What Music means to me

Children - Robert Miles



This track was what got me into the dream trance genre. When I was about 7 or 8, I spent a lot of my time on the computer while listening to this track. I feel as though this track defines my childhood because of its constant beat. There are many different threads in this track, they all go in different directions, but the beat is always there, keeping it on track, binding it together into a coherent piece of music. I can apply that to my childhood, as I always to slack off, but my Mum would keep me working so that I'd do well in school. I appreciate the efforts now.


Somewhere I belong - Linkin Park



This song reflects my early teenage life. I felt really lonely because I was so socially awkward (and still am). I didn't feel like a part of any group so I was on my own for most of my time. I'm sure that there were attempts to befriend me but I didn't understand how the friendship dynamic worked and I just felt that no one liked the stuff I did or understood why I was how I was. I wanted to find my place in society. This song describes my desire perfectly. It was also one of the first ever Linkin Park songs I listened to. My friend brought over the Meteora CD one day and I was hooked instantly.

Firework - Katy Perry



Firework is a song that I feel reflects my life currently. I feel as useless and lonely as I did in my young teens, but now I have a glimmer of hope, mostly provided by my art and my friends. There's a future in sight for me now and everything is slowly coming together. If I can put my talents to good use, then I'll never want for use again. One of the problems I have right now that the song covers is my lack of self confidence. I don't think I'm good at anything, it's especially hard when my Mum keeps comparing me to people who work harder than I do, or people who just have more talent than I. It's kind of depressing, but I just have to keep my spirits up.

Album cover research

Linkin Park album covers are always interesting. The band is well known for its nu-metal and alternative rock songs. Their style of music is suggested through the album covers, for example, the first album cover, Hybrid Theory, consists of a soldier with dragonfly wings. The idea behind this was to describe the blending of hard and soft musical elements, contrasting the outstanding red soldier to the delicate, pale wings. The use of spray paint reflects the content of the songs; frayed, uneven and broken, like the themes of isolation, disappointment and relationship failure.

The second album, Reanimation, also has a related cover. The soldier from Hybrid Theory has been replaced by a robotic version that resembles a Mobile Suit Gundam from the Gundam Wing animé that became extremely popular in the U.S prior to the release of the album. The robot has connotations of a remixed album, as the songs are remixed versions of Hybrid Theory songs.

For the Meteora album cover, spray paint is again a common theme. The album contents reflect this, which is perhaps the reason that some critics have called it nothing more than Hybrid Theory part 2. This, however, makes it easier to brand as Linkin Park. They are already well known for their nu-metal/alternative rock songs due to Hybrid Theory, allowing LP to link Meteora back to that via the spray paint. In addition, the man doing the spray painting with a gas mask is a call back to one of the songs from Reanimation; Frgt 10 (Forgotten), the music video of which features a rebellious man spraying the LP logo onto a wall.

On the other hand, while Linkin Park often shows their band members on the cover of their albums, Coldplay is more of a conceptual band than Linkin Park, with their album covers reflecting their alternate nature, despite being classified as the same genre as Linkin Park. Coldplay's first two albums, Parachutes and X&Y have a cryptic album cover, mystifying the listener. The covers raise questions about the band that aren't immediately answered, which interests the listener and persuades them to buy the album to examine the band furthur. While Parachutes has no direct reference to the songs on the album, X&Y is named after the song X&Y on the album. None of Coldplay's albums feature the band on the covers, although Parachutes has the band on the back (albeit very small)

 

As a whole, album covers are designed to sell the album, to market them to the target audience. They are there to help promote the band image, in Coldplay's case, to promote an image of mystery and indie, in Linkin Park's, to sell the band as punky and edgy. The front cover sells the artist as a whole whereas the back cover is to sell the album itself, as well as having the institutional synergy (i.e, company information, company logo, barcode etc). The back cover also has a song list, with time codes and duration of the song.

Every album cover will have the title of the album, the name of the artist and a unique image to help market it. The size of the font will depend on how well known the artist is, if it's a debut album, the name of the band will overshadow the name of the album, with the band name shrinking in the later albums, as there is less need to emphasis the artist's name. The type of font used will usually reflect the artist's nature, for example, Linkin Park's font is quite grungy earlier on, reflecting the dark themes contained within, whilst Coldplay's font is relatively plain in the earlier albums, but becomes much more extravagent and eccentric in the later albums.

Semiotic Analysis

Coldplay - The Scientist - X&Y - 2005



The Scientist is about starting over in a relationship, about a scientist who wants to rewind time to when they were still together.

The video starts are the end of the story, with Chris exhausted on a moldy old mattress. It shows him going back through an urban setting to the countryside, which suggests going back to simple times, as there is a common conception that the 'big city' is complicated and the countryside is more plain. It also suggests that life is continuing around them and that the countryside is isolated, where they're in their own world. It's implied that life is complicated after the breakup/loss. The imagery of Chris throwing away the jacket seems to suggest Chris throwing away a burden or trying to get rid of his loss. Perhaps it represents his heart. Chris sings about how "nobody said it was easy", reflecting on the difficulty and stress of breakups. The video shows how Chris loses his girlfriend in a car accident, which represents the event that splintered their relationship.

The whole video is in reverse, suggesting that Chris wishes to rewind time, undoing whatever he did wrong. The lyrics suggest that the Scientist was too busy "guessing at numbers & figures", not playing enough attention to his girlfriend. The song suggests overall that if he had another chance, he would cherish his girlfriend much more and pay more attention to her.

Scientist is very Coldplay, similar to previous songs with of love underlying many of their songs.

Group 2 Edit - Everybody Get Up

Evaluation of workshop

1. Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?

I found the workshop day enlightening and educational, not to mention fun and tiring. I had some concerns at the beginning of the day that we would be incredibly behind schedule - the first shots took over 2 hours to prepare for and shoot, but we soldiered through and managed to finish just an hour and a half behind schedule.

It was inspiring to see all the equipment that was in for the day, the track and cart, the monitor to show the camera screen in a larger resolution and the jib, I think working in the industry would be very interesting, as would daily usage of the equipment. My favourite part of the day was the whole day, sometimes chilling out and the rest jumping up and down and waving our hands around. And my impromptu nap on the crash mats outside.

2. What did you learn from participating in the workshop?

I learned that a LOT of time is needed to set up for every shot, and that you should plan for every contingency. Even with the 2 extra hours from 6 til 8, we almost ran out of time. Doing a music video shoot also takes a lot of energy; at the beginning we had a lot of energy and we had a lot more gusto than towards the end when we were all fatigued, but we pushed through the aches and kept going.

We will have to keep the spirits of our actors up when we're doing our shoots, or use ourselves as actors. I also learned that we should record full takes for every shot, because sometimes there is a piece of magic that you might miss if you just do each shot bit by bit. Lighting can make all the difference on a shoot. Having the backlights pulse from 40%-70% brightness gave a nice flashing effect and filled the shots with a hazy fog like glow.

Finally, as with the re-edit of the original music video, lipsynching is extremely tedious, but even 1 frame can make the difference between an accurate synch and a sequence that seems off for some reason. This means that most of the time in our music videos will be spent cropping footage to fit right and matching up lips to music, which we will have to plan for beforehand.

3. Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?

I was amazed by the quality of all the footage and how much it actually looked like the real thing. Our footage did not have the flashing blue strobe lights, unfortunately, but the natural wood grain diffusion gave an orange glow to our shots, which looks almost the same as the real music video. The footage from the Canon 5D MK2 however, did not pick up the light from the stage lights, which resulted in a dull grey colour in all the footage and no amount of colour correction could make it fit the rest of the footage.

I am pleased with the edit we have created, it stays true to the original music video, but it has a distinct feel of Latymer around it. Since it follows the original closely, it's pretty much exactly how I expected it to look.

4. How do you think your workshop experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?

Knowing what I've learned from this workshop, I know that there is going to be a lot of work involved in preperation and planning. We will have to keep a strict schedule so that we don't waste time working on one shot over and over again, if we have takes and it's time for the next shot, we will have to move on. Given that we know how much effort it takes to keep going through the day and keeping up the energy, we will also have to find a way to keep our actors happy and rested throughout the day, unless we use ourselves as actors, because we are more likely to remain focused than actors from outside. We will also be to lipsynch our videos more accurately after the practice we've had editing the footage we got.

Everybody Get Up re-edit

During the course of re-edit, I learned several new things, the most important of which is that every single frame counts towards the fluidity of a sequence. If even one frame is missing, then the latter clips in a music video may not match with the lyrics correctly, resulting in a misaligned video.

In addition, I learned that cutting to the beat is a very effective way to keep up the energy of the song, making a steady pulse makes it easier to enjoy and it adds to the memorability of the song. Sometimes, cutting off beat is an effective way to promote band identity, and connotes a sense of individuality, of being strange, weird and special. In contrast, the acting in the music video is done in a way that brings everyone together. As such, the editing of a song is essential to help with the feel of the music video.

Group 8 Lipsynch (Everybody Get Up - 5ive)

This is a video of our group performing a lipsynch of the song. I want to be the kid jumping off the table, but given that I have a leather jacket and know the dance routine already, it might be prudent for me to audition as one of the band members. Probably the one on the far left during the introduction walk in on stage. Whose name eludes me.