Picking and researching our genre

After doing some research into existing media products, Katie and I decided to stick to our favourite genre which is: Indie acoustic. This tends to entail music artists which are less well known or songs under the romance genre. We created a mind map where we placed different categories such as: common themes within the genre, iconography, stock settings, stock characters and common narratives. We also had a browse on youtube to find some examples of songs which come under our genre and made a note of these.

Once we knew which genre we wanted to make our music video based on, we looked at some of the acoustic artists we were already aware of. 

Focusing on the narrative: 
When looking at these videos we focused on the different narrative theories and which applied in order to make some conclusions on what we wanted to adapt for our video. The different theories include:

• Vladimir Propp (Stock characters present)
• Levi-Straus (binary opposites)
• Roland Barthes (5 codes)
• Todrov (5 stages)
• Andrew Goodwin (relationship between video and lyrics)

Applying Narrative theories

Gabrielle Aplin - Home

Propp (stock characters)

Characters present:
princess – the singer herself left in a difficult situation, a little like Cinderella
father – could be seen as the man in the truck who picks her up off the road and takes her somewhere to help her out, something a father figure would usually do
villain – In this case villain(s), they take her phone, then drive off in her car

Strauss (binary opposites)
Good and bad
people who earn money and people who struggle – rich and poor
old and young generation

Barthes (5 different codes)
The enigma code – left wandering what she is going to do once her things have been taken
The action code – “
The semantic code – audience can understand the situation
The symbolic code – can tell straight away that the people dressed in tracksuits are going to be trouble due to the stereotypes of that dress code in today’s society
The cultural code – can understand the video as they would be able to put themselves in her situation and think about how they would deal with it (getting a part time job to get by and using talents to make money)

Todorov (story line structure)
Original equilibrium is that she is going to her car to go home as normal then the gang disrupts her as she is doing so. She then realizes that she has to somehow find a way to get back on track and sort out what has just happened as she is in the middle of nowhere. Her attempt to repair is by selling her old watch and using any money she had left to buy a guitar and sing on the streets to make any possible money and even get small part time jobs. New equilibrium is that she is enjoying life as a singer and is about to evolve a career out of it.

Goodwin (relationship between lyrics and video)
Illustrative – video portrays her actions and thoughts of home
Amplifying  - throughout the wholke song she is not at home, howvere she wants to be
contradicting – ‘where you rest your head’ and she places head on pillow, other shots match lyrics too 
Disjuncture – relevant to the song as she can’t get home

Lauren Aquilina - Fools

Propp (stock characters)
princess – singer herself (Lauren)
No other characters from the theory present however this can be seen as relevant as she is talking about how she feels in the situation and uses facial expressions and actions to show this.

Strauss (binary opposites)
possible old and new within the setting

Barthes (5 different codes)
The enigma code – wandering why there are keys everywhere however this is not explained so leaves the audience in confusion
The action code
The semantic code
The symbolic code
The cultural code

Todorov (story line structure)
There is no storyline

Goodwin (relationship between lyrics and video)
Illustrative -

Amplifying -
contradicting -
Disjuncture – there is disjuncture in this video.
there are no links between the lyrics and the song, There should have been another character involved aka the person she wrote the song about in order to help the audience understand the lyrics.

Bright Eyes - First Day Of My Life

Propp (stock characters)
none of these characters are shown as the video doesn’t show a fairytale like story, instead it shows the audience the conncetion between couplese and families.

Strauss (binary opposites)
Lesbians and straight couples
old and young
black and white
life and death
affection and separation
loss and possession
animals and humans

Barthes (5 different codes)
The enigma code – you wander what each individuals story is
The action code
The semantic code
The symbolic code – by looking at the connection between the different characters you can tell their sexuality or know a bit about their story. Like the woman holding her stomach who is pregnant and the woman holding a picture of someone who you gather is someone they have previously lost that they love.
The cultural code – easily understand the different relations

Todorov (story line structure)
There is no structure, just a montage of the different couples

Goodwin (relationship between lyrics and video)
Illustrative
Amplifying – there is an ongoing repetition of the love between the characters which helps you concentrate on the lyrics of the song and reinforces your thought on its meaning.
contradicting – the images go along with the video well – ‘yours is the first face I saw, think I was blind before I met you’ is played when the gay couples are on screen which can represent their uncertainty of their sexuality
Disjuncture - none

Ed Sheeran - Give Me Love

Propp (stock characters)

Characters present:
princess – The angel in the song - the protagonist
Hero - the police officer who saves her life at the end
false hero - could potentially be seen ad Ed sheeran himself as he makes appearances in the video and is on his own so you think, as an audience that he is going to be the hero to the angel.

Strauss (binary opposites)
sexualities - homosexual and heterosexual

love and hate

loneliness and relationships

Barthes (5 different codes)
The enigma code – wander how the angel has dies and what her story is, this is before we see a flash back to the angels life before she dies
The action code – When the police enter, there is more action which introduces the action and makes the video seem a lot more exciting
The semantic code – Sadness is portrayed through the facial expressions and other elements of mise en scene which can leave sympathy for the protagonist
The symbolic code – this is similar to the semantic code as the lighting always seems dark on the scenes with the angle with some sorts of lighting which gives connotations of heaven.
The cultural code – this video isn't all that relatable as the love arrows aren't realistic however it still shows the effect that love can have on people which can be relatable.

Todorov (story line structure)At the beginning of the music video there is an equilibrium of the angels death who is then hit by a disruption of time going back and the audience seeing how she changes into an angel in the first place. We can tell that she gives other people happiness and love however she doesn't have love herself which links to the idea of their being reliability between the lyrics and the video (goodwins theory). The new equilibrium is that she goes round giving love out so that people can have the happiness that she doesn't have and therefore ends up dying after she has helped others. Then the new equilibrium is that the arrow that killed her then disappears as the police officer comes in a sees her and she now has love herself.

Goodwin (relationship between lyrics and video)Illustrative – The images within the video give a literal representation of the lyrics 'give me love' is repeated as the angel is giving other people love and deprived of love herself.
Amplifying  -  There is a repetition of love and longing
contradicting – 'give me love' at the end relates to the video as the angel final gets love when the police officer comes in.
Disjuncture – There is no disjuncture

Lewis Watson - Sink Or Swim

Propp (stock characters)

Characters present:

There is only one character throughout the whole music video and this is the singer himself. He could be seen at the hero in the story however he is only singing about how he loves someone and doesn't actually present a relationship with a girl to match the lyrics. However the fact that he is the only person in the video could connote that it is a song from him to the girl as he doesn't look at the camera and sing which means the audience isn't involved as much.

Strauss (binary opposites)there aren't any obvious binary opposites within the video as it is all filmed at the swimming pool with the small scene at the sunset beach. The only binary opposite that could possibly apply is land or water in terms of the setting which links back to the 'sink or swim' which can tell you more about the narrative of the song being all about the choice you make or if something will work out or not.

Barthes (5 different codes)The enigma code – although the song title explains why he is within the stock setting that he is, we are still left to wader near the end what he is going to do when walking up the stairs to the top jumping board.
The action code – “
The semantic code – audience can understand the situation he is facing through the use of facial expressions and emotion he has when singing about this other person.
The symbolic code – can tell through the use of camera shots and editing that the video is building up to the moment at the ned where the video comes to a conclusion as to whether he sinks or swims.
The cultural code – can understand the video, as an audience you can understand the lyrics and this can give away emotions and feelings which the singer has.This can trigger opinions and relatability to the situation. 

Todorov (story line structure)There isn't a todrov sort of storyline. The video doesn't entail much of a storyline as it is more like a montage of clips as establishing shots for the swimming pool.

Goodwin (relationship between lyrics and video)Illustrative – video portrays his feelings towards someone
contradicting – 'sink or swim, hold your breath and just dive right in' is the final lyric of the song which is sung at the beginning of the song as an introduction but also finishes the song. As this last lyric is sung he jumps off the board and you see whether he returns to the waters surface or not.
Disjuncture – relevant to the song as soon as it gets to the end of the video and he jumps in the water as it brings the song to a conclusion and gives a physical example of what he is portraying in the video.

Analysing the micro elements of the genre

After i had analysed the narrative theories of the muic video, i needed to look into the videos in much more detail as to what makes up the music video. In lesson we looked at media language and the ways in which media communicates with us as an audience and came up with this mind map individually: 

After this it was obvious that micro elements played a big part in the genre as they are what makes the video appealing to the audience. Because of this i decided to create a video for 3 of the songs where i used a website called 'youtube to mp4' (http://www.youtubeinmp4.com/) to download each music video onto my mac. once i had done this i imported them onto my imovie library so that i could add text to each one analysing some of the main camera shots, movement, sound, editing and mise en scene elements i could see. I think that by analysing 3 videos, i really got a grasp on what common elements exist in the genre giving me ideas for future planning. 

Ed Sheeran - Give Me Love 

Lauren Aquilina - Fools

Bright eyes - First Day Of My Life

After looking at the elements of the music videos i have found that there were some aspects in on which was then also in another.
Film overlays

This collage shows that 3 out of the 5 videos that i looked at have a film flare overlay edited onto them. They had different purposes in these videos - The image in the centre is from 'First Day Of My Life' video by Bright Eyes and overlay in that video was used as a transition from one frame to another. This made it more indie as on other music videos of different genres tend to just use straight cuts or a very subtle dissolve to go from frame to frame. Then, in the first and the 3rd image (taken from the 'fools' and the 'give me love' music video) the film overlays are used to add a more interesting twist to it as oppose to it just being a plain frame. I think that the overlays play an important part in out genre as they give it a warm feel and definitely add a bit more character to the genre.

Applying genre theories