Music Video VLOG

This is a VLOG to give an update of where we are with the production of our music video.

2014 age rating scheme for music videos

Following a new scheme focusing on the age rating of music videos 'The British Board of Film Classification' will be asked to give an age rating to online music videos of artists signed to UK labels.

The Prime Minister has faced pressure to pass this scheme from parents, who believe that music videos allow their children to freely access sexual imagery . The scheme already has huge names on board such as Sony, Warner Brothers and Universal,, as well as Vevo and YouTube stating that they agree to try the scheme.

The fight to protect children against explicit music videos is far from new; ever since 1983 when Frankie goes to Hollywood released 'Relax' there has been tension against musicians and music labels to tone down their depiction on certain issues. However, this connotes one problem with the age rating, this video was banned in a time when openly being homosexual wasn't as acceptable as it is in today's society. This means that if the BBFC do begin to put age ratings on music videos, they wont just have to put them on new videos, but they will also have to change the age rating on older videos as society changes throughout time.

At the moment these are the current BBFC age rating guidelines for films, which are thought to fit the same credentials as the age ratings for music videos will.

U - Suitable for all ages.
PG - Parental Guidance
12A- Cinema Release, suitable for 12 years and over.
12- Video Release, suitable for 12 years and over
15- Suitable for 15 years and over
18 - Suitable only for adults
R18 - Sexual material only for adults.

According to the BBFC website an 18 rated film may include...

- Frequent use of strong/very strong language.
- Strong portrayal of sexual activity
- Scenes of sexual violence
- Strong horror
- Strong blood and gore
- Real Sex
- Discriminatory language and behavior.

It's important to remember that for a film to be regarded in an age category it only needs to fit into one of the criteria.

The new age ratings from the BBFC will have a huge impact on many genre's such as Rap, Metal and R'n'B. This is because of what the stereotypical videos of these genres contain. Stereotypically a Rap video will contain the use or connotation of drug use. A metal video may contain blood or horror. And a R'n'B video is often expected to denote scenes which sexualise those who are depicted in them.
This means that producers will have two choices. They will either have to keep making their videos with the same content and risk losing the genre's younger audiences; or they will have to sacrifice the content in order to reach the largest possible audience, however this may risk losing audience members who are die-hard fans of the more grittier scenes in music videos. As well as this, losing audience members due to the new restrictions will indefinitely lead to productions having a lower budget due to their previous productions bringing in lower revenue. This could potentially lead to a chain reaction which see's more audience members stop watching the videos due to music videos being lower quality due to their budget.

In my opinion the new age rating schemes will not impact my production. This is due to the fact that the only thing my music video can be judged upon is the depiction of alcohol abuse. However, I don't believe we make the scenes denoting this too graphical and therefore I believe my overall production would be rated a 12. As a result, this will not impact  my production due to the fact that this was the lowest age boundary which I planned for,

Production Schedule

Sticking to our schedule/filming diary is crucial to making sure that we complete our post-production, preparation, and filming on time. This will enable us to have sufficient time to edit and, go back to film in case we don't have enough footage.

Ideally, we aim to complete the post-production and final stages by the end of November. In this time, we are aware that we could face potential problems such as the weather leading to us having to cancel filming, problems with equipment or needing to re-film certain shots at any point. As a result, we have prepared for the possibility of taking production/post production into December in case we incur any such problems.

Before finalizing the music video, we aim to hold another focus group in order to give a first viewing of the music video to the peers in my class. By doing this we hope to highlight any areas of the music video which need refining and hope to gain feedback on the shots and overall quality of the production. Furthermore, we hope that this focus group will give us an idea of how effective our techniques have been in trying to impact our target audience. Overall, this final focus group will lead to the final production being free from errors and making sure it has the desired impact upon audiences. 

Risk Assessment

There were various risks to which we had to take into consideration before we went out filming several scenes of our music video.

Friday 3rd November - Park Scenes

There were several risks to which we would entail when filming in our first location, the park. Factors such as public privacy, weather, and equipment could potentially become a massive risk when filming.

Public privacy would have to be the biggest risk when filming as due to being a public place, some individuals may not have wanted to be filmed meaning complaints could be made and we could encounter potential violent situations. Filming the public would have meant blurring faces and people in the background of shots, potentially ruining the effects on the scenes we wanted and storyboarded.

Weather also played a key factor in achieving the precise shots that we wanted. We hoped for sunny weather in order to the reflect the mood and atmosphere of the certain scenes we were filming to juxtapose the negative, more gloomy scenes later on in the music video. The sunny scenes would almost act as the equilibrium of the story, following Todorov's restoration theory.

Rainy weather would not only have given us a negative and disheartening effect on the scenes we wanted to film in the park venue but also could have ruined the camera equipment. Due to borrowing from the school, we wanted to keep the Canon camera, tripod and any other equipment in good condition, with rainy weather also having potential for the tripod to sink or slip giving us lob-sided and unfocused shots.

Predicting the weather deemed to be rather tricky and although checking the news and weather schedules, some days that we had planned to film the park scenes the weather took a turn for the worst leaving us unable to film.


Thursday 9th November - Bar Scenes

Our second Location to which we chose to film, a bar, could also have potential risks and heath and safety issues.

Gaining permission from the owner was the first step in securing filming ability. If the owner had said no, then we would have had to have had another group meeting to discuss another bar location or to re-think that scene altogether.

Fortunately the bar owner agreed to let us film, as long as we could prove our age by bringing ID. When in the bar we had to be extremely careful when setting up not to hit the bar furniture or film members of the public as again, we would have to blur out faces during the editing stage.

The bar scene allowed us to juxtapose the park scenes as it was considerably darker and gloomier connoting the emotions of the male/female protagonist in the scene we were able to film the disequilibrium of the music video's storyline. This also meant that we wouldn't have to use as many effects or colour manipulation during the editing stage to create the emotional effects.

Risks such as bar violence could have potentially arose inside the bar, this is why we chose to film in a quiet corner of the bar, away from members of the public. Being aware of members of the public was key during this location, the whole group were very careful and stuck to the filming space that the bar owner allowed us.

Throughout filming in both locations the whole group made sure to be aware of our surroundings sticking to the sections of locations that we were allowed whilst following any rules given. This meant that we could minimise any risks at hand, filming safely and securely without any accidents.

Cast

Cast

Pre-Production Focus Group

Music Video Focus Group - Kyle & Mitchell

A key part of our primary research was holding a focus group. Conducting this enabled myself, and my group to gather accurate demographics about our target audience, whilst gathering feedback and opinions on our ideas.

By voicing our ideas about the music video in terms of characters, plot, colour manipulation at the editing stage and camera shots/ angles, our audience of media peers could voice their opinions, helping us to finalise any good idea's and eliminate the undeveloped/negative ones.

The group decided that our first focus group should be amongst media peers due to the fact they had a wider knowledge of the industry and could give us a more accurate/professional view toward our initial ideas, whilst apply more conventions.

Juxtaposing this, we also created a focus group with members of the public so we had a wider range of feedback and could determine a more mass target audience as opposed to the local niche.

Analysis of Questionnaire Results

Question 1 - From this we hoped to find out the most common gender of our audience and as you can see the most common gender is Male. This means that in our video we will be likely to use a male protagonist in order for the audience to relate and feel a personal relationship with the character as they can relate to them. As well as this we want to use a female character in order to satisfy the male gaze theory for those with voyeuristic persona's and furthermore, we'll do this because females still make up 35% of the audience and that would be a large percent of the audience to leave unattended to.

Question 2- From this we hoped to see the most common age within our audience, with 40% the most common age group is 16-21. However, as a group we decided that in order to make the events that take place in our video seem more realistic we have decided to go with the second largest target audience of 28-33 as we have decided that if we do a video based on the breakdown of a relationship that we want the relationship to seem more matured. Of course people of the 16-21 age group can still have matured relationships however i feel as though it the age may compromise the professionalism of our video and so using older characters (28-33) will help to overcome this, and also it will give people of that age group a character who they can relate to.

Question 3 - the majority of our audience say that they only watch music videos once every few weeks which means that their library of music video knowledge may be a bit weaker than the 25% who said that they watch music videos everyday. This is important because in the later questions we will go through the questionnaires separately in order to see which responses we should place more emphasis on due to the fact that we believe the audiences who watch videos everyday will be more helpful than those who never watch videos, although all responses will be given some weight.

Question 4 - We wanted to know how our audiences usually access music, this question has been asked in order for us to know in which forms we should deliver our music video. The most common answer was that audiences use sites such as YouTube in order to access music videos; this means that once we have created our music video we shall post in on YouTube. I believe it is also important that a few audiences members said that they like to access music through the use of live gigs; this is important because it connotes that some of our audience clearly favor performance and so it may mean that in our video we should include some performance based scenes in order satisfy this sector of our audience. The other common format is that people like downloading music videos, by posting our video on YouTube although it will not be downloadable, it will be accessible on a huge variety of technological devices meaning that although audiences can't keep the file, it is always available to them.

Question 5 - We had already decided that as a group our desired music genre would be either metal or rock and this question helps to justify this as in total the two genres make up over half of our target audience. Even though pop is nearly a quarter of the audiences favorite genre we will not be doing this as as a group we feel that our knowledge of the genre isn't vast enough in order to deliver as high a quality pop music video as we would be able to deliver a rock/metal music video. The responses to this question mean that we will try to pick a song which will conform to the codes and conventions of the genre's.

Question 6 - In my opinion this question is absolutely vital to making our music video the best it can be. By finding out what audiences like best about their favorite genre's music videos we can see what numerous audience members favor most commonly (such as performance). After seeing which answers occur frequently we can try to work the most common ones into our own music video in order to satisfy the desires of the audience. it is clear already that performance based shots will be essential in our music video as it is a recurring theme that audiences (especially those of the rock/metal genre) like seeing this in music videos.

Question 7 - This question doesn't just help us to look at what we should include but more importantly helps us look at the quantity of each element that should be included. For example the majority of respondents said that performance was their favorite feature and so we shall aim to dedicate a larger percentage of our music video to performance shots. Many also favored special effects, as a group we decided that we don't want to use too many effects in our shots, however we would be more likely to use effects such as filters on our video. This is because we want to make the scenes seem as realistic as possible and don't want to compromise this with unneeded special effects.

It is also important to audiences that the characters have a persona, due to the fact that this was a common response from audience members who are fans of different genre's we have decided to not make our protagonist the stereotypical person you're likely to see in a rock video and instead make both him and the female character seem like a common couple in order to allow as many audiences to build personal relationships with them as possible. We will use the performance shots in order to conform to many codes of the rock genre and keep the performance shots as relatable as possible.

 

Question 8 -  In order to find inspiration for things which we could include in our own video we decided to ask the audience what their favorite music video is, and why. Some audience members said that they liked a uncommon approach to a otherwise cliche concept, an example being the response which states that Megadeth's Public Enemy No. 1 alters a cliche scenario by using monkeys instead of humans. Although we wont be going as far as using monkeys, i think that using a different perspective for a cliche concept is highly important. Firstly it puts a spin on the video, and secondly it can be powerful and make the audience think about the video after watching it, rather than just watching it and discarding it from their thoughts. Also by using a new perspective we somewhat conform to the wishes of the audience members who both used Thriller as an answer as a different perspective can allow the video to break new ground. A couple of respondents also said that they like videos and songs which they can relate to, this is important to our video, as I've already said, we wish to keep it relatable and realistic.

Question 9 - As previous answers have suggested audience members put greater value on performance based music videos as connoted by the fact that as well as performance being the highest, a mix of performance and narrative has the second highest vote. We have decided to have also include narrative as many audiences still valued it and the percentage of the audience who value it is too great to not have narrative shots; Also having a narrative helps with our previous findings that we can take a cliche scenario and give it a different perspective, in just a performance based video this would be much harder. Also a narrative allows us to attract different audiences as some may not be fans of the music genre yet may still like the story that the narrative portrays.

Question 10 -  As we don't know entirely what route we wish to take on our music video we decided to look at videos with different aims, portraying a message, being fun, and being performance based. By asking the audience their favorite music videos that have those aims we are able to analyse various different videos in order to see what ideas we can come up with and also what preexisting ideas the audience are already fond of. Also, each question helps us to see more into the audiences preferences as their answers tell us stuff about them; Their favorite video that carries a message can help us to become more aware of their beliefs and values, their favorite lighthearted video makes us aware of their style of humor and finally their favorite performance based video tells us where they like to see performance shots take place. From the responses i can already see that the audience values a message which portrays the effects of drugs varying from alcohol to things such as heroin and finally they like quite simple performance shots which take place in studios due to the fact that its professional and looks much more authentic. 

Music Video Questionnaire

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Nickelback confirmation

"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use." 

In order to comply with copyright laws I had to ask Nickelback for permission to use their song. As well as this I put on the description of the music video that "we do not own the copyright to this song" when uploading it to YouTube. 

Prop/Costume List - Performance Shots

This is a list of all of our props and costume items which we will use in the performance shots of our video. The table includes what shots the items will be used in, where we will get the items from, why we will use that particular item, and any theories which can be connected to the use of the item. We will film the performance shots in our sixth forms recording studio in order to make the music video look even more professional.

Song Choice and Lyric Scripting

"How You Remind Me"

Never made it as a wise man [Montage of man waking up and various flashback shots]  
I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing

Tired of living like a blind man        

I'm sick of sight without a sense of feeling

And this is how you remind me    

This is how you remind me [extreme closeup of mans face as he puts on sunglasses]
Of what I really am [Performance shots]
This is how you remind me [Flashback of female at the lake]

Of what I really am [Performance shot]

It's not like you to say sorry
I was waiting on a different story [Flashback showing a moment of Breakdown in the relationship]
This time I'm mistaken

For handing you a heart worth breaking [Performance shots] 

And I've been wrong, I've been down, [Montage of Bar shots showing man drinking]

Been to the bottom of every bottle

These five words in my head

Scream "are we having fun yet?" [Fade between bar shot and performance shot]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no [Performance shot of whole band]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no [Shots of couple walking to secluded part of the park +walking through the park]

It's not like you didn't know that [female staring at man as shot fades out]

I said I love you and I swear I still do [Close up of man in cafe whilst on phone]

And it must have been so bad [Female protagonist brings drinks over to the table]

Cause living with me must have damn near killed you 

And this is how, you remind me [performance shot of drummer]

Of what I really am [Male protagonist is unresponsive to female]

This is how, you remind me

Of what I really am [Performance shot, drummer then going onto shots of vocalist]

It's not like you to say sorry [Performance shots continue]

I was waiting on a different story 

This time I'm mistaken [Male protagonist puts the phone down]

For handing you a heart worth breaking [Performance shot of vocalist]

And I've been wrong, I've been down, [Female tries to look at males phone]

Been to the bottom of every bottle [Male snatches phone off of her, woman attempts to hit man]

These five words in my head [Man catches the girls hand, after a struggle she walks away]

Scream "are we having fun yet?" [Performance shot of the vocalist panning to drummer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no [montage of bar scenes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no [Montage showing male walking away from bar, female walking away from man]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no [Shot fading out of man standing in shock at woman walking away]

We chose to use Nickelback's 'How You Remind Me' due to the fact that it was a song that we both knew and liked, we knew the original video quite well and instantly had various ideas of how we could apply them to the lyrics of the song. As well as this, we needed to pick a song that would suit the vocalists image, as other possible songs such as 'When Im Gone' by 3 Doors Down wouldn't have been the right pitch for the voice of the vocalist. This means that even from an early stage we was thinking about the quality of the production and how it would look to the audience.

Target Audience : Psychographic & Demographic Profiles

As a group we decided to create various mind maps in order to further explore our target audiences Psychographic and Demographic profiles. This would give us a greater understanding of their background, lifestyle and interests. We decided the target audience would be likely to have little religious values, or possibly atheists; also their psychographic profile would likely to be similar to that of a 'Struggler'.

In terms of Demographic profile we decided the target audience would be British Young adults (18-30), living in urban areas. Their race would stereotypically be white, and gender would be all. 

The sexuality of our target audience doesn't need to be fixed, however due to the plot of our music video we feel it would more easily be relatable to heterosexual couples. 

Music Video Story Board

This is a story board including the narrative structure of our music video as well as the shots used in each scene and the diegetic and non diegetic sound that we will use. Through the most part the sound used will be the non-diegetic sound of the song 'How you remind me' by Nickelback. Our music video will be a mix between performance and narrative shots. When editing we plan to add fade to black/fade to white cuts between some shots and to put a black and white filter over the performance as well as other editing techniques. Our story board is helpful as it helps us stick to a plan and keep a clear vision of what our final product will look like; We may digress from the story board if we need to but it's key that we follow these guidelines to give our music video clear stability. 

Mood Board

Mood Board

This mood board denotes many different pictures which signify inspiration for our final piece. As you can see there is various images of bands, we aim to use these bands videos as inspiration for our own. Festivals is a huge inspiration as they allow the bands who we study to become well known as well as propelling lesser known bands who we take inspiration from into the limelight. A recurring theme on this mood board is the theme of alcohol and substance abuse, this is because somewhere in our video we would like to have shots of our protagonist being at his worst, these shots also tie into the images which signify people being down and distraught as we want the protagonist to be drinking excessively due to his emotions. Furthermore there are shots of music studios, this is where we aim to shoot the performance based shots of our music video, as well as shooting the narrative based shots in both a park and in a pub. The final piece of inspiration is the clothing, as the band we want to dress stereotypical of our genre and so we will wear predominantly black clothing.

Music Video Inspiration.

Filters (performance) 'Strife' By Trivium The music video for 'Strife' the 2013 single from the band Trivium can provide inspiration for my video due the fact that i believe the use of a grey scale filter over performance shots looks highly effective. One reason why it is effective is because the grey filter further connotes the meanings of the lyrics of my chosen song, as the lyrics will be pessimistic therefore the grey scale would identify with the lyrics and exaggerate their meaning in order to make them seem heavy in emotion. Although this video changes between both colour and grey scale I will just keep grey scale in my video due to the fact that the performance shots are a much lower proportion of the music video than in Trivium's 'Strife'

Mise-en-scene Setting (Performance) 'Nothing Else Matters' By Metallica After watching the Metallica video for their song 'Nothing Else Matters' I've realised that if we film our performance shots in an actual recording studio then they can make the video look incredibly professional as it will make the band in the video look like they're used to being in a recording studio and therefore the band will look more realistic. Furthermore, if we ever need any filler shots for our video a location such as this offers many as already connoted throughout this example. If needed we can get shots of guitars being tuned and equipment being set up in order to fill any time slots we may have in our video.

Lighting (Narrative) 'Bittersweet Memories' By Bullet For My Valentine In the shots where the male protagonist is reminiscing the females face the lighting is high key, i think this would be effective if we were to use this in our video during scenes when our protagonist is having a flashback. Using different lighting over flashbacks symbolises to the audience the juxtaposition of the protagonists past and his current state. As well as this using high key lighting connotes happiness due to the fact that its bright, in contrast to this low key lighting connotes the characters misery. I believe it would be effective if we used low key lighting in shots which denote misery in the characters and high key lighting in flashbacks of when they were happier.

Mise-en-scene (Cast) 'Wake Me Up When September Ends' By Green Day Much like in the video 'wake me up when September ends' by Green Day, I want my video to have a male and female protagonist who can both fit the male and female gaze theories of Laura Mulvey. This will attract both male and female audiences to watch the music video due to their voyeuristic needs. The video also brought up the idea of whether or not the video could have a prologue before the music in which it is just purely narrative. However, we feel like the song we have creates our narrative quite well anyway. Also, both of the characters in this video seem to fit the stereotypes of their genders as the man is seen to be quite powerful (going to the army) and the girl much more emotional than him. Although this may not link to the stereotypical audience of a Green Day video it does result in drawing in a much wider audience and as a result will make for a much more appealing video. I also believe that the characters in this video dressing the characters in casual clothing is quite effective as it makes them more relatable rather than glamorizing them for a video and making them 2 characters in which fewer people can relate too. This is important due to the use and gratification of personal relationships as audiences can relate to characters.

Music Video Analysis - Rise Against 'Make It Stop'

Rise Against's 2011 single Make It Stop was released as part of an anti-bullying/anti-suicide campaign for teenagers, which meant that the video was created with the intention to be extremely emotional and gripping to audiences in order to prove the point of the campaign.

The mise-en scene of the band is stereotypical of the genre as they are all wearing black tops with jeans and converse/canvas shoes. However, i don't believe they are dressed like this in order to relate to a specific target audience, instead i believe the band are dressed quite casual and generic as it means that they can relate to who the campaign is aimed at, teenagers. By relating to as many teenagers as possible the video will allow for personal relationships to form with both the band and the characters in the narrative parts of the music video meaning that audiences will be more likely to take in the information as they feel more related to the characters.

The use of editing during the performance shots is quite fast paced in order for the cuts to be synchronous with the fast tempo of the song. However, during the narrative shots i believe the editing has been made slower in order to deliver the narrative to the audience without it being too overwhelming. This is important in delivering the message in the video as they wouldn't want any fast paced, eccentric editing techniques taking away from the video's true aim. On the other hand they have made the performance shots faster in order to conform to the bands star image as audiences wouldn't want the stars playing at a slow pace as the reason why they are so well known is for their high tempo'd music.

I also believe that Todorov's Equilibrium theory is used throughout the narrative scenes as the music video starts with the 3 protagonists in a calm environment, then it changes into the chaos of their bullying and being about to commit suicide, and finally it reverts back to calmness as it connotes that in the future the characters have become successful. This gives the audience the belief that they should never give up due to the fact that they never know how successful they could become in the future and that they should stick to their beliefs and to being who they are because that won't take away from their potential.

The plot of the story symbolises the bands beliefs and values as they are clearly against bullying and suicide and have used their fame and status in order to raise greater awareness on the issue. I believe this is a good thing for the band and the 'it gets better' project, which is mentioned at the end of the video, due to the fact that it is synergistic; both the band and the project will gain publicity for each other which will increase the awareness of both of them. Furthermore it is good for 'Rise Against' as they will get recognition for the work that they have done even by audiences who may not be fans of the Rock/Metal genre of music, and although this may not increase the number of people who like the genre, it will lead to a much larger chance of the band winning accolades for their work.

During the narrative scenes much of the camera work is fairly basic, there is very little use of pans or other camera movements for the same reason as in editing, the video needs to be delivered to audiences without being too overwhelming. The lack of camera movement continues throughout the latter half of the video however in this we see more varying shots and especially a use of close-ups in which the audience can see the emotion in the 3 characters faces as they walk home, but also as they are about to commit suicide. These use of closeups have been used to pull on the heart strings of the audience and are highly effective in creating support for the 'It gets better' Project. The performance shots on the other hand are a direct contrast as many of the shots feature camera movements such as panning shots, zolly shots and others. This is used in order to keep the traditional audience of the band interested as they would be used to seeing much faster paced editing and camera techniques than that which are used in the narrative shots so the performance based shots are included to satisfy Rise Against's established audience.

Music Video Analysis - Metallica 'I Disappear'

The music video for the single 'I Disappear' by thrash metal legends Metallica first off carries the inter-textual reference that it was used on the soundtrack to the movie Mission:Impossible 2. This means that audiences will recognise the song from the movie and vise versa therefore making audiences feel knowledgeable. This inter-textual reference is concluded at the end of the video as you see the protagonist of Mission Impossible 2, Tom Cruise, climbing the mountain which the band were performing on.

A warm filter has been used over the performance shots to create a connotation of the heat in the desert, this allows for the audience to show empathy for the characters who appear to have been driven to having to perform in the desert due to the fact that they were chased away from their realities during the narrative shots. This is a direct contrast to the narrative shots which use a much colder filter featuring much more blue lighting. One reason why you wouldn't expect to see a colder filter used in the narrative shots is that the colour red usually symbolises danger, this in my opinion would be better suited to the narrative shots due to the fact that all 4 members of Metallica are shown to be in danger.

In terms of mise-en scene Metallica in this music video are as close to the rock/metal stereotype as you can get. They are predominantly wearing black with very little care for their appearance as further connoted by their facial hair. Furthermore they are wearing tight jeans which are stereotypical of the genre and in one stage vocalist James Hetfield is depicted driving a muscle car. Muscle cars have largely been associated with the rock/metal genre as the cars are seen to be extremely 'american' and this link is made due to the fact that the genre's both originated in America and so can be seen as part of the 'american' stereotype.

The music video follows two theories as there is the Levi-Strauss' binary opposites theory, due to the fact that there is the juxtaposition of the emptiness of the desert alongside the hectic overcrowding in the city scenes. Secondly there is the enigma codes of, Why are the band being chased? and Who are they being chased by?. In this video the 2 enigma's aren't answered so this may be a promotional technique in order to get audiences to watch the movie Mission Impossible 2 in order to see if that answers any enigma's that arise from this music video.

Camera and editing techniques have both been used throughout the music video in order to make it increasingly fast paced as any camera pan shots quickly pan rather than panning at a slower pace and in terms of editing there are many jump cuts and cross cuts in order to connote that all of the scenes were happening at a extremely fast pace to the audience. There is also the overt editing of the ground breaking and rising whilst James Hetfield is in the car scenes. Another example of overt editing is when the drummer, Lars Ulrich, jumps out of the building and is free falling, this adds the Use and gratification of escapism/diversion to the audience as it isn't something they would be used to seeing in their daily lives. This scene has obviously been edited in order to cut out any evidence of equipment such as wires, which would have given the impression that Ulrich is falling and also to hide the fact that the building he jumped from was actually just the image on a green screen. However these shots do all tie in with the rock/metal genre as it is stereotypical for videos of these genres to connote endangerment and various hectic scenarios to the genres target audience.

Music Video Analysis - Sixx: A.M 'This Is Gonna Hurt'

This music video looks both into the creation and delivery of the title track of the album 'This is gonna hurt'. The first thing that needs to be mentioned is the inter-textual reference that the album was released alongside bassist Nikki Sixx's book titled the same name. The book aimed to look into the lives of people who are considered to have abnormalities and in this video scenes of where the inspirations from the book are denoted in the narrative shots.This ultimately connotes to the audience that the band are sensitive towards many issue's such as abnormality and this could help the band to reach out to an audience which wouldn't usually listen to their music. Furthermore it connotes synergy between the book publishers and the band due to the fact that both of the pieces of media text interlink with each other and therefore this will create greater publicity as people who have read the book will want to listen to the album and visa versa.

In terms of costume the vocalist and lead guitarist are both stereotypical of the genre as they are represented wearing jeans and plain tops whereas bassist Nikki Sixx's costume is much more eccentric and over his huge career he has became an icon for many reasons including this. This also carries the inter-textual reference that Sixx is also part of the band Motley Crue who would all often wear highly eccentric costumes. However, his 'wild' hair as well as many aspects of his costume have led to many audiences copying his style and so this links in many ways to the uses and gratification of escapism and personal identity as audiences may use this costume style as inspiration to escape from their usual identity. In many ways this contrasts to the message of the music video due to the fact that it is trying to tell people to embrace their identity no matter what their own flaws are.

Furthermore the overt editing of a greyscale filter, used during montages of footage denoting characters with abnormalities, makes these shots seem extremely effective as the filter foreshadows the grey message in which the song is trying to deliver. These scenes are clearly not directed at passive audience members as the band are trying to get people to think about what they are seeing and to be emotional about the abnormal characters. To add to this it connotes that the band refuse to conform to the stereotype of having 'normal' characters, who would better fit theories such as the Male/female gaze, or who the audience would be likely to build personal relationships with; instead they aim to use abnormal characters that challenge the media's concept of beauty/normality. In fact this actually leads to a much wider target audience as the video isn't just directed at a specific demographic profile and instead can be effective with audiences of different age/race/gender etc.

Throughout the video there is fast paced editing which is stereotypical of a music video of the rock/metal genre. This fast paced editing can mainly be scene during the performance shots as it connotes the intensity of one of the bands gigs. This feeling of intensity is further created by the lighting as many of the colours are saturated and the natural colour of the performance shots are darkened. This takes away many of the flashing lights that you would expect from a rock show and instead replaces them with the idea that the song/band isn't about flashing lights and fame but instead delivering the deep and intense message that the lyrics of the song intend. The editing is synchronous with the tempo of the sound in the music video and this creates ambience for audiences when they are watching the music video.

Short Analysis Task - 'Numb' By Linkin Park

Numb – Linkin Park

Editing has been used in the music video for ‘Numb’ by Linkin Park in order to show a passing in time. This has been done by the use of time mapping. This makes the audience feel as though the protagonist is portrayed to be lonely and dislike as throughout the sped up scene she is not seen talking or interacting with anyone as the long shot isolates her. This idea is further developed, as mostly all the camera shots of the girl are high angle shots. These shots give the girl very little power as they connote that she is always being looked down upon by society for whatever reason.

The symbolic codes of the video include her costume; she is denoted as wearing dark clothing, which would be stereotypically described as gothic. Stereotypically gothic clothing gives the character a much darker and deeper persona, which she is singled out for. Her feelings about this issue can be connoted through her lack of facial expression, and also the application of her makeup, as she is quite pale. Her pale motionless face leads the audience to believe that she appears dead but furthermore it has the symbolic meaning that she appears dead inside.