Clay Sherki

Clay Shirky is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism. He believes that there is no longer such thing as a passive audience. A passive audience is someone who just watches the film "mindlessly" and doesn't actually thinking are using their brain. Instead he believes everyone is now a more 'active' audience which is people who like to be active and take part. He puts this down to technology. Technology has now changed how we view things and has changed our "expectations and behaviour". For example we want to be able to give our thoughts and ratings on a lot of things whether its an app, a video, a film or even something like rating players during a football game. 

This can clearly be seen with newspapers which are now predominantly online so people are able to leave their comments and thoughts on articles they read. Shirky believes this whole idea of wanting to talk back and be an active audience also applies to producers of media. We want to be able to give our thoughts and in a way be closer with the producers. 

The addition of the many social media apps such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook its now a lot easier for people to interact and directly give their thoughts to the producers. "Because of technology audiences are beginning to get more power". 

Analysis of beautiful trauma by P!NK

 I chose this so to analyse because I feel the video for it has a similar concept to the video we plan to create. 

A key thing to notice at the very start of the video is the face masks the couple are wearing. Immediately there is a close up of her face to clearly show she is wearing a mask that says 'Mrs' on it. This tells the viewer its about some sort of relationship  and possibly gives an immediate impression that she there is going to be a dominant person in the relationship however it is unclear who at this point. 

The scene then switched to her hoovering in the sitting room whilst her husband sits with his legs up reading a newspaper. The initial wide shot is used to set the scene and shows us the interesting colours in the house as well as the covers over the furniture which could be an indication of the artist's personality

 The immediate thought that will come to most viewers mind is that this is about a stereo-typical old school relationship with the late 20th century dress sense and the fact that the wife is doing the work around the house whilst the husband sits around after a long day at work. 

The wife then begins to be seen to start making mistakes such as burning a hole through the husbands shirt and then burning the food in the kitchen as the husband once again sits around.

Throughout the video there are a significant amount of closeups and facial expressions are a huge part of the performance. The husband always seems to be very serious and straight faces throughout the first half of the video whilst the wife always seems more stressed.

She then turns to the pills and a wide shot of the cupboard shows a huge number of them. This is where another sequence of close ups occur where the camera switches between the wife and the pills she is holding. She seems to have some sort of addiction to the pills as the words repeat "nothing but you" as she starts taking more and more of them which could indicate how unhappy she is constantly working and doing jobs around the house for her husband. However after she takes the pills she suddenly becomes much happier and starts dancing around the kitchen with her husband. 

Contrast in outfits

 

Casting ideas + test shots

We have spoken about the possible people we are looking to cast and it's actually very hard due to the precise image we need our artist to give off. The cast needs to preferably all have dark hair, a good fasion sense however that can be altered and they just genuinely need to give off a sort of punk vibe. There are a few people who immediately came to mind. We did a few audition and this one below seemed to be the best one and clearly seems quite confident seeing as she's being filmed randomly and had never heard the song before. Her name is Amelie and she's in A2 year group so the only problem could be trying to get her off lessons for a full day with A-levels coming up. 

We also need three other girls to complete the full girl band. This needs to include a drummer, a guitar player and a base guitar player. On top of this we need four boys who will be in control of the girls initially and have them held in chains before being tied up by the girls at the end. 

Developement of our group and idea

 When we presented our idea to Matt he believed there were a few problems with it. The first problem was that it was "a typical first thought idea". This meant that a prom was one of the first things that comes to a lot of peoples heads when coming up with initial ideas. The second problem was that we live in England. Its very hard to accurately replicate an American prom in the UK due to the fact they have very stereo-typical classrooms and hallways. They have the classic American 'jocks' which are the people in the American football college team and tend to have a certain look. Even their pitches are different. Matt believed this idea would be too difficult or wouldn't come off as imagined simply because it would be too hard to accurately replicate an American school in the UK. 

Due to this we decided to come up with a new idea. We went back to the song and decided on the sort of artist we believed would sing it. We then thought of the sort of things the artist might wear and the image that artist would give off. Her persona would be a sort of punk vibe with the two primary colours being pink and black. We then came up with an idea by thinking what sort of thing she might stand for and came up with female rights. This is currently quite a big political debate in todays world and we thought that the artist could use the video to send some sort of powerful message. 

When researching further into this idea we came up with a few set ideas and some shots we could use to present this message throughout the video. We will have three setups; the first one being the main performance setup. The second setup will have the all-female band tied up in chains being held by some men and throughout the video they will escape these chains and tie the men up instead. The last setup will be the women doing jobs that they would have stereotypically done in the the olden days such as cleaning and cooking and again throughout the video they will start doing what some people would see as more masculine jobs. We took this idea to Matt and he said its a great idea with a lot of potential.

Initial pitch to Matt

Star Persona 

- We want our artist to look like a typical 2000's pop punk artist like Avril Lavigne

- Her social media would contain a lot of pinks and blacks

- It would also be inspired by 2000's myspace accounts

- We want to present her as being quite edgy and quirky but also quite girly ​

Set ideas

- We plan on using 3 different locations - a high school prom, a teenage bedroom and the performance shot. 

- We were Inspired by Courtney Love on Hole's Album "Live Through This". We wanted to use settings that are iconic and identifiable in Teen Movies. The prom setting is very prominent in these kind of films because they are presented and the culmination of the character's Teenage experience. We wanted to present this sort of a narrative by having the characters have a "Jocks vs. Rockers fight" that ends up making a mess of the prom.

Different shots

- We're hoping to have a wide range of shots to show some key camera skills and try to make our sequence stand out as there is likely to be a lot of 'schoolgirl transformation' ideas. 

- Our main stand out feature will be a sequence of slow-motion shots as the girl smashes up the room. 

- We could get some shots of a poster being ripped from behind or a cake behind smashed into the camera to make it more affective. 

​Cast

We will need 3 main cast members – two girls and a boy. One girl has to look a bit punky and the other has to look like a typical prom queen. Their hair must contrast so if the queen has blonde hair, then the other girl needs to be brunette or vice-versa. We then also need a boyfriend who will start flirting with the prom queen. 

 Main character( girl): Look for A1 girls – possibly Amelie (A2)​

Her boyfriend: Look for A1 boys – possibly Fin JB (A2)​

Prom queen: Look for A1 girls – possibly Emily (A2)​

Drummer - Look for A1s​

Guitar – possibly Bashy /Tommy

​

Matts comments​

1. Some of the idea sounds quite American and stereotypical, which in itself isn't unusual for music artists, but perhaps is a bit overdone - can be tricky to pull off eg prom.  It can also limit your audience to a young teen audience in the US, and it would be nice if your artist has more global appeal.
2. Matt liked the idea of the punky, feminist / girl power star persona but felt it could be more intense and mature eg less 'destroying the prom and more destroying the patriarchy'
3. We discussed the fact that bands & artists with political statements tend to do quite well at the moment, particularly feminist ideas as it would give you lots of scope of things to post about for their social media feed etc.  
4. Perhaps carry out some research into modern feminist issues eg MeToo movement, Women's Rights in 2021
5. Consider how you could translate feminism onto screen eg women in destroyed wedding dresses, women as puppets on strings with men as the puppet masters, but then cutting their strings?  Use of chains?  Use of symbolic items in the set eg irongs, hoovers etc.  Could you even include subtle  intertextual references to famous women in power who have changed the world eg Ruth Bader Ginsberg, etc?  

​

Comparing solo artists with bands workshop

If you look at the popularity of artists in recent years, particularly on yearly listeners on the likes of apple music and Spotify you will see the charts are predominantly filled with solo artists. In recent years there has been a much higher demand for solo artists for many different reasons. 

If you look at why the main reason is that they simply seem to have more of a personality than bands and your only focusing on one person instead of four. Solo artists fill up 45 out of 50 of the top monthly listeners in the last few years and two out of the five bands that feature on this lost are 'Queen' and 'The Beatles' which both stopped producing music 20-30 years ago. This statistic alone shows how bands are going out of date and people aren't really listening to them anymore. 

However there could be one lifeline for bands and that is festivals. When watching live performances solo artists can be incredibly boring and unenthusiastic to watch and the demand to watch bands suddenly shoots up. Bands are significantly more entertaining to watch and there is a lot more movement om stage. This is when their personality finally starts to come out and when they begin to become more interesting than solo artists. The other good news for bands is that festival attendance is increasing significantly every year which could also result in an increase in band popularity. 

Its hard to tell whether the popularity of bands will ever reach what it used to be or if they might even overtake solo artists however at the moment it's clear that solo artists are significantly more popular than bands and it doesn't look like changing anytime soon as there aren't really even any up and coming bands and any new artist seems to be solo. 

Our song and analysis of the lyrics

 [Intro]

One, two, three, four 

(Hey, hey, hey)

[Verse 1]
So co-dependent on you - immediately its clear the song is about a relationship/breakup 

You keep on letting me down, down (yeah) - breakup


[Verse 2]
My fault for expecting shit - self blame but clearly the partner is wrong

My standards so low, they're on the ground, the ground - self blame again


[Pre-Chorus]
Am I caught in my selfish ways? - the mood turns and maybe its her admitting she's in the wrong

I hate when the world stops revolving around me - sounds a bit bratty 


[Chorus]

I'm sick of it all - sick of the relationship and her partners actions?

I don't wanna deal with it 

`    
Sick of it all

The good times they never stick

I'm this close to throwing a tantrum

I'm so close to throwing a tantrum

I'm sick of it all

I'm sick of it all

[Verse 3]
They always ask me what's wrong

What could get me so down, down


[Pre-Chorus]
Am I caught in my selfish ways?

I hate when the world stops revolving around me


[Chorus]
I'm sick of it all

I don't wanna deal with it

Sick of it all

The good timеs they never stick

I'm this closе to throwing a tantrum

I'm so close to throwing a tantrum

I'm sick of it all

I'm sick of it all

(Hey, hey, hey)

I'm sick of it all

(Hey, hey, hey)

I'm sick of it all

(Hey, hey, hey)

I'm sick of it all

(Hey, hey, hey)

[Chorus]
I'm sick of it all

I don't wanna deal with it

Sick of it all

The good times they never stick

I'm this close to throwing a tantrum

I'm so close to throwing a tantrum

I'm sick of it all

I'm sick of it all

Researching further into funk/pop

Funk-pop is arguably quite a wide genre in terms of music possibilities. Its basically just two different genres merged into one. Songs range from slightly more rock sounding to very obvious pop artists such as Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars. The genre isn't like Jazz where you can immediately picture the sound of a song, its more open to a wider range of music that can still be classified as 'funk-pop'. "Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of soul, jazz, and rhythm and blues". Its already a combination of 4 different genres and then when you add the pop part into the equation its clearly a very wide genre.

 https://open.spotify.com/funk-pop playlist

This is a funk-pop playlist I found on Spotify which clearly shows the wide range of music that fits into this genre. There's a huge range of artists with some being some of the most famous in the world to some very unknown ones and even some well known songs that you wouldn't picture being part of the funk-pop genre are there.

Funk-pop is all about the instruments. There is often a wide range of guitars, pianos and even wind instruments to create a slightly different vibe to normal pop music. This would need to be shown in the music video to make it clear that whatever song we do is part of this genre. When researching further I discovered the base guitar is actually the most important instrument and is the "hook of the song". I would also need to bare this in mind when coming up with ideas for my music video and try to make sure it is a stand out instrument. 

I also did some research on the sort of costumes and outfits funk-pop artists. "Funk bands in the 1970s adopted Afro-American fashion and style, including "Bell bottom pants, platform shoes, hoop earrings, Afros, leather vests,... beaded necklaces", dashiki shirts, jumpsuits and boots. In contrast to earlier bands such as 'The Temptations', which wore "matching suits" and "neat haircuts" to appeal to white mainstream audiences, funk bands adopted an "African spirit" in their outfits and style. George Clinton and Parliament are known for their imaginative costumes and "freedom of dress", which included bedsheets acting as robes and capes." These are the sorts of outfits I discovered people wear when I did some research and it's another thing I have to consider when planning my music video. 

What people thought of my song

I chose to shows the class a long written by a friend of mine called Will Wilkinson. His name on Spotify is Wilko and he has released 4 songs on Spotify. The song I chose to present was called 'Sweet Poison' and is roughly 4 minutes long. The song got a range of feedback from the class. 

The first key piece of feedback was that the song in general is a good well-made song however people struggled to see how an interesting and exiting music video could be made out of it. The song is very slow and more about emotion than anything else so the music video wouldn't really be able to go anywhere. A few suggestions in terms of what I could actually do in a music video included a lot of slow, camera close ups to capture specific facial expressions as well as a lot of very precise lighting work. 

 I also managed to record the comments people made about the song which I have put below.