There are many very good, creative music videos that I have looked at before starting this project, and here are some examples and brief analysis to explain how effective the techniques they use are.
This is a video of the song "4 Chords" by the band The Axis of Awesome. The song itself is a compilation of a lot of other successful songs that use the same 4 musical chords. Within this video, the director, Adam Hammer and the band, try to reenact sections of the videos of the original songs, all for comedic effect (the band are a comedy-rock band, and use humour for all of their songs). They use a white background - which makes it easier to transition between songs/the action because the pace to the song is quite fast, so the action needs to happen in time to the music and switch onto the next section as the lyrics alter. They use a basic costume of black t-shirts which contrast with the white background, which puts all of the emphasis upon them. This also helps when more costumes and props (relevant to the original videos) are brought into the shots, to differentiate the song various lyrics - a clear flow to the video. Also, they use certain effects, such as the slowing down of the two shot of Lee and Jordan (whilst Benny sings the lyrics from The Calling's "Wherever You Will Go) because it references the original video for that song, where they slowed down some of the motion to emphasise the action. The intertextuality of all of the original music videos make this video particularly special and memorable. I will be looking to use a few pieces of intertextuality from other media texts, not just music videos, but film and television also, in order to grab the audience.
This video is of "Pork And Beans" by Weezer. In this video, the key grabbing feature is that it consists of a vast amount of internet sensations which are current and very popular with the youth of today. This helps to engage with a new, younger audience that the band hasn't always appealed to, despite their family-friendly reputation. With the purposes of the video being to entertain the audience, and also a secondary purpose to promote the band itself, it is very important that it grabs the audience and either makes them laugh or keeps their attention for the duration of the whole song. The variety of viral video stars that appear in the video help to do this, but also the shot types, and particularly the transitions and movement to the different characters. An especially great transition, is from 0.36-0.39, where a man in one shot, from the experiment piece throws safety goggles out of the shot, only to land in the next shot, on an animated viral character. This smooth transition is very cleverly edited to link the shots - and in turn linking them all together, to get the main theme and moral of the song, which can be summed up with on section of the lyrics - "I'm 'a do the things that I want to do - I ain't got a thing to prove to you". The whole idea about getting all of these very unique and popular people/talents together in one place helps to get that moral across - celebrating all things that are different and originalities. This use of making the moral a very key feature in the music video is something that I am very keen to emulate.
This video is an official alternate music video for "The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars, starring Leonard Nimoy. The song is about feeling lazy and not doing much. Because Leonard Nimoy is an actor widely associated with his role in Star Trek, as Spock, there is a lot of Star Trek intertextuality, namely the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" hand gesture and also in particular, the sequence of shots showing Nimoy watching television, with his former Star Trek co-star William Shatner on every channel as he flicks through, so he turns the TV off (despite them having a good, long-standing friendship in real life - their on-screen characters didn't always see eye to eye). The video does not directly depict the narrative of the song, however, it does use a narrative to portray a similar lazy day. In the video Bruno Mars is not directly starring in it (although does make a cameo outside of the supermarket) and there is no shots of him singing the lyrics (although in the official main version to the video, he does). This is a technique that I will be looking to take for my production; to create a narrative to portray the theme/moral of the song without including the band, making a character that the audience can relate to, or on some emotional level, connect to. For example in this video, as a viewer I relate to the notion of not wanting to do much some days, and being lazy. I think that this type of video is quite effective, this video has currently over 5.2 million hits.
This video is "Last Leaf" by OK Go. OK Go are established as a band who use viral marketing from their unique and impressive music videos. Part of the impressive nature of the videos are the fact that they are performed in one lengthy shot - with no cutting or editing such as their videos for "This Too Shall Pass" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w) and "Here It Goes Again" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA&ob=av2e) which both of these are very effective in captivating an audience and providing fantastic entertainment and admiration. This video for "Last Leaf" in particular, has a creative method of capturing the audiences' attention through telling a narrative that links to the story in the lyrics of the song from artwork on slices of bread. After watching that for the first time, I was so intrigued by it, I watched it again, and then watched other videos by the band, which is what they want - gaining views and promoting themselves through their videos. The production of the "Last Leaf" video will have taken a large amount of time to prepare, with 215 loaves of bread being use - with a lot of slices needing to get engraved with the images. Also the filming, done by taking stills of each piece of the story, will have taken a lot of time to prepare the shot with the right slice, take the shot, then do the same for the next - it would have been very time consuming an require a great deal of patience. I wouldn't try to create something like this because I wont have the time to film it, or have the artistic ability to draw/engrave anything on any material.
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