Music video analysis Dry the river

Dry the river “No rest”
I used to be a king alone
Like Solomon or Rehoboam
And in this, a corvée day
Did jealous keep my picture frames
And everything did oxidate in place.

But then it came a single sound
With astronite and (?)
And algebra and symmetry
And none of this was lost on me
And I could see how still I'd been before
If I don't eat, I don't sleep at all
Like limbs in procession,
Like so many birds
Stampeding like oxen,
Our hearts are a herd

I loved you in the best/bed
I loved you in the best way possible
I loved you in the best

Did you see the light in my heart?
Did you see the sweat on my brow?
Did you see the fear in my heart?
Did you see me bleeding out?

I loved you in the best
I loved you in the best way possible [x3]
I loved you in the best...

‘No rest’ by Dry the River is a 3minute 7seconds performance, the video is shown in colour and has a variety 64 shots within it including the artist and a couple of extras.

Camera

The first shot of the video shows a high angled camera position of a man lying down on his back on a dusty floor, which resembles an outside location. The start of the track doesn’t have an instrumental however goes straight into vocal the male lying down is breathing heavily although can not be heard and isn’t singing along to the track. After 14 seconds the camera cuts to another male lying down on his back, the camera is still on a high angle. As the camera cuts to this shot it starts with a blur and eventually fades out to show a close up of the other male. This continues for three other males all lying on the ground in a close up high angled shot with various shadows and dust moving around them. Various more close up; high angled shots take place with the five males being surrounded with stones. 1:00 into the video the camera changes from high angle to low angle to get the male’s prospective. Which is of clouds and then enters people jumping over them with sticks. The camera then cuts back to high angle for the last time and continues with this throughout. The majority of shots taken within the video are of close up however there are a few mid shots showing the upper body of the artist. This allows the audience to connect with the artist and feel his or her emotions that come out when performing the song. The video also allows the audience access to the performer in a much greater range of ways than a stage performance could, eye contact and facial gestures via the close up present the artists in a number of ways of which would not be possible in a live concert. 

Lighting 

The video is shown in colour, the first 1minute 25 seconds of the video is presented in day light, this can be seen though the light upon each of the males faces and the shadow that appears to the right of them. After 1minute 25 the video appears to become darker and during this flames are brought into the video which are shown on sticks, the dark lighting also links in with the atmosphere and the beats the music is portraying. As the track climbs to the climax the flames disappear to show which creates dim and lifeless lighting, a few seconds later the artists get bombarded with gushes of water and a bright white light emerges on their faces. The moment the bright light comes on suggests this specific moment is important as it reaches an emotional climax until is fades to an ending.

Sound

Sound is obviously an important part to a music video; the lyrics, beat and rhythm of a song introduce the general feeling and mood an audience have towards a song. In Dry the River’s ‘No Rest’ the track starts slow and peacefully, lyrics are used right at the start with no instrumental giving the track an ‘introduction’. After 38 seconds the beat begins and the track introduces drums and guitar with areas of strings. Once the chorus begins the instrumental becomes more pronounced and in depth, making the audience feel emotional and surrounded by the beats.

I loved you in the best/bed
I loved you in the best way possible
I loved you in the best

Did you see the light in my heart?
Did you see the sweat on my brow?
Did you see the fear in my heart?
Did you see me bleeding out?

Mise en scene

Location

There isn’t a specific location to this video however the surroundings are very minimal with only the dusty ground and sky being seen. Shooting the video and making it seem as though the artist have no peripheral vision makes the video very intimate creating a connection between the artist and viewer.

Costume

Costume is used very little through this video each male is dressed in a different way and due to the close ups on the top body can be seen. The first male that is seen wears a pale blue top the second male wears a black top with a grey shirt over, the third males wears a simple black vest top, the fourth man wears a dull green top and the final man is shirtless showing various tattoos. The simple costume suggests the focus is upon the song rather than the video it’s self, however the costume can also represent genre pop/rock.

Target audience

“Dry the River have a lot going on with them since their Transgressive single in April ‘New Ceremony’ sold out after being playlisted on Radio 1 and featured heavily by Zane Lowe, Fearne Cotton, Rob da Bank and Huw Stephens etc. They are at most of the major festivals this summer inc Glastonbury, Lovebox, Bestival, Latitude, Hop Farm, Truck, End of the Road, Summer Sundae, Green Man, Wilderness etc but the Scala is their first major London show.” From this quote I found on Dry the Rivers website I can see there target audience aims towards older teenagers (16/17) to adults, the particular song “No rest” isn’t as up beat and “happy/joyful” as other records and genres such as pop therefore they aren’t targeted towards the younger generation. Particular target audiences for the band and song are within their genre of pop/rock, which is mainly seen throughout older teenagers and adults.

Music video analysis Mat Keneary “Hey mama”

According to Steve archer (head of media studies at Charles Darwin school) there are five essential parts in which evaluate whether that an “ultra-cool” new video really does do justice to the music or if it’s just a glorified marketing tool. These include “thought beats” or seeing the sounds in your head, narrative and performance, the star image, visuals to the song and the technique aspects to the video.  

The conventions of a music video vary depending on genre of music. However, some general conventions are: The artist is shown performing; the lyrics of the song have influence on what is shown in the video, the pace of editing fits the pace of the music, and the codes of dress reflect the mood of the song.

With indie music videos there is often a mixture of narrative and performance and sometimes the whole band performs and other times just the main vocalist sings. When Indie music videos do have a narrative they are often quite symbolic and do not literally follow the lyrics.

-There is a variety shots used especially of close ups to show the main artist singing and other band mates performing as well as wide shots of the whole band.
-The colour of the video changes depending on the lyrics of the song and the tempo of the music it can be bright, dark and sometimes black and white.
-Special effects are sometimes used.
-Editing is usually quite fast paced depending on the music.
-The band wears casual clothing.

Mat Keneary “Hey mama”
She don't know what she wants to be
With all the pictures in the magazines
Holding hands when she's mad at me
'cause she don't wanna go, don't wanna go

I met her at anthropology
Purple boots and her golden dreams
Standing there like a Tennessee queen
Singing don't look at me, don't look at me

Singing oh oh
won't you help me sing this song
Singing ee ee ee
She don't ever want to go to sleep

Singing hey mama, don't want no drama
Just a kiss before I leave
Hey lady, don't say maybe
You're the one that I can believe
Hey lover, don't want no other
finger for my ring

Hey mama, hey hey mama x4

Oh oh x3

I can see it in her Cherokee eyes
Those baby browns and the golden thighs
What you doing for the rest of your life?
Cause you don't want, don't wanna go

Singing oh oh
won't you help me sing this song
Singing ee ee ee
She playing like a mystery

Singing hey mama, don't want no drama
Just a kiss before I leave
Hey lady, don't say maybe
You're the one that I can believe
Hey lover, don't want no other finger for my ring

Hey mama, hey hey mama x4

Oh oh x 3

Couldn't be more opposite
I'm hard to please and you're hard to get
You're Mississippi and I'm Oregon
You're sun tanned and I'm porcelain skinned.

Singing hey mama, don't want no drama
Just a kiss before I leave
Hey lady, don't say maybe
You're the one that I can believe
Hey lover, don't want no other
finger for my ring

Hey mama, hey hey mama x4

Oh oh x3

‘hey mama’ from mat Keneary is a 3minute 8seconds performance, the video is shown in black and white and has a variety 146 shots within it including the artist and extras.

Camera

The first shot in the video is of a man facing sideward’s from the camera clapping his hand to the beat of the music the location is not known however it appears to be near a large bridge and a town can be seen in the further distance. The camera swiftly pans towards the left a little to get a better view of the male and then cuts to a new shot of a woman’s legs and shoes dancing. The camera continues to cut from shot to ‘random’ shot until the male at the start of the video is revealed to be the artist; the camera is on a slight low angle tilt and in moving backward to allow the artist to walk, the shot quickly changes again to another sequence of random shots both in mid shot. The camera cuts away and goes into a close up of the artist singing. This type of fast cut montage is very effect to this type of music genre as it simulates multiple viewing as well as creating something dynamic and artistic to watch. The video has an almost handheld type of effect and feel to it however this is only used within parts of the filming such as when Mat Keneary is walking though people on the streets, this is effective as it creates the illusion he’s walking with no one around him and makes the audience feel as though they could easily recreate a moment like this. The camera moment within this is also very important and throughout the video there is speed, fast cutting and digital effects which are all motivated by shots in which people are dancing, moving, running and playing around in these types of shots are placed extremely well as they have to represent the beat and pace of the music. Another technique in which the director has captured within this video is representing what’s being spoken in the sound or the beats and the rhythm in the music great examples of these are at 1:26, 1:35 and 1:42.

Lighting

As mentioned previously the whole performance is captured in black and white, this is done for a number of reasons. Firstly to add individuality as most music videos are shown in colour, concentrating a video around black and white also gives it a vintage to a performance. Another reason in which the director has done this is to not create emphasis on one particular part of the video. As there are a range of different shots from extravagant to extremely simple showing the video in colour would create emphasis on a more extravagant area rather than focusing on the song and artist, Evidence of this can be seen in areas such as 0:33 and 1:32. Even though the video is presented in black and white a viewer can easily tell the video is set in daylight and has a sunny atmosphere.

Sound

Sound is obviously an important part to a music video; the lyrics, beat and rhythm of a song introduce the general feeling and mood an audience have towards a song. In Mat Kearney’s ‘Hey Mama’ a fast and energetic beat is used to make people feel happy and energised as soon as they hear, lyrics aren’t used until 8 seconds inwards and once they are used it quite simply uplifts you without having heard it previously. The simple lyrics are also easy to grasp with the repetition of the chorus;

“Singing hey mama, don't want no drama Just a kiss before I leave
Hey lady, don't say maybe
You're the one that I can believe
Hey lover, don't want no other finger for my ring
Hey mama, hey hey mama x4
Oh oh x 3”

Mise en scene

Location

The location changes throughout this video, it starts where what appears to be under a bridge along a river or ocean with a town in the back ground. The camera then cuts to a montage of various locations such as streets walls, shops etc. The location of a music video is very important as it creates atmosphere and narrative to a performance. The ‘Hey Mama’ video shows a sense of freedom, individuality and joyfulness through the way various locations are used and how the characters within them stand and portray there personality.

Costume

Different types of costume is widely used in this music video, concentrating on the lead singer Mat Kearney; he is dressed all in black, black jeans, top, shoes and hat. The effect of dressing him in this shows equality throughout all other extras the costume for him also creates focus on the song rather than looking at the artist appearance. However other elements of music video show characters dressed extravagantly or out of sync with the artist this to create a visual aspect of the video. Without some visual content the music video would become boring for a viewer, this is where the lighting also comes into question due to the fact the video is shown in black and white. The more visually dressed characters can be died down so allow the song to heard yet keeping the video interesting and exciting to watch.

Target audience

I believe this music video and song is aimed at in particular at older teenagers to young adults, however can be suited to older generation because of the bubbly joyful tone of the song. It is known that Mat Kearney is within the pop/rock genre so people who enjoy music within these areas are also targeted.

Music video timeline

·         1920’s- Oscar fischinger (German) made short films to music (komposition in blau) and worked on Disney film fantasia (1939)

·         1939-46- panarom (early jukebox) contained 20 inch screen with black and white projection

·         1950’s- television coverage of pop wanted to capture teenage audiences in the USA (American bandstand)

·         1957- Elvis Presley ‘jailhouse rock’

·         1960’s- scpitone a machine provided individual selection, play and rewind for 36 short films ( resurrected in France)

·         1960’s- TREND SETTERS Rolling stones, the kinks and the who

·         Mid 1960’s- coverage of pop wanted to capture teenage audiences in the UK (top of the pops)

·         1963- Cliff Richard ‘summer holiday’

·         1964- Beatles ‘a hard days night’

·         Mid 1965- around 1000 machines were installed

·         1975- a perpetuated myth that the first music video was queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ which sold 2.1 million

·         1970’s- ‘serious rock gained slots on TV

·         1980’s- MTV now owned by Viacom, a major media conglomerate.

·         End of 1980- the music video was an absolutely essential element in the promotion of all singles

·         1981- MTV made big claims “it will show state of the art video records of contemporary artists… highly stylised visual interpretations of music.”

·         1983- Michael Jackson’s thriller

·         1984- MTV was established as central to the music business and instituted its own version of the Oscars

·         1990’s- creation of boy bands (pop stars and pop idol)

·         1990’s- Hype Williams led way fro black artists and black directors for the likes of TLC, R. Kelly and missy Elliott

The form had started to propel some acts to mega stardom bypassing the traditional route of live performances. This was exemplified by Madonna, whose videos have always been interesting and innovative.

“Image, performance, choreography and the use of the close up have suited the success of females acts in particular.”

Preliminary Task- Britney Spears

Research and planning

Task outline and real video

For our prelim task we had to perform a short 1 minute 19 seconds sequence of the Britney Spears music video “hit me baby one more time” each pupil in the class had to impersonate Britney and carry out some miming, dancing, directing and editing. The task involved us to work as group to create a final product that looked professional and resembled the real “hit me baby one more time” video. The real video consisted of Britney dancing within a school environment (classrooms and hallways), there were a number of extras within the part of the sequence we were filming this worked well for us as we have a large class. The first 1minute and 19seconds held around 62 different shots all from close ups, mid shots, long shots, high angle and low angle.

Planning

To plan for our prelim task we started of by looking at the video and thinking about and mind mapping locations we could us within the school grounds, specific areas that we definitely wanted to us was a classroom with windows as this was one of the first shots in the video. Another location we definitely needed was a long and spacious corridor to allow us to dance and move around. We also thought it was a good requirement to find a corridor with lockers. Once we looked at this we discussed and wrote down what costume we needed to create the right effect, for girls black skirt, shirt, and black knee high socks and for boy’s only trousers and a shirt was required. After this the class split up in two, one group went and looked at the video and copied all of the shots down to allow us to distribute certain shots to people and to know the amount of shot we need and what types. The other half of the group watched the video on a big screen and learnt the dance moves within certain shots to be able to teach it back to the rest of the class.

Filming

Filming our prelim task consisted over several days mounting up to 4 ½ hours we started of slow with creating the correcting lighting and ambience, however once we started filming a couple of shots we soon got into it. We decide to go through the shots logically as well as we could due to the fact there were a lot of cuts. On the first day we filmed the classroom shots and a couple of the corridor shots, this was easy and looked really professional. On the second day we moved to a new location for the start of the dancing shots, on the third day however we continued to shoot some of dancing pieces but not everyone was prepared for this as some people didn’t have costume which cause some parts of the piece look unprofessional. For half of the fourth day we filmed small shots such as the clock and the bell, some close up against the lockers and shot of the boys “dancing” and “spinning” out of the doors. After this we had finished all the filming we need to, we were now able to proceed onto editing.

Editing

For the editing process we split the sequence into four sections we all paired up and took charge of a 20 second section and edited that to match the real Britney spears video. I was paired with zoran and we were given the 21-40 piece section, this consisted of mainly dancing and a couple of locker shots. The editing process was hard at first because we didn’t delete shots that weren’t good on the camera before we uploaded them; this meant we had to go through all the shots we had collected to find the correct pieces for our segment.

Final product

This is our final product.

 

My contribution

Hours of contribution

I contributed during the whole process of planning and filming giving opinions on what would be the best options to choose and looking at the angles from which the real video takes and applying them to our project.

Which sections you filmed (upload)

I filmed parts of the close up towards the end of the sequence in which Sophie appears in.

Which sections you lip-synched (upload)

I contributed with lip-synching towards the end of the sequence which started from 1:13 and ended at 1:17 not only did I contribute with singing I also did a section of dancing.

Which sections you edited (upload)

I edited from 21 up 30 to this took a while due to the amount of shots we had on different dates; I had to go through all of them to find the correct shots for my section. When I had finished my part of the editing zoran took over the last 10 seconds to finish our whole 20seconds piece. 

Evaluation
            

Our prelim wasn’t very professional looking due to the dancers and llip-synching, we didn’t have enough time to get dance moves completely perfect and the group members were very self-conscious of singing in front of others. Another factor of why our prelim task wasn’t as professional as it could have been was due to some members not wearing the correct costume this made particular past of the video look very unprofessional and “tacky”. As a group we didn’t have very good time management skills, this was a problem as we were working to a tight time schedule as we only had the camera and lighting for a certain amount of time. We shot the main shots with the lighting man  and started editing them together but we some members had to shoot some small singular shots which put the prelim task down further. I have learnt that there is a lot more planning to a music video then I originally expected, you have to know each shot keep organized when creating a video otherwise it becomes very stressful, when it comes to creating my own music video I will make sure I am organized and know types of shots I aim to film this will make it easier for me and less stressful. I did find the task very useful to do before starting straight away with our own music video, as know I am aware of certain aspects that make a music video unprofessional and the requirements that are needed to create a professional looking music video.