TRACK CHOICE

We have decided to produce our music video to the song 'Little Black Submarines' by The Black Keys.
The track is from the American Rock Band's seventh studio album 'El Camino' released in 2011. This track ties in well with my research and my understanding of music videos due to it being in the alternative rock genre. The song starts with an acoustic element, but soon turns into the stereotypical conventional alternative rock music video. At this moment in time, my work partner and I can imagine a music video with a narrative, from the point of view of a male young adult, but also include a performance , to test our syncing skills.

WHAT IS GENRE?

I have created this prezi in an ironic record player design to carry on the music video theme. I have targeted the 5 main genres that are most commonly used in the industry to date, and have gone through them explaining how they have developed through time and where they originated. Some people are quite unsure of the word genre and its meaning, i have explained it clearly so people can get a good understanding of convenions and now have a better idea when watching a music video of the narrative and how it waves into the 'genre'.

CHOSEN GENRE

ALTERNATIVE ROCK

Alternative Rock is a genre under the umbrella of Rock. Alternative Rock is more so associated with an Indie genre.

The name "alternative rock" essentially serves as an umbrella term for underground music that has emerged in the wake of punk rock since the mid-1980s. Throughout much of its history, alternative rock has been largely defined by its rejection of the commercialism of mainstream culture, although this could be contested ever since some of the major alternative artists have achieved mainstream success or co-opted with the major labels from the 1990s onwards. 

Bands associated with Alternative Rock include:

• REM
• Joy Division
• U2
• The Smiths
• Radiohead
• Pulp
• The Strokes
• The Stone Roses
• Blur 
• Green Day
• Razorlight and many more

HISTORY OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

The Music Industry began in the 18^th century when formal composition became popular and music was printed with support from the churches. It became an industry because people bought the printed music and because musical artists began to seek commercial opportunities to market their music and performances to the general public. For example when Mozart died his wife made money through a series of memorial concerts and by selling his manuscripts. She also created a biography to sell on his behalf. In the 19^th century the music sheet music publishers dominated industry.

The recording of musical performances started in the late 1880’s, however, the onset of widespread radio broadcasting started in the 1920’s, changing the way we heard music forever.

Opera houses, concert halls, and clubs continued to produce music and perform live, but the power of radio allowed obscure bands to become popular on a nationwide and sometimes worldwide scale.

The "record industry" eventually replaced the sheet music publishers as the industry's largest force. A mass of record labels came and went. Some note-worthy labels of the earlier decades include the Columbia Records, Decca Records and many others.

 The present music industry developed around the middle of the 20th century, when records had replaced sheet music as the largest player in the music business: in the commercial world, people began speaking of "the recording industry" as a substitute of "the music industry".

Along with their abundant businesses, a large majority of this market for recorded music is controlled by three major corporate labels: the French-owned Universal Music Group, the Japanese-owned Sony Music Entertainment and the US-owned Warner Music Group.

The music industry has been undertaking radical changes since the arrival of widespread digital distribution of music. A noticeable display of this is total music sales: since 2000, sales of recorded music have dropped off significantly while live music has increased in prominence.

Rise of the Digital Distribution

Despite increasing digital sales, the largest record labels have all reported a sizeable deterioration in overall proceeds from sales of recorded music to customers in the first decade of the 21st century.

In response to the growth of extensive illegal file sharing, the record industry took destructive legal action. In 2001 it succeeded in shutting down Napster, and threatened legal action against thousands of individuals who participated. However, this failed to slow the decline in revenue and proved a public-relations disaster.

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS - Howlin' for you

This music video acts as a film trailer, with a narrator and actors talking through it. However it is not an actual film trailer but just acts like one. It starts with a narrator saying “Her name is Alexia Wolf, a sexy assassin with a troubled past.” This already links to the lyrics as the title “howling for you” relates to her surname, Wolf. Whether she is the one who is ‘howling’ for someone out of anger or others are ‘howling’ for her out of love is not yet explained in the video.

Throughout this narrative it shows her as a little girl, her father making medieval era weapons and then her father being killed. When this happens she drops her toy dinosaur and runs for her life, as the murderer of her father picks up the toy dinosaur.  It then shows her as an adult looking focused and angry. The narrator says “Now this kittens all grown up, and the claws are coming out” also relating to the title as howling and claws are words both related to wild animals, especially wolves, which links to her surname yet again.

We then see her having sexual intercourse with a long haired man who afterwards says “That was amazing.” She turns and looks at him infuriated and then there is a shot of some chains and another of the male characters fist tightly clenching until it goes limp. We then discover that he is dead, but throughout this we also realize he is not the murderer of her father as there is little resemblance between the two. She stands at the door and says “you’re welcome” in retaliation to his comment about the sexual intercourse earlier. During this scene the narrator says “Bad guys beware, she’ll bang you, but then she’ll hang you.”

The lyrics of the first chorus that play throughout this first part of the video go “I must admit, I can’t explain, any of these thoughts racing through my brain, it’s true, baby I’m howling for you.” At first, looking at these lyrics alone would lead someone to believe they’re about a person and that the theme is love. When watching the music video however, it becomes apparent that the lyrics meaning can vary. Alexia Wolf ‘can’t explain the thoughts in her brain’ because she witnessed her father dying and anyone going through an experience like that has a tidal wave of thoughts and emotion that can’t be easily deciphered even by the person feeling and thinking them. Now the narrative starts to edge more towards her ‘howling for you’ out of anger, ‘you’ being the man who killed her father.

“There’s something wrong, with this plot, the actors here, have not got a clue, baby I’m howling for you.” These are the lyrics to the second verse, which could relate to her lying to the ‘actors’ as they ‘don’t have a clue’ that she is planning to kill them. ‘Actors’ could refer to all the characters as the music video is clearly supposed to be a film trailer but doesn’t seem to be 100% serious, especially towards the end where it seems to become more of a parody.

The next few shots show her meeting a man and the two having passionate sex. Instead of looking at this man in anger she seems to look at him affectionately. When the narrator says “She vowed never to love,” we see her standing in front of a glass case which contains her dinosaur that was taken by the murderer of her father. Then the narrator speaks again. “But when she falls for the same man who killed her father…” It now becomes clear that this man she has just fallen in love with is in fact her father’s murderer. We are then introduced to a new character. He is an African-American man who is dressed as a priest. He makes a motion with his hand to another suited African-American man as if to say “stop” or “quiet.” He says to the other man “wow! It’s about to go down.”

We then see a montage of lots of different scenes that would be in the fictional film as the song lyrics go into a chant “Nana nana na, nana nana na”. The video seems to stick to a spaghetti western theme with some modern touches such as a female protagonist. A few shots in we see Alexia vow to ruin her father’s murderer’s life and cuts his eye. The rest of the montage now appears to involve him seeking revenge on Alexia for his eye. A handful of new characters are seen throughout, most of which seem to be hunting down the protagonist Alexia Wolf, such as an Asian cowboy, a female dressed in black leather with two knives and a rather large man muscular man. However amongst these characters is a young girl who looks much like the protagonist. This characters is not explained but in my opinion she could be one of two things. Most likely she a fellow assassin and friend or relative of Alexia’s. Looking deeper into the narrative she could even be something more symbolic such as the physical embodiment of Alexia’s conscience or revenge that only she sees. The two African American’s seem to play a big role in the story as they are seen in many of the shots throughout the rest of the video.

“Mocking bird, can’t you see, little girls got a hold on me like glue, baby I’m howling for you.” This line could be interpreted as coming from the villain’s perspective. The little girl he’s referring to could be Alexia as when he first met her when killing her father she was only a child. She has a ‘hold on him like glue’ because she took his eye, and he cannot rest until he takes revenge. Revenge is in this circumstance an emotional ‘glue.’

“Throw the ball, to the stick, swing and miss, catcher’s mitt, strike 2, baby I’m howling for you.” To me this comes across as a comparison between the villain’s hunt for Alexia and a baseball game. He’s trying to score a home run against her to beat her but continuously misses, just like he tries to have her murdered numerous times but fails.

Then the more comedic and parody based part of the video comes in. Alexia sits at a table with the other female assassin. She says “He wasn’t my first love.” The other female asks a question out of surprise “There was one before!?” to which she receives the answer “No, two.” Again the chanting chorus starts and we are introduced to two more characters. These are played by the two men that make up the band ‘The Black Keys.” They are dressed in stereotypical Mexican clothes (although they are not actually Mexican).

We now see another montage of action clips but this time the narrator introduces the actors who play the characters. A lot of the actor and director names seem fictional;

“Chris Marss Pilero
Trisha Helfer

Sean Patrick Flannery

Corbin Bernson

Diora Baird

Christian Serratos

Sir Todd Bridges”

The Narrator then introduces the band. “And introducing Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach as ‘Las Teclas De Negro.” This means the band name ‘The black Keys”

In Spanish. The music video finally ends with the narrator saying “She’s howling for love, she’s howling for revenge, she’s howling for you.” 

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS - Everybody Hurts

The video begins on a road, making it seem that you are a car travelling on it; therefore immediately making the audience feel like the message of the song may be aimed at them as they are made to feel a part of the video. This songs’ message acts like advice to the audience, and the video gets that advice across by showing that ‘You’re not alone’ and that there is a lot of people just like you in the world.

‘When the day is long’, are the lyrics that open the scene of a group of people inside a car. I think that a car journey has been used to symbolize the ‘long days’ that the band is describing.

The next set of lyrics; ‘and the night is yours alone’, is contradicted by what we see in the video which is a traffic jam, suggesting that even when you feel alone, there are a lot of people who will always be in the same position as you.

‘When you’re sure you’ve had enough’ is visually accompanied by the sight of a young boy with his hands against the window with the words ‘They’re all stuck’ at the bottom of the screen. This suggests that this writing we see on screen that doesn’t match the lyrics are the thoughts of the person who we see. So in this case, the boy seems ‘stuck’ himself, however he is also thinking that everybody is in the same position as him; supporting the message of the song.

This shot shows an upset woman with the ‘thought’ that nobody can see her. The lyrics ‘everybody cries’ applies to what we see, as if to tell the woman and the audience that it is okay to cry because ‘everybody cries’.

‘Everybody hurts’ is the next set of lyrics showing a young boy thinking ‘They’re going to miss me’, this suggests that it is okay to  ‘hurt’ because a lot of people do even though they don’t show it. 

The audience hears ‘Hold on’, and we are greeted with a low angle of a boy ripping pages out of a book, alongside the words ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy’ written on the screen. I believe that this means that if you ‘Hold On’ when you’re sad, you’ll eventually be happy again. Basically I believe that it suggests that joy is always around the corner, this is associated with what we see on the screen as the boy is sat on the edge of a bridge, so if he ‘Holds On’, he will remain happy.

 On the screen, we see a young boy wishing that his dad would stop singing, even though the audience will have grasped of the message that ‘Everybody Hurts’, therefore showing that the boy is one of the many people who struggle in everyday life. The lyrics for this scene still apply to this boy’s story of him wanting his dad to stop singing, and the lyrics tell us ‘When you think you’ve had enough of this life’, telling the audience that the boy wishes that he had a different life.

Throughout the music video, each shot shows each individual story of the people stuck in the traffic jam. I believe this to have been a clever way to express narrative because even though each individual’s story is different that is making them ‘hurt’. However the message of the song is that even though everybody is different, ‘everybody hurts’ in the same way, proving that you are never alone so everybody needs to stick together.

This music video has been analysed due to the significance I am looking to include in my video also; how it tackles everyday problems and lets people know they are not alone. I am looking to use this theme in my music video also because it is not that much of a recurring theme, there is a lot more to come from it. 

SKILLS AUDIT

The Personal Skills Audit is a review of the G321 Coursework Portfolio, which I completed as part of the AS Media course in my previous year at college.

The skills audit examines what skills I gained and how these skills developed and helped my in the production of my group’s Film Noir film. The skills audit also shows how I plan to improve these skills at A2.