MUSICVID #20: Kendrick Lamar - HUMBLE.

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The heads in conformity, have them turned around, people from JugendClub, could turn around and start to sing. They could be praying to some dystopian ruler, and she rebels against that? (Is it really dystopian and dictatorial if she can rebel against? Or is it all inside her head, bzw. it's what she feels like letting out. Oh, ooooh, maybe at the end it turns out she's in a prison, like just about to go to Room 101. maybe give it a digital twist with all these worries with surveillance and cyber crime, space and war and shit)
• The money, dollar bills being burned, a part of yesterday's society
• The end, he silently walks out facing camera like the band and their followers in Kraftklub's Chemie Chemie Ya, and then the found footage blips
• The splitscreen, and them going from one to another (needs to be extremely carefully filmed and edited in order to visually work)

ACT: Kendrick Lamar
TRACK: HUMBLE
ALBUM: DAMN
YEAR: 2017
GENRE: Hip-hop
DIRECTOR: Dave Meyers + The Little Homies
LABEL: Top Dawg (owned by UMG)
SINGLE?: Yes, lead single, released two weeks before the album

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT

• Kendrick Lamar started out as an underground rapper, in 2012 he assigned to a major label, TDE Entertainment
• This is his fourth studio album and third with the label
• He is known for a very intense and political style of music, having even met Barack Obama in the White House
• The advent of the Trump presidency has an influence on this most recent album
• Huge chart success, and also retaining critical success

PERFORMANCE, NARRATIVE OR CONCEPT?

Performance and concept.

EXTRA SOUND:

Silence while the titles play and the camera remains static, and the track starts with different lyrics, very unconventional.

TITLES:
As is typical for the label they are included in the titles. All white and upper-case, roles are smaller for the director however for the label they are the same size, signifying how they want to assert their brand in their video products. 

TDE PRESENTSKENDRICK LAMARHUMBLEDIRECTED BY DAVID MEYER + THE LITTLE HOMIES

NARRATIVE ENIGMA:

Lamar is in extreme logshot, we don't see his face.
Then the second shot we see his face.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS:
B**** be humble - Heads bowing.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND VISUALS:
First cut as we cut to the lyrics.

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:
We get rap dance moves, typical for hip-hop. 

INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES:
To Christianity, or specifically the Bible, to The Last Meal.

OTHER NARRATIVE THEORY:
Is Kendrick Lamar being branded as the Proppian hero, he certainly seems to have a number of princesses.

BRANDING:
The opening shot is used as the cover of the single, which Lamar has done with other singles such as Swimming Pools.

REPRESENTATION:
GENDER: Heavy Female Gaze, received criticism, some labelling Lamar even as a misogynist. We just get men bowing their heads, as if it's men he's levelling 

ETHNICITY: The image of Lamar with glasses, a pun on white intellectualism?

AUDIENCE REPRESENTED/TARGETED:
The Female Gaze will help to attract a wider male teen audience, however the music itself has already been very successful among both teen males and females in my own school.

DEVELOPPING THE IDEA #4

Have beginning full of clips of dystopian world (can I really not even add one or two copyrighted images). This is a dream, she wakes up and shakes up the world.

Like the Atraxi showing the world when the Doctor confronts them.

Or instead she is in a world that is both boring, depressing, conformist, and then goes out to find some weird, quirky characters. 
She dreams of the band, could wake up sweaty. And then she goes to the stones were she dreams and dances to them at night, or half-way dark. And when the band is playing at day, she dreams of being with them, also drums on the drums 

Is it too direct/too much, not enough narrative enigma?

Didn't realize where the influence came from of the speeding and waking up from mass flash forward dream, but soon realized it came from the time traveling in Misfits, particicularly the older guy waking up in Alternate Nazi Present, unconscious intertextuality, like the stalking camera in Halsey's Colors vid, but then it took me a bit longer to realize that ;)

Have multiple songs speeded in like at the end of Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. album.

The stuff on Stay Together from 5'00-5'50 would sound  good speeded up like in Misfits and DAMN.

POSSIBLE MV INFLUENCES - Aspect ratio

DEPECHE MODE

TRACK: Soothe My Soul

DIRECTOR: Warren Fu. 

LANA DEL REY

TRACK:  National Anthem 

DIRECTOR: Anthony Mandler.

ARCADE FIRE 

TRACK: Creature Comfort 

DIRECTOR: Tarik Mikou.

KENDRICK LAMAR
TRACK: Backseat Freestyle
DIRECTOR: Jerome D. Hurd

...

POSSIBLE MV INFLUENCES - Editing Speed

Cross-cutting between normal and shaking

02:27 - 02:52

...

The beginning of Animal Nitrate, as the guitar starts, a POV tracking shot is used to speed into where the apartment where the band are playing

*

Starting to get a bit dizzy at 01:11









...

DISTRIBUTION RESEARCH - Release Ratio

Look at albums in 2017 to see how the space is between singles released + the music vids, and the full album release.

Kendrick Lamar's DAMN.

One single released before album, followed by three singles in the space of six months afterwards as well as one extra song, ELEMENT, having a video. The second and third single have a video, however the fourth one has yet to release on after three weeks.

Studio album by Kendrick Lamar
Released	April 14, 2017
Recorded	2016–17
Studio

Singles from Damn
"Humble" Released: March 30, 2017 "DNA" Released: May 30, 2017 "Loyalty" Released: June 20, 2017 "Love" Released: October 2, 2017

Arcade Fire's Everything Now

All Four Singles before the full album release 

Studio album by Arcade Fire
Released	July 28, 2017
Recorded	September 2016 – April 2017

Singles from Everything Now
"Everything Now" Released: June 1, 2017 "Creature Comfort" Released: June 16, 2017 "Signs of Life" Released: June 30, 2017 "Electric Blue" Released: July 13, 2017

Kraftklub's Keine Nacht Für Niemand

Studio Album of Kraftklub
ReleaseDate	2. Juni 2017 Singles 17 March 2017 Dein Lied 7 April 2017 Fenster   31 May 2017.                                          Sklave

Halsey's Hopeless Fountain Kingdom

Promotional singles[edit]

On May 4, 2017, "Eyes Closed" was released as the first promotional single.^[21] 

On May 26, "Strangers", featuring Fifth Harmony member Lauren Jauregui, was released as the second promotional single. (It debuted at No. 100 on the Billboard Hot 100. It became Halsey's sixth entry and Jauregui's first as a solo artist.)

Studio album by Halsey
Released	June 2, 2017

Singles from Hopeless Fountain Kingdom
"Now or Never" Released: April 4, 2017 "Bad at Love" Released: August 22, 2017

Lorde's Melodrama

Studio album by Lorde
Released	16 June 2017[1][2]

Singles from Melodrama
"Green Light" Released: 2 March 2017 "Perfect Places" Released: 1 June 2017 "Homemade Dynamite" Released: 15 September 2017

COMPILATION ALBUMS

Michael Jackson's Scream

Compilation album by Michael Jackson
Released	September 29, 2017

Singles from Scream
"Blood on the Dance Floor x Dangerous(The White Panda Mash-Up)" Released: September 6, 2017 "Thriller (Steve Aoki Midnight Hour Remix)" Released: September 29, 2017

Worst of Jennifer Rostock

Greatest hits album by Jennifer Rostock
Released	September 29, 2017

Singles from Worst of Jennifer Rostock
"Alles cool[1]" Released: August 25, 2017[2] "Haarspray[3]" Released: September 22, 2017[4]

RELEASING EPs as part of a jigsaw puzzle:

The Pixies's Indie Cindy

Nine Inch Nails
The video released eight days for the album's release

...

Back Cover announced:

http://www.spin.com/2017/07/nine-inch-nails-add-violence-art/

DIGIPAK RESEARCH: Concept Albums

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• I can't write an album as a whole, but I want to include interludes and have the concept that this could be some sort of narrative

Article on Pink Floyd's Animals, based on George Orwell's Animal Farm:

http://www.openculture.com/2017/04/pink-floyd-adapts-orwells-animal-farm-into-its-1977-concept-album-animals.html

A book looking at the concept albums as a whole:

Roger Waters And Pink Floyd

Beyond its elucidation and critique of traditional ‘notation-centric’ musicology, this book's primary emphasis is on the negotiation and construction of meaning within the extended musical multimedia works of the classic British group Pink Floyd. Encompassing the concept albums that the group released from 1973 to 1983, during Roger Waters’ final period with the band, chapters are devoted to Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut(1983), along with Waters’ third solo album Amused to Death (1993). This book's analysis of album covers, lyrics, music and film makes use of techniques of literary and film criticism, while employing the combined lenses of musical hermeneutics and discourse analysis, so as to illustrate how sonic and musical information contribute to listeners’ interpretations of the discerning messages of these monumental musical artifacts. Ultimately, it demonstrates how their words, sounds, and images work together in order to communicate one fundamental concern, which—to paraphrase the music journalist Karl Dallas—is to affirm human values against everything in life that should conspire against them

A udiscovermusic article looking at Kendrick Lamar's good kid, maad city:

The best concept records still have fabulous singles. There is a reason that people know ‘Juicy’ by the Notorious BIG, ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ by Marvin Gaye, or ‘Ziggy Stardust’ by David Bowie despite maybe never hearing the full albums that feature them. Those singles alone are strong enough that even someone with just a casual knowledge of the albums they come from, can’t deny the talent that is behind them. The same could be said for ‘B__ch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’ or ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’ from Kendrick Lamar’s major-label debut, Good Kid, mAAd City.
It’s been five years since the release of Good Kid, mAAd City, and the album not only holds a place in the hip-hop cannon but it shifted the culture. It’s even been incorporated into the curriculum in several universities.
The Good Kid, mAAd City cover art features a childhood Polaroid of Kendrick with his uncles and grandfather. There is a baby bottle, a 40-oz bottle and one uncle is flashing a gang sign. In the background is a picture on the wall featuring Kendrick and his father. Everyone’s eyes are blacked out. Speaking on the cover art, Lamar says, “That photo says so much about my life, and about how I was raised in Compton, and the things I've seen, just through them innocent eyes. You don't see nobody else's eyes, but you see my eyes are innocent, and tryna figure out what is goin' on.”
The title on the cover also reads: “a short film by Kendrick Lamar”. This is not an accident. Good Kid, mAAd City is cinematic and tells a gripping specific narrative. It’s a day in the life of the protagonist, K Dot, as he becomes Kendrick Lamar and in it, hooks up with his girl, robs a house, and goes through misadventures, which makes him question hood politics.

IMPACT OF DIGITISATION:
Audiences listen less and less to full albums, this was started through the CD player where you can jump to tunes, with the vinyl you could move the player but not to precise moments and you risked damaging the record. 
The advent of iTunes brought mass consumption, digital disruption, basically killing the album.
Pink Floyd wanted to avoid their concept albums with a single flow to be played randomly,
so they engaged in a court battle, but they eventually gave in, read more in this Guardian article:

The band's decision to offer fragments of their famous concept albums for 99p each on iTunes is likely to disappoint prog rock purists who applauded their stand against EMI.
During March's legal battle, lawyers for the band told a high court judge the tracks that made up Pink Floyd's seminal albums could not be unbundled and sold as individual downloads.
Robert Howe QC told the court it would have been "a very odd result" if band members were able to control how their music was sold in its physical form, but there was "a free-for-all with no limitation on online distribution".
The judge eventually sided with the band, telling the label it had to adhere to a clause in its contract with the group intended to "preserve the artistic integrity of the albums". He also ordered EMI to pay Pink Floyd's costs.

Now due to Spotify albums are less and less listened to in their entirety in one setting, however Brett Anderson in this interview thinks the concept album still has a loyal, strong following:



An article by The Independent: 

A Telegraph review of Night Thoughts and how the film and album together form a the concept of a narrative:

Playing behind a huge screen, Suede projected a film directed by Roger Sargent and written by Stephanie de Giorgio, with each narrative element operating as an enclosed promo to a particular song, whilst the whole built up to a dark and dramatic tale of love and despair.Perhaps because of its origins in the psychedelic pomp of the Sixties, the very concept of a concept albums tends to suggest florid excesses but Suede’s Night Thoughts essayed a grungy, trashy, kitchen-sink tone in keeping with their own origins as council estate aesthetes. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think I have ever seen so much vomiting in a music promo. It is probably not for everyone, involving psychological breakdown, murder and suicide, shot with a kind of Nan Goldin style low-life veracity. But songs and images worked in powerful conjunction, so each threw inner light on the other.

...

MV RESEARCH - Summary of Conventions

1. A music video has music played over moving images, in length it is like a short film.
  - Can be live action or animated (Gorillaz) or a mixture (Madonna's Music)
 (can't really apply animated music videos)

2. Mostly music videos will be done for singles, but other songs can also have a music video and a single doesn't always necessarily need to have a music video released with it.

3. Either the music is sung to, there is lip-synching, or it isn't. When it is this can vary in how many times, can be very little like in Halsey's Colors, and the performer singing can be onscreen while not singing (or join in and out like in Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down and Lana Del Rey's High By The Beach). Or they can appear at the end after a narrative without them like in Kraftklub's Fenster (speed ahead)

4. However even when there is no singing, the sound will often dictate the editing. 
Relationship between the emotions and atmosphere conveyed by the music and the visuals.

5. Doesn't have to include the band, even sometimes when there is lip-synching, it can be done by a different actor playing a character (Cro's Easy)

6. The relationship between the content of the the lyrics and the visuals.

If it is a concept album there will be the same characters in the all the videos (David Bowie and even with Ivy Levan all four songs on an EP have a music video, some even refer to each other with flashbacks. Halsey has a concept album, see 9

7. What is appearing more and more are diegetic intros, outros and interludes.

8. Also some have the song played at the beginning or the end, this can be part of the diegetic intro/outro (Kendrick Lamar's Alright and DNA, Green Day at the beginning, Halsey's New Americana at the end)

9. If it is a solo artist then they will however often be central, they will be playing different characters, although some might be more or less the same, like with Lana Del Rey where she often is  a mysterious, love-lust, almost suffering, however someone like Halsey plays multiple characters in multiple times and locations (Badlands). Although with Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Is Kendrick Lamar constantly playing himself, working-class rapper and (gangster) in urban locations

10. If the solo artist has a backing band, then they will often also be in the video, though the solo artist will be more visible (Backing band was in David Bowie's John I'm Only Dancing, The Jean Genie but not in Space Oddity and Life On Mars. In Life On Mars particular even though he had the same red hair colour, the song was of a different character, so his costume changed, he was much more solo then. 

11. However just like with backing bands, in normal bands even though it is supposed to be a "democracy", the lead singer will often be signified as the lead, even if for example he is not the writer like with Depeche Mode.
Example: In Suede's Beautiful Ones the entrance of the lead singer, Brett Anderson, is subtly built up by showing all the band members before he enters onto the screen and starts singing.

12. Like all media texts there will be intertextual references. to film, TV, literature, other music videos, both that was already in the lyrics and was not.
Goodwin marked this out as special for music videos. But didn't Kristeva say all media texts are linked? How is it then special for music videos? For even other media texts are referencing music videos nowadays, for example Ashes To Ashes's homage to Uptown Girl.

LITERATURE
- David Bowie's Look Back In Anger, based on Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray (no links to the play by John Osborne)

FILM
- Robbie Williams's Millennium A sort of nostalgic celebration and parody of the early James Bond films like Thunderball and From Russia With Love 

TV
- Sia's Cheap Thrills Referencing the origin of music video ironically, the narrative is like old music shows American Bandstand and The Buddy Deane Show

13. Genre characteristics, Goodwin said they are linked to the music genres, he said there had been too much focus by theorist on applying genres of film, television and literature. 
Electronic Dance Music, conventional emphasis on dance.
However, genres from film and TV that have their origins in literature can be found in music video:

Zombie: Michael Jackson's Thriller, Bring Me The Horizon's Follow You, Kraftklub's Fenster
Sci-Fi: Katy Perry's E.T.
Dystopia: David Bowie's The Heart's Filfthy Lesson, Kraftklub's Fenster, Halsey's New Americana (the whole album is her dysfunction expressed as a dystopia)
Romance: Carly's Call Me Maybe, You're Not Alone

13. Goodwin also said there are several notions of looking (screens within screens: Depeche Mode's Stripped, mirrors, stages, other reflections

14. There might even be archive footage of real events or other media texts put in (Queen's Radio Gaga) or it might purely consist of that (Queen/David Bowie's Under Pressure, David Bowie's I'd Rather Be High has a few seconds of performance from Bowie but its nearly all archive footage of war).
Or it could be archive footage of their own work (Queen's The Show Must Go On). There are some cases where the audience have made these through UGC (Depeche Mode and Kate Tempest's about Europe)

15. There have been many more music videos shot in black and white then there have been films shot in black and white since colour was introduced. 

16. Representing reality, there can often be actual human talking seen both without singing (Bronski Beat's Small Town Boy, Mojo's Lady (Hear Me Tonight)) and with singing (Halsey's Colors, even the band can be doing it separate from the narrative like in Depeche Mode's Strangelove, although was that outtakes?)

17. Performance and Narrative, they are sometimes separated, there can be a location where the act is singing on their own (in Maroon 5' Sugar, lead singer also sings individually without his band in some segments, in Halsey's Colors she is just singing in 
In One Republic's Counting Stars the performance and narrative/concept segments are brought/revealed to be together (can you apply Todorov's theories to that)

18. The length will usually want to stay between three and five minutes. For singles there will frequently be a radio edit released as the single and a longer version on the full album. Mostly the music video will always use the radio edit version. 
Examples: Daft Punk's All Around The World and Sigala's Give Me Your Love.
Or like Daft Punk's Get Lucky there will be two videos for both the single and the album version.
However there are examples for music videos that use tracks that are

19. For the task I have to do using a previous track for a music video promoting a compilation album, that is not so common if not extremely rare, often instead there will be one new single released with a music video and added to all the tracks collected there is an example like Army of Lovers's Crucified, for which they released a 2013 version with the same track (however it was mainly a performance video mixed with a large amount of montage clips).

20. There can often be silences at the beginning and/or end, instead of diegesis
    Depeche Mode's Shake The Disease.
    Kendrick Lamar's HUMBLE
    Other Examples.

Examples where it immediately starts with the track, not a second of silence:
Depeche Mode's I Feel You
Bring Me The Horizon's Throne
OneRepublic Love Runs Out
OneRepublic Counting Stars

21. TITLES
Mostly at the beginning
Track, then act, then director
Can be called a film by the act or the director
can promote the album (Robin Schulz: "from the album")