a prayer
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’


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