MY FINAL VIDEO

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Paul Abbott, writer of Channel 4’s Shameless said ‘all writing is re-writing’; all art adheres to or subverts codes and conventions, tried and tested ideas and ideals. When creating a new music video, one must call upon existing media products for inspiration and guidance. Using the ever faithful Internet as a starting point, even though I was creating a music video for a jazz song, I decided to re-watch the legendary music videos of my hero, Michael Jackson; he was the vanguard of contemporary music video and unequivocally, he revolutionised the face of popular music. Fact. It struck me immediately that his videos, although timeless, are synonymous with the decade in which they were released; ‘Bad’ reeks of the eighties and ‘Rock With You’ is the seventies personified! So, I knew I had to create a video that was relevant for the twenty first century if it was to have mass appeal yet, being a jazz song, I wanted it to have that old-school pizzazz, that black-and-white music hall charm that is associated with the music of yesteryear; in a nutshell, I wanted to mix old and new styles of music together. This is something Jackson did brilliantly; the native drums coupled with the electric guitar in ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’’ shows how he transcended both cultural and contemporary barriers.

On Jackson’s website, there is a link to a Youtube page where his fans broadcast themselves and their videos, covers, of Jackson’s songs. I visited the ever popular Youtube for research and the video that fans had made for his posthumous single, ‘Hollywood Tonight’ was breathtaking; the simple narrative of a girl looking for fame in Hollywood was married beautifully with energetic dance numbers and a plethora of smouldering shot types; this was something I wanted to emulate in my video: an engaging narrative shot beautifully.

As an amateur comedy writer-performer, I knew I wanted to create a ‘funny’ video that I could taint with my wry wit and silly stupidity equally. After outlining an initial plot that Will, my comedy collaborator, is a once-successful comedian now embarking on a mad vendetta as his once comedy partner rockets to fame, Mrs Hughes suggested I turn to the cult classic ‘Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?’ I watched extracts of this on Youtube and found the tongue-in-cheek puerility and camp frothiness of it both endearing and charming; I wanted to emulate certain facets of this in my music video also.

Of course, it was very important to stay true to the song, Cullum’s ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ and so I visited his website and browsed the fan blog. Now, due to technological convergence, the artist-fan relationship has become augmented in recent years. You can speak to your favourite artists on Twitter, you can comment on their website, you can communicate with other fans and their music resides on a microscopic little block in your back pocket! Anyway, the fans were fond of ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ as it was one of Jamie’s first songs, along with one of my favourites, ‘I Want To Be A Popstar’; the lyrics slate pop culture and the mass produced homogonous pop star. As neither track had an official video, fans had created their own and uploaded on the blog; the majority interpreted the lyrics literally and lip synced the lyrics to ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ as they wandered down ‘Memory Lane’. However, after using the web to access the fan blog and ascertain why Pointless Nostalgic was popular, I used lyric websites to analyse the lyric to both ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ and ‘I Want To Be A Popstar’. I decided that I would merge the two when creating the video; fickle fleeting pop culture would be challenged in my ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ video.

After storyboarding the initial idea and casting Henry and Will as my comedy double act, Shuttle and Cock, a tongue-in-cheek nod at the crazy comedy double acts of yesteryear, I drew up a shooting script and we met in the school hall late October. Filming was about to begin!

Using the standard signature cameras of the QEGS Media Department, I was ready to make magic. During the AS course, I was a little reluctant, a little coy, about being experimental, avant garde and original with camera work as my previous experience with a Canon Legria FS200 camera was virtually non-existent, hence my AS work was a little languid, lack lustre, and this time around, I was ready to learn from my mistakes. Using professional flood lighting and the stage lights that the school hall boldly proffered, I plunged the room into darkness and then set it alight. With the theatrical lighting of course! The shadows created were melancholic and almost malignant; like celebrity culture, there was something unexpected and something surreptitious in the darkness. Dramatic pans on the dolly and low angle tracking shots captured Henry as he banged away at the keys vehemently. The dolly allowed me to create effortless glides; there was something sinister and ghostly in the framing of the shot. Extreme close up’s captured Will as he loomed in the darkness, impending, menacing. After all this excitement, I returned to the media room and opened up Final Cut. It was here that the real laborious yet rewarding task of editing was about to begin.

Using Final Cut, I desaturated the footage of Henry at the piano to give it a typical 1940s jazz look; a nod at the music hall stars of yesteryear. The extreme close ups of his pianist fingers are hypnotic as they tinkle the ivories; the grand piano and the pale bony digits liken him to the Phantom! The contrast of light and dark achieved after desaturation shadows the personalities of Shuttle and Cock with aplomb. To achieve maximum effect, I used Colour Corrector to enhance the light in the shots so the contrasts became more overt and the footage looked a little more polished and professional; I didn’t want to fall in the trap of dull, drab, colourless shots, similar to my work at AS and so the Colour Corrector was a vital tool at my disposal. Last year, I wasn’t aware of the Colour Corrector and my student film looked like exactly that: a student film. It lacked sparkle, freshness and life and so this year, I was determined to exploit Final Cut and utilise all the treasures it bestows upon the amateur film maker!

I sped up the piano sequences to 300% (Apple + J) so that the piano playing seems ridiculously and deliberately out of time; as Morecambe and Wise said ‘ I am playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order’! I became slightly over indulgent in regards to comedy; I wanted the video to be akin to spoof music videos where the lip syncing and miming is slightly out of sync! It is juvenile, yet it adds a new dimension to the proceedings and potentially, opens the video up to a new audience.

The extreme close up’s of Will gurning made me cringe as I used colour corrector to enhance every facial etching, wrinkle and vain. When desaturated, his skin has a lovely doughiness that readily and rather greedily absorbs the light.

Then came shooting in the Sixth Form garden. It became immediately apparent that a mellifluous fluidity wouldn’t be achievable with the dolly as the grass and the wheels do not marry. Placing plywood down on the dewy grass, the smooth shots could not match the beauty of the garden: crisp, sharp and fresh. After shooting Will in the sixth form garden, I Colour Corrected the footage so that the colour became even richer, more resonant and even more delicious. Due to Colour Correction, Will’s grey aged face looks bronzed and sun-kissed; the foul winter foliage is now scintillating with awesome autumnal golds and greens. Grainy, greasy and grey images simply look cheap and amateur; this ‘look’ would not fulfil the brief and would not be at all compatible with the tone, mood and style of my chosen track. Using colour corrector, I felt that the footage was beginning to ooze quality and burst into life.

Shooting commenced once again as I shot Will lipsyncing the song against the greenscreen. Eclectic dramatic pans and quick tracking shots are very genre specific and nod at the Buble video ‘Haven’t Met You Yet’ in terms of style and presentation. I got a little carried away with the manual depth of focus tool on the camera however, one can’t help but feel that I’ve created some interesting effects. Metaphorically, Will’s fading away could suggest how his career, his time in the limelight, is now somewhat amorphous, falling away into the ether. Similarly, it adds to his ghost-like persona in the video; the creepy black and whites, the hands on the shoulders, the grey somewhat languid doughy skin. Giving him spiritual qualities suggests he has an omnipresence; he’s dangerous and not to be messed with!

Using Chroma Keyer to turn the greenscreen black has enabled me to place Will’s head in a dark, drab and dingy void. The shots of him passionately lipsyncing on a dark background are not at all dissimilar to shots employed by Sinead O’Connor in her music videos. By merely copying and overlapping clips, three Will’s serenade us simultaneously, coming and going with grace and charm! Again, three heads on one person hints rather overtly at the paranormal; Will is not from this Earth. Gosh! 

I slowly but surely began to assemble the jigsaw; the shots of the garden were introduced to the shots in the hall and the lipsyncing greeted them both jovially! But after watching through my ‘finished’ video I was content. Not yet happy. The variety of shots were commendable, the colour correction had emancipated the footage from a perpetually dull existence and the lip syncing seems to be in perfect time; everything is cut to the beat and Will is hilariously brilliant as Harry Cock.

However, the video is a little languid in one respect: it lacks continuity, the footage, the narrative is not yet sequacious. Several people have perused upon the video and have been very generous with praise. However, the same question has always left their lips: ‘what’s it ‘bout?’

To make this clearer, I remember saying in previous posts that I would film a prelude, a preface, a mini-film that delineates that Shuttle and Cock were once a high-flying double act; Harry Cock was very much the star whereas the talented yet timorous pianist, Tommy Shuttle, existed only in the background. Then, after the press outed some dreadful addiction or revelation that would be deleterious for Cock’s career, he is now on a mad vendetta to encumber Shuttle’s rise to fame as a solo star. As this would be time consuming, laborious and may overshadow the video itself, I have decided to pepper the music video with ‘Photoshopped’ treats that will aid in the elucidation of the narrative.

The video will now open with a still of a grandiose theatre in the 1950s; Shuttle and Cock will be headlining. Using Photoshop, I will layer an image of an old fashioned playhouse and obscure the text, allowing me to place my characters at the top of the bill. Using Final Cut, a slow zoom into the doors of the theatre will signal the start of the video as Henry plays the moody bars of Pointless Nostalgic.

I have photoshopped a 1960’s ‘London Palladium’ poster, complete with Bruce Forsyth! Shuttle and Cock have been placed on the bill using the process I delineated above.

 Then, throughout the video, I have taken famous newspaper headlines of the last century and using PhotoShop, I have created some hilariously interesting additions to the video. Viewers will no longer wonder why Harry Cock’s career is in ruins when they read the headlines ‘Harry Cock Ate My Hamster’ and ‘Flash Harry: Comic Cock exposes himself in local park’!

The images were placed sporadically throughout the video giving an over-arching theme and reassuring the narrative. The constant headlines also show how I am intertextually referencing popular culture and similarly, it could also suggest how Will will do anything for fame; he is one of the fickle majority who believe fame and fortune is for everyone, even if they are devoid of talent.

As the editing process reached the final stages, I had an epiphany. By the fall of the video, Harry Cock has been condemned to Broadmoor for murdering Tommy Shuttle. As the video fades accompanied by the melancholic final bars, there will be an interference as the screen begins to crackle and pop. We cut to Harry Cock in a cell wrapped in a blanket, the iconic closing scenes of Hitchcock’s Psycho…

So, one Friday, Will donned some dark eye make-up and shrouded his sorry self in a blanket as we replicated the scenes. He was captured in a steady zoom, made possible with the use of a dolly, and sharp close ups, nodding at the famous final moments of the thriller. Of course, in Psycho, there is a fly on the characters hand; unfortunately we couldn’t book the fly as we was signing at a movie convention so we improvised and attached a raisin to a bit of thread! Even though this sounds unequivocally and unbelievably bad, this adds a new dimension to the scene. The whole video is marked with levity, stupidity and parody, this epilogue augments those qualities. The Maureen Lipmanesque voice over that dubs the original final scenes was replicated by Will as he dug out his best RP British female voice. The dialogue was identical to that in the film except that I want the raisin to be acknowledged:

“You couldn’t even swat that fly… wait, where’s the fly? Is that… is that a raisin? Jesus Christ!”

In the editing suite, the bright, vibrant footage needed to look scarred with time in order to resemble the original. Using Final Cut, I desaturated the footage and added noise; the footage was then given an ‘Old Film’ filter. Scratches and dirt, jumps and interference could be augmented and exaggerated until the mini-movie paralleled the iconic thriller. This was added to the end of the final video but one or two touches needed to be made. Using Youtube, I found a clip called ‘White Noise’ and using Final Cut, this was edited and preceded the Psycho clip suggesting that Will was breaking into our screens! At the fall of the Psycho short, Youtube, bizarrely, offered a clip of an old TV being turned off! This was placed after the video to add a finality to the proceedings and accompanied by a high pitched sonorous beep, synonymous with the archaic TV, the video would have a strong, resonant end to it and the noise would also unsettle and alarm; intentionally, the beep lasts just a little too long!

And so, the video was exported from Final Cut and then exported to the main computer ready for broadcast on the big screen. Using OpenOffice, I created a questionnaire that would accompany the video in order to ascertain and acquire student feedback; the results of this are delineated in the second question of this evaluation. In order to see if the appeal of the video was far-reaching, in order to see whether my video was enjoyed by the ostensible target audience of 25+, I would have to call upon the delights of the Internet. Before technological convergence, showcasing one’s work was an archaic and in many ways, laborious process. Let’s take a music video for example; Michael Jackson’s music videos were all scheduled, allocated a selected time on MTV and if you missed it, that was it. children would miss school in order to catch the latest releases from the inimitable MJ, the phenomenal Madonna or the wonderful Wham! Perhaps if an artist had mass appeal, a VHS of their videos may be released at a costly sum of £20 but if they were the run of the mill homogonous pop star, the likelihood is that their videos will be lost in the ether. Now, as Youtube proudly boasts, ‘you can broadcast yourself’. The videos of pop princesses, rock Gods and music legends are just waiting to be consumed twenty four hours a day; the fan-artist experience exists on so many levels now and due to the Internet, blogs, fan polls, unofficial sites and the like are all subsidiary promotion for the artist. Their music reaches a wider audience, they are readily consumed as a product and hence, they are likely to make a larger profit in regards to track/album sales and merchandise. But it’s not just the household names that can ‘broadcast themselves’; we can broadcast ourselves from our household! Love them or hate them, Rebecca Black and Justin Beiber have made their break into music because of the aforementioned broadcasting platform. Thanks Youtube! So really, in order for my video to have mass appeal, I need to broadcast myself. So, I uploaded my video to BlipTv, a website full of amateur films, videos and silly tomfoolery; I have an account on this gem of a site and many of my comedy sketches reside on here!

After receiving feedback from my peers in the form of a written questionnaire, I used OpenOffice to write up the results, creating perfectly pretty pie charts along the way. Now, it seems that I have reached the end of my journey but I have sidestepped one element of media technology immensely; something that has been an omnipresence through the planning, research, development and evaluation stages. The blog!

Last year, I regret to say that my blog posts were sporadic, infrequent and lack-lustre. Now, at A2, I have relished the opportunities that WordPress offers and I have, whole-heartedly, enjoyed blogging my heart out. There is something ineffably rewarding about documenting a creative process, seeing and reliving the journey, re-reading brainwaves and in hindsight, laughing at crazy ideas. Throughout the year, I have used the blog to upload any planning and research material; the storyboards, shooting script and the like all reside on the blog along with pictures, videos or articles that have stimulated some form of creative response. My initial ideas are also documented showing how the creative process has evolved and developed, changed and transformed.

As l have a love of language and a worship of words, the written word is my tool of communication, my choice of expression. Now, this is where I have struggled a wee bit because I have tried to make my posts ‘blog specific’; I have added endless pictures, links and regretfully, few videos to my verbose posts but I can’t help but feel that the content is always relevant. I dislike posts that are shrouded in slang, peppered with LOLs and ROFLs and COOLs or drenched in drivel; I have used the blog as a tool of communication and externalisation as opposed to just superficial documentation. I understand the need to be laconic, concise and ‘blog specific’, posts are like little post it’s on the fridge door that is our blog, yes, but I have greedily devoured and over indulgently delighted in the prospect of writing away to my hearts content about postmodernism, intertextuality, the creative process and the tediously pretentious ‘Me On…’ articles, my attempts at journalism that pepper the blog. Not only as WordPress allowed me to see a progression, an evolution in my work but it has allowed me to create a rather effective revision tool: my posts on postmodern, my notes on intertextuality will all prove important in the months to come.

I have relished the prospect of blogging this year and I have thoroughly enjoyed ‘broadcasting myself’. The editing process has been a challenge; this year, I have thrown myself into Colour Correction and the prospects of Chroma Keyer, I have desaturated, cut, sped up, slowed down, re-coloured, re-filmed and redone and I feel better for it. The skills I have learnt this year will be of the upmost importance as I embark on a course at University; Textual Analysis and Film and Television Studies are on the prospectus at UEA. My new found facility with Photoshop cannot be overlooked; I have delighted in the creation of the crazy newspaper articles and I am in the process of making posters and programmes using the program in order to promote my new sketch show. As you can see, the year has been a hive of creativity processes and learning curves, new experiences and new discoveries; I feel that new technologies, the excellent facilities the department has to boast and the freedom of creativity that the music video genre proffers has lead to a remarkably productive and exceptionally enjoyable year!

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

For me, the key to success in regards to the album cover and magazine advert lies in continuity. My music video established many perpetual motifs, themes and ideas and one feels that these motifs, themes and ideas need to be emulated in the ancillary texts. Tabloid newspaper front pages pepper the video and both delineates the narrative as well as adding a puerile playfulness to proceedings. With this in mind, I initially planned to create a mock newspaper from the album sleeve. Like a broadsheet, it would open up and reveal the lyrics and the like; Jethro Tull created something of this ilk in the seventies and as I say, initially the idea interested me. Initially! The intertextual reference to the world of the printed media is synonymous in the video, yes, but it is the trashy tabloids that are most resonant throughout and I felt that this needed to be reflected in the album art; a fold out sleeve in the style of a broadsheet wouldn’t quite tick the boxes, as it were and so I returned to the drawing board.

With Jethro Tull’s album art fresh in my mind, I knew that a newspaper front page would unequivocally form the front of the album. However, I had to create my own newspaper brand for copyright reasons and ideas such as ‘The Daily Digest’ and ‘The Horncastle Chronicle’ were branded around; they both sound like broadsheets as ‘Digest’ and ‘Chronicle’ aren’t akin to tabloid newspapers; readers of The Sun can’t even spell Chronicle. So, after much deliberation, ‘Daily Dirt’ was born! Bold, ostentatious tacky writing framed in a blood red box with an outer glow is not at all dissimilar to The Sun insignia; I have intertextually linked music and the tabloids here! Cunning! Placing the insignia in the top left hand corner of the ‘album cover’ in Photoshop, the cover was slowly beginning to show signs of form and structure. Adhering to a stereotypical tabloid layout, a large black box was positioned underneath the insignia with a striking white headline; ironically, the black and white suggests equality and a left-wing liberal approach to the news… how wrong this is when it comes to the tabloid papers! The striking white headline that dressed the box would be ‘Jamie Cullum: Pointless Nostalgic’ and would be coupled with a shot from the video of Will looming over a piano playing Henry. This was positioned in the lower left hand corner, again adhering to conventional tabloid structure and convention. Next to the insignia at the top of the page, the eyes are usually treated to a colourful competition or the rather mendacious statement regarding the hottest celebrity news. Next to my insignia, I placed a blue box reading ‘Exclusive’ and this was joined by fictitious reviews from Kerrang, Q and the like. The primary colours of the red and the blue are not only strikingly sonorous, beautifully bold and ridiculously resonant, but there is something primitive and basic, cheap and tacky about the coupling of two such primary colours; this reflects the quality of the tabloid newspapers: primitive, cheap and tacky. The black and the white suggest there is a darkness, a melancholy malignant undertone to the bright and cheerful that the cover ostensibly offers; there is a darkness underpinning the music, a message and a moral. The vibrancy of the colours suggest that the music has mass appeal; the colours aren’t alienating like the dark blacks or purples of a punk rock or heavy metal album or the soft sickly pinks of an homogonous young female breakthrough artist, but they are all-encompassing. The colours reflect the broad expansive target audience and potential consumer group that was delineated in the feedback from the questionnaires yet the dark black and resonant white suggest there is a darker, deeper satire, story underpinning the music; hopefully, this will be acknowledged by and appeal to older consumers who are familiar with the intertextuality the video boasts.

I have suggested in previous blog posts that the inside of the album sleeve will consist of newspaper articles and the TV guide will be superseded with a track listing; this was my initial idea. Fortunately, the idea didn’t get beyond the ‘boardroom’ as the idea itself was superseded with what I feel was rather a cunning plan! From audience feedback, it became clear that the character of Harry Cock (Will) was exceptionally popular; his creepy personality and striking looks are endearing and enduring and the audience quickly fell in love with him. One couldn’t help but feel that one should exploit this potential opportunity; if the audience are fascinated by a character, they will inevitably want to know more about them. I decided that the inside pages of the album should consist of Will’s journal, a tea-stained, blood-soaked scrap book style diary documenting his exploits, wheelings and dealings; photographs, notebook pages and the like would be clipped to the greasy pages of this ominous little memoir! I began crafting hand-drawn pages and the book slowly began to take shape. To continue the ideas & events that were mentioned in the video, I made reference to many of the newspaper front pages and slowly but surely, I had a rough plan for the journal. At home, I dug out the old craft box and begin sticking old plasters, TV Times cuttings and bits and bobs to the pages of a psychopath; extracts of Will’s own handwriting, akin to archaic hieroglyphics, were also pinned to the pages. I filled in old crosswords with the lyrics of the songs and stained the pages with rings of tea; tomato ketchup made a remarkably thrifty and nifty blood substitute. The pages of the diary were then assembled and the rest as they say is history; the album cover was complete! The playful stupidity and marvellous make-shift magic stress how unhinged Will’s character is; the journal augments these ideas that are established in the video. The rough and ready, makeshift journal also parallels the world of fame; it is scruffy, tempestuous and unpredictable, it is capricious, dirty and untidy. The idea for such an amalgamation of tit-bits came when reading the album sleeve for Jamie Cullum’s ‘Catching Tales’ album. Doodlings and drawings, thought bubbles and intricately designed pieces peppered the pages mirroring that mellifluous yet tumultuous flow of creative that overcomes one, drowns one, when creating an album or any piece of art; this is something I tried to emulate in the eclectic music video and the album art.

Will will be holding copies of the album, fanned out in his thin, ominous hands, as he looks upon them with scorn; he’s trying to sell them out of a backpack. Continuing motifs established in the album cover, a strip of paper is ripped from his journal and 

plastered in the top left corner reading ‘Jamie Cullum’s Pointless Nostalgic’, in the bottom right corner, the same thing but reading ‘Out Now’. That is it. Simple yet effective. Less is more. The black background will continue, extend the ominous, malignant darkness that is resonant in both the video and the album art and the cuttings from the journal will also give the ancillary texts a defined continuity. The very fact Will is trying to sell the albums from a backpack parallels every theme, motif, idea and thought delineated in the video; fame is fickle, lonely and fleeting, it is desperate, cheap and pathetic. Even though Will’s character feels that the album, his video, credits front page news, hence the front page of the album cover, it is still being sold out of backpack! This image suggests how ego, style and promotion often betters the product; Gaga’s music is factory produced, homogonous pop grunge. However, it is her eccentricity, egotism and endearing madness that makes her a vanguard of contemporary music. Hopefully, the consumers will connect with this and recognise, acknowledge and appreciate the ideas that the video, album art and advert is trying to promote.

In conclusion, I feel there is a distinct continuity between the ancillary texts and my main product; I have furthered themes and developed ideas and motifs that were established in the initial task to give the ‘brand’, the ‘product’, an over-arching theme and sense of style, tone and structure.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

An audience of approximately 200 16-18 year olds watched ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ and answered the questions below. Due to time restraints, the Psycho epilogue was not shown. Here are the results!

1) The narrative underpinning the music video was clear

It was my principle concern that the audience would not be able to follow the narrative of ‘Pointless Nostalgic’; it isn’t a video you can watch passively and readily absorb what is unfolding in front of you. However, my worries were quickly quashed as I browsed over the questionnaire results. 52% of the audience ‘strongly agreed’ that the narrative was easy to understand; a staggering 46% agreed. But not strongly! So, 98% of my audience were able to follow the narrative underpinning the video and one can’t help but feel this is entirely due to the use of the tabloid front pages that pepper the product; these were very popular. This little technique that was both fun to create and hopefully fun to watch, allowed for ‘easy viewing’ for want of a better phrase. From the results, it’s clear that a recurring idea, motif, that is simple yet silly, not only appeals to an audience but heightens the consumers experience on so many levels; viewing not only becomes easier but the playful puerility of the employed motif is remembered and inevitably becomes synonymous with the video. Of course, I suggested before that the album art, in the style of Harry Cock’s journal, could be released as a book; this move into tie-in merchandising could generate phenomenal revenue. Similarly, the newspaper front pages could be released as posters if the demand was there. I cannot ignore the 2% that found the narrative unclear however I must assume they were watching the video passively; they’re an anomaly if you will. I feel I must add that someone approached me after watching the video and said: ‘the narrative wasn’t clear because I didn’t know what nostalgic meant’. Oh. Perhaps the video isn’t for them! All in all, the narrative seemed readily accessible mainly due to the use of the headlines and similarly, it was readily received and enjoyed by the masses!

2) The product looked like a music video

99% of people surveyed ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that the video did in fact fulfil it’s primary purpose: it looked like a music video. The moody and almost melancholy desaturated extreme close up’s of Tommy Shuttle playing the piano or the harrowing mid shot’s of Harry Cock lip syncing, several ‘cliché’ shots were replicated. When making a music video, there are codes and conventions one seems to subconsciously adhere to; a piano player will always emulate Chris Martin and bang the keys vehemently looking at the camera with puppy dog eyes as the smoulder and steam… or try to! The artist will always look down, saddened and manically depressed, as they sing of their pain and distress and try and pull at the heart strings of the audience! Of course, as my music video is almost a parody of the genre, I peppered the product greedily will ‘staple shots’ in order to fulfil the brief and again, to be playful. The Sinead O’Connoresque glowing facial close up’s of Harry Cock, the Chris Martinesque piano playing of Tommy Shuttle; there are even moments of painstakingly painful choreographed dance in there! At the start of the A2 course, when discovering I had to create a music video, like many I was worried that I had to adhere to codes and conventions, rules and regulations immediately identifiable with the genre and that these would encumber my creativity just a jot. However, I have bathed in the playfulness and pleasure that parodying these codes and conventions, rules and regulation shave proffered; Will is not a conventional artist and so juxtaposing the odd and eccentric character that is William Hunter with the tried and tested formulaic shots of the genre as allowed me to create some very poignant and very funny sequences.

3) The music video complimented the jazz/pop genre of the track

100% of those surveyed either ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ with this notion and I have to be complete ingenuous here and say that that surprises me. The desaturated black and white shots of Tommy Shuttle tinkling the ivories are synonymous with my chosen genre of music and I worried that the audience would feel that the video didn’t quite suit the jazz genre; it was too playful, too crazy. Jazz is seen as relatively highbrow, it’s almost a niche genre and so one felt, in hindsight, that the video should be highbrow also. Instead, I opted for an over-indulgent feast of playfulness and intertextuality! However, however, however, the audience felt that the video did suit the genre of music and after listening to their feedback, perhaps I can understand why. Allow me to explain! As explained in question 1, Cullum often attacks pop culture in his lyrics, namely ‘I Want To Be A Popstar’ and this is something one has tried to emulate in the ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ video; Cullum is a jazz artist who satirically ridicules pop music and I have replicated that in my video. Therefore, my final product seems to conform to the type of jazz music that Cullum creates and the audience have connected with that. Similarly, I have mentioned that jazz is relatively highbrow; the plethora of intertextual references that soak the video require a certain cultural and arguably political knowledge in order to fully appreciate them. Here, however subtly, I am nodding at ideas of high and low culture and this is something the audience seems to have noticed.

4) I would buy the track after watching the video

Here, 52% ‘strongly disagreed’ or ‘disagreed’ with this notion which I feel is hardly surprising. When embarking on this project many moons ago, I delineated that my target audience would be the ‘archetypal jazz consumer aged above thirty and perhaps a younger niche who appreciate good quality soulful music’. Now, an audience of 16-18 year olds watched the video and to know that 48% of them would purchase the track when they aren’t my target market is really rather interesting. One feels that this is primarily due to the playful stupidity of the video that seems to have been enjoyed by the 48% in particular. The role of the music video is to promote a track or an artist and then of course, lead to the sale of the track and thus, the artist makes a profit; it appears that my music video has achieved its purpose. Of course, the 52% of people who wouldn’t buy the track presumably didn’t like the video or didn’t like the song; that is both expected and perfectly understandable as both the video and track are not aimed at 16-18 year olds. This question perhaps offers me a great deal in terms of who I should aim the video at; if an audience of 30-50 year olds were to watch it, would more than 48% of them buy the track as these are my target market? However, it wouldn’t be a shrewd move commercially to neglect a younger audience, 42% of which would buy the product. I think it’s high time I showed the video to my ‘desired’ audience and see how they respond. This sweeping statement is perhaps horrendously generic, but 30-50 year olds often appreciate old school rock or pop as opposed to jazz; Queen, The Beatles, Led Zeppellin and The Who still have a greater commercial success with this niche than contemporary jazz as the aging rockers and popstars try to recapture one’s youth! However, however, however, jazz is synonymously successful with this audience but, after browsing Jamie’s website and trawling through the comments of infatuated and almost libidinous female twenty-something’s, Jamie has a huge youngish female fan base; my video has not catered for this niche at all. It would be very easy to side step this market and say ‘you can’t please everybody’ but success in the music industry today is measured in sales and good hard cash. However, 16-18’s reviewed the video and 42% of them would buy the track; it’s fair to assume 40-50% of the 42% were female so again, this niche hasn’t been alienated. In conclusion, it seems that the video, surprisingly, has a wide appeal. The older jazz lovers will hopefully fall in love with Cullum’s beautiful music and will connect with the intertextual playfulness the video boasts. Similarly, the younger niche who perhaps aren’t mad for jazz will enjoy the stupid narrative, the puerile playfulness, of the video and part with the pennies and purchase the product.

5) Who is the target audience for this product?

Quite a range here: 40% believed the video should be aimed at 30+; 26% believed the target audience was 25-30 year olds; 20% believed the video was aimed at teenagers; 12% believed anybody would enjoy the video and bizarrely, 2% believed the target audience was pensioners! The majority of those surveyed vindicated my belief that 25+ was the target audience for the video. One can only assume that the majority thought this because of the genre of the music as opposed to the video itself. Even though the video is seasoned generously with intertextual references and nods at popular culture, the basic bones of the narrative, a jealous vendetta against a famous friend, is easily accessible; perhaps this is why a fifth of those surveyed acknowledged that teenagers were the target audience and similarly, 12% believed anybody was. Perhaps the 40% who believed that the video should be targeted at 30+ year olds didn’t connect with the video at all, both musically and visually, yet felt it was something their parents would enjoy? I understand that this is a huge assumption and credits a questionnaire in itself but it could be the case. It is a possibility that the 40% are familiar with the comedy tastes and musical tastes of their older relatives, parents and guardians and they assume, like I do, that the older market will enjoy this product.

6) It was my intention that ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ challenges ideas surrounding modern celebrity culture and the lust so many have for fame. Did I achieve this? Please explain your answer.

96% of those surveyed believed that I did challenge ideas surrounding modern celebrity culture and the lust so many have for fame. I asked them to explain their answers and, due to time, the responses were both laconic and languid yet here are a sprinkling of responses:

A: “yes, you achieved this as you showed celebrity culture for what it is and you showed the flaws of fame”

B: “it was a different way of addressing fame as the characters in the video were unlike most celebrities as they weren’t fake and weren’t trying to be something they’re not; they were real everyday people”

C: “you showed how obsessed people are with fame and how insane people and the media get when they loose it”

Of all the responses, however brief or bizarre, these three statements have poignancy and encapsulate what it was I was trying to achieve. It’s hard to determine what person A meant when they said ‘you showed celebrity culture for what it is’ but one can only assume that they mean the fickle, fleeting facets of fame and the crippling competition, jealousy and dog-eat-dog mentality attached to it were captured in the video. The phrase ‘flaws of fame’ suggests that the dangerous lust for recognition and, rather superficially, how fame can change people were ideas that were both addressed in ‘Pointless Nostalgic’.

I found the statement from Person B both insightful and inspiring; it shows how an audience can interpret something in a completely new light and make me re-examine my motives and intentions. It strikes me that Person B believed the representation of fame in the video was positive; the characters were not being fake or false, they were being themselves, being human and their foibles, jealousy, envy and lust, are foibles of everyday people! What a way of looking at things! Quite frankly, I am thrilled that someone hasn’t watched the video passively and answered the questions with responses devoid of thought or intellect, but has instead peeled away the cursory representation of ‘fame’ and scratched away at the surface, uncovering something very new and quite profound. The most famous people roaming the planet are human, as are the most infamous, with foibles, flaws and facets of their personality which lead them to make rash, wrong and down right foolish life choices; it seems such an obvious thing to say but it is something I seem to have side-stepped, over looked, when trying to be intertextually and intellectually profound! Harry Cock is an ordinary guy, crippled by his humanity, his emotions and his feelings; he is encumbered by his very humanitarian lust ‘to be remembered’ and ‘make his mark on the world’. Thank you Person B for such a marvellous insight! 

Person C made suggested that both the media and the celebrity in question place ‘fame’ on such a pedestal; it often seems that when a celebrity is out of the limelight, they have nothing to live for, fame is all that makes them who they are and they have no personality, no strengths or qualities other than their ability to say ‘yes, I’m famous and that is all’. This notion underpins reality TV in my opinion; without fame, Brian Dowling, Louie Spence, Kerry Katona and Jordan have nothing to offer the world; they are dull, drab, dreary drones. Yet the likes of Judi Dench, Madonna, Barack Obama, J.K.Rowling and the like have so much to offer the world, fame is just an additional trapping that neither makes nor breaks their career; they don’t live off their fame, they live off their phenomenal talent. And rightly so. This is something I have tried to address in my music video and it seems that Person C, along with 98% of those surveyed, has connected with. Good news I feel.

7) Will and Henry do not conform to general male stereotypes. Do you agree with this? Please explain your answer.

76% of those surveyed agreed with this notion. Their explanations ranged from a choice of mise en scene (‘Will looks weird because he’s in a mac and glasses. He needs to go to more parties’) to the fact that their lives are devoid of female relationships (‘neither of them have any contact with women. Are they gay?’). Harry Shuttle is not your archetypal male. His quest for revenge, bitchiness and ‘divaish’ lust for fame and glamour are stereotypically female foibles. The mac and specs, unfortunately, are both items belonging to Will, both of which he wears by choice, and so it appears that many he is not your conventional male!

I believe one or two people commented on the ideas of bromance that underpin my video; this is something I explained in greater depth in Question 1 of the evaluation but clearly it has hit home with my audience. Perhaps this is why 24% believed that Harry and Tommy are conventional males; often a young male relationship is underpinned by friendly competition, bromance and a primitive almost animalistic need for recognition, a mate etc. I have merely augmented these ideas for comic effect.

In Question 1, I explained that ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ depicts men as dependent on each other; when Henry isn’t in Will’s life, he falls to pieces. The black and white filters that polish the romantic two shots of Henry and Will liken them to old fashion romantic couples from the world of British cinema; this is something the audience connected with. Someone, rather eloquently, penned that ‘Harry and Tommy’s relationship is romanticised by the desaturation and Harry hovering over him suggests that they are in love’; obviously a media student there! I’m so very pleased that 76% connected with the idea that the characters could be lovers and so they don’t really conform to male stereotypes.

8) Will and Henry do not conform to general age stereotypes. Do you agree with this? Please explain your answer.

Not surprisingly, 90% of those surveyed agreed that Will and Henry do not conform to general age stereotypes. One of the most commonly repeated opinions was that Will and Henry were behaving like they were older than their years. Now of course, they were students playing adults in a music video… superficially! Allow me to defend this notion. What I am suggesting is that fame can contaminate childhood and subsequently development; many child stars who are either forced into the spotlight or freely choice to bask in it grow up far too quickly, they are forced too, and usually tread a very undesirable path in later life. Now, I understand that this is again a generalisation but what with issues surrounding the sexualisation of youngsters in the media, child stars turning to drugs, alcoholism or the like in later life and the increasing rise of child stars all pervasive in the media currently, I see this as an issue that one simply had to address when representing age and fame in parallel. Will and Henry are forced to behave like adults, they live adult lives, face adult problems and the consequences of their actions, well, they face the consequences like adults. Child pop stars and celebrities are thrown into an adult world prematurely and this is something several members of the audience connected with. Conversely, many believed that for their age, Will and Henry had tremendous independence in the video; they were self-sufficient, both employed and, regardless of how you interpret the word, they were both relatively successful. Again, this is refreshing to see that the audience has responded to the video in a rather unexpected light; they view the representation of age in the video as positive. In a society where youngsters are branded as ‘youths’, ‘yobs’ and ‘thugs, (look at the riots of 2011) it is invigorating to see the youth of today making a success of themselves and having something to strive for, be it fame and fortune. Of course, this almost utopian argument is counterbalanced by Will’s deliberate murder of Henry. Whoops! It wasn’t my intention that the protagonists in the video should appear completely self sufficient and I didn’t deliberately or knowingly choose to represent them as successful youths with a future and a career! However, if that is what the audience think, I find it both interesting and enlightening and it just shows how a rather an astute viewer can interpret the representation of age in my video.

9) What was your favourite part of the video?

Many enjoyed the black and white shots of the piano and the lip syncing: ‘it was cool’, ‘stylish’ and ‘went with the jazz genre’ to quote the audience. Perhaps in hindsight, if I had the opportunity to remake the video, I would augment these black and white moments, especially the piano sequences as these seemed exceptionally popular, and as opposed to using them as fills, I would have them create the bulk of the video. Of course, it is a student film and I am always going to be encumbered by facilities, yet I believe crane shots of Henry smashing away at the keys of the piano as the track reaches it’s inevitably blissful crescendo would be both exhilarating and blissfully beautiful; it would nod at Cullum’s style of music delightfully and what add majesty and grandeur to the video in equal measure. At a cursory glance, a crane seems almost impossible using school equipment yet scaffolding is readily available and perhaps, yes, a crane shot would’ve given the video a little more gravitas and magic!

The newspaper headlines were also a favourite of the masses as not only did they delineate the narrative but people simply enjoyed them; the tongue-in-cheek puns and wickedly wonderful wordplay added levity and stupidity to the video in equal measure allowing easy intertextual, cultural and social references simultaneously. As I watch the video now, I feel there are copious headlines and too many would simply spoil the attraction. Although they were a late addition to the storyboards as my peers felt the narrative was difficult to understand without some element of sign posting, they are indeed a welcome addition and it appears that the audience liked them just as much as I do. Again, as I expressed earlier on in this question, they would make great posters to promote and market the video; tie in merchandise would inevitably increase profit.

Other favourite moments included Will’s moody lip syncing, Will’s ‘urination’ in the bush, the extreme close up’s of Will’s gurning and the variety of shots. The silly, stupid and downright daft elements of the video seem to have struck a chord with the 16-18 year olds and that pleases me immensely!

10) What was you least favourite part of the video?

Answers here showed some sense of correlation and the majority seemed to look upon certain qualities of the video with disdain! Many didn’t like the colour sequences and felt that the whole video should be in black and white; the change was ‘distracting’ and ‘annoying’. During development, there had been much discussion over the possible complete desaturation of the video and even now, I am left in a state of ambivalence when confronted with the problem. I love the rich moments of colour when then the foliage, the greens of the garden burst through and penetrate the grey and dark; it is visually interesting, stimulating and alarming and illustrates the relationship between our two protagonists through colour; Will is drab and dreary and dull and Henry is iridescent and scintillating and vibrant. Similarly, many felt Henry was dull and Will was an incredibly interesting character! This level of interpretation could only be achieved through the use of such a colour scheme and it seems such a shame to potential loose this by desaturating the whole video. No, I understand why many like continuity and a lack of colour, but I am rather fond of the two-toned tint to the video. 

Many find Will terrifying and creepy and so didn’t like his contribution to the video; one can only empathise with the audience and sympathise with Will! Others didn’t like the song finding it languid and dull; that of course is due to musical taste and has little to do with the video.

Someone just didn’t like the video: ‘it was stupid and I couldn’t understand it’. Fair enough, it’s not for everyone! It would be too easy for me to retort and say ‘well, you’re probably stupid, stolid and slow-witted; the intertextuality and cultural, social and political references were somewhat wasted on you, you ignoramus’ but I’m sure our confused and discombobulated little friend is not an ignoramus; the video is difficult to understand and confuses me at times! Unless you watch the video intently, read every headline and article diligently then, yes, perhaps it does make no sense and, if I was to redo the video, I would reconsider the narrative: is it too complex? Is it too subtle? Is it too stupid? From the survey, it would seem that the majority found the narrative both clear and entertaining, but it isn’t a video you can watch passively. Perhaps that is a flaw; homogonous music videos are peppered with mindless dance, sexualised gyrations and body-pops yet ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ doesn’t deliver in this field! I can’t see Will body popping somehow!

FINAL NOTES ON QUESTIONNAIRE

Generally, the results are positive and deeply insightful. The majority found the narrative underpinning the video was clear and equally copious amounts felt that the music video looked like exactly that, a music video. Many found the video complimented the jazz genre yet not everyone would buy the track after watching the video; this is due to taste regarding the track, the style and tone of my video or both. The perceived target audience was widespread yet the majority vindicated my notion that the video was aimed at the ‘30+ jazz fan and the younger niche’. In hindsight, a screening of the video for the ‘30+ jazz fan’s’ would verify or indeed, falsify my beliefs. Many believed that ideas surrounding fame were challenged and satirised whereas age and gender stereotypes were both subtly adhered to and in cases, overtly subverted. The moody black and white shots in the video were looked upon propitiously yet some found the playful stupidity of the video and the often complex narrative both unnecessary and ‘stupid’! Charming!

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout the video, I have called upon tried and tested codes and conventions, rules and regulations of the genre and have either adhered to or overtly subverted them in order to create many desired effects delineated below. Using existing music videos, shots and frames synonymous with the genre and nodding at film, television, literature and the like, my video is peppered with intertextuality.

Long shots of Will roaming around a park show how isolated and lonely he is; without fame he is nothing. However, long shots of him on his own show he is at the heart of the frame; he has power and dominance giving him an air of status and strength, however subtle. This is a conventional shot in the industry that allows the audience to see all of a character/object. However, there is something surreptitious and clandestine about Will’s behaviour; even though we can see all of him, we know there is an ominous and sinister undertone to his actions. Mid shots will allow my audience to see some detail of facial expression; Will’s doughy face, similar to that of Rowan Atkinson, will unnerve and amuse my audience giving the video a new dimension. Extreme close ups of Will’s eyes give him a malignant quality; he hides behind the glasses.

Low angle shots of Will gives the audience an unusual perspective which is unsettling paralleling his persona in the video. High angle shots make him look small and menial; he is governed by his lust for fame and he falls at the feet of his demons. Tracking shots give the audience a sense of being at one with the character; they are sharing the movements with him. I want the audience to connect with Will; a sense of pathos, hatred, anything. An emotional attachment heightens the enjoyment as you feel part of the text in a post modern way. When Will looks directly to the camera, the forth wall is kicked down with gusto; the audience has a sense of power and purpose. When Will sings to the camera or his eyes reveal his plans, the audience feel trusted; Will is sharing with them emotions he doesn’t share with anyone else. 

A segment of the action in my video takes place in a garden. The juxtaposition of beautiful greens and exuberantly rich leaves with the drab, desaturated grey shots of Henry playing the grand piano give the video a new dimension. Henry is full of life and energy, yet he is in black and white; through editing, he is portrayed as being drab and boring. Will, a lonely hermit, is enveloped in luscious colour as he plans to kill. This postmodern stylistic element adds to the comedy of the video; I am challenging narrative and ideological codes and conventions. Will notably wears a pair of circular specs; when he takes them off in the garden, vibrant over indulgent colour floods the screen. When he puts the glasses on, vibrancy and life is drained away; desaturated. A crucial piece of mise en scene, the glasses change how Will sees the world; literally and metaphorically. As soon as he puts them on, he sees darkness and destruction. This suggests to an audience that Will is adopting a persona, a character; he was a comedian before his habits ruined his life. This stylistic quirk will hopefully show that Will’s character is three dimensional and isn’t all bad, as it were.

Will’s character in my ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ video is clearly a young man; the mac, carrier bag and rimmed glasses suggest otherwise. The choice of mise en scene and the dark colour filters give Will a maturity; he becomes a hermit, an Alan Bennett like character that seems trapped by his image. This ‘look’ was inspired by Will himself; he has a professorial archaically ancient fustiness to him with doughy skin and a face that looks yellowed with time. Of course, what with Will in The Inbetweeners for example, geek chic and ‘the hermit’ look have never been more ‘in fashion’, if you will permit the use of such a clichéd phrase. This just shows how much popular culture affects our prejudice and perception; if something suddenly has broad appeal, mainstream appeal, our morals, ideas and judgements are changed and rearranged; we really are that subservient to the media.

In the Pointless Nostalgic video, I am overtly subverting age stereotypes regarding young men and late teens as Will is not your ‘conventional’ teen, for want of a better phrase. But what is a ‘conventional teen’? The Internet, pornography, sexualisation of youngsters, fashion; all these are exponents of change. Although Will’s character may, at a cursory glance, seem odd, old fashioned and eccentric, when compared with some of the extreme fashions, attention seeking activities and ludicrously bizarre feats undergone by today’s teens and young adults, Will seems painfully normal.

Similarly, Will is a young mentally unhinged character. I am portraying youths as psychopathic, deranged, avenging and grudge-bearing; I have taken the stereotypical foibles of a youth – indolence, isolation, depression, moodiness – and electrocuted them, intensified them. Even though Will’s behaviour is unnerving, we can all relate to it as youths; we have had this phase or are passing through it now. He wonders around aimlessly causing trouble, he seeks avengement, he is irascible and has mood swings; he revels in his own misery. We can all connect with that. 

Will’s character in my music video longs for status, albeit fame and fortune. The ‘avenging angel’ role he adopts is delineated by a thirst for recognition; he wants to be remembered. Low angle long shots of him performing mundane tasks show how Will wants to be seen; people will watch him, gawp at him, as he just goes about daily life. Celeb magazines and tabloid columns are filled with drivel and photos of celebrities doing nothing; Will wants that and my choice of shot reflects that. Perhaps we all want it. The American Dream, Opportunity Knocks, X Factor; a longing for stardom and recognition is as old as the hills. This quest to be remembered is pervasive in society: when I frame Will and Henry in my music video, Will is always stood over Henry glaring down at him. Metaphorically, this is suggesting how a hunt for fame and fortune, a need to be part of celebrity culture, is now more dominant in society than ever before; it is placed on a pedestal. Will, like so many, only feels he can have class and status if he is famous, worshipped and adorned with adulation. Underpinning the narrative in my music video is that question we all ask ourselves: will I be remembered?

Will’s character in my ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ video is also not your archetypal male. His quest for revenge, bitchiness and ‘divaish’ lust for fame and glamour are stereotypically female foibles. For a character that looks so heterosexual, he has many female characteristics. Superficially, he is obsessed and driven by limelight and fame but underlying all of this is a passion, a love, of Henry. The romantic pan outs as Will stands gazing over the top of him or watching him from the wings not only nod at cinema of yesteryear, but also metaphorically suggest that Will’s heart is ‘going out’ to him. The thought has just occurred to me that Henry is Will’s Phantom Of The Opera! Henry plays the organ with passion and lust and Will is bewitched and bothered and bewildered! Perhaps this infatuation is very heterosexual; the modern of idea of a bromance is arguably a subtext, an antithesis, to the narrative that delineates my music video. The black and white filter applied to scenes depicting Will’s isolation and loneliness show his withdrawal symptoms, his mood and his lack of brotherly love. Conversely, the lives of my characters in my music video are void of female companionship; they have each other. The more I think about it, there are strong homoerotic undertones underpinning literally everything I do!

‘Pointless Nostalgic’ depicts men as dependent on each other; when Henry isn’t in Will’s life, he falls to pieces. This idea of ‘the lads down the pub’ and ‘ a night out with the boys’ is subtly referenced in my music video; even though there are these homosexual undertones, they too are very heterosexual. The number of heterosexual men who behave in an overtly homosexual way with their friends is staggering; all because they are comfortable with their sexuality. The black and white filters that polish the romantic two shots of Henry and Will liken them to old fashion romantic couples from the world of British cinema; I have taken the idea of a bromance and allowed it to fall subject to hyperbole and manipulation.

Conversely, as Will and Henry seem self-sufficient and only dependent on each other, I am subtly suggesting that they do not need a woman to mother them. There is an age old thesis that men look for woman like their mothers so they are babied and looked after. Perhaps as Will’s life is void of a mother figure, a maternal influence, that is why he is mentally unhinged and emotionally unstable; he lacks the social aptitude one would possess if one had been brought up proper. I am not adhering to stereotypical views of the man/woman relationship in either ‘Pointless Nostalgic’; Will and Henry do not have wives, lovers or girlfriends. In a rather ominous way, they seem to fulfil each others needs! Subjectively, I hate the idea that marriage is a blessing; the number of people I’ve heard say ‘a woman’s only complete when she’s got a husband’ or ‘behind every great man is a great woman’. Utter twaddle! My characters are self sufficient, independent and are, for want of a better phrase, their own boss. We all have separate identities. I’m not saying other people, external influences, cannot help us to find them and nurture them, no, but what I am saying is that we need to be true to ourselves; male or female, gay or straight.

Fans of Cullum know that he is a playful artist; his lyrics are littered with self-referential jokes and a satirical sneering of pop culture:

“Why is it all these fakers, seem to make the morning papers?

They’re selling records by the million, seems so easy in my opinion.

Look at the jazz star, he really needs some guts

Playing from seven to midnight, surviving on peanuts

Selling records by the dozen

Probably sold his tenor to make ‘em

With artwork designed by his brother

And liner notes by his mother

Told what do, miming to a tape

While a team of experts make sure you’re looking great

Taking a limo to your own private bar

My God! I want to be a popstar!”

Those lyrics, taken from Cullum’s ‘I Want To Be A Popstar’, seem to encapsulate the themes I have tried to address in ‘Pointless Nostalgic’. Jamie is attacking pop culture as artists are churned out in what is really a production line industry; pop music today is homogonous and repetitive, it’s languid and predictable and bad. Bad. But of course, so many chase the dream of becoming one of these factory produced robots and Harry Cock is one of them and, as the predictably pathetic people we are, we turn to the press to find out about the latest sensation; this is depicted in the video overtly. As Cullum says ‘why is it all these fakers, seem to make the morning papers?’; of course, in my video, the tabloids, gutter press, are the catalyst for Cock’s downfall; pop stardom in the twenty first century, like pop music, is fickle and ephemeral. Conversely, even though Cullum’s lyrics are slating pop culture, they seem to be underpinned with envy and a jot of jealousy: ‘seems so easy in my opinion’ and ‘my God, I want to be a popstar’ show this. This is something I have tried to emulate in my video, that lust for fame and the inevitable jealousy one feels for those who have achieved it; that epitomises the relationship of Shuttle and Cock and is a universal axiom that hopefully, audiences will connect with.

At the early stages of development, I suggested replicating scenes from the iconic sixties film ‘Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?’, a now iconic gay movie. However, I felt mere replication was lazy, overtly intertextual and most importantly, it wouldn’t quite sit right with the genre of music I’m working with. Although, the movie has been subtly referenced throughout the video and indeed, underpins the narrative. At the heart of ‘WHTBJ?’ is the idea that a jealous carer tries to murder her famous friend; this is ‘Pointless Nostalgic’! By subtly nodding at this cult classic, Will and Henry seem to adopt female personas, something I have discussed previously in this question, and for those who get the intertextual reference, this adds a new dimension to the narrative of my video; it lives and exist on a different level in the minds of the audience.

Henry’s erratic piano playing is synonymous with Chris Martin of Coldplay fame; the vehement and vicious destruction of the keys adds a levity to the video and calls upon popular music also. This intertextual reference, however subtle, is underpinned with an even subtler message; Chris Martin openly said at the start of his career that he dislikes the limelight and likes to keep a very low profile. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he married one of the most famous actresses in the world, is rather supercilious and ‘out-there’ for want of a better phrase and as one of my lovely friends, Mr Harry Elvin pointed out, ‘he is the only member of Coldplay that anyone can actually name!’ Now, Henry’s character in the video is rather reticent and coy on the surface, he lives in Will’s shadow ironically, yet he too is never out the papers; he saves someone from a Netto fire, Nelson Mandela is a fan of his music and he his hailed as a national treasure. What I’m suggesting is this; everyone who has fame, loves fame. They are in a privileged position and they relish the opportunities and bask in the glory that fame so auspiciously bestows upon one. I understand that that is painfully generic but I feel it is an idea underpinning my video; Henry loves his fame and Henry also loves the limelight. Throughout the video, there is reference to ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ being Henry’s debut solo single; for his promotional music video, he has decided to belittle his comedy partner by showing how Will, presumably like the public, are incredibly envious and jealous of his prized position! It’s a strange way of looking at it but it’s a way of looking at it! Here’s to you Chris Martin, you shy and modest retiring fellow!

Sinead O’Connor is an artist that isn’t in the public spotlight currently yet I have, rather subconsciously, nodded at her music video’s with ‘Pointless Nostalgic’. Will’s ‘floating head’, a ghostly white face foregrounded on a black background, is a shot synonymous with Miss O’Connor; she uses this shot when lip syncing in her music videos. Will’s isolated head suggests he is lost in his thoughts, his mind is all that matters or, conversely, he has no-body, literally and metaphorically! He is on his own, lonely and isolated, roaming the park and hiding in bushes. Even though everybody knows his name as he’s never out of the papers, he is always alone and sequestered from society. ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ subverts ideas surrounding ‘the famous’ and ‘the limelight’; fame is lonely, you are different from Joe Public. On the other hand, as soon as the fickle, fleeting mask that calls itself fame slips from your heavily made-up face, no one is interested. These themes are attacked head on in ‘Pointless Nostalgic’, fame is fickle for both Will and Henry. When Henry dies, he is hailed as a national treasure; this fleeting ephemeral story is soon superseded with ‘Cock In Broadmoor’; the country moves on, mourning stops as the next ‘big thing’ grips the nation. I have used, developed and challenged forms and conventions surrounding society and the media in my music video.

Perhaps the most overtly intertextual references lie in the satirising of comedy double acts, namely Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies. The choice of mise en scene regarding Will’s carrier bag, mac and glasses is of course synonymous with Eric and Ernie and today, the Shooting Star’s character that is Angelos, an incredibly funny, painfully stupid character with greased back hair, ill-fitting trousers, specs and a Sainsbury’s carrier bag! Geek chic, what with the advent of old and new comedy, is increasingly popular and in a rather subtle way, my music video is referencing and indeed challenging ideas surrounding popular fashion. Henry’s piano playing is out of tune and out of time in the video; this is addressed via a newspaper headline delivering the line ‘he played all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order’, a line immediately identifiable with a classic sketch from Morecambe and Wise. Not only does this degree of intertextual referencing add to the levity, humour and puerile playfulness underpinning the video but intertextual references are strangely rewarding for those who connect with them, identify them; there is a degree of ‘nerdiness’ attached to intertextuality! Peppering my video with intermedial and intertextual references not only shows that I am aware of past and present media products, calling upon my predecessors to create something post-modern yet exceptionally different, but I am also gratifying the knowing few that connect with my perpetual referencing; be it Coldplay, comedy or cult classics. For those knowing few, the video takes on a new lease of life, a new dimension, a forth dimension, and the video is consumed on a whole new level.

Mrs Hughes, my marvellously lovely media teacher, pointed out that I film Will in rather an idolatrous manner; the extreme close up’s of his wet lips, smouldering eyes and intricate fingers reek of hero worship, libidinous lust and admiration. Now, after watching ‘Pulp Fiction’ earlier in the year, Tarantino shot Thurman in a similar manner, the only difference being that she is worthy of worship and oozes beauty; Will does not. The sexualised, almost obsessive, shots of his features nod at the work of the great Tarantino, as does the playfulness of my video. Like Tarantino, I have taken a plethora of ideas, styles and themes that appeal to me and have nebulously brought them together; I have been over-indulgent with close up and comedy, I have been greedy with intertextual reference and I have relished every minute of production. On a very vainglorious and supercilious level, it would be charming and flattering if anyone compared my childishly playful style to that of Mister Tarantino but as that is unlikely to happen, one would be content if they acknowledged the subtle reference in shot style and framing technique. The extreme close up’s of Thurman that reek of adulation are replicated and, as Will is by no means beautiful, this added an amusing and ominous touch to the video. In ‘Pulp Fiction’, there are some very poignant shots when characters delivering lines are not in frame; either the backs of their heads are captured, the camera is fixed on another character or part of their face/body is not in frame. At a cursory glance, it appears that editing is a little lapse(!) however, in my opinion, Tarantino is satirising the conventionally crisp shots that frame those delivering dialogue, he is playing with code and convention and he is challenging it in equal measure. This is something I have tried to emulate. When Will lip sync’s, often his mouth is partly obscured or his face is at a bizarre angle; not only is this uncomforting and unnerving for anyone watching the video, but it is also a rather overt nod at the brilliant Mr Quentin Tarantino!

And then comes ‘Psycho’… we fade to black as the final melancholy chords fade also and those rhapsodically beautiful notes ring out and then, and then, the tranquillity is interrupted with white noise and there he is, Harry Cock, playing the role of Norman Bates in the final scenes of Hitchcock thriller ‘Psycho’! The idea for this nugget of intertextual referencing hit me rather late on in the development process and knew immediately it was something I had to create. Will unnerves, alarms and shocks the audience throughout the video; he is ominous, odious and horrendous and quite simply, an archetypal ‘psycho’! What better way to close the video than with a nod at one of the most famous ‘psycho’s’ of all time!? The final scene was replicated to the last detail, transcript and all, as Will donned some harrowing eye make-up (nearly blinding himself in the process) and shrouded his sorry body in a shawl. The footage was then desaturated and using Final Cut, it was scratched and aged until it looked like the real thing! Now, if you have seen the video, you will have noticed that the fly, that famous fly that lands on Bates’ hand, has been superseded with a raisin on a bit of string! We did try and get the fly, but he had a cameo in Waterloo Road and so we used a fly substitute, a raisin on a bit of string! However bizarre this sounds, in the style of Tarantino, it was a gentle mock, a little dig at the often ostensibly insuperable film industry; ‘Psycho’ is such a classic film, a relic, a vanguard of contemporary cinema, and so to be so sacrilegious and supersede ‘the fly’ with ‘a raisin’ was painfully irresistible! Will dubs the footage with the original transcript and acknowledges the fly: ‘you can’t even swat that fly… hang on, where’s the fly? Is that a raisin on a bit of string? The most famous ending in movie history and you can’t ev… Jesus!’ Will’s performance here was breathtakingly brilliant and harrowingly haunting and I feel this scene, this vile vignette, rounded the video off beautifully. Of course, ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ is Harry Cock’s (Will’s) story and, to close his story with one of the most famous scenes in movie history suggests how he sees himself; in his eyes, he is an insuperable legend, a relic and should be placed on a pedestal! By likening his story to a Hollywood classic, his quaint little music video becomes a biopic!

At a staggering 5 minutes 49 seconds, ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ is a playful plethora of postmodernism and intertextuality. I have used the work of established artists, directors, comedians and musicians to influence my creative choices and I feel my work is better for it. I have developed and challenged codes and conventions surrounding the music video genre and feel I have found my own style, tone and directorial technique in doing so.

FINAL CD INSERTS

Here are the final CD inserts!! I have constructed several copies of the album for the poster; their is a strong sense of continuity with the music video and the ancillary tasks!

 

CD Tray Insert

CD Back Cover

MAGAZINE ADVERT: FINISHED!

 

Here is my finished magazine advert, sparkling and glowing! Inspired by the stylistically subtle and marvelously minimalistic magazine adverts of the Manic Street Preachers and Plan B, the advert isn’t unnecessarily ostentatious yet is underpinned with the melancholy moodiness and madness that is synonymous with the track.

I have tried to keep a sense of continuity in style and form in regards to my main task and the ancillary tasks; the ripped out pages of a notebook that are pinned to the advert are akin with the jottings that pepper the CD sleeve and the ‘Headline News’ font, in blood red, that i used to create the text on the newspaper front pages in the video has been employed once again here. Will’s angrily odiously ominous character has been captured here also!!

ALBUM COVER: FINISHED!

I present to you, for the first time in paperback, my finished album cover for ‘Pointless Nostalgic’. The front and back covers continue the perpetual newspaper motif that is pervasive in my video. The interior pages are clippings from Harry Cock’s notebook. Using tablets, sheets of Will’s writing, newspaper cuttings, tea satins and fake blood, i created a bricolage, a collage that hopefully resembles the journal of a psychopath. It occurred to me, during development,  that the journal could be released as a promotional tie in, merchandise, that could both promote the video and generate hype and revenue. Happy browsing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEST ALBUM ART OF 2011

When embarking on something as daunting as creating an album cover, one must call upon both influential timeless works, vanguards of the art form, as well as contemporary designs that both challenge codes and conventions as well as being innovative, ingenious and exciting in equal measure. The BBC News website boasts a list of ‘The Best Album Art Of 2011′ and so one feels one must take a look! Good, bad or ugly, I’m sure there is something in the following list that will excite and enthrall…

The People’s Key by Bright Eyes is striking, visually sonorous and violently vibrant; the torrent of torrid warmth it exudes is dangerous and knowing little about the band or their music, the cover ostensibly suggests power, energy, heat and intensity. The vicious yet voluptuous colours that radiate from this simple yet unequivocally striking piece of album art make my face flush as i can feel the heat of the album art warm my blood. Perhaps Bright Eyes wanted to create an effect like this: the music runs through the blood with an insuperable intensity and electricity; music is in all of us and like fire, it’s primitive, powerful yet profound. Good music, in my opinion, strips human beings down to base elements, base emotions; music is about the human condition, it’s a way of expressing our humanity. Perhaps this primal rather ostentatious boldness is just a tad too much for my album art; i appreciate the intensity and the energy, the cover oozes warmth, yet it wouldn’t suit the melancholy, timorous loneliness that is Pointless Nostalgic. The record came in a painstakingly-created iridescent foil sleeve, that folded out into six panels; this is perhaps something i would like to emulate; an album cover that is tactile and tangible and fascinatingly fiddly appeals. I have delineated in previous posts that i would like the interior of the album cover to consist of pages from Harry Cock’s journal; i would like these exerts to be peppered with pills, blotted with blood and littered with lots and lots of bits and bobs.

Coldplay’s ‘Mylo Xyloto’ is one of my favourite albums of all time; the playful medleys, the luscious lyrics and the psychedelic riffs and ripples that jump into the ear drums and tickle the senses make this a beautiful collection of eclectic tracks. The album art is just as surreal, playful, iridescent, fizzy, radiant, over-zealous, messy, eclectic, vibrant and hot; the powerful potent pinks and purples and the lovely lush lime-greens bathe the eyes in a Sea of colour. This, as aforementioned, reflects the colourful, eclecticism of their music that inexorably sparkles and scintillates. Of course, why be so greedy with colour, craziness and precocious, pretentiously playful patterns? Today, the CD, the album is a dying art form; technological convergence has revolutionised how we consume, buy and share music and so the tactile, tangible, aesthetically pleasing, lusciously vibrant and often original album will encourage many more potential consumers to buy the tangible and tactile product. Over recent years, album art has become more outrageous, more unique, more playful and indeed, something that shakes the world of music, musically and artistically, will have longevity and undoubtedly, large album sales as many will want to see what the fuss is about, for want of a better phrase. Photographs of ‘pop stars’ are readily accessible online 24/7 in the 21^st century; the fan/artist experience/relationship has been re-energised/re-imagined by the wonderously wonderful world wide web whereas in the eighties, nineties, the ‘image’ of pop stars was determined by how they choose to portray themselves in music videos, album art and the like; the artist and their management had primary control over the artists image whereas paparazzi, tabloids and even the keen obsessive fan armed with a camera can now shape, influence how a celebrity is represented, received and portrayed in the media. In other words, a photograph of Coldplay is readily accessible and easy to acquire whereas something as unique, individual and intricate as this beautifully bizarre album cover is not. This style of album art wouldn’t suit the jazzy number that is Pointless Nostalgic; the track is relatively refined, profound and, dare I say it, traditionally classic whereas this avant garde psychedelic feast of colour is anything but refined. But I think it is profound. Profound and deliciously unequivocally beautiful.

Over Summer 2011, I revelled, bathed, in the fantastically folky sounds of Bon Iver; their music is ominous, impending, sinister and spooky yet it sparkles, scintillates and soothes in equal measure. This cover for their second album is synonymous with their rural roots; the rolling hills, the rich, greedy greens suggest such freedom yet such isolation. There is something so warm, so calm and tranquil about landscape; we feel at one with nature, we feel alive and invigorated. Perhaps, Bon Iver is suggesting this is how we will feel after listening to their album? Yet paradoxically, there is something so lonely, so intimidating and belittling about rural landscape, rolling hills and the insuperable force of nature; we feel sequestered from the environment, we feel small and insignificant, pathetic and futile; there is something lonely and desperate, harrowing and haunting about Bon Iver’s style of music and the soft pastille colours capture this beautifully. It appears that the art work is a wallpaper clipping as the edges are jagged and the paper is peeling and rippling. Perhaps this suggests that they are ‘ripping up’ the rule book in regards to conventional folk music; for a rural band, their tunes ooze originality and freshness. Similarly, they could be suggesting that rural music is crumbling, fading away, it’s dilapidated and tired and old; this once colourful genre is now archaic and forgotten and they are trying to retain that colour, that warmth and that power that the genre once so proudly yielded. Of course, I am reading far too much into this but I can’t help but feel that by using such a dominantly resonant landscape, they are suggesting that their music has mass appeal, it isn’t niche at all. The ubiquitous axiom of loneliness and insignificance when confronted with nature, natural beauty, is something we can all connect with; like that feeling, that condition, their music will unite us. Again, I am scratching far too deep here and I am probably barking up the wrong tree in the wrong pastel-painted forest. A beautiful cover but too soft, delicate, for me.

The simplicity of the Cult’s album cover is striking and ineffably classy; the gold lettering should be cheap and tacky yet it married the black and white so beautifully. The artists seem to be careless, devoid of inhibitions and really seem to be giving themselves up to the moment for want of a better phrase; I know little about the band but they are both over zealous, zany and unbelievably energetic performers; this is captured on the album cover. The basic yet visually sonorous black on white suggests that there is either something basic and easily accessible about their music or that it has mass appeal; their music transcends ‘niche market’ and will appeal to all. Conversely, a basic colour scheme ostensibly suggests that it is just the music that matters, nothing else; they need no pomp and ceremony to sell their album, there is nothing pretentious and ostentatious about their music. Yet, on the other hand, the gold lettering suggests otherwise and the very fact their faces are obscured suggests that they have such faith in their own identity, brand, their music, that they don’t need pictures of themselves adorning the albums in order to generate sales. Conversely, they could be suggesting that the artist is unimportant, it’s the music and how I affects you, the listener, that matters. I like the basic yet bold, subtle yet sonorous clinical classiness that this cover yields; it is something I would like to try and emulate when creating my album cover.

The Diary Of A Psychopath

As an extension of the puerile playfulness ‘Pointless Nostalgic’ proffers, I have decided that the album cover should also be akin to the silly and splendidly stupid. It is my intention that superimposed on the newspaper cuttings are pages from Tommy Shuttle’s journal. Here, key events that pepper the music video are documented, his plans to murder Harry Shuttle are indignantly delineated and he will wax lyrical about his obsession of trying to watch women poo. I plan to create this insightful and exciting titbits by taking a 12cm x 12cm piece of card (the size of an album cover) and paper clipping tickets, pages from notepads, shopping lists, trinkets and the like to it to create a cute yet creepy little journal. It is my intention that if the album cover was to be massed produced, it would be tangible and tactile; the music then lives on a wholly different level thus increasing units sold. Of course, the possibility for tie-in products such as a leather bound journal and books for example would also both promote the album and increase profits! Kerching! Here are some initial designs for the pages of the journal. Enjoy!