This post represents the efforts of the whole group.
The song we have chosen to make a video for Road to the Throneby Our Last Night. This song is in the pop punk and punk rock genre. We decided on our genre first because all three of us enjoy it and regularly listen to pop punk bands; this means that we would already know a little about the conventions and style of videos in the genre.
We decided on Our Last Night because Sabrina already knew who the band were and we found out that they were unsigned through our genre research. Since one of us was already familiar with the band, we decided to listen to some of their songs and realised we all liked Road to the Throne the most. It was very simple and easy to choose so we could quickly move onto emailing the band’s manager and asking for permission.
(hover over images for caption)
Our original email part 1
Our original email part 2
Our original email part 3
The response we received from the manager
Our reply
Our most recent communication
Fortunately, the band’s manager was more than happy for us to make the music video using the band’s song and we know that if we have any concerns or want to contact the band we have a way to do so. This also means that we are now able to go ahead knowing that this is definitely our song and we can come up with a concept and plan in a lot more detail.
‘As It Is’ is a British punk rock band based in Brighton and formed in 2012. They were signed in 2014 to Fearless Records and have since been on tour and played various festivals such as Reading and Leeds 2015. The group consists of lead vocalist Patty Walters (who is originally from Minneapolis, USA), guitarist and vocalist Ben Biss, guitarist Andy Westhead, bassist Alistair Testo, and drummer Patrick Foley.
Their music video, Cheap Shots & Setbacks, was released April 2015. This is a combination video, meaning there is both narrative and performance- similar to many of Our Last Night’s music videos. The video is an Amplification video meaning it has been inspired by the lyrics of the song but adds other narrative elements to complement the themes and ideas of the song. The editing is at a steady pace to match the tempo of the song. There is a huge contrast between the narrative and the performance sections. The narrative features random actors and a lot of time changes such as slow motion. As well as this, in the editing process a harsh blue, clinical looking filter has been added. In the performance section it is a much more relaxed feel with the band playing their instruments under a warm orange based filter which matches the uplifting sound of the song.
The video also features many binary oppositions (Levi Strauss) such as light vs dark, good vs evil, police vs criminals, entrapment vs freedom. The video represents society’s conformity habits and how anyone deemed different in a community can be isolated. As the target audience for this band is mainly teenage girls ranging from 16-25, this concept is something that is stereo-typically a current issue in their lives (feeling outcast, like they don’t fit in) which is what makes this such a popular video for the band.
The band was started by youtuber Patty Walters. Born in Minneapolis, he moved to Brighton at a young age. His YouTube Channel gained him many followers which aided him in the success of his band. Patty began his singing career on YouTube, making ‘screamo’ covers of popular songs such as Let It Go from the Disney movie Frozen.
The video for Girls Like Girls is an example of a narrative video, in which there is no performance and the artist, Hayley Kiyoko, is not even present in the video. This is unusual as it is typical of videos within it’s genre to showcase the artist in order to sell their image. However, it is common for narrative videos to tell a story that is socially relative or important, which this video does as it tells the story of a girl who is in love with her friend, another girl.
Rather than echoing the lyrical content of the song, the video’s narrative is inspired by and complements the lyrics. For example, one of the first lines in the song makes reference to “stealing kisses” from her friend and, although she doesn’t actually kiss her at this point in the video, they’re shown to be very close and affectionate- emphasising the feelings being expressed in the song.
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As you can see, although what is happening in the screenshots do not exactly match the lyrics played at the time, they fit the overall message and do have a link to the themes and feelings being expressed in the song. This is common within music videos of many genres, especially those with a large narrative section, and is definitely something that we should consider when it comes to making our own music video.
The video does not seem to have a set beginning middle and end. Rather, it feels like the story is being picked up in the middle of an important time in the character’s lives. Normally in a romantic narrative, we see the characters meet and begin to see their feelings form; in this video though the two girls have clearly known each other for a while and already have feelings for each other and we get to see the conclusion of their story when they finally get together. This is likely because it’s difficult to portray a full story like that within the limited time constraints of a music video so we are shown the most important moments in order to give the viewer an emotional connection and to create a nice sense of pacing.
This video has a very slow build up and doesn’t change shots or angles very often. This matches the song, as it’s slower and more relaxed since it’s best described as an indie song. This makes the video very effective as a faster paced video would not match the song. This means that we need to take pacing and tempo into consideration when making our own video and we need to consider whether a slow build up or a more intense narrative would be more effective.
Overall, this video breaks a lot of the conventions of the genre and thus it was a very effective video and was widely talked about in the media due to it’s themes and it’s intrigue. Therefore, breaking conventions and being creative is definitely something we should strive to do while still making the video match the song’s themes and other features. It’s important to make the narrative match the lyrics as that tends to create the best effect and impacts the audience a lot more.
You Me At Six are a rock band from England who have been going since 2004. They’re similar in sound to bands like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, All Time Low and, most importantly, Our Last Night who are the band that we are creating our music video for. You Me At Six have a wide range of music videos, but most of them have a few conventions and elements that appear in each one.
The video for Underdog begins with the band clearly about to perform, but we can only see their silhouettes. Although there is a narrative section to the video, it doesn’t start until the chorus starts and seems to be less important than the band who are obviously the product being sold by the video. This is because the narrative isn’t fleshed out very much and feels like a small glimpse into the character’s lives- plus it’s often being split up by the many band shots.
The shots used in the band shots are clearly there to put the focus on the singer. We see a lot of shots where the singer is looking at the camera or the camera will linger on the singer for more time than the rest of the band. Also, the shots of the guitarists don’t tend to include their faces and instead focus on the instruments- and there’s a lot less of these shots because it’s the singer that is being sold.
A technique used a lot in this video, and many other videos in this genre, is cutting up the narrative and performance shots and switching between them, and each time the shot changes it matches the beat of the song. This not only makes the video feel like it matches the song, but it also makes the video a lot more interesting to watch.
Even their slightly more narrative heavy videos, such as Loverboy, feature a large performance aspect which shows that the performance is an important part of their image and is the thing that they want to sell. This is the closest the band has to having a narrative focused video, and it still puts an emphasis on them being performers. Plus, they are nearly always in the narrative themselves rather than actors which further sells their image.
A lot of the lipsyncing in this video, and in other videos like it, are included in the narrative rather than just being sung to the camera. For example, on the line “What do you want” the singer is seen saying it to the police officers interrogating him rather than directing the words at the viewer.
There’s also a lot of links between the lyrics and the visuals- as a lot of what the singer does when he’s lipsyncing matches the actions described in the song. For example, when the line “the past has you in the choke hold” is played you see the singer’s hand go up to his neck.
Unlike the other two videos, Bite My Tongue doesn’t split the narrative and performance into two seperate section but instead it incorporates the performance into the narrative and it still makes sense and the singer has turned the band into puppets who have to perform for him.
This video focuses on the aesthetic a lot, as it remains quite dark and with quick bursts of light throughout the whole video. Furthermore, every person in the video is wearing dark colours in order to not distract from the feeling that they’re trying to give throughout the video.
Every single video has some kind of urban setting, Bite My Tongue is set in what appears to be a warehouse, Loverboy is set in a police station where the band are being arrested and Underdog is set in a performance venue. The only video by the band that isn’t set in a similar place to these is one of their slower and softer songs.
Through my research of this band, it’s very clear that the performance aspect is the most important part as it often takes up the majority of the video and thhey even have a few videos where it’s just videos of them performing live cut together. This indicates that it is common for bands in this genre to be selling their own image, and is what we should focus on when making our own music video.
This post represents the efforts of the whole group.
After a few lineup changes, the ‘Our Last Night’ group was complete in 2006. In early 2007, the group signed with Epitaph Records, the day before their first tour.the lead singer Trevor was only 13 years old. The band originally had 5 members however over the years many members have left and others have joined, bringing the total as of now, to 4. Trevor Wentworth – vocals and acoustic guitar; Matt Wentworth – vocals, guitar and piano; Alex “Woody” Woodrow – bass guitar and backing vocals; Tim Molly – drums.
The band released their first album, ‘The Ghosts Among Us’ on March 4, 2008. The group then toured the United States toward the end of 2008. In 2010, they released their next album, ‘We Will All Evolve’ and their third ‘Age of Ignorance’ in mid 2012.
In 2015, Our Last Night released their latest album ‘Younger Dreams’ which features the song ‘Road to the Throne’ which we will be using for our A2 music video task.
The band’s musical style has been described as post-hardcore and alternative rock. In their earlier works there were fewer clean vocals however in their more contemporary material, there are cleaner melodic materials.
Our Last Night have many original music videos, all of which mostly follow the conventions of their genre by having performance and narrative sections, making it a combined, amplification video. However, they also have music videos for the many covers they have done, all of which are performance only. For the most part, in their original music videos, lead singers Trevor and Matt are featured lip-syncing in the narrative aswell as performance, another convention of the punk-pop like genre. An example of this being one of their singles released in 2014, ‘Sunrise’.
The image of the band has a very raw and punk-rock feel to it. They usually choose to wear darker clothes, they have tattoos and dark hair. All of this helps give the band a new, modern, helping them draw the attention of their target audience which is typically teenage girls.
Love Is Easy, released in 2012, is an all performance video shot in just 4 takes. It is also an Illustration video, meaning the lyrics match the visuals of the video almost exactly.
For example:
“I hear what the flowers say”
“And drink every drop of rain”
“Love is easy”
“A simple equation”
“It’s the easiest thing to do”
“And the birds sing”
All of these screenshots are examples of how the visuals of the video match directly with the lyrics, an Andy Goodwin theory. Another theory that can be applied is by Claude Levi Strauss- the binary opposition theory. This is where two opposite things are purposefully added to a text. This video contains the performing stars and the behind the scenes background workers. With Jacques Derrida’s addition, the stars (McFly) are the more dominant of the oppositions in the video representing how they would be in the real world.
The Audience Position Narrative theory is also applicable to Love Is Easy. The video is forcing us to follow the band members and what they are doing.
There are many intertexual references to the band’s own journey, for example; they go through their album covers chronologically and recreate them.
Room On the 3rd Floor
Wonderland
Motion in the Ocean
Radio:Active
Above the Noise
Toward the end of the video, it is revealed that there is an audience watching them perform on stage (the Andy Goodwin theory on voyeurism).
This is also an Unrestricted music video, meaning there are no hidden meanings or mysteries throughout the video that is kept from the audience. The audience is therefore in a priveledged position and has a hightened emotional response.
A2 Media Studies Group 2 2016 