R&P Post 9: Delving Deeper Into our Song

Hello again! In this post I will be discussing the deeper meaning of our song in regards to its lyrics and its overall tone and mood.

Lyrics:

The lyrics to our chosen song 'You Are The Solution'.

The main lyric in our song, which is also its title, is "You are the solution". In our music video, we are planning to use this lyric as a way of showing our audience how the boy in the video sees the girl as his 'solution' to his problems. The whole meaning of the song seems to say that the singer's lover is their 'solution', their way to solve their problems.

Also, when the lyrics "Love it when you kiss me/ Love it when we touch" play, following our idea of our music video being a virtual reality game (see previous post), we could have some performance shots of the girl singing to the boy and they are touching by hugging each other or holding hands, for example. This would represent how the boy feels towards the girl because although he is not the one actually singing it, the music video will be all about him and his feelings, putting a slight twist on things.

Additionally, the lyric "I wanna hold your hand, you're everything I desire", could be interpreted in the boy's point of view by representing how the girl in the VR game is everything that he wants and longs for. He is a lonely, geeky teenage boy and although he might never admit it, he longs for companionship, specifically for a girlfriend. This is the idea that our music video plans to follow and expand upon, exploring the boy's true inner feelings. 

Mood and tone:
This song can be categorized as being a generic pop song and as a result of this and its lyrics, it is a rather typical love-story type song which seems to be speaking about how someone's lover is the answer to all their problems. In this sense, it is a rather stereotypical love-story-type song and although we are thinking about producing a music video about a romantic relationship between a boy and a girl, we want to explore this and add counter-stereotypes to it to make it less generic. The main way in which we are going to do this is through the boy's character as usually in pop videos it is the girl who is longing for a boyfriend, for example 'You Belong With Me' by Taylor Swift, but in our music video we are planning to subvert this. 

However, looking more specifically at the tone of the music video, it has quite an upbeat and pursuing tone which makes the song sound like a good song to dance to. During the first two verses of the song, they start off quite slowly and have a mellow tone to them and during these parts of the music video, we could use long-timed shots with few cuts or even use slow-motion to capture the tone of the song here. Then in the chorus, things speed up a lot more and whilst the chorus is playing there will be more editing and it will be at a faster pace too. But by the last verse, the mood of the song changes a little. The third and last verse of the song has a very similar tone to that of the chorus, because it is fast-pace and upbeat throughout. Thus, we would keep the editing during this part of the video at the same pace and rhythm of the chorus. Then towards the end of the final verse, it becomes slower and calmer, telling us that in order to match the mood of the song here we would need to slow things down on screen and have longer and less shots. But when the chorus starts up again we would immediately speed things up again and make it exciting and thrilling for the audience to watch.

So there you have how we plan to use and interpret the meaning of the lyrics and the mood and tone of the song into our music video. Come back again soon for more information and updates!

R&P Post 8: Developing our Music Video Idea

Hello! Welcome back to another research and planning post! 
We succeeded in choosing the song 'You Are The Solution' for our music video and in this post you will read about our latest developments on our ideas for the video.

The song we have chosen is 'You Are The Solution' and below you can see an image detailing the summary of our idea for the video.

From this you can see the main story of our music video- that it is essentially about the story of a geeky teenage boy who loves video games and falls in love with a non-existent girl in a virtual-reality game. We have also began to think about the smaller features of our music video and what we are actually going to include in our video. You can see a picture of these detail below:

Furthermore, the girl in the video is going to be the artist of the song and in terms of performance shots, so far we are planning to film them in a studio or studio-like setting with a plain black backdrop. Then the girl will be filmed singing the lyrics whilst standing directly opposite to the boy and it will be as though she is singing the song to him. 

So there are the latest updates on our developments and come back soon for more information!

R&P Post 7: Choosing the Song for our Music Video

Hello and welcome to another research and planning post!

When it came to choosing a song for our music video we had a choice of 21 different songs. In my group we all individually listened to the songs and then communicated with each other our WhatsApp group chat which ones we liked the best. 

Personally, I liked 'Lonely Together', 'Young' and 'Jailbird' as my original top three choices but other people in my group also liked 'You Are The Solution'.  Additionally, when we were discussing song choices we found that one person in our group really didn't like 'Young' and another really didn't like 'Jailbird' so we ruled both of them out. However, when we were discussing ideas for 'You Are The Solution', we all came up with lots of ideas. For example, Destinie in our group thought of the music video for this song being about a married couple who have a child together but then fall out, however the child eventually brings them back together and is the 'solution' to their problems. I also had an idea of a girl having a boring home life because of strict parents but she decides to rebel against them and goes on crazy adventures with her boyfriend. However, her boyfriend turns out to be really dangerous and they start committing crimes but towards the end of the video the girl reunites with her parents and discovers that they are the 'solution'. Below you can see another idea I had and also an idea that Lesley had:

What you can see from this is that as a group we had many different ideas for a music video for the song 'You Are The Solution' so we decided to choose this song as our choice. 

Come back again soon for an update on our ideas!

R&P Post 6: Analysing different music videos

Hey there! In this post I will be analysing a range of different music videos by studying their key features and how they are constructed. Enjoy!

1) Looking at the general narratives of music videos:

'The Scientist' by Coldplay:



This is a very interesting music video because the entirety of it the footage is reversed so all of the movements go backwards in time. However, as well as this, the lead singer of Coldplay, Chris Martin, who stars in the video is filmed mouthing the lyrics of the song and in order for this to work he had to learn all of the lyrics to the song backwards so he would be mouthing them correctly in time with the song. The video starts with Martin's character travelling backwards through different locations and it is not revealed to the reader how he has come to be in these various different settings until the end of the video. This is what keeps the audience's attention fixed on the video as it seems to be telling a story but they do not know what the story is until the end. Then at the end of the video we see that he was involved in a car accident with what we assume is his lover and she is found dead on the ground, revealing the entirety of Martin's character's story.

Another music video that travels back in time is 'Breezeblocks' by Alt-J:



This is another unusual music video due to the fact that, like 'The Scientist' video, it also travels back in time. However, this is a much more dramatic video and it tells the story of a man who murdered a woman and at the end, it also seems that the woman who is killed kidnapped another lady who the man finds gagged. The relationship between the three characters is not entirely clear, but the video's use of the thriller genre grips the audience and keeps them on edge throughout the video, making them watch it all because they want to find out how the girl, who appears dead right at the beginning of the video, ended up so.

2) Analysing music videos in depth:

'You Belong With Me' by Taylor Swift:



This is the music video that my group chose for our preliminary task and I have chosen to analyse it in more depth here because it is a very generic pop video which tells the story of a stereotypical teenage romance. It follows nearly every rule of Goodwin's theory including:

• Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics:

Both of these photographs demonstrate to the audience that Swift's character in this music video is a geeky, seemingly lonely girl who is clever and enjoys school. 

This picture also shows that the boy plays sport which is a stereotype for males. Also the fact that he has a girlfriend and when he wins the match (see GIF below) proves his popularity, showing that the girl is a reserved geeky character and the boy is an outgoing popular character. Their feelings towards each other are also conveyed through the shots showing them in their bedrooms as well as the prom scene, establishing the genre of romance. 

The clip below proves the boy's popularity and represents one of the traits that the girl finds attractive, adding to the romance genre.

• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals:

In the above clip the boy can be seen walking back and forth in his bedroom, talking angrily on the phone. Then during this scene the first song lyric is "You're on the phone to your girlfriend, she's upset." which shows a strong correlation between lyrics and visuals by taking the lyrics as a literal meaning.

• The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist:

Throughout this music video there are many close-ups of the artist which shows how the video follows Goodwin's rule of music videos containing many of these shots. This is a rule which the vast majority of music videos follow. 

'There For You' by Troye Sivan and Martin Garrix:

Here we have an interesting and exciting music video which does not actually apply to many of the rules from Goodwin's theory. This video captures more the mood and tone of the song rather than the meaning of the lyrics, unlike the music video for 'You Belong With Me'. 'There For You' can be categorized as being part of the electropop genre and sounds as though it should be played in a club. It  is a song with a strong beat and good rhythm which makes it an exciting song in itself, but its music video takes advantage of this to make it even more exciting for the audience. The main way it which it does this is by having shots of an arena concert in which the artists perform the song with flashing lights. fireworks, smoke machines and confetti cannons, making it a thrilling experience for the audience, for example:



Furthermore, although there is not a strong narrative in this music video there does seem to be some relationship between the two boys (the characters that Sivan and Garrix both play). The connection between the two is not entirely clear but it seems as though there is a certain degree of love between them but they might have fallen out because at times they are quite distant from each other. It is pictures like the ones below that suggest this relationship:

These images show moments during the music video when there seems to be some sort of narrative happening, hinting at the connection between the two boys. For example, the picture in the top left-hand corner shows them facing away from each other but in close proximity to each other at the same time, suggesting a closeness in their relationship but also implying that they have recently fallen out. 


'Islands' by The XX


The music video for 'Islands' is another interesting and quite unusual music video. It uses a continuous but gradually decaying dance sequence to tell a story which could also be symbolic of the meaning of the lyrics. The beginning of the video starts off with a consistent dance routine but as the song continues, it gradually changes, starting with the two dancers in the forefront changing their routine first and then the other dancers begin to change their routine as well. 

However, this dance sequence is symbolic of the lyrics because as the song continues, it goes onto speak about desire and after the lyrics "That's a risk I'd take/ I'm froze by desire", the two dancers at the front stop dancing completely and sit staring at each other, essentially suggesting that they have been 'frozen' by desire. Then after this part, the next section shows only one of the front dancers as the other has now left, potentially implying the consequences of desire. Then after the dancers at the front have left, the other dancers start to change their routine, for instance at the beginning of the video the camera shows a medium close-up shot of two dancers kissing but later on this changes and they no longer kiss. Thus this demonstrates how the producers of this music video have used this dance sequence to represent the dark nature of the song's lyrics, making it an interesting video to watch. 

'Saint Claude' by Christine and The Queens:


This is another music video that incorporates the use of a dance routine but in a different way. The music video for 'Islands' uses a dance sequence to represent the lyrics, applying to Goodwin's rule that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals, whereas the video for 'Saint Claude' uses dancing to capture the mood and tone of the song and has nothing to do with lyrics. Therefore, this music video applies to Goodwin's rule that there is a relationship between music and visuals. 

The dance sequence performed by Héloïse Letissier here, known by her stage name Christine and The Queens, is very abstract and although it is a regular routine with repeated steps, it is very abstract and unique. Instead of capturing the meaning of the lyrics, it succeeds in capturing the mood and tone of the song through dancing which makes it an interesting music video to watch.