So exciting news – this week two friends and I secured a lease to our first ever home. We’re moving out!

Ok, ok, this has nothing to do with music video but I was so excited I wanted to shoehorn it in. A thought that came to mind was Rohan telling us about all the videos he managed to film in his lounge room through creative use of lighting, sets and camera angles. One that had us all really shocked was Swagger by Ayawatamaya:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg7b8ICs8sE

This video looks like it’s been filmed on a stage or in a studio, but Rohan said it was all done in his lounge room. Inspired by this creativity and my own new space to explore, I began to think about the importance of location in music video and thought I’d take a look at some more prominent music video settings.

1. Blank Space by Taylor Swift

Whether you’re a fan of it or not, it’s hard to deny that this is an astonishingly pretty video, not just in terms of the cinematography and lighting but in terms of the settings, costumes and props. The whole song is a bit of a self-parody on Taylor Swift’s part, so it’s pretty appropriate that she used a luxurious mansion as the setting and home for her larger-than-life protagonist. The real life Winfield Mansion in New York is worth USD$19 million.

2. Come Into my World by Kylie Minogue

We watched this video in class the other day as part of our focus on French director Michel Gondry. The video, which features multiple Kylies, was pretty revolutionary at the time and the buzzing activity of the video comes from all the extras scurrying about in the background at the intersection of Rue du Point du Jour and Rue de Solférino in Paris.

3. Telephone by Lady Gaga and Beyonce

I’ve always had pretty serious problems with this video, but there’s no denying that it has a vibrant art-pop tone that really catches your eye and draws you in. Again, this comes from pretty extensive set-dressing, but a big contribution comes from the setting of the retro diner that Gaga and Beyonce stop at. Unfortunately for us tourists but perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not a real diner but a movie set. About an hour out of Los Angeles, the Four Aces diner that seems to be in the middle of nowhere has supposedly hosted such celebrity guests as Brad Pitt, John Travolta, Jim Carrey and Jennifer Lopez.

(Shout out to Lewis Corner at Digital Spy whose article provided a lot of the information for this post: http://www.digitalspy.com/music/feature/a663126/9-awesome-pop-videos-surprising-real-life-locations-from-madonnas-like-a-prayer-to-the-spice-girls-wannabe/)

Today we got the chance to meet recording artist and composer Georgia Fields. She is a long-term collaborator of Rohan’s, having composed music for his documentaries and having been the artist behind several (after much debate the pair decided it was nine) of his music videos. Rohan has showed us a few of them, and this one has a really cool look:

Georgia came in today because it was time for us to present our pitches for our group music videos to the class. Rohan decided it would be a good idea for us to get some feedback from an actual recording artist, who understands what it is like to perform in a music video and so could provide feedback from that perspective, as well as being a fresh set of eyes to examine our concepts.

It was a really good idea. Georgia gave some great, practical advice (I can believe that she’s just become a mum!), such as, “where is the nearest toilet?” And, “if it’s a new song will they know the lyrics perfectly?” Her points were really valuable, and it was kind of her to come in. We’re really lucky to have her coming in again next Thursday to do a live set, which we’ll be using to practice shooting music live. Unforunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to come in next week, which is a shame not just because I’ll miss out on the technical learning but also because I’ll miss out on seeing Georgia live!

It was also great to be able to see what the other groups are doing. It sounds like we’ve got some great clips coming up (Rohan even joked that he was worried Georgia would fire him in place of us!).

We started with group ‘Hawaii 5-0’ (in honour of them being the only five-person group), whose song ‘Ten Different Names’ by the band Pockets had a groovy Wild West cowboy sort of feel. The band’s artwork for the song was each of their heads in silhouette inside one another (if that makes sense), and the group was using that design as a template for incorporating some awesome designs that they’d created from food dyes and paints.

Group two was Elle and Jac, who confused us all into thinking they had extremely good contacts with their powerpoint title ‘Fortunes – Justin Beiber’ (Fortunes was the artist). Like us, they’re going for a narrative – that of the artist planning a party. But to avoid the trap of cliched teen party scenes, they’re ending with the plot twist that there is actually no-one at the party.

The third group played a hardcore rock song aptly titled ‘Anxious’, and are matching the song’s ominous sound with some witches dancing in a forrest, but are mixing it up with some cool projection work in the studio.

Finally,our fourth group was also using projectors, projecting images onto their artist to portray the inner emotional turmoil described in the song. Their clever interpration of the lyrics into visual metaphors should be fun to watch, along with their scenes graphically added to the artist’s sunglasses.

It’s 12.25 on a Tuesday, and rather than spending my uni lunch break, you know, actually having lunch, I’m sitting here writing this blog post up on level four of building 57. Today, The Assenders, the RMITV show that I’m a producer (and also an actor, and a sound operator, and a first assistant director . . .) is filming its final shoot. Hurrah! My role is a producer is not yet over, as post-production still has a ways to go, but it’s a momentous occasion nonetheless.

There’s not really a way for me to link this to music video, but I feel like this show has given me a lot of experience and training for my career in the media industry more generally so I wanted to mark the occasion. I’ve really enjoyed producing on The Assenders; I like the combination of creativity with my natural tendency to be organised and, well, boss people around. I’ve also really enjoyed meeting new people – I’m working with a great bunch of people on the production team who I now, after dinners, nights out and asking them to be sneaky references on an application, regard as friends.

I’ve been fortunate enough to both crew and be a producer on this show, and I feel like I’ve learnt a lot of new skills. I’ve had a chance to do some scripting, something I never thought I’d get to do but have always dreamt of, and I’m even due to appear on screen today. In all honesty, I think RMITV has been much more relevant to my career training than anything I’ve done in class. While it’s valuable to be able to analyse media products, my practical training at RMITV in equipment, software and production procedures is something I can put on my resume to distinguish myself from other graduates and make myself valuable to an employer. Certainly, the skills that I use in my job at the moment (editing of internal educational videos) all come from RMITV. Just the other day, my manager asked me to make up some production administration documents based on the stuff we’ve been using at RMITV.

In short, I’ve loved it. So I’ll definitely be signing up for another RMITV show (probably with some of the people I’m working with now). But for the time being, The Assenders is still going strong. Here we are in action:

Our group’s music video project for Aivi’s Hey You There is coming along swimmingly. We’re pretty close to being ready to film , as we’ve got a really clear idea of the tone and narrative we’re trying to create. This is the treatment I wrote today:

The clip opens with our protagonist, ABBY, sitting on a bench in a large lawned space by a lake. She is dressed in feminine, retro-style clothing and there is warm afternoon sunlight. She’s absent-mindedly strumming on a ukelele when something catches her eye. On a path nearby, a man with Elvis-like hair walks along carrying a large bunch of helium balloons. As Abby watches, he happily gives the balloons out to passers-by. At this point, she begins singing as she remains seated and plays the ukelele.

After a few lines, Elvis Hair disappears. Abby (still singing) cranes her neck looking for him, and stands up to wander around and look for him further. She can’t spot him, but near the path he was walking down she sees someone holding one of his balloons. She asks the person where Elvis Hair might have gone. The person points, and follows Abby, and we see the two looking about for him.

We see the two arrive at a new location, still searching for Elvis Hair, and they see a young couple with balloons. Excitedly, they approach, and once again the balloon-holders join the search, and they look around for Elvis Hair.

In a third location, we see a third person with a balloon, with headphones in. The existing searchers approach, and this person is more reluctant. However, after some persuading from the others, he too joins the search.

The final people with Elvis Hair balloons are an older couple, enjoying a romantic date. They are very willing to join Abby’s search as she approaches.

Here we have a few humourous b-roll shots of the group’s search, such as them puzzling over a map, looking under benches and up trees.

In the final scene, Abby sees the bunch of balloons over a hedge or tree, and the group eagerly runs to see Elvis Hair. Abby is at first too shy to approach, but the group encourages her, almost physically pushing her towards him.

She taps Elvis Hair on the shoulder and he turns so they face each other. They introduce themselves, and he offers her a balloon. In our final shot the two walk off into the distance and we pan up to a shot of the balloon.

Being a technological hermit, I normally try not to jump on mourning bandwagons when a celebrity passes away. Don’t get me wrong; I definitely think you can be genuinely sad about the death of a person you haven’t met, especially musicians who have such strong emotional influences on us. But  I also think that we have a tendency in the age of social media to become a part of what I think I’ll call ‘herd grief’: finding ourselves caught up in a public outpouring of emotion without realising that it’s not actually an emotion we share ourselves.

So normally, the death of David Bowie would not draw a response from me. I was not a particular fan, so while I obviously see that a man’s untimely death from illness is a tragedy, I wouldn’t say that I am exactly grieving. Again, I do believe that some people expressing their grief are truly sad; there’s no doubting the influence of Bowie’s music and artistry and I’m sure people did genuinely feel he made a significant impact on their lives. So they are rightfully grieving. I am not, and I think that to pretend that I am – to jump on the Bowie bandwagon only now that he’s dead – would be an insult to the memory of a man who had a real effect on the music industry and to his audience.

However, now that I’m in a music video course, I feel that I couldn’t let the passing of a man who was a real pioneer in the area of music video go unacknowledged. As I have said, while I’m not particularly a Bowie fan myself, as a student of media but also just a music listener like everyone else I can see the importance of what he did as an artist and the effect it had on both the music and music video industries.

For example, the NGV recently held an exhibition that showcased some of Bowie’s most famous and experimental outifts, and it’s not just your Average Joe who gets his cossies in the NGV. Costumes were just one element that Bowie used to create a brand new aesthetic that extend to his music videos, and that didn’t just look trendy but really pushed boundaries, particularly in his exploration of the ‘androgynous look’ that I think is still relevant today.

He released his last album on his 69^th birthday – just three days ago, and considering his 18-month battle with cancer, there’s little doubt he would have seen it himself as a final farewell. Today in class we watched his last music video, Lazarus. It’s a rich music video in any sense, but knowing what we know now it’s particularly moving and insightful.

I was pretty keen to get onto this week’s reading, as it was all about modern feminism, and the way that translates into representations of women in popular music videos. To be honest, it was a bit dense and theoretical for me, but a few cultural touchstones helped me get a few key points out of it. For example, the first part of the reading focused on Pink’s Stupid Girls.

Believe it or not, V-Hits had shown this video as part of their ‘Flashback Friday’ segment just a few days before I did the reading, so it was fresh in my mind (I take back all my criticism of being subjected to V-Hits at the gym). While I’m not a huge Pink fan, I’ve always admired her strong personality and musical prowess, and like most people (I suspect), I’ve always seen the video for Stupid Girls to be one of her most powerful feminist statements. The video’s criticism of plastic surgery, spray tans and all things fake seems to be an encouragement for girls to shake off society’s beauty expectations for more authentic, strong personalities.

However, the reading made a very interesting point that questioned whether the video was feminist at all. Because while Pink’s video on the one hand encourages girls to value themselves and their true appearances, it also ruthlessly criticises women who choose the lifestyle of beauty regimens and cosmetic surgery. Can the video still be considered feminist if it attacks women? Indeed, can a video entitled Stupid Girls be anything other than misogynist?

Maybe I’m getting a little carried away, but this sort of duality that the reading highlights in representations of women in music videos particularly struck a chord with me, as it is something I have long considered with regards to depictions of female sexuality.

When it comes to music videos, sex is never very far away. And I’m okay with that. I like to think I’m not a prude, and with music being an ultimately emotional art form, it’s to be expected that there’s going to be music (and therefore music videos) about sex. But of course, that doesn’t mean that all depictions of sexuality in music videos are completely benign. As a feminist I often see women in music videos in positions that seem to me to be demeaning – Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines comes to mind as a recent example of a video that raised ire.

However, having acknowledged the role of sex in the music video industry, do I have a right to tell these women not to be sexual? If memory serves me correctly, after Blurred Lines was released one of the models in it made a Facebook post saying how pleased she was to be part of the project, which no doubt boosted her career considerably. As a feminist, do I not have to respect these women’s choices in being a part of this project?

In the case of Blurred Lines, I still err on the side of ‘they’re being objectified by men and that’s not okay’, but in other cases, well – the lines are more blurred. The example that comes to mind for me is Miley Cyrus, about whom I have kind of had an about-face. I used to see her revealing outfits, sex references and whacky stunts as trashy; however, as a feminist it drives me mad that men can be ‘players’ where women are ‘sluts’, so I had to ask myself: did I have a right to judge Miley for her sexuality? In fact, some of her more recent comments regarding her sexuality and her typically controversial but I think extraordinarily brave move to ditch her underarm razor show a strong, considered, feminist perspective.

Wow, that turned into an essay quickly! Feminism inspires me to diatribes like this. And I guess issues like these will never be black and white, so it’s just a matter of watching and deciding for ourselves:

When asking us about our initial ideas in class on Thursday, Rohan asked us “Who wants to use slow motion?”, and just about 100% of the class put their hands up. After explaining to us how to go about doing that (something to do with frame rates, resolution and camera types), I have to say I was completely turned off it. The technicalities of cinematography are not my specialty.

Having said that, Rohan also asked us if any of us were aiming to get our work on Rage or a similar television music show, and he observed quite rightly that the amount of hands raised was about the same (basically all of us). And if you watch Rage, or V-Hits, or The Loop, you do see quite a lot of slow-mo.

Which makes sense, really. Because a music video clip is not just a short film with a soundtrack; it’s a video in which the music is the focus, so it makes sense to try to use as many cinematic techniques as you can to play around with rhythm. Editing that matches the beat, differing frame rates and physical movement of the camera are all ways in which music video producers aim to evoke the rhythm of the track within the clip. It seems slow motion is a favourite. It’s not necessarily a case of matching the action to the music exactly, so much as it’s about creating a considered sense of rhythm and timing that is kind of musical in and of itself. Also, as many video clips don’t follow a narrative but focus instead on imagery and aesthetics, slow motion can create interesting visual dynamics that are engaging and add to the piece’s overall appeal.

As usual, my constant exposure to V-Hits means I have a strong opinion about this, so I’ve decided to highlight two examples of slow-motion video clips that are popular at the moment; one that I like and one that I’m not such a fan of.

Okay so I’m back – I went to have a look for some slow-mo videos and after getting lost in someone’s Best of 2014 playlist and watching the entire trailer for Sisters (which I have to say looks pretty disappointing from the comedic fempire) I discovered many videos that use slow-mo in some capacity, but none that I could actually say I liked. Taylor Swift uses it to show off her famous friends in Bad Blood, One Direction uses it in Drag me Down to make you believe they might actually be astronauts and whoever directed Good For You uses it to sexually objectify Selena Gomez even more than that song does.

But top marks go to Vance Joy’s Fire and the Flood.

I love this song to bits, which may be exactly why I hate the video so much. I find the let’s-film-something-cool-in-slow-mo-and-reverse-it technique a little bit of an artistic wank (‘scuse my French); it doesn’t match the tone or narrative of the song at all and, to me at least, seems to be trying too hard to be artistic and aesthetically pleasing where in reality it’s a bit of a cliché. But hey, that’s just one girl’s opinion. If my research has taught me anything it’s that slow mo is not my personal preference, so when you combine that with how difficult it is to film I think I might be avoiding it, thank you very much.

Considering that our music video course is a six-week intensive, we had to get right down to business on Tuesday and start working on our final group project. Three guesses for what it is . . . I’m working with Jordan, Blair and Jenny, and Jenny was right on the pulse with finding an artist who was keen to work with us in producing a music video. I was apprehensive at first, not being familiar with the artist – I don’t think I could commit myself to a project involving heavy metal or thumping EDM. So I was pleasantly surprised when listening to Aivy’s (Abby Iverson) Hey You There: a sweet acoustic, almost country or bluegrass-style love song. Have a listen – Aivy has a beautiful voice and the style suits her wonderfully:

Now, of course, we need to decide what sort of video we want to produce. I’m sure Aivi will have her own ideas, and we’ll be meeting up with her soon, but it’s important that we’ve got some ideas too. To help me think about it, I decided to have a look at some similar songs and see what sort of road they’d gone down for their videos.

Picture Frames by Georgia Fair

If this song sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because it was on a Big M a few years back, which is how I got onto it. Interestingly, when I looked up the video clip for this I was surprised – I thought I’d already seen it and did not remember it being like this. It was only after a while that I realised what I was thinking of was the Big M ad itself (a summer road trip). Nonetheless, I liked the way the video’s bright lights (the natural sunlight and the coloured fairy lights at the end), casually dressed cast and simple framing mimicked the laid-back tone of the song. I like the idea of trying to replicate our song’s playful tone in our video clip.

Tomorrow by Gianluca Bezzina

Speaking of playful, when I heard the lyrics of Aiva’s song, this immediately came to mind. The song, being a cheesy Eurovision entry (that I love nonetheless!), has a pretty strong narrative, and the video reflects this. Again, bright colours and costumes reflect the happy tone of the song, and the simple narrative is engaging and humorous. I think our song has a similar sort of narrative that we could explore.

Hey, look at that: three months off and suddenly I’m back on the blog. What can I say, the summer breezes and a renewed positivity brought on by a fresh year rekindled my writing spark. That, or I’ve started a summer semester that has compulsory blog posts. I don’t know, you decide.

Despite having to admit that I’m doing the class to make up credit points for an early finish to my degree, I am genuinely excited about this course. Led by sometime tutor but most-time director/filmmaker/documentarian Rohan Spong (can’t wait to check out some of his docos), the subject is named The Great Belgian Egg Hunt in honour of Anton Corbijn and is all about music video. Music video production is a really interesting part of film-making (especially for those of us with short attention spans!) and I feel that it’s a really viable career pathway for those of us looking to get started in the Australian media industry.

In honour of my new course, I thought I’d start by reviewing a few of my favourite and not-so-favourite video clips out at the moment. Anyone who knows me well will know from my constant complaining that at my gym we’re subjected to channel V-Hits, so I feel relatively well-versed in the current music video zeitgeist. Here are my thoughts:

The Girl is Mine by 99 Souls.

While I’m not a huge fan of this song, I really love this video clip. In our reading this week, Vernallis looked at the importance of narrative  in music video, and suggested that the majority of video clips actually don’t conform to conventional narratives. This video must be the exception, because what I love about it is the quirky and considered story with engaging protagonists at the heart. Pretty unrelated to the song from what I can tell, it follows a young man living in a reverse-world where he seeks treatment for his crushing disability: walking forwards.

The Trouble With Us by Chet Faker and Marcus Marr.

This video is much less plot-based than The Girl is Mine, but I would argue that you can still glean some narrative by reading into it. That’s not why I like it though; I simply really like the aesthetic created by the costumes and choice of cast against the minimal props and background, and the engaging visual effect of the domino-like repetitive sequences.

On the naughty list: Hello by Adele.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bagging Adele. Are you even allowed to? Along with the rest of the world, I love this song, but I’m not so enamoured with the video clip. While it’s not so linear as The Girl is Mine, it does clearly tell a story; that of a break-up. The problem I have with it is that while the song tells that story with gut-wrenching emotion, to me the video seems overwrought and clichéd. The reaching hands, POV shots of an argument and falling leaves all strike me as melodramatic and detracts from the song’s emotional power.