Two Door Cinema Club- Undercover Martyn Music Video

This is the official video for the song 'Undercover Martyn'. It was produced by Elliot James and released on the 22nd February 2010 by the French label Kitsuné Music and Co-operative Music. This video is very experimental as it is the first time in years that a video like this has been done in a long time, but not the first of its kind so it is a great example of post modernism. 

Final song choice...

After some discussion, me and my partner Christian decided which song that we were going to use for our music video. In Wednesday's lesson we thought that our final song choice would be "Bloc Party- Banquet" but after some thought during Friday's lesson, we soon realised that it was not the right song for us. We had thought about the style that we wanted our band to be but then saw that this did not match up with the original song choice.

After thinking about what song to do even more we finally decided that we would do "Two Door Cinema Club- Undercover Martyn". We felt that we could easily work with this song as it has the vibe that we wanted and matched with the way that we wanted our band to look like. We want our band to have a kind of scruffy look to them as it is part of the indie rock vibe. We were thinking of having the clothing as skinny jeans, vans, t shirts, denim jackets etc. but this topic will still be discussed as we look further into our bands image.

Feedback for music artist presentation

Favourite Video

This is one of my favourite music videos and it is The 1975- Robbers, directed by Tim Mattia. Although it is a very recent video, I really enjoy watching it due to its narrative especially. I think the acting from the lead singer 'Matthew Healy' and the woman in the video, model 'Chelsea Schuhman' is superb and I can feel that there is a real connection between the pair in the video.

The video is about Matty and Chelsea who are lovers, who rob a shop to obtain money to fund their alcohol and drug addiction. The video shows how the drugs and alcohol sometimes affect Matty in the wrong way and he becomes tempered at times, but despite this, the love shown between the two overcomes the side effects. Near to the end of the song, when the pair go to rob the shop, Matty is shot and is instantly taken back outside by his lover to a van, driven by the rest of the band. He is being treated in the back whilst still doing drugs and the part I like about this is that the camera shows different points of the video that we had seen at the beginning which helps to explain the situation that is happening. For example, there is a blooded handprint shown on the side of their home near the beginning is re-shown when Matty is being taken back into the home and his blooded hand creates the handprint after he has been shot. This is a great use of foreshadowing in my opinion.  

History of the Music Video

History of the Music Video

The purpose of a music video is to tell a story of a piece of music through the use of visual images produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Music videos started as just small clips called "talkies" which people went to watch at the cinema. After these came about, there began to be a lot more of songs that had music videos to go with them. This included Walt Disney releasing "Fantasia" in 1940 which was an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music.

Many big singers created their own music centred films including Elvis Presley in "Rock around the Clock." The main music video that came out that inspired others to start making their own, and also setting the tone of what a modern music video should be was in 1975 when Queen released "Bohemian Rhapsody". This was seen as such an iconic music video because it was the first to use advanced technology and featured both live performance and when they used the advanced technology it was to import a video of Freddie Mercury's face singing to fade in and out during the video.

Music videos became more mainstream in1981 when MTV aired "Video killed the radio star" and the began an era of 24 hour music on television. This was followed by people such as Michael Jackson creating a new era of creating a short film as a music video as he did with "Billie Jean" but in 1984 is when he had really taken this idea to the next level when he released a video for "Thriller.



Andrew Goodwin's Theory+ How it is used in Jay-Z's "99 Problems" music video

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. dance routine for boy/girl band).
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which reoccur across their work.
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos etc.) 

Goodwin's theory suggests that the lyrics in a song constantly make references to the visuals on the screen as they reinforce what the lyrics say. Genre and characteristics are mentioned in Goodwin's theory, and these are depicted as the certain traits associated with a particular music genre. For example, in a rock video you will expect to see a live performance of the band playing, along with the characteristics being a lot of black clothing, long hair, boots and other smaller things such as tattoos. Along with the genre characteristics, there is also music videos being narrative based. This means that aswell as what the artist/band is wearing and doing in the music video, the narrative brings the whole video together and explains the story of the music video which is especially important for the audience so that they understand what is happening.

 

Goodwin's theory can be applied to some artists music videos such as Jay-Z's "99 Problems".

Firstly, we can tell from the costumes that he wears throughout the video that it fits well into the hip hop/rap genre of music as he is wearing baggy jeans, chains, baggy jacket, cap along with hoodies which shows us his "gangsta" way of life.

The video has many ways of showing the "gangsta" way of life as it has things like a dark run down setting (Brooklyn, New York), rough looking areas, dog fighting, women showing their sex appeal and also large gangs of people wearing the "gangsta" like clothing hanging around the streets looking troublesome which sums up the whole point of the music genre.

Within the music video, there is a strong relationship with the visuals and the lyrics. This is shown when the word "bitch" occurs and several women are shown that are dressed provocatively throughout the video which again shows that it is set in a rough area as the women are shown to be slutty for the men. Another example of the relationship between visuals and lyrics being shown is when Jay-Z says "Talk to the Lord", and with this being said a clip of Jesus on a Crucifix statue is seen.

In the video, different shots are used to connote different things such as when Jay-Z and Rick Rubin are in the car after being pulled over by the police, the police officer comes to the window and begins to talk to the pair. With this, the police officer is always being shown as higher up than Jay-Z using both low angles and high angles to show this. This shows that the white police officer is high in power and authority compared to Jay-z who is black and shown to be a troublemaker due to him being pulled over by the police. Another example of this is at the very beginning of the video when the camera is going up the stairs and onto the streets of Brooklyn, this shows that the people of that area are at the bottom in life due to the roughness of their city. The walking up the stairs shows how Jay-Z has slowly became bigger in life.
 

Major vs Independent Record Labels