Research on Music VideosThis presentation is about various different research tasks carried out to help me when making my music video.

MY CULTURE AND STYLING OF MODELS AND THE ARTISTThis is research in to the look and style of my band, I have chosen to first start of with the culture, then look in the male artists, and then the main female character.

The culture of my Track is:

Click icon to add picture

Urban

• Urban culture and urban artists tend to wear high fashion. This means that big labels such as Gucci and Prada will be what they wear, some urban audiences might also wear high street labels such as River Island.

• The look tends to be crisp, clear and neat. • In most cases it tends to be tailor made or tight/slim

fighting.

The Female character and my artist/models look a-likes.

• Firstly when it came to what the woman was going to look like I put “sexy woman in clothes” in the Google images search bar. the second image the woman was wearing clothes and this was a white shirt. I then redefined the shirt to woman in white shirt. This was good for finding the sexiest thing a woman can be in. but it was not the look/style that I wanted. I then started to watch movies and look at front covers to magazines, in one mag there was some good Emma Watson shoots so I searched and included them. I then found the Vanityfair Magazine cover of Jenifer Aniston. This was a good find as it enabled me to then look at everything else Jenifer would wear in other movies and on the red carpet. I read a short passage about the front cover and it said that the cover featured Woman in man’s white shirt. So I then did a search for this. Upon doing this search I found nothing so I then searched for the jennifer aniston picture again and found a picture of Angelia Jolie & Brad Pitt in the moive Mr & Mrs Smith. I then did a search for angelia Jolie and found the big one on the next page. This is close to the style that I want. The shirt says a lot of different things about the woman, the relationship and, if she is wearing his shirt that means he has nothing on. A lot of information can be gathered form a fame of a female character in a white shirt.

• I went on to the artists website and looked at the track again and the artist said he sounded like Justin Timberlake. JT is a Urban artists so I got some photoshoots of him and included them.

URBAN Celebrities

Taken note of the hair styles/stylists and dress sense/fashion coordinator

Live performance by Beyoncé

• http://youtu.be/nEkXs6JM7wM• This is a live performance by Beyoncé at an MTV awards ceremony in America. This

performance has everything that is needed. It has interesting visuals, perfected yet complex dance routine, as well as a good use of props. These are key to gigs as if they don’t then they may lose the audiences focus.

• The reason why I chose to focus on a MTV gig rather than her own concert is because at MTV there may be people that don’t like her genre of music or don’t like her style. This means that these people need to be entertained even though she they don’t really like her.

• This is something that I will need to think about in my video. In the live performance by Beyoncé you can clearly see that nearly anyone would be impressed by the dance routine. if that dose not really tickle the taste buds, man handling Beyoncé and pining her down to a chair might.

• These tips I can use in my own video. If I try to get some kind of element in the video that attracts other cultures but still sticking to my own urban genre it might be a ore successful video across the board.

“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.” JOHN BERGER

Urban Quotes“Street culture is a culture of containment. Most young people do not realize that it all too often leads to a “dead end”. “Street culture,” as I am using the term, is a counterforce to movement culture. Street culture in contemporary urban reality is synonymous with survival at all costs. This world view is mostly negative, because it demands constant adjustment to circumstances that are often far beyond young people’s control or understanding, such as economics, education, housing, employment, nutrition, law, and so forth.”

From this quote by John Berger I can gather that the urban culture have an speech impediment which means that if I which to include script in the video, I will need to make sure It can be understand by the urban culture.

HAKI R. MADHUBUTI From this quote by Haki R. Madhutbuti, I can say that they wont understand

the video if I start to include politics and the worlds economy. The might not even watch the news so therefore may not understand that part of the video. This may through them off watching the rest of the video. If You Seek Amy is a good example, the video starts off with a news report and most urban people responded along the lines of ‘wtf @ news woman’.

MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTORAnthony Mandler I have chosen to do some

Anthony Mandler Back

Ground information

• He was born on April 18th 1973 in Los Angeles.• He is a commercial and music video director, who has written and directed music

videos for several artists. • His most popular artists to work with him is Rihanna. The first video that they

worked on together was for her single Unfaithfull. This was a in 2006 8 years after his first Music Video. The most recent one has filmed with her is “Man Down”. Alltoghether they have wowred on more than 12 music videos together. Other artists/bands he does vidoes for regularly is Jay-Z, Drake, The Killers, and Mary J. Blige. Commercially, he has regular employment with Motorola, Samsung, Nike and Ciroc.

• He began his career as a photographer for some major magazines such as: Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Men's Health, and ESPN The Magazine

• He has also done a wide selection of celebrity portraits include Ryan Phillippe, Eva Mendes, Lebron James, Eminem, Colin Farrell, David Beckham, Heath Ledger, and Katie Holmes and many more.

Anthony Mandler Examples

Rihanna Russian Roulette:

this video I really like because there is good use of space. In the top screen grab there is lots of space this shows a lot about the state of the mind as well as the fact she looks like she is in a padded cell. The space can indicate that she is mental, lonely, and isolated for a reason. In the bottom screen grab we can see that there is no empty space she is recalling what is happening to her, therefore her mind is going to be going crazy and a lot will be going on at the same time.

Anthony Mandler Examples

Usher (feat Will.i.am) O.M.G.:

Again this video has good use of space and backgrounds. The plain white background for the dancers make the scene look very polished. It also works well with because the dancers are wearing black. In the bottom screen grab we can see that the screen has been divided in 2 like in Rihanna's Video. For Will.i.am on the left we see a pink/red box with contrasting stripes throughout. I think that this scene was in front of a green screen as it would enable them to get the right shade as well as save time for the artist.

Anthony Mandler Examples

Jay-Z (feat Mr. Hudson) Young Forever:

In this video I like the delay effect with in the beginning scene. The bottom screen grab is taken form the opening scene. The delay is where the camera moves up to follow the sparkler. I think that this give it a more personal feel to the footage and makes it seem less staged . Again as shown in the top screen grab, there is a good use of empty space in the video to symbolise praying alone to god about living forever or staying young.

Anthony Mandler Final

• Its clear that the majority of the artists that he works with are in the Urban Culture. This covers RnB, Hip Hop, Dance, also from looking at the 3 music videos that I have chosen as well as more form his list. I can assume that he covers mainstream music as well.

• This is the main reason why I have chosen to research this director. • All of his videos have a polished look to them, this means no shaky camera. So to avoid

this problem I will use a tri-pod to try and get a steady shoot.• Anthony does not really do staged live performance, he will have the artist lip syncing

different parts of the tracks along side acting form the artists/models. • His editing style tends to be very interesting. Its normally very basic cuts or fades,

however he uses them cleverly to make them seem more interesting than they look on paper.

• There are several reason to why I like Anthony Mandlers work, one reason is the good choice of music. The other reasons include interesting story/plot lines, the flow of the music video, the good use of colour and unusual shot angels. For shot angles I particularly the ones used in Russian Roulette, the over the shoulder shot that he has included at 1:14 this shot has no shoulder in nor does it have any facial expressions. It plays completely on the body language of the arms, its only 2-3 seconds long but its still very effective. His videos also seem to have a beginning middle and end, although he may play around with the order in different videos.