Thursday 26 September 2013

Video Idea

For the video we need a narative and a series of live band footage so it sticks within the lines of a pop-punk video.

For the live band footage we are going to stage a house party and get the band to perform the song there infront of a crowd of 'partying people'. This will fit in with the conventions of a poppunk video because you generally see scenes like this in this type of video.

We are going to insert a narrative throughout the video. The narrative will feature a boyfriend arriving at a party at his girlfriends house and then the boyfriend ignoring the girl for his friends. The girl will then proceed to try to make the boy jelouse wich will then lead to an argument and inevitably the end of the relationship.
In the narrative there will also be some reference to the lyrics. For example when the song says "She said don't let my door hit your ass" we will show her slamming the door on her ex boyfriend  At the end of the video the couple do get back together after a series of events like when the girl chases the boy through the house.

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Pop-Punk Video Analysis







Screen Grab One
This is a wide angle long shot of the entire band performing the song. This is a good way for the video to start as it gives you a sense that the video will be performance heavy. The band perform for about five seconds at this stage of the video but there is no editing it is just the camera zooming from a hight angle into a medium close up of the drummer.

Screen Grab Two
When the camera movement stops at the drummer the editing pace picks up and it changes to more shots of the drummer playing. This change happens roughly around the same time that the bass drum is hit. The fast editing here is necessary because it helps keep the video fast moving like the music and this will help the person watching it keep interested.

Screen Grab Three
The video then cuts to the narrative side which is less heavily featured as pop-punk tends to be more about performing and instruments than telling a story.

Screen Grab Four
This High angle long shot looking up at people running is one of the few sections of narrative footage. They have made it so the camera is focused on the foreground while the background is blurred. This tactic is used to make the video edgy and dynamic so that it will have more association to the pop-punk genre.

Screen Grab Five
In this shot they use a rig that allows them to move from an extreme long shot to a mid shot of the band. They have used this shot to add excitement to the build up of the music because at this point there is a lull in the song and when the shot has moved to the mid shot of the band the music kicks in again.

Screen Grab Six
This shot is a close up of the rhythm guitarist playing the guitar. Again this sort of shot and content is associated with the pop punk genre. The reason for this is so that the audience can see that the band can actually play the instruments unlike in other genres.

Screen Grab Seven
This is a continuation of the narrative in which the main protagonist, the singer, is walking towards the camera and a passer by that is running the opposite way tries to drag him away. They use a mid shot and track for this shot as the camera follows the movement of the singer and moves backwards.

Screen Grab Eight 
This part of the video uses a swoopy camera shot that starts at the top right and zooms down towards the guitarist. This shot settles on a close up of the guitarists face. This type of shot is common in the pop punk genre because it shows all of the action and can include the whole band moving about in a very punk way.

Screen Grab Nine
This is the penultimate shot of the narrative where everything starts to explode. The camera movements tries to portray that the explosions are actually happening by using shaky movements. This is also common within the pop-punk genre as it makes the video look fast moving and  action packed.

Monday 23 September 2013

Music Videos and Society

Music videos have been around for many years in one form or another but they really took off in the early 80's with the creation of MTV which played music videos 24/7. The first video to be played on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Strar by Buggles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ&safe=active


With people being able to access music videos all the time it became increasingly more important what you wore and how you acted. This in turn gave birth to the diffrent social groups e.g. mods and rockers.




Over the years music videos have stood out for diffrent reassons; some for being influencial and some for pushing the bounderies of what people class as acceptable.
Some of the most controversial music videos include;
  • Heart shaped Box by Nivarna. This video featured scenes that involved a young child dressed in the same attire as the Ku Klux Klan looking at a tree decorated with unbore babies. It's safe to say it offended pretty much everyone.



Don't you want me by The huma league had a music video that was a film within a film and was a huge step out of the norm for music videos then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPudE8nDog0&safe=active

Tuesday 17 September 2013

The Blink-182 Fandom

It is easy to tell the difference between someone that likes the music Blink-182 make and a person that is a die-hard fan.

The Die-Hard Fans
These fans are easy to spot in a crowd. They will try and wear as much Blink-182 merchandise as they can and always want more just because they have the band name/logo/lyrics on them.
The more extremists of these fans will even go as far as to get tattoos relating to the band.

Pop-Punk Fans

The fanbase for any band is really important because they help to keep the band going. Fans for every genre are diffrent in how they look and act. Blink-182 fans fall in the the genre of pop-punk and therefor act accordingly.


The thing that makes a punk-pop bands fanbase stand out from each other is the band merchandise, posters on theiri walls and how they can relate most things to the band they love. Sometimes name their fans e.g. Enter Shikari fans are Lions, Slipknot fans are Maggots. However, punk-pop don't tend to name their fans for whatever reasson.

Monday 16 September 2013

Pop-Punk the Genre

When watching a music video it is easy to tell if it is within the pop-punk genre.

The first major giveaway of a pop-punk video is the high amount of band performance footage that is used. They tend to use all of this performance footage to outline the edgy outgoing side of the stereotypical punk.


The band performance also shows the pop side of the band because it shows them doing dramatized, storyline based, shows. This is more on the pop side of punk-pop because it is typical of mainstream pop bands in wich none of the members can play an instrument.

The videos that pop-punk bands make don't tend to have a storyline. They generally consist of the band performance footage and a party or concert. The party/concert scenes tend to be of a destructive and rebeliouse nature. An example of this would be the music video to My Friends Over You by New Foung Glory, which clearly depicts the destructive and over-excited concert scene that people generalize to the punk-pop genre.

My Friends Over You-New Found Gloryhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfcLcDBII78&safe=active

The way bands dress in pop-punk videos also helps to clarify the genre because it s edgy and items that most people wouldn't wear. The males tend to wear a t-shirt and jeans combination but both are worn away at the edges to show that they don't care about apperances. They also commonly wear cut off (three quarter length) cargo pants.





The female pop-punk band/singers tend to go for a more dramatic look with excessive eye makeup and torn tops with multipule layers. A good example of a typical pop-punk dress sense for females is Avril Lavigne.

Smile - Avril Lavinge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagvExF-ijc&safe=active

Blink-182

Blink-182 are an american pop-punk band that formed in 1992. They spearheaded a new wave of the pop-punk genre in the late 90's that brought the genre into the mainstream with their 1999, album Enema of the state.
The bands image shows quite clearly that they are in all ways a pop-punk band. They way they dress is unique to them and makes them stand out from the crowd, the music they write and play stick to the roots of the pop-punk genre with its fast, loud guitars and it's catchy pop lyrics.


Contacting the Artist

As a group we have decided that we are going to do our project using the song Don't Leave Me by Blink -182. I have sent an e-mail to the band explaining why we would like to use the song and asking for permission to use it.

We are currently waiting for a reply.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Pop-Punk Video Research


Pop-Punk is a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars.

Sum-41 - Fatlip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMX2lPum_pg

This song is a perfect example of the Pop-Punk genre because it shows examples of stereotypical punks and how they behave. The music video also consists of band shots where the band are either playing their instruments or dancing about with the other people in the video.


Fall Out Boy - My songs know what you did in the dark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkIWmsP3c_s

This songs and band is an example of modernized pop-punk where they no longer take interest in the history of punk and just use catchy melodies to get higher sales rates.
As the band has strayed so far from the roots of pop-punk the music video has more in common with mainstream pop than any other genre. An example of how it has strayed from the roots of pop-punk is at the start when it uses very smooth camera work whereas all other pop-punk videos use more shaky realistic camera work to put across how edgy and cool they are.  Another example of this would  be how there are no band shots in the video.
This is why I think it is a bad example of a pop-punk band/video.

 
Paramore - Ignorance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH9A6tn_P6g&safe=active

It is obvious that this music video is pop-punk because of the vast amount of band performances with its edgy style. The fast paced editing and the shakey, but effective, camerawork help to put across the rebeliouse side that every pop-punk band should have. This rebeliouse side is reinforced by the lead singer, Hayley Williams, dancing about on a table holding a light bulb really close to her face in a darkened room.









Research Task

Research Links

Brief

For this project we have been asked to make a music video, a magazine advertisement and a digipack (album cover, track list ect.) for a band.