Typical conventions in heavy metal

 Conventions of Heavy Metal:

Heavy Metal is a genre of music which is usually sung in an aggressive and grungy manner with it originating and being most popular in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Camera Work

• The types of camera shots that you will see in a typical Heavy metal music video will vary between lots of close ups on the lead singer or each of the band members or full body shots of the band playing as a collective. Close ups of the band members playing the instruments are also implemented heavily e.g. close up on drummers hands while he/she is playing.
  
  

Editing 

• Overall the editing in heavy metal is very fast paced with a lot of cuts between shots to make it seem violent and aggressive. 

Music video analysis: Childish Gambino 3005

The music video that I have chosen to analyse for this blog post is Childish Gambino's 3005 from his album Because the Internet.

Because the Internet is an album that Gambino created to find meaning and growth in the age of the internets expansion.

In the video Gambino takes on the role of a character that he created named 'The Boy' who is said to be a rich 20 year old who just lives his life throwing parties and trolling on the internet. In the beginning of 3005 he mentions that he had "A house full of homies, why it feel so the opposite" this is in reference to his character but it seems that he is now going through a sort of existential crisis in which he does not know what he is doing with his life at the current moment. 

The set of the video is also really important to the overall structure of the music video as throughout the music video the whole video is shot on this Farris wheel in the dark. The constant spinning could possibly be showing the constant loop in time that he feels he is going through and that there was almost no change in  his day to day life and that he is trapped in a cycle. 

In this small section of the music video we get a very smooth and somewhat complex loop that shows outside of the Farris Wheel though the footage of the outside of the Farris wheel might not be integral to the video the loop could mean or be a visual representation of no matter how hard he tries to turn away or find and exit out of his loneliness he will always be brought back to where he is and that he'll have to face these challenges himself. 

Another constant in this music video is that the bear that Gambino is seated next to on the ride appears to become more and more beat up and worn as we get further into the song, this could be symbolising the inner damage that Gambino's character is taking as he keeps having his self destructive thoughts throughout the song until it eventually overwhelms him.

"Nobody got it figured out so therefore I've lost all hope of a happy ending". This is a line that reflects his thought process throughout the video he has been telling himself that if nobody else on the planet has figured out and who they are and want they want to become that there is such little hope in figuring out what he's doing that he might as well give up as he sees no point in an outcome that will almost never happen.

By the end of the music video we loop back to the seat on the farris wheel however Gambino is now gone and the bear is left by itself ripped and torn as though it has been there for years. This could mean that Gambino was completely lost in his existentialism. Another meaning this could hold is that the bear symbolizes his old life and how he distanced himself from it more and more that it eventually aged and was forgotten by Gambino leaving it in the past as he moves on trying to live his life instead of being in fear of living alone.

Music video idea development

Our idea had changed quite a bit in the last week with us now changing the whole feel of our music video with us initially wanting to have more of a traditional heavy metal performance based video to having a heavy satanic religious set and tone of our video, and now instead of it being entirely performance based we have decided to add more of a concept rather than a solid narrative. We decided to change the tone of our idea as we looked deeper into the lyrics and found that there were many lines that included phrases such as 'faith betraying us' and anti religion statements. 

We have also decided that the set will be a bigger factor to our video than we thought it would in the beginning. We wanted to have satanic and anti Christian/ anti religion imagery so we decided that i cloud draw or the set designers could put pictures or graffiti drawings of rubber hose style devils or the other idea we had was to have a more realistic goat head Satan as a Symbol while a ritual of sorts will take place in bits of the music video preferably in the beginning and the end.

For costumes however we still have not fully decided on what we would want our band members to wear but we will be having background characters that fall into the concept section of our music video, they will be wearing religious pastor like cloaks possibly with the leader wearing a different colour to show that they are in charge of the ritual. 

Casting/Test shots

For our casting we had decided that we would create some posters putting the information on the type of people we wanted for our heavy metal music video, So far we have gotten back two emails from A1 students saying that they were interested in what was being advertised in our poster. As for test shots we have not fully casted all of our band members so we will do test shots once we have fully completed casting.

Clay Shirky's Theory

Overview of End of Audience Theory:

Clay Shirky believes that audiences now are not able to just sit aimlessly while indulging in a form of media whether it be watching a full film or reading a magazine. He believes that audiences want to be interacted with and that they want to be engaged with what they are viewing. Ways that audiences are included can be done through things such as e.g. competitions, interactive videos/movies and even events.

An example of a website from an artist can be Lil Nas X's Merch website for his Montero Album:

Though there are no current contests or giveaways on his website. Fans are able to interact with his site and see the track lists that are on the album and even the merch that is being released in celebration of the album releasing. 

Lil nas x also has several of these comedic promotional video son his tik tok with a song from his album usually playing in the background this can also get the fans engaged as he may use fans comments to create one of these videos.

Star Persona

 What is a Star Persona?

Star Persona – Used to refer to those music stars who have an identity beyond their ability to make music, e.g. Lady Gaga. The persona may be demonstrated through character and personality, and be evident in other media products and platforms, for example magazine interviews and advertising campaigns

• Some stars are adept at changing their star persona to keep fans interested: an example of this can be Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. The producer of the star may be instrumental in creating their persona.
  
  
• Social media is also a method used to show either the solo artists persona or have separate personas for a whole band but still focus on the lead and make them stand out more by giving them the more dominant personality.
  
  
• Instagram is a social media platform which almost if not all musicians have. The artist or band will usually have a team behind them to help either create or maintain the star persona which the musicians gave off and possibly even change their image as time moves on to keep the audience engaged.
  
  
• Going back to the example of Taylor Swift she has had many changes in terms of feeling of her music and even how she presents herself in her music videos and live performances this is a clear example of a shifting Star Persona. From her Purple era to Reputation she was always changing her image.

Digipacks

• Digipaks are a printed card packaging that is often used for CDs. They contain information about the band or the artist and the songs that will be contained in the CD. The designs of the digipacks can usually give most of the information you need to know about the artists, like the colours used on the cover, the fonts used and the imagery.
  

Matt Workshop

 On Monday we had a workshop with Matt:

• The point of the workshop was for Matt to basically show us what the differences are for having a band or a solo artist for your music video and the different ways you have to go about promoting them and creating their persona through social media and the music video itself.
  
  
• Matt had shown us a list of the most popular artists on Spotify and it was evident that solo artist were the leading members of the list with only a few bands making the list and the majority of the bands being very old.
  
  
• Matt then told us the difference in why it is easier to boost a solo artists career and self image is that they have a whole team of people behind them and that team only has to look over the one person instead of having to look over 4 separate members social medias or create a 'star persona' for each band member.
  
  
• Matt showed us examples of videos from solo artists and bands to show the difference in the amount spent on production for the video and the amount of locations they film at. It was evident to see that solo artists had more locations in one music video than bands did, the reason for this is because solo artist need more of a gimmick to grab the attention of their audience since they are preforming on their own.
  
  
• So in the workshop we learnt that it is easier to market and cater for a solo artist but a music video for a band is much easier to produce because they generally have less set up changes and even if you do have a minimal set up you can have ways in which you can make it interesting to watch