Changes to Music Videos

There have been many changes to the music video over the years. The three types of music video are performance based (where the main focus of the video is the artist singing), narrative (fragmented, never complete) and concept based (mainly focuses on society's issues, such as drugs, alcohol and sex). The main purposes of music videos are to promote the artist, increase sales, entertainment and to create a relationship between the artist and the consumer.

Conceptual based music videos range from Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles to Where is the Love? by Black Eyed Peas. Video Killed the Radio Star is a performance and concept based video, and is critical of the up and coming music video industry and how society believed it would kill the radio industry. Many of the shots are closeups of the performers and it included animated overlays. Where is the Love? is a performance, conceptual and narrative video. It focuses on racism, gang crime, pollution, war, religion and beliefs. One of the shots shows the Statue of Liberty, which is a symbol of freedom for America; yet despite this, America is one of the worst places for racism and racist attacks. The song is still relevant today, demonstrated by the lines "But if you only have love for your own race / Then you only leave space to discriminate" and "Nations droppin' bombs / Chemical gasses fillin' lungs of little ones / With the ongoin' sufferin' as the youth die young / So ask yourself is the lovin' really gone". The difference between these two videos is mainly the style. They both may be conceptual, but Video Killed the Radio Star uses a lot of animation, whereas Where is The Love? uses a lot of wide shots and closeups of the artists.

Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles

Where Is The Love? - Black Eyed Peas

An example of a narrative music video is Young Volcanoes by Fall Out Boy. It uses a lot of short, quick shots, both a mix of medium shots and wide shots. The storyline is mainly based around the kidnapping and drugging of four men, who are served red wine, blood and food by a group of women. The drugs ensure that the men hallucinate that the entire affair is a party, when in reality, they are being tortured. Like most narratives, the story is left unfinished, however, the music video is third in a series of eleven, so the viewer has a chance to see what happens next. The video isn't just a narrative, as it also includes one of the men singing, however, the majority is a narrative. The song juxtaposes to the darkness of the video, as the lyrics and music are relatively upbeat. Another narrative/performance music video is Material Girl by Madonna. The song details a woman who is extremely materialistic and is followed around by many men who shower her in gifts. A lot of the performance is a voyeuristic Madonna surrounded by a group of men that are giving her gifts, however, the narrative follows her falling for the guy who has nothing, showing that she isn't all materialistic. It uses a lot of sharp cuts between narrative and performance, effectively showing the story. This music video was a forerunner in changing the style of videos. These videos are extremely different, more so than Where is the Love? and Video Killed the Radio Star, since one is dark in nature and one is upbeat and bright.

Young Volcanoes - Fall Out Boy

Material Girl - Madonna

Rockin All Over The World by Status Quo is a performance style music video. It uses closeups and medium closeups of the band performing the song on stage, which is typical of an early music video. Another performance music video is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. It uses closeups of the four members before zooming out to show the members on stage. A lot of the following shot types are closeups of Freddie Mercury's face, as well as medium closeups of the other members. Performance based music videos haven't changed much over the years, except for the addition of conceptual and narrative scenes. 

Rocking All Over The World - Status Quo

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

Music videos started off as performance, before Video Killed the Radio Star (which is considered to be the first music video that wasn't fully performance) introduced concepts. From there on, with the introduction of narrative, music videos have become something that everyone is used to, a vast contrast to the days when people thought they would kill the radio industry. A lot more money also goes into creating a music video these days, before, the majority were under $500,000, with the exception of Scream by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson (it cost between $7,000,000 and $11,7454,141).

Photos

Closeup

This photo represents the emotion that can be seen in a dog's eyes and how the eyes are the window to the soul.

Medium Shot

This photo represents the freedom of a wild animal.

Wide Shot

This photo represents freedom and tranquility of water. It also represents life, since water is essential to living. 

 

What I learnt when making an advert

 

When making this advert, I learnt how hard it is to make all the elements work together. For example, the picture of the swan was quite dark originally, and the writing wouldn't show up properly. I had to lighten the picture quite a lot in order for it to make it work. I also learnt that some elements just don't go well together. I originally had some pictures of flowers in the background behind David Attenborough that I had to remove due to it not looking right.

Context in the Media (Historical and Cultural)

 

 

The Daily Mail Online has chosen to use this image due to it successfully conveying the unrest in American politics right now. They used a reference to an elite person, which is usually seen as more newsworthy, as well as major negativity. A lot of the world are watching the elections, so to know that Trump wants to stop the counting is scary. By reporting this, they target Americans that live in the UK and want to keep track of the elections. Historically, the Daily Mail are right-wing leaning and supported fascists such as Hitler and Mussolini and although Trump isn't technically a fascist, he shares some ideas with Hitler. Culturally, the Daily Mail is a tabloid and has many tabloid conventions, such as a very dramatic and emotionally charged headline - despite the subject being more serious. 

This is the same event but reported by The Guardian. They have chosen to use a less emotionally charged and dramatic headline and report it in a sensible fashion. The Guardian is a left-wing broadsheet, so everything they report is serious. The headline "US elections 2020: Biden holds lead over Trump in tense wait for results" is informative and factual, and the picture they have chosen to use shows a white man yelling at a black person, which is stereotypically considered to be a thing that Trump supporters do. Culturally, The Guardian has chosen to report this as it's a current affair that will affect everyone.

Fun With Fonts

This font could represent something written in blood due to the trails underneath it.

This font would be good for Christmas due to the snow on top.

This font looks like movement and would be good for a action movie.

First Elements 11 Practical

 

Online News Consumption

Despite TV remaining the most used platform for news by adults in the UK, it has decreased to 75% in 2019 from 79% from 2018. Online media usage has increased to 49% from 44%, as it is the most popular platform for media consumption for 16-24 year olds. 

BBC One was the most used news source in 2018 (58%), compared to ITV (40%) and Facebook (35%), yet they saw a decrease in views in 2019. Use of social media platforms increased. There's evidence that UK adults are consuming more news from social media, commenting on apps like Twitter and Facebook. However, magazines and TV are still more trustworthy than social media.

Six in ten 12-15 year olds are interested in news, as they wish to know about the world around them. The only reason some children don't watch the news is because it's "too boring". TV is the most popular platform for 12-15 year olds, with BBC One/BBC Two remaining the most-used sources. TV, family and radio are seen as the most truthful, with social media and friends seen as the least.

In 2019, 73% of people interviewed used Facebook for news, down from the 76% in 2018. It was the only popular social media platform to decrease in usage, with platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat increasing. 16-24 year olds and ethnic minorities are more likely to use social media, with the exception of Facebook. Men are more likely to use WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit for their news, whereas women are more likely to use Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. Those using social media for news get it from posts instead of directly from websites and apps run by news organisations.

     News consumption in 2020

Heaven by Emeli Sande

 Narrative: 

The music video follows around various people going about their daily lives, for example, there was a woman in a red dress going down some stairs, a man in a blue jacket sat in a doorway, an old man with a white beard and a girl in a taxi.

Shot type: long

Shot type: wide

 Shot type: medium

Stranger Things

Stranger Things is a Netflix original series based in Hawkins, Indiana, in 1983. 

Season 1 episode 1 starts with a laboratory in the middle of the woods and a man in a lab coat running down a hallway. He is pushing the buttons to get the lift to come to him and as it arrives something growls and we never see him again.

After that, we are introduced to some of the main characters: Michael, Will, Lucas and Dustin. They are sat in Michael's basement, playing a fantasy RPG and Michael's mother comes to tell them that they need to go home. Will and Dustin go biking home, deciding to race. Will pulls away and finds himself in the woods near the lab. He hears something and runs home, but is soon taken the mysterious thing.

A young girl with shaved hair, wearing a hospital gown, is introduced after she wanders into a diner. She has a tattoo of the number 11 on her arm which she claims is her name. She stops a fan from spinning using her mind and appears to be a lab experiment. The scene changes to the boys deciding to search for Will since the police were unsuccessful in finding him. They then stumble upon Eleven in the woods, who says she can hear Will breathing. The scene changes again to Will's mother Joyce on the phone to a static line with growling. The phone surges with electricity and Joyce is burnt and the episode finishes. 

Stranger Things was originally called Montauk as it was based there, however, the writers decided it would be too hard to film in winter. The Montauk Projects inspired the writers to write Stranger Things. Before being picked up by Netflix it was rejected 15 times by different networks. 906 boys and 307 girls auditioned and Stephen King was the one who found Millie Bobby Brown.

Netflix is currently the streaming service with the largest subscriber count, however 41% don't pay for their account due to account sharing. It was founded in 1997 and launched in 1998 and was the first streaming service to be available as an app on multiple devices. As of April 2020 Netflix is worth $162 million.

Setting: the boys in the basement of Michael's house
Costume: various dark coloured clothing
Shot type: wide

Setting: a house or a hotel
Costume: blue work jacket, yellow phone on the wall
Shot type: medium close-up

Setting: kitchen of a diner
Costume: hospital gown 
Shot type: wide

First Photography Shoot

 

 Closeup on the thistles.

Wide shot of a castle near Beeston Castle.

Extreme wide shot of the countryside surrounding Beeston Castle.

Medium close-up of a rhinoceros. 

Medium close-up of a bovine animal.

Full shot of a chimpanzee.

Focused on flowers in front of lion.

Close-up on lioness.

Full shot on Sheffield Steelers player Ben O'Connor.

Full shot of Sheffield Steelers player Anthony DeLuca.

Deep focus on Sheffield Steelers player Alex Graham.

The Guardian

 

Launched in 1821 by John Edward Taylor, The Guardian (then The Manchester Guardian) is known for being one of the oldest running Sunday papers and its emotionally loaded headlines. The paper caters towards an educated, left-leaning, middle class 18+ audience, with 72% of readers identifying as liberal, in contrast to the 20% mixed and 9% conservative readers. They have always stated that they are left-wing and that they favour the left, but are generally factual. The Guardian was created during a time of worker movements and anti-corn campaigns. It has two sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly. The Guardian reinvests into journalism instead of distributing profits to owners and shareholders. 

Founder John Edward Taylor (11th September 1791 - 6th January 1844) was an editor, publisher and business tycoon. He was an apprentice under a cotton manufacturer and soon became a successful merchant. The Manchester Guardian was found using profit from trading slave grown plantation cotton. Upon Taylor's death, his nephew Charles Prestwich Scott (who was the first editor of the paper) fought to buy the paper, eventually succeeding in 1907. He was a liberal member of parliament and continued editing until 1929. 

The Manchester Guardian was a strong opposer of slavery and supported free trade. In 1860, The Observer quoted a report that the recently elected Abraham Lincoln was opposed to the abolition of slavery; however, shortly after the start of the American Civil War, they argued that the North imposed a burdensome trade monopoly on the South, claiming that if the South was freed to have trade with Europe, slavery would eventually cease. The American Civil War brought division between political parties in England. The Manchester Guardian were also split, as they had supported other independence movements, yet felt like they should support the rights of the Confederacy to self-determination. 

They criticised President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation for not freeing all American slaves and on October 10th 1862, they wrote "It is impossible to cast any reflections upon a man so evidently sincere and well-intentioned as Mr Lincoln but it is also impossible to not feel that it was an evil day for both America and the world, when he was chosen President of the United States". The newspaper reported the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. 

During the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, the paper earned a national reputation and respect of the left. George Orwell wrote in the 1938 Homage to Catalonia "Of our larger newspapers, the Manchester Guardian is the only one that leaves me with an increased respect for its honesty". Alongside the pro-liberal News Chronicles, labour supporting Daily Herald, communist party's Daily Worker and many other Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the Republican Government against General Francisco Franco's insurgent nationalists. On August 24th, 1959, the Manchester Guardian changed its name to The Guardian, reflecting the national and international issues published in the paper. It began publication in London in September 1961. 

One of the main scoops published by the newspaper was the 2011 international phone-hacking scandal, in particular the hacking of murdered teen Milly Dowler's phone. Another was the 2016 investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing then Prime Minister David Cameron's links to off-shore banking. They have won newspaper of the year four times, the last being in 2014, for reporting on government surveillance.

References:

The Guardian Wikipedia

Media Bias Fact Check

AllSides

John Edward Taylor Wikipedia

C. P. Scott Wikipedia

List of the Oldest European Newspapers

About The Guardian