Music Video, Imagery and Hyper-Realisim. Fun times!

I got a chance to do some reading this week on the topic of music video and got some insight what makes it special, and from what I have read it gives great insight on why it is so very special.

 From reading three different chapters about it in Kevin Williams’ book, “Why I Want My MTV” I have determined that they all share a common theme. That theme is that music video is a form of expression that transcends just plain sights and sounds. It takes from those elements and combines them into something completely new, and the possibilities are only as limited as the creators mind is. Images, colors, light and dark, and even camera angles all interact in various ways with the music they are paired with. The result is an evolution and fusion between sight and sound, and the manifestation of this inspiring art form.

In chapter 5, the reading discusses how music video deviates from traditional cinematic filmmaking that includes narratives and plots and instead focuses on relating imagery, culture and symbolism to the viewer in a nonlinear format, relying on the music and images to convey the determined style, all the while trying to emulate pop culture.

A good way of summing up chapter 5 would be the concept of  “Musical-visuality is thus the interplay and interpenetration of sights and sounds, music and visuals whereby sights dance to the sounds of music and sounds appear visually.” a quote coming directly out of that chapter.

Chapter 6 continues expand on the concept of visual literacy and how our society has already determined what certain images mean and how to associate them to real life scenarios and how music video seeks to take what is familiar in a certain context and morph them into another entity. This allows practically everything to be used as ammo for the music video creator and nothing is out of their grasp. All is fair in the world of music video and nothing has to obey the rules of the rational world. Understanding this idea opens the door to a greater level of creative expansion.

This leads me to chapter 7. This chapter mostly discusses realism and hyper-reality; something that I find is the best thing about music video. It is here that music video shines at being a truly wonderful form of entertainment and communication. It takes the ideas that all these chapters have been discussing and meshes them together, using hyper-reality and what we know about realism as the glue.

It is here where we can really take all the things that reality has dubbed as something and make it something completely different. It can be as comical, explanative, obscene, confusing, metaphorical, or as symbolic as we want and we wouldn’t be wrong. This is the beauty of music video and visual literacy. Music and imagery together are great by themselves, but when orchestrated properly, they can speak ideas and thoughts they couldn’t separately.

All these different ideas about musical-visuality, non-linear narratives and style and association are all concepts that work integrate together perfectly to create some great art and without them, music video would either not exist or be really lame.     

Music Video Update

While we don't have any written material yet to provide, my partner Brett and I have discussed what our plan of attack is for our video. We plan to get an acoustic setup for 2 of the band members from Strikeout Kid preforming their song, 5:33, to do an audio recording of the song first, then shoot section 1 of the video in the studio.

The actual music video will consist of shots of the band playing from the studio (Section 1 as I call it) and shots outside the studio that depict the video's story which we still have yet to draw out Section 2).

We plan on beginning this process this tuesday and hope to provide updates regularly.

If we finnish this video in a good amount of time and have some extra left over, we want to shoot an experimental video with whatever song we can legally get our hands on. This would be just for the heck of it, which I figured was a great time to test out different techniques and ideas and just get a better feel for editing and adding effects.  

Audio Tech? I Like the Sound of That!

As the title partially implies, if I were to be part of a television studio, I would love to be part of the sound team in some form. Sound design would be my primary choice with audio operator being my second

 I am very well aware of sound's ability to make a production sink or swim  and I realize that without sound, visuals in almost any form are left lifeless.  A commercial without sound is just a car driving down the road or an ocean that just says "I'm just a body of water. Theres no fun here." A show with poor audio quality is doomed to mediocrity, and a movie with improper music scores can confuse and disconnect with an audience.

Courtesy of Matthew Keefe

While the effects of poor sound design and audio recording can be detrimental to any production, sound work that is well done can bring that same production to the next level. Stories and emotions can be expressed ten times better and good scoring can immerse the viewers into another a world in cinema. 

I have found that bad sound is noticed way more than good sound in todays media saturated world. If a program has a well produced musical track with clean audio levels on mics and cool sound effects, the viewers will probably end up saying, "Wow, that was a good show." They might talk to their friends about how awesome the show "looked" since television is primarily a visual medium and they might not even say anything about the sound, which is a good sign to me since I find it usually registers on a subconscious level for most. It's all to easy though to find an auditory mistake, and those mistakes tend to be the most off putting  for a viewer. 

Sound design and audio engineering is an art form to me, and I hope to work hard in these fields and hopefully master them someday. I am very fortunate to be a Communications major at Shepherd University and with the experience I am getting, I am confident that I will be prepared to put my skills to the test in the future.  

   

Experiencing the Studio

When it comes to education and learning, I am a firm believer that experience and hands-on training supersedes bookwork and lecturing, at least on a personal level. I find that when I get the opportunity to see the equipment for myself and have things explained to me as I actively work, I learn things faster and they actually stick, and this is what I love about working in the studio.

My favorite thing to do so far has either been doing sound or operating the camera.  Working with audio is something that I am extremely interested in so learning more about it in an interactive environment has been great. In addition to sound, I have taken a strong liking to video work, so getting in some time behind the camera, especially one of the studio's caliber, has also been a great experience.  

The only thing I really didn't like doing was being the director/producer. I have a good eye for what looks good in frame and on screen, but I don't multi-task well enough to call out shots, look at setting up shots farther down the line and then trying to tell the switcher and the camera operators what to do next.

If I had to pick something that I wanted to learn to do better, I would say directing and working at the soundboard more often. Both of these positions are critical to making a great program and being proficient at them would be a great asset to me and my Communications career. Overall, being in the studio has been a fulfilling experience and I look foreword to learning as much as possible.

Music Video Preproduction: Just Half of the Fun!

Music videos are not created simply on a whim. They require careful preparation, creative planning and foresight, and my video is no exception. Taking into consideration my resources and time to produce this, I have come up with a few different ideas for my music video.

My buddy's debut album. Check it out!

1. My first choice would be to use one of the songs a friend of mine has made to use for my video. His band, Asoflate, makes really good indie type music that is very well produced and musically executed and I would love to do a video for him. This wouldn't be the first time I have worked with his material. I made a 30 second kinetic typography video for him last semester so a music video would probably be something he would be excited about. The only problem here is that he lives all the way in Texas and would obviously not be able to appear in the video so it would have to be a story driven video without the musician present.

2. For this idea, I would shoot a music video to one of my sister's original compositions. She plays the acoustic guitar and sings, so getting footage should be quite simple since I wouldn't have to drag a whole band around everywhere. It's also a plus since we live in the same house, so again, I have that convenience of shooting almost anytime I want.

As for as specific ideas go, I really don't have one. I'm a big fan of developing a general story line and story board for a project, but as for as things like camera angles, editing and location of the shoot, I usually figure out as I go and let the ideas just come to me. Sometimes I find trying to sit down and concentrate on all the elements tends to stifle my creativity. I now devote half of of my creative energy to my impulsive intuition and the other half to strategic planning and coordination and we'll see how it goes from there.  

Swiss army syllabus.

So, the last blog I did I wrote about how awesome the COMM 333 syllabus was, aka, the “Music Video Syllabus.” Since the COMM 360 syllabus is similar in it’s content and layout, I will avoid repetition by discussing the different elements the Studio Production has.

This syllabus starts just like most syllabi by talking about all the usual class stuff, like: who, what, when, where and why thing in section 1 of the syllabus. It then moves onto section 2, which like the COMMM 333 syllabus, talks about podcasts, blogging and other communications related topics in an informative fashion, explaining to the reader the basic instructions to these realms.

From here, starting in section 3, the syllabus begins to mention the importance of critical and creative thinking and provides insight on how that relates to new media and the mindsets that governs it. Section 3 also provides some excellent charts that amplify the point like Bloom’s Taxonomy, which explains cognation levels and matches them with certain levels of education as demonstrated below.

E.S.A.A.C.K. = Best acronym ever.

Section 5 briefly goes over some concepts such as: critical and creative thinking, oral and written communication, quantitative and information literacy, collaboration and teamwork, problem solving, multiculturalism, and ethical reasoning and practices.

Ultimately, it feels like even though there is not to much information on the advanced production aspect of this class as I would like, this syllabus still does a great job at giving students a different angle of looking at production and the thought process that goes behind a television show or an advertisement or whatever it is that we are working. It’s one thing to have a good understanding of the technical inner-workings of a field of study, but I feels like it is of equal importance to have a solid understanding of higher thought processes, such as creative and critical thinking, problem solving and learning about how to get your ideas to relate to your audience.  

 

It's not a class syllabus. It's a career syllabus.

It's the first day of class and you have just arrived at your class. You take your seat along side your fellow students and your professor hands out the 8 page syllabus that most of us usually cram into our backpacks after the first week of class, never to be seen again. Normally, a syllabus consists of the same standard information that every student has probably memorized by now at least in terms of layout. It has information on what class you're in, what time its at, who your professor is, a calendar, and what you can and can't do. Thats about it, but not the Music Video syllabus. The COMMM 333 syllabus is not a normal syllabus.

While other syllabi tend to just give you basic info regarding the class, the COMM 333 syllabus not only provides the information a student needs to know about the class, but it looks beyond that and covers information that relates to the student and his or her education in the world of communications that the student can use outside of of class, and that's the best thing about the syllabus. If a student needs advice on a subject relative to the class, they can always refer back to their electronic syllabus and get some quality information on things. For example, starting on page 23: blogging, podcasting, critical thinking and even common sense in the digital world. This is something that I have never seen before in any classroom environment, or at this caliber at least, but as a student, I am really impressed by the amount of effort that my professor went through to ensure that we get, what I am now calling a, "Career Syllabus." I call it that because even though it is still a syllabus for a particular class, it is also a resource that is applicable to the job hunting world.

Page 24 from the syllabus.

This syllabus is a great tool for a students, especially freshmen, who may not be as familiar with the Mass Communications world. They now have the basic information they need to create good quality content for whatever medium they're working in. Even students who do know a lot about the comm field can still benefit from this syllabus, including myself.