Laura Marling Album Covers

Laura Marling is a British Folk singer who has three studio albums out. Her sound is often soft to listen however; her lyrics are habitually full of sinister melancholy. Each album cover reveals a position in her musical life and put together can describe clearly how she has developed as an artist.

Her first album Alas I Cannot swim (2008) is punctured with vibrant, warm colours. The cover is of whimsical drawings of things such as mushrooms, crocodiles, flowers, insects and the sun; while her name is written in fluent jointed writing in the middle of what looks like a flower. These natural images reflect the style of music that she plays; folk/ pop folk music can be interpreted by some as to having connections with natural things such as animals and plants. Often being simple and solitarily played, this abundance of images from her album cover can be seen as an imprint on what type of person she is.  The colour scheme is warm, happy and fresh; reflecting the feeling of summer and joy. Moreover, the messiness of it reflects the scruffiness of her career and youthful flair.

On the other hand her second album, titled as I Speak Because I Can (2010) clearly demonstrates how her music and whole persona has changed dramatically. The colour scheme is extremely different, bland grey tones are used. However, unlike her first album cover she has an image of herself as the focus; this could be due to her increase in popularity, such as Lady Gaga her image becomes an icon and instantly recognisable. The feel of the cover is more ridged and strategic in the sense that there are lines all over the cover and the text is neatly placed in the top left hand corner on lines. Nonetheless, a hint of colour is still evident which could be an indication to her ‘roots’; reflecting her first album and telling her audience that she is still the same person she was before despite what the cover portrays, keeping her fans loyal.

Moving onto her third studio album A Creature I Do Not Know (2011), Laura reverts back to her first album in the sense that she uses drawings opposed to photographs, nonetheless the style is a big difference and compared to the whimsical style of the first album feels a lot more downhearted and heavy. However, the colour scheme is very similar to that of the second album and could be seen as a pattern and an inclination to what to expect of the music, that it’s more like that of I Speak Because I Can and less like that of Alas I Cannot Swim.

To conclude, each album cover is very different but in its own way very compelling. As one of my all-time favourite artists I found that every time one of her albums were released they appealed to me in different ways and always made me expect something new because of their differences in styles. Whereas the album covers of Taylor Swift are very similar meaning that you don’t necessarily expect and coverage of new ground and you know what you’re buying.      

                          

Marc Webb Music Video Director

Marc Webb born on the 31 August 1974 is a highlight ranked music video director who has built up an impressive portfolio of videos over the years. The beginning of his directing career started with Canadian Rose by Blues Traveller in 1997, in more recent years Webb has directed music videos for a wide range of artists. From the likes of rock bands Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte and Weezer to teen pop idol such as Miley Cyrus and rap artist P. Diddy.  

In 2009 Webb made a transition from music to film. Unveiling his film skills he directed the 2009 positively received (500) days of summer. In 2010 he was unveiled to be the next director to get a hold on the comic book hero film sagas, working on the reboot of the first Spider Man film titled as The Amazing Spider-Man  ,this transition clearly illuminating his progression in the film industry.

Webb's signature is a white lamb, which has appeared in a few of his videos. In Brand New's "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades" video, the lamb appears on the door before Jesse Lacey enters the bar. It also appears on the shirt of a girl in the bar. In Yellowcard's "Ocean Avenue" and "Rough Landing, Holly" videos, the lamb appears on the briefcase Ryan Key carries around.

Here is a filmography list of all the music videos he has directed from 2007to 2010.

 2007

    * Good Charlotte – "The River"

    * Relient K – "Must Have Done Something Right"

    * P. Diddy – "Last Night"

    * My Chemical Romance – "I Don't Love You"

    * My Chemical Romance – "Teenagers"

    * Evanescence – "Good Enough" (co-directed with Rich Lee)

    * Blaqk Audio – "Stiff Kittens" (co-directed with Rich Lee)

    * Regina Spektor – "Better"

    * Fergie – "Clumsy" (co-directed with Rich Lee)

    * Miley Cyrus – "Start All Over"

2008

    * Maroon 5 – "Goodnight, Goodnight"

    * Nelly feat. Fergie – "Party People"

    * All American Rejects – "Gives You Hell"

2009

    * Green Day – "21 Guns"

    * She and Him – "Why Do You Let me Stay Here?" (Version 2)

    * Green Day – "21st Century Breakdown"

    * Weezer – "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To

2010

    * Green Day – "Last of the American Girls"

    * Taking Back Sunday - "Faith (When I Let You Down)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZudX66IBat8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-jRHI3INyg&ob=av2e
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z300zmq1XTo&ob=av2e

Timeline of the Development of Music Videos

 C.1900 Edison invents the gramophone in the USA: first shift from music as a solely live and audiovisual experience to recorded audio on various forms of disc

1920’s Fischinger experiments with sound/vision synchronisation on film

1927 First sound film, The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, USA)

1930’s Creation of first ‘soundies’

1939 Introduction of the Panarom

1940’s Peak period of MGM Hollywood musical

1954 Elis Presley records ‘That’s All Right’ (Mama)

1960 Scopitone introduces in France

1963 UK’s first music TV Programme begins, Ready Steady Go (BBC)

1964 Top of the Pops TV Programme begins (BBC)

                The Beatles releases the film and album, A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester, UK)

1966 The Monkees’ TV Show starts on NBC in the USA

1967 The Beatles release TV promos for Penny Lane and strawberry Fields Forever

1975 Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody (Bruce Gowers)

1977 Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, USA)

1979 Buggles: Video Kills the Radio Star (Russell Mulcachy)

1980 David Bowie: Ashes To Ashes (David Mallel and David Bowie)

1981 Pop Clips on Nickelodeon

                MTV stars

                Duran Duran: Girls on Film (Kevin Goley and Lol Crème)

1983 Michael Jackson: Thriller (John Landis)

                Beginning of Country Music Television (CMT)

1984 Music Box starts in Europe

                MTV Video Music Awards launched

1985 VH1 begins

                MTV taken over by Viacom

                Live Aid

1986 Dire Straits: Money for Noting (Steve Barron) is top video

1987 MTV-Europe (MTV-E) launched, broadcasting to 1.6m homes

                Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer (Stephen Johnson), wins best director award

1988 MTV-Europe achieves 3.5m subscribers

1989 MTV-Europe reaches 6.7m homes

                Live broadcast from Moscow Peace Festival

                Madonna: Express Yourself (David Fincher). Wins best director award

1990 Madonna: Vogue (David Fincher), wins best director award

                Launch of MTV-Unplugged

1991 Madonna Justify My Love (Jean- Baptiste Mondino)

1992 MTV launches the Real World, a fly-on-the-wall documentary following the lives of seven people sharing a New York loft

1993 MTV launches TV series Beavis and Butthead

1994 REM: Everybody Hurts (Jack Scott) wins best director award

                Launch of VH1 in UK

                Launch of MTV- Europe Music Awards

1997 MTV UK and Ireland launches as stand-alone channel

1998 Launch of Celebrity Deathmatch

1999Fatboy Slim: Praise You (Spike Jonze) wins best director award

2000 Launch of Jackass

2001 Launch of MTV Dance

Theory of Synaesthesia and Grain of Voice

The theory of synaesthesia is that a sound can evoke an image or shape in which you would associate. An example of this is the sound of a banging drum; the beats could be interpreted as a shape such as a circle or it could be felt as a star shape to match the powerful feeling of each blow. Understanding how synaesthesia works enables me to look deeper into how music videos are constructed. Cuts are usually the result of synaesthesia, with the beats matching each frame. Moreover, shapes and repetitive motifs can also highlight how synaesthesia works; with each instrument having its own representing shape, colour or style.  A good example of how synaesthesia has worked well in a music video is the White Stripes ‘Seven Nation Army’ video. A repetitive use of triangles and geometric shapes with the addition of lights become a clear motif throughout and also reflect how the music sounds, giving the sound a body.

To continue, Roland Barthes theory of the ‘grain of voice’ links with the idea of synaesthesia. He says that the singer’s voice is more of an ‘expressive instrument’ and that because of its unique and personal sound it becomes sort of a fingerprint; allowing the audience to make associations, just like in synaesthesia. An example of a distinct grain of voice is that of Michael Jackson’s, his trademark yelp sound allows us to identify him instantly, additional because this any other artist that use the same technique as Michael Jackson would (even if unwanted) be associated or linked to him. It could be argued that the gain of voice is what creates successful artists such as Florence Welch (Florence and the Machine), Muse, Rihanna and Laura Marling. But on the other hand, as the music industry has become a lot more technical, techniques such as auto tuning have begun to take over, with singers making the charts due to the aid from a computer.   

The application of Goodwin’s theory to Weezer – Buddy Holly

For my chosen video to analyze I have looked at Weezer’s ‘Buddy Holly’, released in 1994 under the labels DGC, Interscope and Epitaph. Weezer are a modern rock band formed in 1992 and have released 9 studio albums. I have chosen to look at ‘Buddy Holly’ because of its unique and interesting narrative and integration of performance; additionally I personally like the band and find their videos interesting and distinctive to their sound.

Goodwin in his novel ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ highlights a range of different concepts and conventions that are repeatedly used in music videos and other forms of mediation. Particularly, Goodwin looks at the idea of contextualisation within music videos. In music promos, there are often references to existing texts in order to spark of recognition in the audience. Weezer’s music video for Buddy Holly, distinctly harnesses this idea. The complete narrative is set in an episode of the 70’s show ‘Happy Days’ which within itself is contextualised within an idyllic American idea of the mid 50’s and 60’s.  Weezer use a wide range of techniques to keep with the context of time. Costume is keeping with the fashion of the 50’s; instruments are also ‘old’ and reflective of what people would play in that time. Additionally, little things such as dance moves, ethnicity of the characters and the grain of the video matches the show perfectly and at times the band (Weezer) are virtually undetectable as their integration into some of the real ‘Happy Days’ clips used in the music video. Buddy Holly was known as a pioneer of rock & roll music and it could be argued that Weezer as a rock band owe some thanks to how he has developed the music industry and helped shape rock & roll music in the mainstream. As such it could be said that Weezer’s song ‘Buddy Holly’ is a tribute to his work and also a distinct contextualisation of an iconic figure of the 50’s creating a point of association for people who will remember Buddy Holly in life.

Goodwin also talks about the idea of looking. Weezer’s music video again proves Goodwin correct in the use of voyeuristic tendencies within music videos.  ‘Buddy Holly’ is set as a TV Show and as such means that you are the viewer watching through a television. The director plays with that idea by opening the video with a presenter talking to the camera as a TV host would do. By doing this the director has played with the position of the audience and created a window within a window. This is frequently seen amongst modern music videos where the band/ performer becomes a lot more connected with the audience and commonly looks into the camera, merging the line between narrative and performance. Along with the notion of looking, the voyeuristic treatment of the female body isn’t as prominent in this video. Women are featured in the video frequently however, their position as character is never sexualised, I believe this is because the narrative and context of the video is set in the 50’s where US television was distinctively more conservative than it is now, and the sexualisation of women, particularly young women was not seen as acceptable by the majority.  Nonetheless, clips of original pretty female characters from ‘Happy Days’ are shown. This can be seen as a considerably more docile version of the sexualisation of women, but nonetheless it is in sighting the notion to look and the objectification of women in the media.

In addition looking at the different relationships between lyrics and music to the visuals is interesting and can be argued from different angles. However, my perception of their relationships are that visuals in the relation with lyrics amplify what is being sung, this is because the chorus repeats ‘Oh ee oh, I look just like Buddy Holly’ the visuals clearly make a connection to the lyrics by setting the video in the time Buddy Holly was an iconic figure amongst celebrities. On the other hand, I believe the relationship between the music style (style of the band) and the visuals are to an extent disjuncture but could also be argued to be an accentuation to the music style that they originated from (50’s rock & roll). I believe that the style of the video is a disjuncture to that of the music style only because of the sound of the music, it sounds heavy and in places uses synthesizers which wouldn’t have been used (as far as I know) in mainstream 50’s music. Moreover, the image that was assume is different to that that is being presented; I assume to see styled down and ‘casual’ clothing, matching that of the laid back and heavy tones in the sound of the music. Regardless, of my perceptions on the relationship between the music and visuals, many different arguments can be made and with each it’s on validity.

Little Red Riding Hood task revisited

These are the images from the short story board, this one shows half of the 30 images taken away. As you can see there is very little consistency running throughout and at times there isn't even any logic as to why the shot is placed in that area. I believe that I have successfully grasp the idea of  how disjuncture works within music videoe while understand that this technique can also go very wrong and can only really work with the correct band/artist. Often this technique is used by 'arty bands' but can sometimes be seen as pretentious and an indulgent mistake. Which is why using this method in the visuals of a music video should be carefully thought through.



 

Little Red Riding Hood task

For a warm up task before we start to storyboard our ideas for our groups music video piece for the coursework, we were given the story of Little Red Riding hood and were told to storyboard what it would be as a music video. Prior to this we learnt about the three ways in which a music video relates visuals to the song. These are either; illustration such as image of what the lyrics describe, amplification such like illustration but going to the extra mile to add new meaning, and lastly disjuncture, the method in which something completely nonrelated to the song is shown adding new meaning to the whole music video. For the task we were given, we were asked to experiment with disjuncture as it was the hardest one to grasp accurately and professionally. Initially, we were asked to make as many as 30 images for our music video, keeping in mind the conventions of music videos; do just about anything you want. We worked with obscure angles and voyeuristic based shots, making sure that the narrative was ambiguous. After we had completed this we were asked to take away half of the images leaving us with an obscure music video storyboard. By doing this I learnt how to forget all codes of films and TV programmes (that is; consistency, chronology and logic) and apply only those of music videos.

Preliminary task

This is our preliminary task video where we had to create a music video for a 30 second clip of a song; this was done before the start of our A2 course and was used to compare the transition we make through our A2 Media course. For this I was in a group with Almaz, Iva and Abby who no longer attends Coombe Sixth Form. 

  

As this was my first attempt to create a music video I found a range of things difficult but also I found other things easy and pleasurable to complete. Creating a script was difficult, as I had to devise an idea out of nothing without any knowledge of conventions or codes that work in music videos. Nonetheless, as I’ve seen music videos before I have gained knowledge about similarities and differences that can be seen such as camera angles, video style in correlation to music style and frequency of cut and edits.

Playing the lead role in the task made my personal vision a lot easier to be brought to life, but with our group’s ideas being brought together, I personally found it hard to express what they wanted and do it to a high standard.

Over the time in which we planned for the filming we changed a lot of the ideas but I believe that our final outcome was of a good standard even without being taught all the correct information.

For our videos concept we wanted to create a world in which the character goes into, we expressed this through the use of cardboard. Giving the style a sugar sweet whimsical feel, similar to the video for ‘Float My Boat’ by The Mollies. Additionally we accentuated this through costume. And luckily the weather was nice so the sunny day again heightens the all over feel of the video.

 

Learning about voyeurism

During our lessons so far we’ve been learning how to understand ‘voyeurism’, the idea that we look to get sexual pleaser out of looking. Voyeurism has brought up many different arguments such as the male viewers gaze is different for that of a women’s; male viewers are geared to the notion of voyeurism, and that their gaze is a powerful controlling gaze that objectifies females on display. Whereas it could be said that a woman’s gaze is effectively the same however it doesn’t hold the same power that the man’s gaze does. Goodwin’s interpretation of Voyeurism is that women are frequently objectified, if not all the time. This is done through the use of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the female star.  Nonetheless, in male performances voyeuristic treatment of women are used as adjournments to the male stars ego. However, as the years have passed powerful female acts such as Madonna and in recent years Lady Gaga, have added the complexity of the gaze by being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control. To continue, I learnt about Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘four active looks’, the relationship between men as they do the active looking, the relationship between the cameras looking at stars, relationship between the audience looking at the screen and the relationship between the characters and the screen. Taking in everything that I have learnt into consideration, I now hold a firmer grip on understand why things happen in music videos and what their effect are on the audience.