Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Tuesday 21 June 2016

Work with local band: Luxembourg

I've blogged on finding a local act back in Yorkshire, England, so a quick post on how you can quickly find info/contacts for local acts - same principle applies for some very simple googling, just change key words.

It was as simple as 'luxembourg band listings' to find the following:

Fuze listing:
RateYourMusic list:


You can also simply check newspaper, magazine, online listings and go to a gig to speak to a band - or tweet, Facebook, Instagram...

Saturday 18 June 2016

Elders React

http://loudwire.com/elders-reacting-to-bring-me-the-horizon/

Thursday 9 June 2016

Blogging on 'Exemplar vids'

Start of 1 of my vid analyses: Hyperlinks,
wider research, sub-headings, top summary
There's no single right way to blog on individual videos you've looked at, but you do need to be clear on what sort of points/details you're after, and the overall purpose of undertaking this work.
Remember, you've got 3 years worth of IGS/StG student blogs to help you as well as this blog.
I'll set out the minimal expectations at the bottom of this post, but first...

QUICK LINKS:Music video examples tag; 
Pixies: Bagboy (individual video analysis); 
Pixies artist case study; 
Hetero-normativity: exploring a theme through multiple videos; 
Music videos I've selected + blogged on for raising useful issues 
Some female fronted bands
I blogged on several dance vids, amongst many others, to give you an idea of good style, layout + organisation:



WHY BLOG IN DETAIL ON INDIVIDUAL MUSIC VIDS?
  • Its a basic principle of any Media Studies coursework brief that you cannot create a suitable text without developing a thorough, detailed familiarity with the key codes and conventions of a particular format

Monday 6 June 2016

Pop gender history in Vanity Fair videos

Vanity Fair (upmarket US men's magazine) has put together some useful montages of how male and female performers have evolved different looks over the decades...
The past century has seen a whole range of music icons, with distinct personas and styles, and, in this visual journey, as we did for female pop stars already, we take a look back at some of the most notable male artists from the past 100 years. We begin with Joe “King” Oliver, a preeminent 1910s jazz performer, and then work our way up through the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson, before reaching modern-day stars Kanye West and Justin Bieber.
MALE POP STARS


FEMALE POP STARS

...

Sunday 5 June 2016

VR pioneered by Beatles and Bjork

See the video here.
The industry keeps changing, and the pace of evolution is speeding up even further, reflecting the fast pace of technological change. A staple of sci-fi movies and series, VR is now filtering through into music video, with smartphone-connected headsets seeing this advanced technology become yet another converged offshoot of digitisation. 

(Quotes below sources: Bjork; McCartney)

Bjork has been a pioneer of utilising new technology for music promotions/expression for 2 decades, so its no suprise to see she's amongst the first to embrace the possibilities of VR:
Few among those musical stars that came of age in the 90s have evolved in such complex and interesting ways, carrying their old fans into the future and picking up a whole heap of new ones along the way. A clue to her evolution may lie in her unusual collaborations with designers, scientists, software developers, composers, instrument makers, app makers and film directors.
She has been planning VR content for years, and stresses the intimacy of the technology.
When I started working on virtual reality, it was a home for my music. It’s a journey you are on: the fact that you have your own theatre and you have this psychological drama.
At the same time, I realised it would be a couple of years before people would have this technology in their homes. It would be an impossible feat to do – it’s like going to the moon. I thought, OK, the way to do it is for people to have a place to go to and watch the videos, and it would be like a workshop and work-in-progress and if people want to see it, they can have somewhere to come.
The older I get the more I understand what is special about how we experience music. It’s either one-on-one, or thousands of people at a festival where you lose yourself. It’s not intellectual, it’s impulsive. Virtual reality is a natural continuity of that. It has a lot of intimacy. As a musician to be intimate is really important. If you want to express certain details, it’s an opportunity to do that.