Friday 8 October 2010

Spike Jonze

I have chosen to research music video director Spike Jonze. Spike Jonze has directed such famous music videos as "Buddy Holly" by Weezer and "Praise you by Fatboy Slim.
Spike Jonze's videos have a high level of entropy as he often tries to create something outside of what you would expect from a standard music video. The "Buddy Holly" video is entropic as it is not what you would expect from this band. Weezer are a rock band so you would not expect them to adopt the smart, formal style of the 1950s band and the audience would also not expect this kind of setting (TV show "Happy Days"), you would probably expect them to adopt a more "rebellious" and entropic attitude like many other rock bands. The video also uses audio from the original TV show, which is unusual for a music video. You can see throughout all of Spike Jonze's videos that all of them have an entropic twist, none of them conform to genre conventions which is what makes them interesting and different. Spike Jonze's original and creative videos show an Auteur signature of entropy and comedy as most of his videos have an element of comedy to them, often from the strangeness of the video itself. Most of Spike Jonze's videos don't adhere to Proppian or Todorovian narrative structure, they are instead more abstract art pieces. The target audience for "Buddy Holly" would be tennage males aged 16-20, probably students or C1, C2 or D on the Jicnar scale.

Digipaks

This is an example of a digipak. Digipaks are a four panel paperboard case with a plastic interior containing a CD, DVD and lyric booklet. This form of CD became popular in the early 2000s, offering the consumer more content for their money. Digipaks are the "Premium" edition of a music album allowing the artist to include extra content such as music videos, "making of" documentaries, interviews, photo galleries etc. Digipaks are slightly more expensive than regular CDs. These types of CD are more popular nowadays as they offer more value for money as opposed to a simple download., also offering extra content unavailable anywhere else.

Research and Planning

This is a typical pop music video. The style of this video is Performance/Narrative as there is a small thread of story but we mostly see Katy Perry performing ; singing and dancing. I would classify this video as "Amplifying" as it is not directly representing the meaning of the song instead showing a fantasy world that still fits in with most of the lyrics. This video shows a lot of typical conventions of pop music videos such as the sexualised females and lots of focus on the main singer, with lots of close-ups. Because of this I find this video redundant however it has a degree of entropy depending on the audience because of unusual "Candyland" setting. The video represents women in a way typical to music video conventions and the ideology of pop music. Women are mostly displayed in a sexualised way or as "sex objects". The way the main singer is shot with lots of close-up and the mise en scene and costume creates this idea of sexual objectification. The way the singer in this video is represented is voyeuristic which relates to Laura Mulvey's theory that film is seen through the point of view of a heterosexual man and as such are often represented as sexualised and fetishistic, this point of view is especially evident in the video from 00:57 - 01:08. This theory is known as "The Male Gaze". The target audience for this video would be 12-16 year old girls who are students at school. They are mainstreamers and will listen to anything that's on the radio. It also has a smaller audience of teenage males who enjoy the video for the sexualised females and the guest vocals by rapper Snoop Dogg. Many viewers will take an oppositional reading and think that the depiction of women is over-sexualised.

Friday 1 October 2010

Research, music videos

This music video is very entropic. The way the band is shot as they play is quite redundant and generic as we see this style of filming in lots of heavy metal videos. The fast paced editing goes well with the fast tempo of the song. The imagery of the old man working on insects in entropic as the audience doesn't know what it is intended to mean. The lighting is typical of heavy metal videos dark but with bright background lights. This style of music is entropic as it is very heavy and uses mostly screaming vocals. The mise-en-scene has the band performing in a small room in which the old man is seen working. The style of the video is dark and serious which reflects the tone of the music itself. The target audience for this video is 16-19 year old males, most likely individualists who are probably D or C2 on the Jicnar scale, possibly students, middle class. This audience would identify with the members of the band and may have aspirations to be in a similar band and play and instrument.