TECHS - Resources for Record Sleeves

ALLCDCOVERS:

CDCOVERS:
limited, can't find any examples of my artist:

- From the CHIP some hints in a video, which recommends these sites:

SEEKACOVER
a dead end

DISCOGS
Really useful database of examples, however you can't download them, I have to screenshot them in zoom.

In order to get more information I created an account:

FOR THE DIGIPAK FORMAT

DISCFACTORY

DISTRIBUTION: Music Video Channels

CHANNELS INCLUDE:

• MTV
• Viva
• NOW Music
• Deluxe Music

The beginning and end (and often thereby the diegetic intros an outros, but also titles as they are given in the captions anyway) are cut off when shown on these channels.

Will maybe the front cover of the album be next to the artist and track title?

PRACTICE FILMING #1 - Enjoy The Silence

ACTORS: Myself (Richard Dannenberg)
LOCATION: My House
PROPS: The long thing

An intertextual reference to the jump and cross-cuts at the beginning of the Enjoy The Silence Video.

INDIE ROCK MV #1: Kraftklub - Fenster

ACT: Kraftklub
TRACK: Fenster (Window)
ALBUM: Keine Nacht Für Niemand 
      (No Evening For No One)
YEAR: 2017
GENRE: Indie rock, Sprechgesang
DIRECTORS: Mario Clement, Chehad Abdallah
LABEL:  Vertigo Records (owned by UMG)
SINGLE?: Yes, second single, released before the full album

BACKGROUND

Indie rock band formed in 2010, this is their third album. With their first album they rose to prominence very quickly and attracted the attention of multiple record labels, similar to the Arctic Monkeys in the UK. However unlike the Sheffield act they didn't sign with a German indie label equivalent, but with Vertigo Records, a 

• Their last single, Dein Lied (Your Song), had already caused some controversial debate when the lead singer apparently slutshamed his ex-girlfriend (he later stated he was writing and playing a different character in the first person)
• This video has a more political tone in contrast to the personal, but deals with a similar character who is frustrated on events/the situation around him

Short compilation vid I created in order  to get a taster of the band:
To summarise, they started out with comedic videos, similar to those of Blur for example, showing a playful sense of rebellion.
With their second album some of their songs got darker, serious and more political. 
This is foreshadowing the dark nature of the Fenster video.

THE THEORIES I WILL ADDRESS:

• Firth's basic video types
• Andrew Goodwin's 6 Music Video Conventions
• Roland Barthes's codes 
• Carol Vernallis
• Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory

FIRTH PERFORMANCE/NARRATIVE/CONCEPT:
Starts off as a pure narrative video, but then the performance comes in later in the world of the narrative.
The narrative follows a man who wants to go on a rampage in the city.
The editing has quick shots of the performing as a climax, so that acts as a teaser for live performance.
As is typical, the band members who are just playing are looking stoically down, while the lead singer sings at the camera all the time, and the backing vocalist and guitarrist mixes both
Most videos either do solely performance videos or cross-cut them equally with narrative and/or concept.
Those who don't know the image of the band well won't be able to follow this preferred reading, but the band members make cameos as corpses.

LYRICAL THEME
The lyrics deal with a angered character who is expressing his frustration about the state of the world, how the government.
It was interpreted as a parody of a conspiracy theorist or a right-wing enraged citizen, and received criticism it was encouraging such people to commit suicide. 

EXTRA SOUNDS:
Diegetic intro with the song being played in the car, as soon as we get to the second shot it is on normal sound and carries on like that throughout the video
Sounds of the antihero screaming and shouting, beeping his car and the buttons on the car radio, the sound of the bullet firing to kill himself, as well as doors opening and blood splattering.


TITLES:
Act and track in one on two lines appears after 2 seconds 
Director isn't mentioned. All upper-case, serif, artist name bigger than track, track is in French-style exclamation marks.








GOODWIN'S SIX MUSIC VIDEO CONVENTIONS
GENRE CHARACTERISTICS:
Rock normally features the band cross-cut with narrative segments, however here we only have them appearing at the end.

CLOSE-UPS OF THE ARTIST:
The band do not appear a lot, however the lead singer always looks into the camera towards the end, never taking his eye off, where as the backing vocalist does to play with his guitar, putting emphasis on the lead singer.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS 
At the climax when narrative when the anti-hero shoots himself the lyrics are saying "Jump, jump out of the window"

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC AND VISUALS 
The lyrics of frustration go well with diegetic blips of the shouting man.

NOTION OF LOOKING
The lead singer and backing vocalist are looking at the camera.

INTERTEXTUALITY:
Capturing the Zombie zeitgeist from the current TV series The Walking Dead. Just like Bring Me The Horizon and Taylor Swift did with their Follow You and Look What You Made Me Do videos. All the way back to Michael Jackson's Thriller video (which was inspired by 1950s and 1960s horror films such as Night Of The Living Dead) the zombie genre is an easy simulacrum for music videos.
Comparisons were drawn in the press with this video from The Ärzte, Hey Junge, a band which influenced them as well as lot

ROLAND BARTHES'S CODES
ACTION CODE: "A code which contains sequential elements of action in the text" (Slideshare)
We follow the protagonist through multiple scenarios.

CAROL VERNALLIS:
Musicologist Carol Vernallis argued that there is too much ellipsis in music videos in order for it be an authentic narrative, however here there is a somewhat unclear narrative but still a narrative we can follow due to it not being cross-cut with the band. There is an ellipsis towards the end as the lighting has changed to night time, this could be a fews hours later or in the context of a post-apocalyptic zombie 
BRANDING:
The band are dressed in red, the new look they moved on after white and black for their previous two albums respectively:

After the video ends there are tor dates, which are on the website and will also bee turned into merchandise, on the back of jumpers, T-Shirts and hoodies and on posters.
The new album is also being pushed, this is the second single released two months before the actual album.

REPRESENTATION
A small detail, the woman he sees is dressed in red, not very glossy lipstick but still the stereotypical red













There is a shot of her leg however one could argue that this is not  sexualised due to the gore:










INFLUENCES ON MY PRODUCTION
The urban locations, and the shots of graffiti influenced my video.
However mine does not have the band only appearing at the end. 
SMALL DETAILS:

• Have a character in the narrative sing one of the lyrics (something I observed in another other Kraftklub video, Sklave and Arcade Fire's Everything Now video)

REACTION:

• https://www.tag24.de/nachrichten/chemnitz-neues-video-chemie-chemie-ya-veroeffentlicht-kraftklub-drehte-an-chemnitzer-lost-places-335345
• https://noisey.vice.com/de/article/9a77vd/kraftklub-und-farin-urlaub-fordern-verschworungstheoretiker-zum-kollektiven-selbstmord-auf

DISTRIBUTION - Fundraising Platforms

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• In their current point in career Suede do not need to raise money in these ways to fund visual output

For indie bands a very useful asset are online fundraising platforms.

PLEDGEMUSIC
A direct-to-fan music platform
The band The Fat White Family made use of this to fund their tour at a festival.

Some more examples (full list here):

Several egs where the label is PledgeMusic itself, another example of convergence

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KICKSTARTER
Has been used for films, such as the film sequel for the TV series Veronica Mars, and the Warp documentary All Tomorrow's Parties.

DIGIPAK RESEARCH - Fan-Club Exclusive Albums

The small entry from the Wikipedia page:

See You in the Next Life... is a fan-club release album by the English alternative rock band Suede, released in 2004.^[2]The album was limited to 2,000 copies and is mostly demos and remixes of previously released songs. "Elaine Paige" is an alternate version of "Another No One", a B-side on the "Trash" CD2 single. "La Puissance" is a live version of "The Power" (from Suede's Dog Man Star album) sung in French.

After discovering this by browsing through Suede's chronology, I checked the category section and clicked on the fan-released albums

AUDIENCE THEORY #9 - Primary + Secondary Audience

When analysing audiences they often fall into two groups, primary and secondary audiences. 

EXAMPLE

Halsey has an established, loyal following of fans after her successful debut studio album Badlands (Vevo trailer).

As usual there is high anticipation especially after the first album is a surprise success, (and thereby there is huge pressure on the second album), so that will be her primary audience that the album "Hopeless Fountain Kingdom" will be marketed on.

The narrative is based on a film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. People who here that might watch it due to this intertextual reference of the both the film and the play ,the play having a more a cultural and high art status, it may also be of interest in English Literature at school or university.

However the primary core audience may also share interest in this intertextual reference, as a devoted Halsey fan stated in this Unboxing Video:

I'm a sucker for like literature, and Shakespeare, and plays, and all of that, it just interests me SO MUCH...I just think it's AWESOME. 

POSSIBLE IDEA - Depeche Mode - Slow

Have the band playing in the video, but have a main female character really in love with this slow beauty (sad look at "When something's so good...") Got this idea when looking into the mirror. 

so the band appear on and off, but the female character does a lot of the singer, could even be Dave Gahan (play with Perücken using standing turned around?) until they are switched towards the end. The whole image of women, lust, romance and anguish of men towards women could be represented as Dave Gahan and even the band being in love with himself, wishing he was a women?

Look at when Dave Gahan dressed up feminely 


FRENCH NEW WAVE STYLE

The two characters in the mise-en-scene in frame as the camera tracks forward.

TECHNOLOGY - Watching Music Videos On TV Channels

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These are some of the videos that have helped in my research

Deluxe Music

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TECHNOLOGY - Photoshop

From this website:

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POSSIBLE MUSIC VIDEO/WEBSITE INFLUENCES #31 - Add Credits In YouTube Description

This would be a very small detail but a thorough detail in use of conventions to achieve verisimilitude.

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MV PLANNING - Editing Effects

UPDATE:
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ORIGINAL TRACK:
Suede - Picnic By The Motorway

Layering between narrative and performance.

The protagonist is up on the Marinen Säule watching the view.

Instead of being repetitive and having the band there as well, layer them in so that they're to left edge of the screen, and one time the lead singer can be moving his arm forward when saying: "Such a lovely day", and reflecting on the views

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #10 - Grant Scott: Do we need it?

Article by Grant Scott, founder/curator of United Nations Photography writing for Medium.

Let me put my cards on the table. I came to photography as a fan. A fan of the images I saw in magazines and on record covers in the Seventies and early Eighties before starting to work as an art director on magazines in the United Kingdom. Magazines that exist to be aspirational, entertaining, informative and most importantly profitable. My view of photography was formed within that commercial context, I never studied photography (I studied graphics at art school) so I was never introduced to the sacred tomes of Sontag or Barthes. I had seen John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Robert Hughes’s Shock of the New on television but this was as intellectual entertainment not as academic doctrine to support dissection, deconstruction and debate.Despite this ‘commercial background’ whilst art directing magazines I commissioned photographers such as Abbas, Leonard Freed, Don McCullin, Jane Bown, William Klein, Steve Pyke, Sylvia Plachy, Chris Steele Perkins, Corrine Day, The Douglas Brothers and Kurt Markus amongst many others. Photographers whose work could sit as easily within areas of traditional photo-journalism or contemporary art as it did within the pages of a glossy magazine, but most importantly the photographers that I commissioned were those whom I admired, respected and enjoyed purely from a photographic perspective.
Fast forward to today and I find myself within an academic, a commercial, a photographic and perhaps most importantly an online environment. Photography is intrinsic to all of these environments but it is the way in which it is viewed and interpreted in each that I believe creates a series of unnecessary barriers for many to engage with photography and navigate its highways and byways.
In a recent interview the photographer and Magnum member Martin Parr declared “Photography is the most democratic art form we have in the world.” I agree with Martin, a photographer whose exhibitions and books are much reviewed, dissected, revered and as often dismissed and vilified but whose work helping to sell frozen food products, luxury clothing brands and streetwear is largely ignored by the theoretic photographic cognoscenti. Which makes me wonder if the writing about photography is as democratic and open as the art itself?Let’s start with the word ‘commercial’. Despite the influence that this work has on our daily lives, it’s creative impact on our visual awareness and its positive impact in supporting a photographic economy ‘commercial photography’ is too often and quickly dismissed by the critics, commentators and academics who deem it to not be ‘serious’ photography. It is this compartmentation of photography based upon critical, academic and theoretical premise that I take issue with.
I can enjoy all forms of photography from the brash image created to sell me a hamburger to a body of work created over decades shedding light upon a narrative of global importance. I do not feel the need to place either in a position of photographic importance both have their place in our cultural awareness. So why do so many ‘cultural elite’ commentators feel the need to do so? Well, let’s think about that.My personal experience of conversations with those who adopt and propagate these views, listening to talks and reading too many linguistically verbose articles illustrates one common factor. That is that few of those speakers and writers have any real knowledge of ‘commercial photography’ and even fewer have worked within it in any capacity.
This may take us some way to understanding the dismissive attitude many have towards it but it also I believe explains why other areas of work are so often exalted beyond their actual importance.To theorize about a subject with any level of authority requires understanding, without that understanding theory is too clearly revealed as ill-informed opinions to those who have the understanding the writer does not have. Many of the critics and theorists I am referring to have never worked as a photographer in any context, they have studied art based theory and continued their studies into a career focusing on themes based on their academic studies and reading. They also continue to use a form of unnecessarily complex academic language (often described as ‘art speak’) in their writing. Within an academic context this is theory as research and when I say research I mean research as is defined by institutions, through papers created to appear within academic journals and at conferences with little if any relevance or impact on or to the wider photographic community.
I have no issue with this. It exists within a niche created for a specific reason. Just as ‘commercial photography’ is created to meet a need and provide an income this academic approach to photography provides a career for those involved with it. In turn reflecting on work created within personal areas of exploration outside of the commissioned market makes sense for those reviewing works that accepted theories and understanding can explain through the academics best friend the attributed reference.
We all benefit from insight into work, to question is vitally important and context helps us with our understanding of all creative endeavour. However, impenetrable academic text, agenda heavy theory and ill-informed criticism does none of these things.The ability for everyone to have an opinion and the easy availability of online publishing (I know just as I am doing here, the irony is not lost on me at this point) has resulted in a tsunami of theory based journals and articles. But how much of it is of any real importance or relevance to us as photographers? We are constantly being told that the proliferation of images online is devaluing photography and in turn the role of the professional photographer. Surely, the same could be said of photography based writing.
I love photography but despite my passion for and knowledge of the subject I find myself, regularly confused, frustrated and quite frankly bored by so much of the criticism and theory I am presented with.I want to understand more about photography, I want to read informed criticism and I’m happy to have these insights come from an academic perspective. But I want that writing to be based upon informed personal knowledge, not just referenced texts. I want it to be open to all areas of practice and I want it to be written in a language which is accessible to all. Great writing is not based on linguistic gymnastics but clearly communicated thoughts, ideas and beliefs delivered with panache and imagination.
Just as my tastes in photography are varied I’d like the writing on the subject to demonstrate a similar level of variety. I believe that we need critics, theorists and rigorous academic reflection on photography but we do not need it to be narrow focused, ill-informed, unreadable and elitist. Critics, theorists and academics are all writing for a reason, to be paid by a publication, to raise profile, to develop a book concept and to fulfil academic research commitments. Just as a commercial photographer shoots to a brief to please a client so the critic, theorist and academic fulfils their brief.
I am not a philistine when it comes to my understanding of photography but I do find myself agreeing with Albert Einstein who said that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.My call to all critics, theorists and academics is for them to think about why they are writing what they are writing and for them to be honest about that intention with the reader. If you don’t want anyone to understand what you are writing, then at least be honest about it. But if you want to communicate with me, inform and maybe even entertain me. Then bring it on. I want to read it!

Similar point to Carol Vernallis (click here to read my post on her) who says that music videos can't have a narrative?

PHOTOGRAPHERS #2 - Brian Ziff

Brian Ziff, worked with her on her second album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom.

Website

Instagram

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PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #9 - David Hockney

Article by The Guardian.



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PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #8 - Robert Hughes

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AUDIENCE THEORY #8 - Four quadrants

Click here to see my post from my AS coursework blog. where I talked about the four-quadrant theory for films. However is it only applicable to the medium of film? Surely it is the ultimate goal of all media producers to have all audience members, male & female and under & above 25 to consume their texts?

Will have to pay particular attention to the demographics when doing my audience feedback to see if it has been applied to.

AUDIENCE THEORY #7 - Morley

Andrew Goodwin says that Morley in his 1980 book usefully summarises "the problems with the empiristic tradition of audience studies." He goes on to state that the most notorious and debilitating aspect of such studies is of course the failure to analyse meaning systematically"

From this Prezi:

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AUDIENCE THEORY #6: Dan Gillmor

I myself have seen how an audience is no longer passive through my feedback, they helped to contribute to the editing process.

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #7: Roland Barthes

The French semiologist has a wide area of expertise (See this tag for his other theories and how I have applied them)

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes (1980), digested by Tim Clark

Camera Lucida is a short, personal response to photography, so it's strange that it has achieved canonical status, but the magnetism it exerts extends to artists and writers alike. This book is a reflection on longing and loss written after Barthes' mother died. It's curious and affecting, exploring the relationship between photography, history and death.Barthes explains two key concepts that can be applied when looking at photographs. The first he calls the studium – vague details which constitute the photograph’s subject, meaning and context.However it's the second concept, the punctum, that has really resonated. By this he means the aspect of an image that attracts the viewer, something intensely private, unexpected and thus indelible. “A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” he wrote. The discussion centres on a photograph from 1898, an image of his mother when she was a child, never at any point shown in the book. “For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the ‘ordinary’”.So subjective, and at times sentimental, is his examination of photography that initial responses to the book were scathing. Conversely, perhaps it is this very act of personalisation and the sense of vulnerability that has continued to capture imaginations in the 30 years since publication. Indeed, the academic Geoffrey Batchen, in his book Photography Degree Zero ventures that Camera Lucida is perhaps the most popular and influential contribution to photography to this day.    

In his own words

“Photography: it reminds us of its mythic heritage only by that faint uneasiness which seizes me when I look at ‘myself’ on a piece of paper.”

“Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels or even stigmatises, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.”

“Not only is the Photograph never, in essence, a memory, but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory.”  

How to sound as if you've read it 

 All photography tells us death in the future.

RANDOM IDEA #6: Blood-like Berry Juice

Just ate a Malberry and the juice came out on my fingers. It looks very much like blood, an image that can be very effective, maybe even more so in black & white. 

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #6: Fred Ritchn

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

After Photography by Fred Ritchn (2009), digested by Diane Smyth

It takes a brave author to tackle digital media, a medium changing so fast that any attempt to read it looks outdated before the ink is dry. And yet that’s what Fred Ritchin did in After Photography, attempting to describe what’s new about digital photography and how it’s changed us. As the title suggests, Ritchin believes digital photography is a fundamental shift rather than a simple change of tools, and he backs up his argument by considering both its ubiquity and its malleability. Digital photography started when National Geographic modified a horizontal photograph of the pyramids to create a more aesthetically pleasing front cover, Ritchin argues, shaking our belief in the image as proof. The fact that we are all now armed with digital cameras, especially those embedded in our smartphones, means that we are all looking at the world second-hand via images, and also constantly presenting ourselves for image-based consumption. It’s a gloomy reading of a brave new world, but Ritchin also suggests new strategies – a shift into “an interactive, networked multimedia”, in which hotspots link into other images and more information. Ritchin’s references to YouTube and MySpace already feel outdated, and his thoughts on surveillance seem tentative now that Wikileaks has blown the lid off the NSA program but it’s a game attempt to draw a line in the sand.

 In his own words

"Photography in the digital environment involves the reconfiguration of the image into a mosaic of millions of changeable pixels, not a continuous tone imprint of a visible reality. Rather than a quote from appearances, it serves as an initial recording, a preliminary script, which may precede a quick and easy reshuffling." 

"The multitudes of photographers now intensely staring not at the surrounding world, nor at their loved ones being wed or graduating, but at their camera backs or cellphones searching for an image on the small screens, or summoning the past as an archival image on these same screens, is symptomatic of the image’s primacy over the existence it is supposed to depict." 

 "Even before the ubiquity of a billon cell phone cameras, we were already in rehearsal for the pose, the look and a diminished sense of privacy." 

How to sound as if you've read it 

The web is all around us; the only solution is to go further into it.