Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp extended the Russian Formalist approach to the study of narrative structure. In the Formalist approach, sentence structures were broken down into analyzable elements, and Propp used this method by analogy to analyze Russian fairy tales. By breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units.

Vladimir Propp had turned long paragraphs into smaller verses to keep the audience more interested, it actually helps the artist as well because it makes the lyrics easier to remember when it is in versus instead of sentences.

An example of this would be from the song we had chosen, Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield. Her verses are broken down so they are easier to understood and keep he audience more interested. For example, 

"Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your innovations
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten"

Extension Excercise

Strengths and weaknesses
The choose the first video that was shown to us. Naive. The music video's editing was really well done and was affective. We could see the relationship between the artist and the girl who was playing in the video. The edit when she blew out smoke then faded to his face was very affected as it looked like she blew the smoke onto the artist's face. The camera was always steady didn't see it shake once.
A weakness was in the mis en scene in one part, in the beginning of the video we see her walking towards us, but we also see a empty McDonald' cup in the screen which straight away got out attention.

Andrew Goodwin felt that traditional narrative analyses don’t really apply to music videos. That music videos are built around songs, which music videos, uses the singer both as narrator and as a character and that this singer often looks directly at the camera. For this particular music video it wasn't like that because we didn't really see the artist or the girl look into the camera.

Andrew Goodwin also said there are three types of relation between songs and videos: illustration, amplification and disjuncture.

The music video i choose has the illustration relation, the songs lyrics relate to the songs video, even the songs name "Naive" suits the video.

Susuana from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Lip Synch tutorial

The title of the song is 'Chic, le Freak', the song was very upbeat and easy to learn.



Whilst doing the lip synch tutorial I learnt alot of things that I didn't know before.
Things such using marks to mark the beats in the song so that is editing is efficient and goes with the song, and having to actually sing out the sing whilst filming so that it doesn't look fake.
I personally enjoy the whole process very much and look forward to doing the real music video.

Lip Synch Tutorial

During the lip synch tutorial I have learnt how to line up the video we had recorded with the song that the teacher had chosen.

What I find challenging was actually was holding the camera steady, this time we wasn’t allowed to use a tripod so we had to hold the camera up our selves not trying to move it so it’s in a steady shot.

I have learnt how to use markers on final cut pro, this was very helpful in two ways. First of all we marked one marker on the beat where the first lyric is said, then again on the video when the first lyric is said in order to link them up and make it suit. The second would be putting the markers on the timeline on every beat, after that was done we had to slice the videos into bits with the razor tool, then delete couple of bits in the video to see the artist sing the song from all different angels and positions.

When we was editing the opening to the thriller movie, we had lots of short clips that we had to crop down a bit then try put it together to try make it look right. Whereas for the music video we had to record basically the same thing over and over again but in different angels and positions, we also had to record without stopping it to make it line up properly with the soundtrack.

Example and analysis of videos that follow amplification, disjuncture and illustration.

Amplification: K koke, Tallman, Squinge, - Burying My Peers.

In this songs video we see images of cemeteries, graves and statures. Where as the song itself is about how they hard there life is, how they live it and what kind of days they have. Then again, all three of the artists talk about how they lost someone and how hard for them it was to get threw the pain.

Disjuncture – Egypt - In The Morning

In this songs video we see her at a club partying, we get the impression it’s at night.

Whereas the songs title is “in the morning”. Even the song’s lyrics are, “in the morning, 

when I wanna be with you, in the morning, I let your love come in, in the morning, 

all I think about is you, in the morning, I let your love come in.

Illustration: Michael Jackson – Earth Song

In this songs video we see poorer countries, we see elephants dying, so we get the impression on what is happening in today’s world. Then near the ends the videos starts to play backwards ad everything comes back to its original form. The songs lyrics are similar, couple of lyrics from his song, It's our planet's womb (What about us) What about animals (What about it).

Summary of Andrew Goodwin’s theory on music.

Andrew Goodwin feels that traditional narrative analyses don’t really apply to pop videos. That pop videos are built around songs, which pop videos, uses the singer both as narrator and as a character and that this singer often looks directly at the camera.

Pop videos relay on repetition, pop videos would repeat images in the way the song repeats choruses or lines.

Pop song videos have a form of closure and ending, they build up to a climax or to a constant repetition before fading away.

There are three types of relation between songs and videos: illustration, amplification and disjuncture.

Illustration is where the video tells the sort of the lyric. Amplification occurs when the video introduces new meanings that do not contradict with the lyrics but add layers of meaning. Disjuncture is where there is little connection between the lyric and video or where the video contradicts the lyric.

Pop videos often easily recognisable features, although Michael Jackson gave I a bit of a twirl in his videos. Another feature is that women are presented as objects of male desire. Whereas some female artist do this deliberately do it but is different because they look back at the viewers through the camera and can cease to be passive.

In some videos, different objects represent the different instruments in the music.

Videos also try appeal to as wide audience as possible without alienating the core target audience.

Finally videos that are from songs writers for a particular movie often incorporate images from that movie in the video.

Planning