Video Analysis Geri Halliwell

Here is the analysis of a video I did a while ago. We were asked to analyze this particular video as a practice, hence why it doesn't fit into the genre of our planned video.

The video begins with a track and tilt of Geri Halliwell wearing a short vest and brief pants, walking into a room towards a table of serious looking judges. Halliwell is holding a record in her hand. The opening sequence is intertextually similar to 'Flash Dance' suggesting that Geri Halliwell is there for a dance performance. The Mise En Scene also supports this image using iconography, such as the leg warmers she wears.

The camera lingers on one of the people at the table as Halliwell walks past them and a look of shock crosses his face. The position of the people suggests that they are judges, reinforcing the dance performance look.

The next scene shows her walking past one of the female judges towards a record player, another look of disgust from the judges shows the viewers that the judges are doubtful of her performance.

The audience is left with no doubt that Geri Halliwell is performing a dance sequence when she puts a record on.

The genre and setting of the video seems like an extract from a musical. Possibly Billy Elliot or Fame. The audience are unable to see the performers face until 30 seconds into the video. This lack of recognition is integral in the video as it builds up the tension, already established with the presence of the diegetic sound at the beginning of the sequence. Anticipation is continuously created by a series of fragmented body images as she begins to dance.

A music video is a vehicle for stars to promote themselves and Geri Halliwell uses this well. She recently released a Keep Fit DVD. The constant view of Geri's new figure is used to promote the effectiveness of her DVD.

Alex has done a few video analysis too, most of them are performance based. So have a quick look here and here.

Video Ideas

Here are the three videos to the songs Alex and I chose. Each one tells a story, but also has a performance in the video.

The Setting and Mise En Scene is completely different in each video, showing us that although the songs are in the same genre, the videos do not have to have any similarities.

Lyrics

Here are the lyrics to 'The Great Nothing'.

Is this your idea of killing time?
You're crushing bones with words
And to make matters worse you're still some kind of friend to us.
A man of profound history you stole away our dignity
But we're still alive, and it's all because of you.

Maybe we just understand each other,
A bit too perfectly
But now you're shouting at me through closed doors this time
Surely it's a remedy, but it's so sad to say
You're nothing to me.

Sound alarms, hold the phones, it's time we take over the town

This has never meant more to me this very inspiration
This view has never been so clear
And we're making our mark

MAYBE WE JUST... understand each other,
A bit too perfectly
But now you're shouting at me through closed doors this time
Surely it's a remedy, but it's so sad to say
You're nothing to me.

You've had your day, and we're on our feet without you.
You've had your day, and we're on our feet without you.
You've had your day, and we're on our feet without you.
(Without you)
You've had your day, and we're on our feet without you.
You've had your day, and we're on our feet without you.

So you know the lyrics, but what do they mean?

Crash Course for Collision have had a pretty rough start. Their main singer left the band, for rationale reasons, and was quite bitter about it. The lyrics reflect the pain the band went through and we hope to show some of this pain through our video.

Video Analysis of Scouting For Girls

Although our video will be a band performing, I have found a video that has both a performance based aspect and an underlying story line. The video is ‘Elvis Isn’t Dead’ by Scouting for Girls. The video begins with a close up of a suitcase and a girl packing it. We can see, in the foreground, a statue, closely resembling Elvis. Although the statue is in the foreground, it is slightly blurry. This effect is called deep focus, where the background is clearer than the foreground. This effect may suggest that the item is relevant, but not important for this particular scene.

The next shot we see is of Roy Stride (the main singer) playing the keyboard. This is important, as the beginning of the song is a keyboard.

The cuts are not long in the video, but not too fast allowing it to fit with the tempo of the music. The singing begins and the camera jumps to Roy’s face as he sings the lyrics. He constantly looks at the camera, to give the viewer’s the impression that he is singing to them. Here we see the opposite effect of Deep Focus, Shallow Focus. This is where the foreground is clear and the background is blurry, as we do not need to see it.

The video returns to the story and we see the girl take away her suitcase, leaving a bobble head statue of Elvis. Here we see a focus pull from Deep Focus to Shallow Focus. The Focus Pull is useful for directing the viewer's attention from the suitcase to the statue.

At 12 seconds into the video we see another band member (Pete Ellard) on the drums.There are three members of Scouting for Girls, however we do not see all three of them until 30 seconds into the track. This is a long time to introduce the members of the band.

Throughout the whole video, we see seven different shots of Pete Ellard playing the drums, but we only see one single shot of Greg Churchouse, the rest are of Roy, the main singer. Greg is wearing a hat and constantly looking down whenever he is in a shot with another band member. This insinuates that he may not be as an important member of the band, or perhaps that he is just shy.

We hope to include all the members of our band in our video.

The video uses Shallow Focus throughout the video as shown below where the singer is in the foreground and cannot be seen clearly and another band member is in the background in sharp focus.

A Focus Pull is seen and the opposite effect is achieved. I like this effect and hope to use it in our video.

I have also found that the camera rarely stays still when the band is performing, showing pans, tilts and zooms. This matches with the tempo of the track and ends up with a good effect.

RESTART

Alex and I have still not received an email from the acting agency and so we have decided to rethink our ideas.

After a long brainstorm and plenty of arguments, we came up with these ideas:

This Ain't a Scene - Fall Out Boy

Mr Brightside - Killers

Misery Business - Paramore

All these songs fit into a similar genre and we felt that they would be simple to interpret into a musical video. After a few lessons of discussion, we still couldn't decide on a song. Luckily our good friend Glenn Rice, chipped in and told us he has a band and asked if we'd be interested in using them and their song 'The Great Nothing'. We felt this would be a great idea as we could use the actual band and have them singing the song would make it easier for us to film.

I am going to leave the research from our previous idea on my blog, as I think it shows our ability to research. However, I removed the survey I had up as it no longer fits in with our idea and may confuse people. Although we are restarting, I felt that I should include the survey that we placed on my blog. It was a good way of researching and got our audience and classmates involved.

I am going to research some well known music videos that will be similar to ours so we can see what looks good and know what not to use.

We Need Actors!

Here is the email we sent, we're waiting for a reply!


To whomever it may concern,


Our names are Sophie Brown and Alex Newcombe and we will be producing a music video for our A2 (G324) Media Coursework.
We would like to enquire into the possibility of using 2 or 3 of your acting students in our mock music video.
The video will not be broadcasted or shown to the public, however it will be seen buy our fellow peers (for peer marking), our teacher and the examination board.
We would like to keep cost to a minimum as we feel this will give valuable acting experience. The actors will need to be between the ages of 16 and 19 and we will need 2 boys and possibly a girl (we will alert you in the near future whether this will be necessary or not). The actors will have a fair say in what they feel comfortable doing and we will gladly take to account any preconceptions they may have.


We look forward to your reply,


Sophie Brown and Alex Newcombe

Letter of Permission

We have drafted a letter of permission that we plan on sending to Island Records. We may have to change a few things, but that is the beauty of a first draft. We've both looked through it and this is what we've come up with

Dear Sir/Madam/Whomever it may concern/Island Records,

We are writing to ask permission to use the song ‘Little Lion Man’ by Mumford and Sons in our A2 (G324) Media Coursework. It is for the Advanced Portfolio in Media. If we receive permission to use this song we would attempt to create:

- A Music Video for the song
And then two of the following three options:
- A website homepage for our fictional band
- A cover for its fictional release as part of the Digipak (CD/DVD Package)
- A fictional magazine advertisement for the Digipak (CD/DVD Package)

The people used in this video will be unrelated to the band, and the video and other creations will NOT be sold or released to the public on sites such as ‘Youtube’. The only people to see this will be ourselves, our peers (for peer marking) and the examination board.

We eagerly await your reply on the matter.

Yours Sincerely/Faithfully,

Alex Newcombe & Sophie Brown

Once this has been approved, we will be able to send it to the company.

Alex and I have found it quite difficult to find people who will be willing to appear in our video, so we have resorted to emailing an acting agency. This will allow us to use actors who, will hopefully, be willing to star in our video. We have found a few agencies and will email them now.

Problem Solved

We had a bit of confusion with which company we needed to contact, regarding permission to use the song! We have managed to sort it out now!
Alex admits that he mistook the logo on the privacy policy page for the Record Label for the band. After some major research we then discovered that the record label was in fact Island Records. This left us confused as to who to contact as we now had 2 possible labels. However, whilst looking through the Island Records website we found that Mumford & Sons had only recently been signed by them and that explained why we may have seen 2 different label names. So now we know who to contact, we just have to write the letter and find an address.

Permission To Use A Song

Whilst Alex was researching Mumford and Sons, he found the Privacy Policy page on their website. It suggested that we should be trying to contact Universal Studios. However, after more research I found that Universal Studios only operate the website. More research (on Wikipedia)revealed that we should be looking at Island Records. On further inspection we found that Mumford and Sons are in fact signed to Island Records. So now we know who to write the letter to, we can begin to draft it.

So The Planning Begins!

I have just started all my planning for my coursework this year!
I will be working with Alex Newcombe (his blog is HERE)
We're going to be making an amazing music video... hopefully!
We've also planned to make a website for the band (this will be my side of things) and a cover for the CD (this will be Alex's side).
We've decided on the song 'Little Lion Man' by Mumford and Sons. Alex managed to find that Mumford & Sons are signed to Universal Studios Operations Limited so we're going to draft a letter and send it off to ask permission to use their song.
After we've done that we must:
- Find people who are willing to appear in our video. We need to ensure that they fit the genre and stereotype of the video.
- Find suitable locations and settings for our video. Again we need to find suitable locations to fit the genre.
- Plan and draw up a story board... This will be drawn by me.
- Research the genre of our video to see what makes a video of that genre popular.
Once we've completed all of this, we can begin filming. Yay!

When I heard that we would be making a music video, I looked up the definition of a music video so that our work would fit into this description.

"A music video or song video is a short video or film that accompanies a piece of music or song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos date back much further, they came into prominence in the 1980s, when MTV based their format around the medium. Prior to the 80s, these works were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional clip" or "film clip"."