Jonny Cash: Hurt (Josh)

The song was originally by Nine inch nails their version was more of a rock song whereas Jonny Cash has changed it into an acoustic/folk song which means that its easier, with the slower pace for him to produce a video that looks fantastic and all of the images that are on display fit in with the lyrics of the song. This would have been harder had he made it a fast paced cover.
The first reference to his personal life is early on in the video where we see an image of a sign for this museum. Written on the sign are the words, closed to the public, the timing of this image highlight how badly this affected him as he is singing about hurt and pain as this image appears which converys that he really did have a strong passion for the museum and was geuinly deeply saddened by it having to be closed due to him going bankrupt.
 
The main focus of the whole video is Jonny Cash in a reflective mood about the mistake that he has made in life. There are references to his time in prison which due to the timing of it is clear that he has regret of. The reason for why he was in prison was due to his addictions to perscription drugs although he was never actually sentenced to any jail time. There is talk of how he remembers everything when an image of a younger happier him appears on the screen.

 

The what have I become lyric is accompined by an image of him performing the song. This shows the audience a literal interpretation of this and what he now looks like. This could however be interpretted as him showing regret for the wasted part of his life and how he wishes that he hadn't of made some of the mistakes that he did. This is followed by an image of him on stage perfroming to thousands of fans. This is accomponied by the lyric "you could have it all" which shows that he knows the mistakes that he made and that it was his fault for why he went bankrupt and for some of the other issuse that he had.

There are many images of his late wife when the lyrics talk of happiness and a sweetest friend. This conveys that the best and happiest part of his life was the time that he and his wife had together during their many happy years of marriage

To conclude the whole video takes the role of a narrative of him reflecting on his life and all of the regrets that he had.

 

 

Case study of iconic music video directors (Josh)

For this I am going to look at how two different music video director and talk about how their careers have differed but also how they have remained the same. Also I will be looking at weather different director tend to produce the same genre of music video as well as working with artists that all produce the same genre of music.

The first director that I am going to look at is Ray Kay, born with the name Reinert K. Olsen. Olsen has been producing music videos since 1996 when he was 20 years old. He has collected numerous awards for the videos that he has produced including from MTV music. This just shows that he has been very successful with his work and has become very well known within the industry for his ability to create fantastic videos. This means that more artists are going to want to work with him as they all want to have the best video in order to gain more publicity for their song. The video that Olsen is probably most famous for is the video for the song Baby by Justin Bieber, this video has over 700 million views and is one of the most watch music videos of all time. In recent years Olsen has tend to stick the pop music genre another example with also directing videos for artists such as Cheryl Cole and Jessie J. This could be because he feels that they are more interesting to produce as there could be a number of different genre of video that he uses such as being able to create both a performance and a image video for the same song. However that he tends to make hybrids of these videos so as to not make them to repetitive but with the Cheryl Cole song - fight for this love Olsen has focused completely on the performance aspect the video almost entirely consisting of the artist singing in front of a green screen or dancing with other backing dancers.

The second director that I am going to look at is Joseph Kahn. Kahn has been directing music videos for 22 years and over that time has created some very iconic videos. Kahn has had a number of his videos nominated for best video and subsequently won quite a few awards for his work. One notable achievement was in 2002 when he won his first Grammy for Eminem's "Without Me" video which also won the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA's) video of the year. Other videos that he has produced such as "Toxic"- Britney Spears also won the MTV VMA's video of the year award. This video covers a few genres the main of these is performance and image but there are some element which could be argued to be spectacle. However from looking at a number of Kahn's videos it appears that the main focus of them is the performance side and promoting the overall image of the artist. There are some which do consist of other genres with other prominent genres used being image and narrative. The main type of artist that Kahn works with is unclear as he doesn't have a particular genre that he sticks to. Due to the high quality of his work many artists re-use him one example is Britney Spears who after the Toxic video asked Kahn to direct the music video for her song womaniser. There have been instances where Kahn has directed a music video for a charity purpose with an example being Helping Haiti which is used to raise awareness of the struggle that the people of Haiti endured after the earthquake using a number of artists to sing different lines of the same song. This video is not really in a particular genre but there are elements of performance as when a new artist sings images of that artist recording their part appears on the screen.

To conclude it appears that directors tend to stick to creating the same genre of video. This could be so that they gain more and more experience at creating a particular genre and become the best they can be at that genre.

Interview With David Fincher (Jonny)

Josh Running Green Screen

This was our first attempt at producing a green screen clip and as you can see it wasn't quite perfect! The edges are very blurred with a purple tint and with green parts coming off the sides. I feel that the main reason for this was that we tried to film a very complicated clip with lots of movement which we were not experienced enough to edit effectively. If we were to do this again I think I would film a still image to make it easier. Although the final outcome was not perfect, I feel that we are now able to produce a green screen clip having learnt all of the necessary steps needed. The filming on the screen itself was easy and the image is now much clearer as we have industry standard lights.  The software on final cut was very simple to use once you get the hang of it and CAN be effective in eliminating the green background. Hopefully as we continue to practice our clips we will get better at the green screen!  

A Brief History Of Music Video (JONNY)

History Of The Music Video

Johnny Cash Hurt Analysis (JONNY)

Record Labels (BIG and small) (JONNY)

Virgin Records

Virgin Records is a British record label founded by entrepreneur Richard Branson in 1972. Virgin Records owes its fame to Mike Oldfield who arguably flung Virgin Records to fame after releasing his multi platinum single 'tubular bells' with the label. Virgin Records were sold to EMI in 1992 to fund Branson's airline business.

 Virgin have a wide mix of artists from many different genres including David Guetta, The Kooks, Deadmau5, Emeli Sande and many more! Although Virgin Records does not have a specific 'image' with such a diverse range of genres all Virgin businesses try to brand themselves as a fun and youthful organisation.

 Virgin Records is a large record company in its own right yet is owned by EMI a record company 10 times its size with numerous record labels to its name some which are much more genre specific such as EMI Nashville which specializes in American country music. Being with a large label like Virgin means that there are no problems with the cost of producing an album or creating the publicity for it, these people know exactly what to do.  The problem is that these record labels are likely to care more about the profit made from the musician rather than the musician itself,   

Disturbing London Record Label

Disturbing London is a small independently owned music record label run by Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu aka Tinie Tempah and his cousin/ manager Dumi Oburota who are both founders and CEO's of the company.


The record label was originally set up to facilitate Tinie's music however has since signed new artists all with the similar genre of pop/
hip hop. In recent years up and coming artists such as Sasha Keable and Dot JR have been signed to the record label.The benefit of being a part of this record label is that they are far more likely to have the musicians best interests in mind considering the fact that it is run by a musician who has experienced many of the same situations before. When Okogwu was asked why they set up Disturbing London he explained "We wanted to have a platform to put out our music and there wasn't any Def Jam or Roc-A-Fella label equivalent in England. [Also] I wanted to create a major independent label with quality artists. I felt like the major labels had lost the passion for music." Disturbing London brands itself as a quirky yet high end record label recently expanding in to the designer clothes market figure headed by Tinie.

 The clothes line looks to be just as high end as the record label with a Disturbing London T-shirt likely to set you back £70 or so. What I like about Disturbing London is its genuineness. A record label run by a musician for musicians, they really care about the artist and its music, something which may be difficult to find at EMI.

In The Sun (JONNY)

Today our Media class had a project to reconstruct the music video 'In The Sun' by SHE AND HIM. We had already drawn out the story boards and decided on locations so we had the majority of the day to film and then to edit the piece. We split in to two groups with each group doing half of the video.

 I found this to be a good learning experience for when I attempt my A2 coursework next year. Something which I used today for the first time was a tracking dolly which I found to be very effective, and is something I may consider using in the future. The dificuilties we faced with this production were very diferent to those we faced when filming our AS coursework. This is because many of the problems were to do with timings of the music and lip synching. When I produce my A2 project I will write greater detailed storyboards and use a larger music system when filming. Hopefully this will help prevent some problems however I am sure we may still face some dificulties. I hope to avoid these problems by taking multiple takes of each scene to ensure that only the best image and lip synch is used. 'In The Sun' is a very fast paced song which was easy to make cuts and scene changes to. I plan to find a song with a similar tempo inorder to have the same ease with editing. My use of final cut (the editing software) at the moment is limited however like Imovie I hope to develop my skills as time goes on. I found this experience really useful and it has got me really excited to start the project in September!

Andrew Goodwin 'Dancing In The Distraction Factory' Audiovisual (JONNY)

Andrew Goodwin 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' (JONNY)

The 6 Rules Of Andrew Goodwin 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' on Prezi

The Village Musicians Project Proposal (JONNY)

The Village Musicians: All This Time on Prezi