Storyboard for "Do I Wanna Know"

The Narrative Structure within our Music Video

Narrative Features Within Our Video

• Our video will tell a story
• It is scripted
• It has characters - Our video will have some of Propp's Character types. "Protaganist" (the main character on a night out). "Antagonist" (the man who eventually "steals" the main character's girlfriend) and then "The Princess" (the main character's ex girlfriend). You could also possibly count the main character's drunken friends as the "Sidekick"
• It has a setting
• Elipsis - Not in real time
• Enigma - Questions will be raised within our video to keep the audience interested. Why did the couple break up? Will they get back together, etc. Roland Barthes theory
• Resolution - The end of the film brings a "new equilibrium"
• Binary Oppositions - the competition between our main character and the "new man" could fit in with Claude Levi Strausse's theory that most structures work better and prove more entertaining when there isconflict between opposing sides

Features Within our Video That Challenge The Narrative Rules

• It is not a Linear Narrative, there will be flashbacks
• It doesnt really fit in with Todorov's structure theory, the entire video appears to be the "new equilibrium"

How Our Film Applies/Challenges Todorov's Hypothesis

Once having researched Tzvetan Todorov's narrative structure I decided to investigate how our music video idea applied to his hypothesis. What I discovered was... well... it didn't.


Our narrative does hold some neccesary aspects needed for a narrative, for example we are going to use a multistrand narrative and flashback which I think makes our film intriguing. However the "Disruption" as Todorov calls it, takes place before the Music Video and what our video is really showing is "The New Equillibriem", this is the end of the story almost, and we are showing the new norm for our protagonist.

• Equillibriem: The norm of our story would be the flashbacks as these are what life used to be like.
• Disruption of the Equillibriem: This would be the cause of the arguement, however this is not seen in our music video
• Recognition of the Disruption: This will be the actual arguments and the fights between the couple.
• Resolution: The unfortunate resolution to our story was the couple breaking up. As there was no way to resolve the damage.
• New Equillibriem: This is where our music video comes into it, this is the boy trying to live without the girl, and the feelings he still has towards her but cannot do anything about. The new equillibriem is seeing the girl be with other boys and him being alone.

El Camino: The Black Keys

The iconic cover art for The Black Keys's latest album turns out to be part of an elaborate extended joke to promote the record. According to various published interviews with Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, the album art came about when they glanced out a window on the road and spotted an El Camino: Chevrolet’s half-car, half-pickup, built from 1959 through 1987. The musicians liked the name and thought it would serve as a fitting title for their next record. But Michael Carney, the band’s art director and the brother of Patrick Carney, whose previous efforts won him a Grammy for packaging chose to place a battered, woodgrain-sided, first-generation Chrysler minivan on the cover. Patrick, during an interview on the topic of the artwork:

I told my brother the idea and my brother was like, "You know, if you name the record El Camino, everybody's going to think of the car the El Camino." And I was like, "Yeah exactly. That's the f**king point!" And he was like, "OK, but why don't we just put a car on the cover that's not an El Camino?" And I said, "OK, what kind of car?" He says, "Just put the first car you guys ever toured in on the cover

I really like the theme of this album art, the colours used seem pretty retro and fits in with the theme of The Black Keys's music and style
Each physical digipack copy of the album has a circular sticker on it that says "Play Loud"
All of the singled released off this album have the same consistent style and font, I really like the black boarder around these and I think I might use a similar thing on my design

Shooting Schedule

AM: Album Research

For their latest album, Arctic Monkeys have taken a similar simplistic approach to the design of the album art as is seen on Suck It and See.

The AM album art is very striking and iconic, showing the same soundwaves as seen in the music video for Do I Wanna Know. Since the band is already quite famous they can easily get away with such a simple cover.
The album art also coincides with a black and white theme seen in the music video R U Mine (the first single released off AM) and seems very similar to the album art for Do I Wanna Know, this gives AM and its singles a nice consistent feel.

Originally, when AM was first put up on Itunes for pre order, the album art was a black and white photograph (seen right) but after the release of Do I Wanna Know they changed it to the iconic soundwave line.

• The black and white theme is also seen in the album art for the single Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High which shows phone buttons with the word 'HIGH' on the number 4 button. Again, this seems to be a very simplistic approach, with no details about the name of the song or even the artist who sings it on the art.

"Alternative" Genre Conventions

Music Videos:
In alternative music videos the scene appears to be abnormal. There is often some form of realism like in the Strokes music video "someday".

• This video is quite simple and is focused mainly on the band.
• The band is shown to be infamous, as if this is when they had not been discovered and was not a big success.
• The camera movement is handheld which gives the impression it may have been low budget.
• I think that the band is trying to be "cool" by trying to appeal to their audience and act like they're on the same level.

  

Editing:

They use continuous editing in this video to make it seem more realistic and the lack of special editing. There's a lot of shot-reverse-shot between band members. They also use cuts between shots and return back to this.
The editing is in the form of a montage, which is simple compared to other music videos.

.... unlike the Red Hot Chilli Pepper's song "Under The Bridge"

The editing in this is interesting and is quite abnormal like some alternative music videos, the SFX in this will have been done with a simple green screen behind the band performing.

9th September

Today I am going to look into the genre of "Indie/Rock"as I think it's a neccesity to understand the genre before I create any projects. I think this will be beneficial as I need to know more about the genre so I can live up to the genre conventions.

Looking into "Film Noir"

The definition of "film noir" is to be used "primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas". It was mainly focused in the early 1940's to the late 1950's, as it can be guessed it is associated with French black and white films. But now Film Noir has now become a classic film genre.

I really like the style of Noir, and would like to use this classic style in  our music video as it is quite an old-fashioned sounding track and I think they would compliment the song. We were intending to use black and white anyway but I think this would make it more interesting.
I will discuss this with the group and see what they think, I will also research more into it.

7th September

Today I have found a good resource on what to research and plan for blogging.
It also provides some interesting content to teach me more into narrative structure:

http://keca2media.blogspot.co.uk/

The XX - Advertisements

I chose to look briefly into the advertisement and products of the band "The XX" as their albums and posters are very consistent. The large "X" is always used, on their instruments, on posters, in their videos. This logo is very important to them obviously, and it identifies the band very well.

It would be good to have something like this as this is very typical of bands to use the same imagery and theme throughout their products whether its the music video, album, logo or clothing.

 Even their website is as plain as the album cover, they are using the same image throughout however the writing is a little different.

Digipak Ideas

Digipak slidshare from harob445

Review of the New Arctic Monkey's Album AM

Review of AM on Gigwise

I believe that it was important to look at some reviews of the album to get the right language to use on the advertisement for the new album, I also thought it could help me when designing the digipak.

This is an example of one of the paragraphs in the review: 



" Ahead of their blistering performance at the London 2012 games last summer, the Sons of South Yorkshire blew fans with away with this fittingly Olympian track. Racing into a heavier psychedelic rock direction, R U Mine has quickly become a fan favourite. Why? Well, it's a right little beast, laden with a righteous riff and sexy QOTSA-esque groove. This is exactly what we imagine blazing through the desert on a Harley with Josh Homme sounds like. Phwoar. "

Words like "riff" will be good to use as it is part of the same lexical field for music. Terminology like this will be essential for the magazine advertisement.

5th September - Research into Narrative Music Videos

Recently due to my other English Language investigation coursework I have been examining Quentin Tarantino films. As I have been doing this I have taken some interest in his use of credits and text within his films, this includes the typical Tarantino convention of the bold yellow writing.

This has made me consider in our music video it would be interesting to use text in our music video as it would be combining film and music.
This has been previously done in Lady Gaga and Beyonce's music video for the single "Telephone".

It even contains the car "The Pussy Wagon" which is featured in Tarantino's Kill Bill.
This is a direct reference to the movie.

 This is the font used throughout the music video for Telephone, it has the same colour scheme as Tarantino films and it also is featured like a film rather than a music video, "WORLD PREMIERE".







Here we can see the resemblnce from a Tarantino film to the music video itself.
This clip is from the film "Death Proof" and although it is rathr dated compared to Lady Gaga's and Beyonce's there is a clear resemblence.

Media Survey: Results

1) What gender are you?


We chose to ask an equal number of Male and Female participants, this would make it a fair result as it is likely that the majority of females would have a different opinion as males.

As you can see by our results the ration between Male and Female was 50:50





2) What age are you?

Here you can see that the people we asked were more our own age group, this is because we can relate to this age.
Our music video is targeted at this a young audience because the characters in our music video are young.







3) How often do you watch music videos?

Here you can see that most of the people we asked agreed with 1 or 2 times a week.
This shows the significance of music videos as the majority of our audience watches music videos at least one a week.







4) How do you watch music videos?


Most people watch music videos on the internet and on TV Channels. This means that id we were to distribute our music videos we should mainly present it on the Artist's Websites and on television.









5) What genre do you listen to/watch?

Here we can see that the people we ask prefer alternative music videos, which is what we plan on doing. This is good as it shows our target audience will like the song we have chosen for our music video.


6) What do you enjoy seeing in music videos?

This shows that our audience would like to see live performance, narrative and comical features in our music video.












7) Do you think music videos are vital to the success of single/albums?

The majority of our audience said "Yes", this shows how vital music videos are in the Music Buisness