MTV Music Video Awards 2015

With the VMA's just finished with their annual award ceremony, revealing this years top music videos, giving some inspiration as to what the public enjoy in certain videos enough for them to win the award or to get nominated for the award. Down below are the list of winners from the 2015 VMA's, already from this, we can see that Taylor Swift ft kendrick Lamar -"Bad Blood" winning video of the year, has had a huge impact on the public, however, not only did Bad Blood have a huge impact, Blank Space also won Two awards, totalling up to 4 awards for the singing sensation, Taylor swift. Winning the best female music video.

Below are the nominations for a few categories that i feel we want to accomplish within our music video, including good cinematography, editing, visual effects, direction etc. 

 2015 Nominations

The winners are : 

 Never Catch Me, winning the best cinematograph, it is clear to see why they won this, with their amazing range of camera angles and movements featured throughout the entire video, and the mise en scene giving an initial feel to the video. The both tied in together make for an interesting and unique video, especially as the video begins, you already have the feel of what the video will be about, with the slow moving shots resembling the sadness as they are at a  funeral tied in with the mysterious location to begin. The video was extremely clever, as throughout, who appears to be in the coffin, both get out and dance around, linking to the title, "Never catch me" yet, other characters in the video stay completely still and take no notice of the two children, until the last moment when they drive off.



Beyonce and her video for 7/11 won best editing, as the footage was filmed by the singer herself with a static camera, with some additional footage filmed with a selfie stick. The visuals were for its personal, relaxed and fun nature compared to her other successful high budget videos. Although, the video won the award for the best editing. With the range of different shots taken and quick editing, making the video still look professional, although shot by the singer herself, but also, how the shots are in time with the lyrical content perfectly, also adding to the professionalism of the video. Which is why i feel like it was well deserved to win best editing video.



Within this video, which won best visual effects, having a completely unique style and originality, with input from the fans themselves. Art lovers flocked to the retail store where they interpreted their own canvas of a sombre lonely Justin behind a simplistic back drop. The visual effects become more colourful, more dramatic and intriguing. With the quick flashes of brightly coloured doodles over Justin dancing against a whit black drop, really catch the eye and make it visually appealing.


 Winning the best direction award, is Kendrick Lamar's Alright, with a black and white colour pallet, representing how black and white is shown between the society and issues faced into the world. The camera angles and movements within the video, with the use of the extreme angles, mainly high angles with some low angles, however, this also gives you a sense of realism and how people in society feel, being looked down on and looking up at higher ranked people. movement was also used within the video frequently as the clips pinned the location but at a low pace, giving you time to take in the surroundings and seeing what people have to deal with who live here. Overall, the video includes amazing shots, that are not expected within the music genre and camera movements.


After looking at the 2015 nominations and winners, i was curious to see what other videos have won similar awards and whether they have the same elements in their videos, or has the music industry changed in a year. Down below is the nominations of the same categories.

2014 Nominations

     

The Winners: 

DJ Snake and Lil Jon's video, "turn down for what" captured the scenes phenomenally with the chaotic scenes being portrayed to the viewers, making the shots link well together with out not sudden jumps, making the video look natural, despite what is happening. Yet, the shots are quite unusual for a professional music video, for example, the opening scene, as they is a camera shake, yet, with it shaking to the beat, to loose the sense of unprofessionalism.


OK Go, "The writings on the wall" won best visual effects for 2014, with their very clever and inovative illusion featured in the clip bringing the sense of visual effects, yet, the video quality and direction are rather poor for a professional video. The visual elements being the main focus, making the viewer oblivious to the quality. The main aspect to this music video is the fact it is so unique and unusual, especially for more recent videos, as most visual effects are done my computer graphics.


Rap god by Eninem, features very quick paced editing that is done to the beat of the song,  The abstract content, tying in with the editing, making it stand out more, with the sudden jumps and quicker speeds used. Throughout the clip, it is featured, however, is not continuous yet, the way it is included with in the clip works well, rather than looking out of place and unusual. The brightly coloured background contrasts with the dull and dark scenes shown, also making the editing stand out drastically.



Beyonce's pretty hurts won the award for best cinematography, but also, won the award for the best social message in a music video. With the way the message is portrayed about the lengths and risks women put themselves in to look perfect for other people, even if they are happy with themselves. throughout the video, extreme close ups are used regularly to represent the emotion and pain the women are in, in the clip giving a sense of realism for the audience to understand and the emotion is also portrayed well with the use of flash backs and home clips from her childhood. The length they took this video, as it is more like a short film, with the detail they put i, from the costumes, make up, mise en scene etc. Making the video look like much more than just a music video, as it reaches out to more people.

Looking into the indie genre

Now we have decided on our final track, we know it is an indie genre, however does link within the pop and alternative genre. This means when thinking of our narrative, we will have three genres to conform to or not. This could be quite a challenge but also a positive as it means we will have a wider audience when releasing our music video as it conforms to a wider demographic with the song itself.

some example of indie pop and indie alternative music videos are below. 

These videos don't all conform to the indie genre, which is shows a different style from the previous post on the idea genre and their conventions, as it shows a different way of approaching the song.

 Alternative/Dance 

Indie Pop

Indie Pop/Rock

Inspirational Music Video #5 - How Deep Is Your Love

Director, Emil Nava and Editor Ellie Johnson have worked together to create a music video with amazing visual effects that immediately catch the viewers eye and engages them in the video.  Its narrative consists of a young woman waking up in a ward, confused of where she is and finds herself in a different position a glamourised lifestyle.  The abstract visuals used continuously through the video inspire us as they strike you when you watch them. The bright and vibrant colours used against the black background create a huge contrast, making the colours more effective to the eye. The idea of this is section does not link with the narratively obviously, but it can be incorporated to the narrative, depending on each persons viewpoint, it could represent the change in her or location. With the shots being rather quick, the colours change fast as the shots have a short time frame, it confuses the audience as it has no link to the narrative. 

I would love to incorporate this technique into our song, as it can represent the change in personality for our protagonist, with it being a subtle way which would integer the audience more. 

Below are some examples of techniques we would want to try and use, by the layering of two shots, the negative saturation and split colours.

Inspirational Music Video#4 - Blank Space

Taylor Swifts videos have a tenancy to be an over exaggerated narrative, This video of hers applies to that as it shows her power and dominance over the relationship with her partner, how full of emotion she is, yet, unemotional when the guy changes. In this video, we side multiple sides to Taylor as she is shown as the loving, girly, sweet girlfriend, to the over powering, dominant and jealous/angry girlfriend. With this video, i feel that the way the narrative is conveyed in a comical and over dramatic way is very effective as it makes the subject light, yet it still address' the idea of women empowerment, which is an idea of our music video. I also enjoy the way Taylor transforms with her mise-en-scene, as to begin with, she is this glamours female with the perfect home and perfect boyfriend, but as the song continues, you see her change to a mess crying on the floor, in this shot, she is alone, showing that she does not like to show her emotion in front of people as when she is present with her boyfriend, she is the strong woman. The idea of this to show the power in woman but also a change in personality is something we would want to explore further into. 

Inspirational Music Video #3 - Where Are U Now

Such a simple idea, such a great visual effect and meaning behind. Justin Bieber became a piece of art during his music video thanks to the fans who have supported him through out his career. Fans were able to attend an event in Los Angeles during the making of the video, where they were able to express their artistic flair by drawing over still shots of the video that would then be editing on top after. There was no boundaries for the fans as they could draw what they want, how they want and where they want letting them run free with their imagination.

Personally, i love the artistic imagery of the video, how quick paced the editing is with the huge amounts of doodles used. I love the way that the artist was vulnerable. letting his fans draw whatever they want, taking a risk as they did not know what the expect as they had no restrictions. The editing is perfectly done, as it is edited with the beat throughout the song.
Although this video does not comply with Andrew Goodwin's theory, the visual effects are very powerful causing him to win the award at the MTV awards 

This idea is something i would like to try and develop from for our music video, as it would relate to our narrative of the video, about freeing yourself and the state of our protagonists mind.

here are some shots of the video below, to show a still frame of the doodles and how it was done in the studio.

Lyrical Content

After now brainstorming our ideas, for our music video, we have narrowed it down to our main initial idea, and started to work on how we want to show the narrative. So below is a lyrical video and our annotations on what we would like to work with. 

Here are the annotations of our narrative. We want to portray the power in women over men, as it is becoming more aware now a days that women can take control within the relationship, although we are exaggerating our point quite a lot. We feel we would like to make this narrative realistic but with a slight humorous factor, due to the level of control and power which the lyrical content represents.
With the lyrics being extremely violent and unsuitable, we did find it rather difficult to find a way to portray the power, so the lyrics and visuals will not match up exactly, but the meaning behind the lyrical content will be portrayed.  As the lyrics state that love can drive you crazy.

Our narrative begins with having the music intro, revealing the location of the women, as she appears to be in a hospital, as the love has drove her crazy. Our initial idea is to let the audience believe what they feel fits, as we will not reveal exactly how she gets to the hospital. We will show that love makes her crazy, but most people would believe that her love interest would be the one in hospital, making it quite unusual for her to be in it.  After revealing the location, we see the female protagonist lying down on a bed in low key lighting, but once the lyrics begin, the lighting changes to high key as she begins to get examined. This happens throughout the first verse. Second verse we plan to have a section which is edited quickly, to show that she is not stable, giving hints to the audience. Once the chorus beings, the powerful lyrics represent her trying to escape and 'free the animal' she is battling with the paramedics which also represents her battling herself. In which the paramedics put her to sleep, giving of an animal feel. This will then start to reveal that our female protagonist is the animal mentioned throughout the song. After the chorus, we show the relationship, and what happened in it, starting of the happiness, then all the arguments start to form, Then finally, we want to reveal she has the power over him, by this we would want to show how when she does something, he would copy her, no matter what, we have not decided on how to portray this as of yet.

Brainstorm

As we have chosen our song, now it is time to figure out the narrative and reasoning behind the lyrics. As a group, we sat down and brainstormed ideas that we felt related to the song when listening to it. We also brainstormed words that came to us as we listened to the song. This should help us come up with a narrative for our song.

Record Label Research

Having short listed certain songs that we would potentially like to produce a music video for, it felt wise to do some research into them, finding about their record labels.

Gabrielle Aplin 

Parlophone, record label for both of Gabrielle Aplin, This record label is is part of Warner Bro's Music Company(Since 2013, was previously self owned). This record label has been around since 1896. It is an English brand that has just recently expanded to the US, due to the ownership of Warner Bro's. This company has proved rather successful as in 1964 as the label had 7 singles reach number one and spent 40 out of 52 weeks at the top spot in the album charts.
Parlophone had worked with the likes of the Beatles for 9 of their records, Coldplay, Connor Maynard, Cilia Black, David Guetta, Pink Floyd, Queen, with the list continuing on and on.
Evaporate was released on 13th May 2013 on her album 'English Rain'.

Sia Furler 

Sia has been around since 1993, and has had a range of different record labels including Flavoured Records, Columbia, Universal International, Hear Music, Monkey Puzzle and her most recent label 

Inertia, Monkey Puzzle and RCA. 

RCA is an american record label part of Sony Music Entertainment. It releases multiple genres of music including pop, rock, hip-hop, R&B, blues and Jazz. It was founded in 1901, being  the second oldest record label company in the US, First is Columbia.

RCA is record labels for Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Chris Brown, Cristina Aguilera, Foxes, Kelly Clarkson and multiple over artists. 

 

Chvrches

Virgin Records is Chvrches most recent record label for the album they released on the 25th September 2015. Virgin Records is an English Record Label founded by Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell and Tom Newman in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Spice Girls and many others. Wholly owned by Universal Music Group after its purchase of EMI in 2012, UMG absorbed its British operations to create Virgin EMI Records on March 2013, which absorbed Mercury Records UK. 

They have been labels for artists such as 30 Seconds To Mars, Atomic Kitten, Victoria Beckham, Daft Punk, Bastille, You Me at 6, and many more. 

 

Pvris 

Pvris are a reasonably new band, with the release of one album so far, which was with Rise records. They are an independent USA record label. It was founded in 1991 but after releasing 7 records, the label went on hiatus until 1999, where he released his first record in 2000. Rise Records' releases are distributed in the U.S. by Alternative Distribution Alliance, by ADA's parent company Warner Music Group in many European countries like Germany, United Kingdom and Italy, and comprises bands and solo artists

They also release records for artists such as Of mice and men, The devil wears prada, Crown the empire, Miss may I and multiple more rock artists. 

Vlog 1 - Chosen Song

Choosing our final song

Sia "Free The Animal"

As it is still early days into the A2 media course, but as a group, we all agree that this song is the one we would want to create a video for, as it has a lot of potential for a great amount of editing techniques which is what we all want. as we really like the beat and lyrical content, and how it has a range of vocal ranges with it building up for the chorus. And already, just listening to the song a few times, me and the group have already come up with suggestions on how we pictured our video and what techniques we would like to use, which gives us a great start as we can begin to practice these to see how we feel about them.

Age Classification from October

The idea of having age classifications on music videos has come in to action more and more, that now on youtube, UK produced music videos will display their age rating. Although this is only in the UK, why not across the world? This was brought to the governments attention when the release of artists video such as miley cyrus, rihanna, and robin thicke in 2013 and cause mass amounts of criticism after it portraying multiple sexual and crude moments. So far, 132 videos have been sent to the BBFC by labels, 56 rated 12, 53 classified as 15 and only 1 being 18 or over, this video contains the singer brutally murdering people in the video. “Age ratings can help parents make informed choices online, and it’s particularly important that digital services offer parental control tools that work alongside these age ratings,” she said. “While this is an important first step, there is a need to extend this more widely to content from outside the UK and to ensure that families are making the most of the tools available." - Taken from the article. 

In my opinion, this article is accurate as i feel that this type of behaviour should not be shown to children, as if they were shown in a tv show, or film it would have age classification, how is it possible that in a music video it is acceptable for it to portray models naked, and containing violence. 

"The record labels submit to the BBFC any music video by their artists for release online in the UK which they would expect to receive at least a 12 rating.  The BBFC then classifies each video, watching it through in its entirety and then assigning an age rating and bespoke content advice (insight, for example, strong language, sex references or sexualised nudity) on the basis of the BBFC's published Classification Guidelines.  The sort of issues the BBFC considers in classifying music videos include:

drug misuse 

dangerous behaviour presented as safe

bad language

sexual behaviour and nudity

threatening behaviour and violence" 

This paragraph was taken from the BBFC site, however, it is all good that they are bringing these rules in, but the 3 artists mentioned in the article are american and anyone would still be able to view it. 

On Vevo, the BBFC ratings symbol appears in the top left hand corner of the video player for the first few seconds. The rating will reappear when you move the cursor.  You may also click the 'i' icon to see the ratings information. this idea i feel is not as effective as i imagined, as it is only displayed for a short period of time, and it allows the audience to still view it. 

Above are a few of the most obvious artists that breached the BBFC age classification guidelines

Sia - Free The Animal Lyrics

Free The Animal by Sia contains a lot of metaphors about the love she has for someone, falling that deep in love, that it makes her appear crazy that she would do for him or to him to make him hers forever, even resorting in killing him. Yet aspects of the lyrics also reveal that the person she falls for is someone she perhaps did not like to begin with, as the line "assassins delight" could represent the sneaking around but also, how much pain this relationship could cause, whether it be to him or her.

Already listening to the song, there is so much more you can do with these lyrics, as there is a range of verses and different elements, as it goes through multiple vocal changes, having a powerful ballad, to very quick tempo lyrics, to a rather slow beat, giving us a lot of potential to experiment with different editing techniques and also, a range of different narratives we can go down. Which will need to be brainstormed to come to a decision as what path we should follow. Yet this makes annotating the song rather difficult when having so many options. 

PVRIS - Let Them In Lyrics

PVRIS - Let Them In, revolves around the concept of love, starting of with how powerful her love is that she has began to lose control of her self, but due to the issues that they had, it caused her to loose insanity, wanting to regain control over herself after all the problems. By the repetition of "I Wanna Feel Something" to represent how desperate she is to forget the past and want to feel herself again after her unhealthy relationship.

Although the concept of the lyrical content contains some good imagery, we feel that the lyrics are rather repetitive, and therefore it is rather difficult to come up with a strong narrative to fit. Although initially liking the beat and pace of the musical content.

CHVRCHES - The Mother We Share Lyrics

CHVRCHES "The Mother We Share" has no official meaning to the song lyrics, making the meaning unclear, as it could be about siblings and the mother they share, or another meaning being we share the mother or nature or in my opinion, i feel the song is about a break up and the mother they share could be a secret they are hiding or their love and will never stop for each other, The song personally feels to me as the break up is harder than believed to be. And have broken up by an argument of some sort as a lyric suggests by stating "'Cause if i told the truth".

After analyzing  the lyrics and visualizing the music video, we found it extremely tough to picture one, as the lyrics are very minimal, with the chorus repeating after every verse and the verses being very similar, making the song repetitive. Another factor which made it difficult is that there is already a video out for the song, which would influence us too much, so, we picture the video the same, which is not a great start.

Inspirational Music Video #2 - Up In The Air

Up in the air by 30 seconds to mars is a very theatrical band that like to show this in their videos. I love the abstract style of this video and how the lyrics have nothing to do with what on the screen, i feel that this technique is effective as it engages the audience well, as they like to see what else will be featured in the video. However, when researching further into the video, it is said that the lead singer of the band, Jared Leto, had directed, produced and directed the entire film, with some assistance. He states his idea was to showcase peoples talents across LA, when he requested that people come and show off their talents. Aspects of Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams are present in the video which relates to the title of the album. Showing that the video is not completely abstract as it does have a meaning behind the craziness. 

Narrowing down

As a group, we narrowed our previous 5 songs down to these 3, as we feel the other two had a rather slow beat and tempo, Which we were not keen on, as we felt these three had much more to offer for a music video, as the upbeat  tempo brings a lot of editing and quick shots which we all feel are effective for a music video.

As we begin to finalize our song choice out of the three current songs, we will be looking closely to the lyrics to see what we can visualize when looking details with out the music to sway us. We will be looking at the song that offers the best imagery with an interesting narrative and great editing opportunities.

Pvris "Let Them In" 

Chvrches "The Mother We Share"

Sia "Free The Animal"