Roland Barthes introduced the terms Denotation, Connotation and Anchorage into Media studies; these terms help us as media students to answer the question 'what does it mean?'.
Denotation deals with what we initially see; this digipak is of a man sitting down over looking a lake, there are people walking into said lake, two statue figures and what looks like white lines drawn onto cardboard.
Connotation is another word for the mental concepts that automatically spring into our mind when we are presented with a picture. This digipak clearly connotes nature, the trees and the lake are painted in water-colour, presenting nature as very beautiful. The man on the bottom right hand side of the digipak could either be looking out at the trees and the lake connoting perhaps man's perceptions of nature or he could be observing the people being led into a lake by the statue figures, connoting a different message of humans standing by whilst others are lead misleadingly. These two connotations differ enormously; this proves that different people perceive or connote different things from the same picture.
Anchorage works to restrict the number of possible connotations; words or text are added to a picture that encourage people to take a 'preferred reading' (to draw out the connotations we want to communicate). More the often the text on the front of a digipak is the title of the album, which gives the audience an idea of what type of music, or what theme the album contains. The text attached to this particular digipak is 'Still time, stream of consciousness'; prompting the connotations of time being stopped, perhaps the man is looking over a still image, whilst his thoughts or 'stream of consciousness' are being shown through the songs in the album.
Feedback from audience:
A lot of the comments on the feedback asked how we were going to make our idea original. It is evident just from listening to a selection of songs from any genre that one of the most, if the most, sung about thing is love and relationships. As our song lyrics are based on love, 'if your going I'm going too', 'are you in love, in love' etc, it would be extremely difficult to make an original music video which only element was love. That is why within our video we decided to have four very different elements blended together in order to achieve originality. The wheel turning as the tape is being pulled out of the cassett, the cathedral bells, the idea of freedom, and then the theme of love will all be intertwined to produce an original music video. We both agreed that it would be unwise to ignore the lyrics, and not include any aspect of love at all, because it may effect how the song and the video fit together, we want it to be absolutely clear that the video we make, belongs to the song 'Seeing Things' by Lakota Soux'.
Another issue was raised about the filming of the Malvern hills; the weather, and the transport. Because we will be filming in January we understand that the weather is likely to be cold and miserable; therefore we have made sure that our concept will work in any environment, we will be able to film no matter what the weather. Obviously if we can avoid the rain it would be better, the equipment wouldn't wet and the actors might be in a more co-operative mood, therefore we will look at the weather forecast within the time period we have for filming, and book the cameras on the days when it is least likely to rain. Transport won't be a problem either, I can drive, and our male actor, Jake Glass can also drive, so we can easily drive to Malvern, as it wont take very long, and park just below the main paths up to the hills; the camera and tripod weigh very little so walking with them will not be an issue.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
These are just a few of the pictures I took yesterday afternoon that I thought would work well with the pictures of the bedroom.
As well as taking nature shots, I also took pictures of bedroom items. I have decided that the front inside cover, and back cover of the digipak will be of bedroom items e.g dressing table, tv stand etc in nature. I will use the magic wand tool to cut the images from the original background and put them on top of two of the nature shots.
Last week in media we were asked to be creative; we were given all of the lessons to create something different to what we normally would. For example, if you like it right long essays to get all of you ideas down, they produce a mind map, or go out and take some pictures.
I personally like to make lists when I'm thinking of ideas, I bullet point sections and like all the writing to look very neat on the page, I can not draw, and I'm much happier writing an essay then producing practical work. I tried to get as far away from my comfort box as I could, we produced two flip books, using stop motion pictures, and also a mind map including pictures and colours.
The first flip book featured two pencils, a blue pencil for a boy, and pink for a girl, having a fight, breaking up and the getting back together again, the second showed a house being built out of everyday objects found in a classroom, ie pencils, scissors, rubbers etc.
At first I found it difficult to not write anything down at all, and just to rely on the camera and our objects to do all the work; but as it continued I learnt that if I had stuck to my safe bullet points, the ideas that we arrived with at the end wouldn't have been the same, and wouldn't have been as good. Sometimes it is a good thing to step out of your comfort box, and try something completely different, it encourages you to think in a completely different way.
Creativity is an original thought or idea that has value; it depends on the ability to take risks, and not being embarrassed about the thought of being wrong. Creativity according to Ken Robinson, is squeezed out of us during our time in education. He says that when we are younger we are more likely to take a chance, 'if kids don't know they will have a go, they are not frightened of being wrong'.We are told to raise our hands if we think we know the answer and then are told 'that's wrong', if the answer isn't the one teacher wanted. A fear of being wrong is built up, and we become unable to participate due to the horrible thought of getting the answer wrong.
In order to become more creative, we need to do the opposite; we need to take more risks, and act on our spontaneous ideas. If we aren't prepared to be wrong, we will never come up with anything original. It is said by some that there were certain acts we can perform in order to become creative; Sleep, exercise and continuing education are apparently just a few of the acts we should perform. In my opinion all three of these acts are not at all helpful; sleep is needed to help any type of thinking; without sleep we loose concentration easily, not just in creative lessons or tasks, but also everyday things. Driving with no sleep is dangerous, your memory often isn't as strong when you tired, to suggest that sleep helps with creativity specifically is ridiculous. Sleep helps with all matters of our lives. Exercise can help you get focused, and also releases endorphins which make you happy; exercise just as sleep does can make us more alert and helps us to concrete better; yes exercise would help you think more clearly which could lead you to being more creative but it does not specially help with the creative process alone. Continuing education if you agree with Ken Robinson, will completely stamp out all creativity you have; the education system at the moment is all about passing exams. You attend lessons for you teacher to tell you how to pass an exam, how to write an answer in a certain way to get the full mark; once you've completed the exam and completed it well there is no need for you to return to that information. Being intelligent at school in my opinion is having the ability to learn and memorise quicker then everyone else.
Creativity is something you are born with; it is a skill. Just as someone could be good at maths, or sport, someone is creative. I believe that your level of creativity can be advanced if you encourage yourself to take risks often, and aren't scared to think outside the box; just as you can be taught to a certain level in maths, you can be taught to achieve a certain level of creativity. However they will be others that have a natural talent for it; that pick it up easier then others.
Creativity is essential to media productions; its listening to a piece of music and instantly being able to picture visuals in your head. On the course that we are doing at college without creativity the music videos would be boring and simple, last year the trailers would have been dull and unwatchable, you have to able to create an idea that really makes people sit up and think, wow that's good. In order to reach this final idea, there is a long process of developing one, maybe two ideas further and further until what you are left with is an original idea.
The third and final music video I will be analyising is Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep'.
It is obvious that this video contrasts the most out of all three videos; all artists are classed as 'indie', but whereas the other two videos have strong elements of the theme nature, 'Rolling in the Deep' does not have a single shot of outside, and its main distinctive theme is destruction.
At the start of the video, there is a stillness that suggests some havoc is about to happen. These four shots show the key elements to the video; adele, the drummer, the objects, and the dancer; it is almost like they are posed, waiting for something to happen during the first part of the first verse where Adele is singing with only a faint drum beat detecable in the background.
As soon as the drums kick in, we see the water start to jump in time with the beat, transforming the still water in glasses, untouched, undistrubed, into pulsing water, causing ripples; clearly reflecting what Adele is singing about, what could have been a perfect relationship was interfered with, and ruined, the water in the glasses were still until the drum beat interfered with them. As the verse starts to build up and then into the bridge, there is a sequence of shot reverse shots between Adele and the dancer. The dancer has started to manipulate the white sand with the stick, and the camera is zooming in further and further towards her face; suggesting a connection between the lyrics and the dancer; it could be said that just as the dancer is influencing the sand, just as the other person in the relationship started to influence her, which eventually led to the breaking up of said relationship. As the song continues, the dancer manipulates with the sand more and more, until eventually it is hard to spot the dancer, because all of the sand is up the air around him and causing what called be called as a smoke screen.This video is full of metaphors and clearly this is another; just as the dancer has messed with the sand so much it is unclear exactly where he is, the person Adele is singing about messed with their relationship so much, she could no recognised what he was doing, or who he was.
As the video continues, other objects are featured in order to show destruction; a medium shot through the door way of a pile of broken white cups that have been smashed, we imeditatly assume they have been thrown and therefore obviously damaged. Later, another medium shot taken from the same doorway, but higher up shows the cups smashing against the white screen having literally being thrown, this confirms our assumptions, that these have been broken through acts of violence. Again here the colour white is used, just as the white sand was used, white is a very pure, clean colour, and in this music video we are constantly shown white items either being destroyed or distrubed.I think this is vital to helping deliver the message, that
from Adele's point of view, her relationship was like a white cup, whole and
untainted, but then it was messed with, and therefore ended up one of the
broken cups in the pile.
This of centre medium shot is the first we see of the 'white city'. Already
sparks are flying off it, and smoke is visable, this reflects the whole video
in the sense that we do not see the relationship before, we only hear about its
decline and the aftermath; we haven't been shown the entire object yet, we just
notice the sparks and the smoke.
Further on in the video, we do see the whole of the white city, without sparks, smoke or fire, the camera zooms in very slowly to change the shot from a long shot, to a close up; this allows to audience time to understand what they are viewing, again a very white, clean model of a city. The close up slow tracking shot empathises how pure this city is, absolutely everything is white,
everything is whole and completed, and still, as if it is at peace.
Then in the last verse, at the end of the song, sparks errupt from above, and they appear almost as if they are raining down, hammering down onto the city of stillness, and creating distruction. Close up shots of the white towers burning, and turning to ash, are a brilliant metaphor for the relationship Adele sings about. 'We could have had it all', the city was complete, it could have been filled with metaphorical people, and a life, but then the sparks came down and set fire to absolutely everything. This as the final object that gets destroyed is the most powerful, the cups get smashed, and the sand gets tossed around, but the city is burnt, and within a video with little colour, the orange flames of the fire leave a lasting effect.
In contrast to 'The A Team', but similar to 'Your Song', one of the key parts of 'Rolling in the Deep', is Adele singing or lipsyncing in the room alone. She doesn't smile once whilst singing, unlike Ellie Goulding, but the close ups do enforce how pretty she is and her facial expressions during these close ups give a clear indication of what the song truly means. The long shots that show her singing in the room alone, a room which looks abandoned, and unfinished, ensures our attention never wavers from her, or from the message the lyrics are telling us. We never see Adele stand up, it is as if she stuck to the chair, too focused on telling us her story to make sudden movements, this provides a nice
simplicty in comparson to the rest of the video, which has lots of different unusal elements. Just as Ellie Goulding wasn't, Adele is in no way sexualised in this video; her gender is not important, her music is.
The drum beat provides a clear, repetitive, ever lasting impact within the video. The constant boom boom of the drum perhaps reflects the constant arguing and unhappiness caused by the relationship; there is no point in the entire video where a drum beat, however faint can not be heard. The close up of the drum pedals, and the drummer smashing the drums enforces the idea that it was another person, not Adele who caused this unhappiness, she is the victim.
As I have already mentioned, the video has little colour, similar Ed Sheeran's The A Team which is all in black and white apart from the very last shot. Although there is not a black and white effect on the camera, Adele is dressed in all black, so are the dancer and the drummer, and the objects are all white; to involve any bright colours in the surrounding such as yellow or orange because it would not fit in with the feel of the song, an emotional revealing of Adele's upset.
The editing pace obviously increases at the song builds towards it's climax and then the end of the song. From 3.09 there are at least 40 shot in only 30 seconds; Adele singing, the dancer, the drummer, the white city, the water and the broken tea cups are all featured, and shown more then once. This editing change complement the change in the pace of music, just before the change, shots of adele in the dark are shown, not singing, and then all of a sudden she begins to sing a long powerful note and the everything changes. This techinque of editing could be said to be an example of synaethesia, the build up of the music reflects in the pace of edititng; synaethesia is also used as the first chorus builds up. As the tempo of the music increases in the first bridge, we are shown a long shot of the dancer lowering his hand towards the bottom of his stick to take control of it and then go on to pull it round in a half circle, in preperation for a rigious dance routine, and Adele starts using her arms to empathise her words, there is a sequence of shot reverse shots whilst building up to the chorus; both the dancer and Adele start to make movements, before making even bigger ones when the chorus does kick in.
In my opinion 'Rolling in the Deep' is the complete opposite to 'The A Team' in terms of narrative; in The A Team, we are shown the girl dead on the park bench and go back in time to see how she got to this state, it is all about what happened before, 'Rolling in the Deep' however is based on the aftermath of the relationship, the effect the break-up has left on Adele. In 'The A Team' the part of the the story that is withheld to us is how exactly she died, the ending of her story, and in 'Rolling in the Deep' what is withheld is the relationship, the story of them before it got to this point.
Adele is known for her soulfull, heart-renching songs, she has not released a single hugely upbeat song; therefore she is shown in this video to be passionate and soulful, it is made obvious through the use of close ups that she really cares about what she is singing about, she knows the exact meaning of the lyrics. The close ups also draw the audiences attention to how pretty she is; it could be said that her music styling is quite old fashioned in a industry that is full of upbeat rnb club music, this I believe is reflected in her hair and make-up. The big eyeliner flicks, and the backcombed beehive style hair is typical of the 60s eara.
This video is amplifying; Adele is clearly singing about a horrible break-up, but the use of the dancer, the drummer and the white objects are what she uses to demostrate this; there is no shots of her arguing with a man, or them 'rolling in the deep' together. Instead she clearly shows us how deeply he has hurt her, and 'the rolling' I believe refers to how lost she is, unsure of what to do or where to go.
John Berger's statement made in 1972 that 'men act, women appear', clearly this is does not go hand in hand with this video. Adele, a woman, is the main focus throughout the video, and the only face we actually see, we do not see the face of the drummer or the dancer; it is unclear what the dancer's gender is, but the drummer is clearly a man, in this video, these two characters appear, and don't act.
Just as it was with 'The A Team' and 'Your Song', all shots are cut to the beat; as I have said in the other analysis, it plays a huge part in making sure the music and the video flow together, therefore this is a technique we will definatly be using in the making of our music video.
The second music video I will be analysing will be Ellie Goulding's 'Your song', originally sung by Elton John.
The first thing that struck me straight away about this video is how centered around nature it is. Throughout, Ellie is surrounded by fields, animals, trees, waterfalls, leaves; there are little shots inside. This is similar to Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team', at the beginning the young girl is shown to be walking in the park, through the trees appreciating nature.
The many shots of nature, give the video itself a very natural, authentic feel, which in turn gives Ellie herself the same vibe. Close ups, and long shots show her smiling, laughing suggesting she is completely at home in her surroundings. The close up of her boots within the leaves, could perhaps connate that she is very down to earth, and the leaves scattered around her, stirs up the image of little children kicking big piles of leaves in the autumn. It is not just Ellie that is seen enjoying the nature, we are shown a long shot of a women feeding
the birds in the park, placing Ellie as 'one of us', despite her rising fame, and best selling album, she is 'normal', and enjoys playing in the park, and observing nature.
Animals are an extension of nature, and therefore the few shots we see of Ellie inside she is playing with what we presume is her cat. Again she is performing actions 'normal' people do, you aren't usually shown images of artist at home playing with their pets, but instead of them dressed up glamorously air brushed to within an inch of their life in a posh club somewhere exotic. These shots re-enforce Ellie's general image; a natural, happy, unpretentious young girl.
The establishing shots show Ellie on a train; the train again empathises this image of Ellie being one of us. The shots show her messing around on a train; not a private jet, or a fancy limo but public transport, suggesting she is the public. The slanted shot of the sign for Hereford train station, which for any fans of Ellie Goulding will know, is her home town, connoting that Ellie has not forgotten where she came from, or the people who have been there supporting her all along. The pull focus shot of the train ticket, tells us that she pays for her ticket, like we do, she doesn't get any special dispensation, because she is famous. In the close up establishing shot we can see nature, and green through the shape that her arm makes, ellie is in full focus but the green is very clearly there behind her. This, in my opinion, tells the audience all they need to know about the entire music video; she is the focus point throughout, but whenever she is shot, they is always nature surrounding her, you could go as far as to say, that Ellie Goulding within the video is one with nature. We are then shown shots of her looking out the window, with her hair blowing behind her, at the forest, smiling broadly; Ellie is happy, and comfortable in this enviroment. The whip pan shot, shows us the view that Ellie must have when she looks out the train window, therefore putting us in her shoes; we allow ourselves to be put in her shoes, because throughout the video we are told over and over, Ellie could be you, this could be you, having fun in outside with your friends.
The only time we see Ellie singing, or 'lip-syncing', we are shown several close up clips, with sunshine shining on to the side of her face, lighting up her hair and the right hand side of her face, perhaps connoting that sunshine, a natural beauty, enables Ellie to become a natural beauty herself; she appears to be wearing very little make-up and her hair is naturally wavy/straight.
The editing is medium paced; it is not as fast as a pop music, with 50 shot changes in one minute, but then it is not as slow as Ed Sheeran's The A Team either. In a upbeat pop song, the editing has to be fast in order to flow correctly with the music, in The A Team the shots were very long for a music video, so that the audience could fully see all of the young girl's distress in her face. The shots of Ellie singing are on average three seconds long, just long enough for us to appricate her true natural beauty, and the beauty of the shot itself. Some of the nature shots last longer then others, but most are quite quickly edited, in order to show that there is so much of nature to see, and Ellie is soaking it all up, as we are seeing what she sees, we too get to see beautiful shots of waterfalls, trees and flowers. We are often shown reaction shots of her reaction to the nature; showing the audience that was is important is her reaction to seeing all the nature around her, the reaction shots are always are her smiling or looking up wonderously at what she is viewing.
Her clothing and appearance matches perfectly the impression we are given of her personality. She wears vintage jumpers, and bobbly hats reinforcing the indie sound her music presents, she always wears hardly any makeup, showing that she is just as naturally pretty as her surroundings. However, she does have the side of her head shaved, a style that was extremely popular within the indie culture recently, which shows that she does take pride in her appearance, however we do not judge her on this at all, because it is only human nature to do this. Some of the shots appear to have had a camera effect on top of them, but after looking that them closely I realised that in fact they are simple shot whilst fully in the sunshine, and slightly out of focus; which in this particular shot really makes the purple colour of the flowers stand out. They are shot, I believe in the light that makes them look the prettiest, full sunshine, which can appear dazzling to the audience.
Within the video, there are no superficial items shown, Ellie is shown playing with her cat, as I said before, and also is shown playing the piano. This tells the audience that she can not only sing, but also plays the piano, and as fans will know, plays the guitar too, proving that she is an extremely talented musican, who does not need to hide behind fancy expensive items.
As I have explained before Andrew Goodwin said there were three types of music video. There is no particular narrative within this music video, that is its main difference from Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team'; we are instead shown shots of Ellie and her friends enjoying the simple pleasures of life; nature and music. The only aspect of the video that I personally think is literal is the lyric 'how wonderful life is'; the life we are being shown, or a day in the life of Ellie, is wonderful, she is always smiling and laughing, and the entire video is simply beautiful, connoting indeed a wonderful life. However, as I said before the video doesn't offer much narrative; most people interpret the lyrics of the song to be about another person, a human being, however it could be said that Ellie's music video enables the lyrics to be interpreted different, and therefore is amplified. Instead of singing about a person, she could be singing about how wonderful life is, when the beauty of nature is in the world.
The main similarity between this video and the previous, is that both cut the shots to the beat, this enables the video to flow alongside the music perfectly. Again, like The A Team, there is no particular shots that are shown over and over again, for the chorus, bridge or verses; sometimes we are shown the same clips from one part of the video in another, but I believe that the reason the choruses etc aren't punchuated, is because this would connote organisation, a manufactured feel to the video, and Ellie and her music video are anything but, she is instead original, authentic. Her voice is very natural, soft and pretty sounding, therefore we are presented with a very natural/nature based video.
Ellie Goulding did not come into the limelight from a national, televised talent show such as 'X Factor' as many artists these days are, but instead from a talent contest in her home town of Kingston, in Herefordshire. Ellie is always presented as very talented, natural, pretty, delicate even, indie sounding, and therefore this music video fits absolutley perfectly with that image. As this video doesn't particularly have a narrative, there is nothing that we are withheld from, we see all that she sees, and we are left in wonder, just as she is.
As I mentioned in my previous analysis, Andrew Goodwin said that there is demand on record labels to shoot a lot of close ups of the artist; certainly in this video there are a large amount of close ups of Ellie, however, the close ups are not how you would expect to find in a rnb music video of a woman, extremely sexualised, but instead close up that show the audience again and again her natural beauty, not sexualised in any way.
In 2001 Roy Shuker stated that 'music videos are both an industrial, commercial product and cultural form. They are promotional devices which encourage record sales'. This video, I believe would increase Ellie Goulding's general record sales, it presents her in an extremely likable light, she is shown as I have stated many time as 'one of us', audiences are more likely to buy records of musicans that they personally like, if someone's music is good, but they are presented as arrogant, or horrible, it is unlikely they will sell records.
