Music Censorship

Regulations and Censorship is a very important part in the music industry. Nowadays you see a lot of albums with the parental advisory mark on. This is to stop younger people listen to a bad language but other than that mark there isn't a lot of censorship.

If a kid wants to listen to music then its easy for them to go on YouTube and watch a music video with violence or bad language.  Some music videos do have an age rating on them where you need to log in to prove you are 18 but this is easy to get around.



But there are occasions where the label record wont accept the music an artist creates and therefor fires them or tries to never release the song to the public. A good example of this is Body Counts "Cop Killer". Ice-T sang the song "Cop Killer" which talked about him killing a cop as this was the time to get payback for all the police brutality against black people. Due to the nature of the song it was never publicly realest but it has been sung at live concerts and can be fount on YouTube.

PODCAST #18

SR, BV, KO

RECORD LABEL: Bring Me The Horizon

Bring Me The Horizon have worked with multiple record labels:

• Epitaph Records
• Visible Noise 
• Sony Music 
• RCA Records
• Columbia Records
• Thirty Days of Night Records
• Earache Records
• Shock Records

BMTH have realest 5 studio albums, 3 of which where by Visible Noise which is a British independent record label. In 2013 their album Sempiternal was realest by RCA and their newest album That's The Spirit use two labels which are RCA and Sony. RCA is owned by Sony Music whos parent company is Sony Corporation.

MUSIC VIDEO Eg6: alt-J - Hunger of The Pine

Artist: alt-J
Album: This Is All Yours (2014)
Genre: Alternative/Indie
Song: Hunger of The Pine



The music video is just narrative and follows a man running through the woods as arrows are flying past him. The video is in one main location with two different areas, 1 being in the woods and the other outside of the woods in a field. The video is in one continuity and is mostly in slow mo. As the man keeps running he gets shot by arrows but keeps running. the clips that are at normal speed are all long shot or medium long shot so you can see all the arrows sticking out of the man. The slow mo first stops when the "drop" hits as hes running out of the forest filmed using a drone.

There a a bunch of different shots uses from long shots to close ups and they cut back and forth. when he is first in the woods there is a lot of drone footage which is made to look like the POV of an eagle. At the end of the video there is a POV shot with diegetic sound as the flaming arrows are flying through the air.

The video looks very good visually and thats why we decided to have a running through the woods sequence like in this video. We took inspiration not only the location but also the use of slow mo while he is running as this looks good.

Evaluation Practice

This video contains genre conventions and how we incorporated them in to our music video. It was created to get me ready for the evaluation question.

The 3 music companies

In the music industries there are three big companies that dominate the market, they are Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and Warner Music Group (WMG).

Market Share (2015)

1. UMG - 33.5%
2. SME - 22.6%
3. WMG - 17.1%

Parent Companies

1. UMG owned by Vivendi
2. SME owned by Sony Corporation
3. WMG owned by  Access Industries

Subsidiaries 

1. UMG - Interscope Records, Republic Records, Island Records, Polydor Records, and more.
2. SME - Columbia Records, RCA Records, Epic Records, Arista Nashville, and more
3. WMG - Atlantic Records, Warner Bros. Records, Parlophone, Reprise Records and more.

SR: PRODUCTION SCHEDULE Update #6

This is the 6th update of the production schedule I created. It includes the tasks that we have completed so far, and the ones which are still to be completed. I always like to use color coding since it gives me a great overview of what still needs to be done. 

After last time it has changed only a bit, because Kristian didn't manage to edit the rough cut for the 10th of February so he will edit it for the 1st of March after the holidays, since we focused on the digipack and website more and Kristian's PC hasn't been working. The plan is that he will now edit the following dates that are below. 

Production schedule Update 6 from Sophie2401

PODCAST #17

SR

This is our 17th weekly podcast. This week we spent a lot of our classes talking about different theorists. We especially focused on intertextuality by Kristeva and discussed in which ways our music videos has intertextuality. Intertextuality is the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. On our blogs you can clearly see what intertextuality we have in our music videos. The reason why we did this is because intertextuality is one of the common conventions of music videos and the first evaluation question is focusing on conventions. Next week we will be working on evaluation questions and during the holidays we intend to edit, work on digipack and website and finalise our evaluation questions. 

Crossword

I've created a crossword puzzle which links in with the music video industry. I created it on Crossword Labs which allows you to create free crosswords. The crossword has 20 different words, if you would like to try it you can find it here.

YouTube Feedback 5: Rough Cut 4

We got some feedback on our video "Throne Rough Cut 1 Draft 4" from some students in our class.

Summarize what there points where:

•  Use more special effects, e.g. color correction
• Improve lighting
• make sure lip-syncing is good for ever shot

List of Intertextuallity

In our music video you can see a lot of intertextuality from different bands. In the first 2 pictures you can see the used of color powder and framing is almost identical. So not to copy it we used a different color than purple.
Our Video: 1:30
Song: Up In The Air by Thirty Seconds to Mars
5:16

Intertextuallity can also be seen in the long shots of the band performance. The location is the same but we have more performance and was shot during the day.
Our Video: 0:36
Song: Ride by Twenty One Pilots 0:21

There is also a shot using a wide lens to capture the Guitarist playing. In the actual video they are on stage ad you can see the crowd but in our video we are not performing live.
Our Video: 1:42
Song: Thunderstruck by AC/DC 0:08

General Conventions: Throne Rough Cut 4

At 1:25 to 1:29 there are 3 different shots used. These shots create verisimilitude and authenticity as you can see the singer and bass guitarist play and sing. These shots are medium to medium close up and  two of the shots are tilted up at the performer. This might get people to want to go and see the band perform live as the from the POV of the audience at a concert they would be looking up at the performers.

In our music video from 1:29 to 1:33 you can see some general music video conventions. The shot is a medium close up which is often used in music video. The shot is also in reverse which is a good SFX. The shot lasts for 4 seconds and is also leads up to the drop. The shot is very slow in the start with nothing really happening but then it looks like its speed up to lead up to the drop. The costume is also different from what can be seen in other shots of the music video. The scene also shows intertextuality to the song Up In The Air - Thirty Seconds To Mars.

SR: Audience Feedback 4: Rough Cut 4

This is some of the audience feedback we got from our teacher and our fellow year 13 Media students.



The points our teacher addressed included:

• return to shots more often
• some occasions where it cuts well to the beat - needs a few more
• impact points where it is not visually representive
• pool scenes are a bit all over the place should be placed better
• experiment more with special effects
• more colorpowder scenes because they look good
• try to use color flicker effect/ flicker effect
• color correction to enhance the color
• more narrative: cooking scenes or scenes where the couple sit on a swing set 

SR: Rough Cut 4

This is the 4th rough cut that I created for our track Throne. It contains 2 minutes and 30 seconds worth of footage. 

Some of the things that I have changed include to switch the narrative around so that it is a more linear narrative rather than fragmented narrative. 

Besides that I added in some more pool footage, because it is a good element of the music video as well as the color powder. I changed the look of the pool scenes by adding an effect called Tint, whereafter I then changed the color slightly so it would look more realistic and as if it was an ocean. Andrew Goodwin's theory on 6 features of a music video outlines that one of the main features of a music video is that there is a link between the visuals and the lyrics. This is what I intended to create with the pool scenes. There are several times where the singer is singing about "lost in the ocean" or "blue", which then fits well with the underwater footage. 

Also, I took some of the running scenes out because some audience had argued that there were too many running scenes. I also tried to edit more to the beat and bring in some of our green screen footage that we filmed last Tuesday. My post on green screen goes into detail about what exactly we did that day and which type of footage we got.

PODCAST #16

KO

This is our 16th weekly podcast where I (Kristian) discuss our ruff cut and new merchandise as well as our trip to the green screen room.

TECHNOLOGY: Dolly

This week we experimented using a dolly. The spider dolly is just three wheels which you then connect any tripod to. Using this you can get some very smooth shots but we encountered one problem which was that there was a small crack in the ground and when the dolly went over it the camera shock a bit.  We did not use a track that the dolly was on but that might have eliminated the problem we encountered.

If you  use this on very even ground then it should work fine but if you are outside where there might be pebbles or gravels than there is on point as the footage will look even more shaky than if you where to do hand held. It was good to experiment with  and if used right can look very good.

TECHNOLOGY: Green Screen #1

On the 31st of January I and a bunch of other media students both A-Level and GCSE where lucky enough to be able to visit a Green Screen room in the north of Luxembourg, The facilities contained 2 rooms with green screen. 1 room had a 2 walls of green screen as well as the floor while the other room was just one wall of green screen. This was a great experience as we got to learn more about what it feels like to be in a study with big lights and professional equipment. It was very popular among students many saying it was a good experience. One student commented "Originally I didn't think I would need it but now I see it could really help my media coursework grade".

There where some complications along the way but everyone got to film what they needed and even though every one might not use it it there project it was good just for the experience and gave students a clearer idea of what goes into a film project.