Evaluation What Skills I Have learned:
I have learned how to use the fill tool, the magic wand and the lasso tool.
Unfortunately this one doesn't look very good as the college's Mac let me down and lost my file two times so I had to do this one quickly in ten minutes because the technology was faulty.
Genre, Stylism, Conventions, Camera Angles & Style Image
Innerpartystem is predominant for it’s ‘Neo Industrial’ style, mixing both dance music with classic ‘Industrial’ (such as Nine Inch Nails) style music. This video is quite cynical, as you will see. Narrative – In this video we see what we believe to be a typical ‘pop style’ beginning, in which a girl begins singing the lyrics (although this is odd as the singer is male and we wonder why this is) furthermore the lyrics appear typed at the bottom of the screen. We then see the rest of the ‘pop’ style band and more lyrics scroll across the bottom. Typical jump cuts are used and stylism is used to show different random items to reinforce the weird ‘pop indi’ genre. However the reason for the female singer is then later explained as the video scrolls ‘This Video Is A Lie’, ‘This Band Is A Fake’, as the video shows its cynical side of how it sees pop music it then explains how the female singer is actually a professor ‘Ingrid’ who they asked to do the lyrics, it states ‘We Could only afford 20 seconds of choreography, the rest of the time we asked the dancers to...wiggle’. This is reinforced by a stop in the music in which you see the dancers wiggling and looking rather stupid. We see how the band shows that ‘anyone can make a music video’ through how they show that ‘The Wardrobe is rented’, ‘The Props are trash’. The band then asks ‘Have you been let down?’, showing how they deliberately went against typical genre conventions to portray how ‘cheap’ music and style has become. This is reinforced by the lyrics in the song and the title ‘American Trash’. There are then overt genre conventions portrayed and reversed as they show how they are targeting the ‘pop’ audience with things like ‘Ego Stroke’ styled across the screen and ‘Product Placement’ and ‘Extra Skin’ and ‘Faux Angst’. The band deliberately don’t use star image as the video uses a different woman to represent there contempt for the ‘fake’ genres. The band is trying to get across the message that music has become ten a penny and that anybody can do it, whereas they mean what they sing/do. This means that there is a huge amount of disjunction in this video because they band has decided to go along with a video that not only doesn’t match with the lyrics, but actually goes against them completely. It’s like the video is a binary opposite to the song. However there is some illustration that matches with the video near the end where pictures flash across, the typing scroll’s ‘Each one of those photos was found in a junk shop and purchased for 15 cents’. This illustrates another point in the video that people are ‘Trash’, and eventually (as the typing says) ‘Your life will eventually become trash’. This is used to portray another meaning of this song that is that material possessions, and image is nothing as it will all fade, what really matters is what you do with your life. Overall the idea of this music video is to disagree with typical genre conventions to reinforce the bands message of the fake nature of the music culture.
Genre - Folk Rock
- Alot of Pete Lawrie's music has alot of effection and feeling behind both his music and his videos. The lyrics are posted into the video with the pictures being assosiated with the lyrics and the actual story of the video.
Narrative
-There is always a story behind Pete's music videos. He tries his best to incorparate his videos with his music and the feeling and meaning to his lyrics and the meaning behind the song. As we can see in the video Pete uses pictures and lyrics on screen to help descibe the story behing the song. We can see this when he is singing about a boat and there is a boat on screen and lyrics as well.
-In the music video we see that the story is of people getting what they want 'In the End'. The song has a very good 'feel factor' in which it makes the audience feel good about themselves. It uses lyrics such as 'So here we are another day, holding on to anything. The light to shine our way' Meaning almost that the light can shine a path for people so they can achieve anything.
Camera
- Within the video we see various brilliantly executed camera shot and angles of pete and his band. These shots only appear every so often during the video but last a good 5-8 seconds. In these shots we see his band playing with varous glass objects hanging from the celling such as glass jars with lights in them. There is also lights hanging everywhere and wrapped around the drum set aswell. This i belive gives the video a very good folk theme about it. The rest of the video is composed of small clips of diffrent things mostly nature and of things outside. It also has shot of people enjoying themselves and having a good time. The shots are truly beautiful and make the video what it is. A truly feel good video that matches the soothing sounds of Pete Lawries voice.
Star Image
- In Pete Lawires videos we see his face only in the scenes which are of his band playing. These are mostly shot of him and his band singing to the song. This makes Pete not really the main 'star image' of the video. I belive that true 'star image' is nature. Most of the images are of people in natures finest places with beautiful shot supporting that.
-Althought Pete Lawrie is not a very well known artist we can certainly see that he does not want himself to be the main attraction of his music nor his videos. He want people to enjoy his music and not him. I know this from personal experiance and seeing him in concert. He acted as if the audience was his family and when we were listening to him sing we all felt like we were sat round a campfire singing alonging to his soothing sounds.
Disjunction - Not used - All of his lyrics match to the video and all of the video is relative to his lyrics and the story behind the song. Illustration - All lyrics match the video as does the video match that of the lyrics. As said before the lyrics are also on screen so we can see that they all relate together. Acoustic - The song is acoustic and therefore gives it a soothing factor. Most of Pete's music is acoustic.
- Post Indie Punk Rock
- In most of The Bravery's music, they sing about how life could be so much better and much more they can get out of life. ( And how people can get more out of life too.) This is refelected in their music rather than their videos.
Narrative
- In this particular video it is mostly of the band singing to a crowd. However throughout the video there is also scenes in which he walks through the crowd singing to them. (Meat shot) The meaning behind the lyrics does not reflect in this video whatsoever. Unfortunatly none of the shots in the video match the lyrics of the song making the music video almost like a live preformance at a concert.
- The lyrics have a meaning however. The song itself is called 'Believe' When reading the chorus of the song we unveil the true story behind the song.
'So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe'
As we can see the song is all about getting more from life and living life to the full.
Camera
Throughout the song we see that sometime the band gest frozen in a freeze frame and all of a sudden an editing technique comes in which makes it look like the band has been drawn as a cartoon. Most of the shots throughout the video are mostly meat shots of the lead singer showingn his significance in the band and also in the video. At the start of the video we see meat shots of all of the band shwoing what their role in the band and also their significance in the band. We also see throughout the videos alot of birds eye view camera shot that point down on the lead singer when he is in the middle of a crowd. By having him in the middle of a crowd and all the crowd touching him, it truly does show his significance in the band. There is also another shot that is taken of the lead singer that takes away his significance. This time he is walking through the crowd as they all point and cheer at the band playing and simply ignore the singer as he walks through them all singing. There is also alot of hand held shots which make it look like the singer is holding the camera and is recording himself singing.
star image
As we can see throughout the whole video the lead singer is clearly the star image of the video. We can see this trhough the various hand held shots and all of the shot that put the lead singer into such a shot where he is the main focus of the video. As we can see at least 90% of the video is shots of the lead singer clearly making him the star image of the video.
disjunction
There is quite alot of disjuntction in this video as not many of the lyrics match to the actual video itself.
illustration
Again not many lyrics actually match the video itself making the video possibly completely random and irrelevant to the song itself.
