Intertextuality Part 2

More recent example of intertextuality in music video - 

• Last Friday Night by Katy Perry (2011)

The music video is said to be inspired by 1980s coming of age films in particular Sixteen Candles. It was also based around teen film of that decade the video is stylised like a short film by the use of a title sequence and end credits. The music video uses typical 80's fashion such as neon colours, big hair styles and pointy heels. As well as the main point of intertextual reference being the 80s and coming of age films, it can also be related to coming of age films in general. It has the typical idea of making the "geeky" girl into something beautiful.

This music video also has sneaky intertextual references:

• Rebecca Black - The girl who is best known for the song "Friday". The two songs have similar themes in the lyrics about Friday being the day to party. 
• 80s/90s Star Debbie Gibson and Kenny G

• Alice By Avril Lavinge (2010)

This was made in collaboration with the film Alice In Wonderland, therefore it holds a lot of intertextual references such as:

- The White Rabbit
- The strange looking Caterpillar
- Larger than Life Mushrooms
- The Mad Hatter

It also includes a scene from the film using the character of the mad hatter and recreating the iconic tea party.

• Love Story By Taylor Swift (2009)

This video can be seen as a reference to the play - Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare it references not only the theme of love but also the era in which it was written it it seen in the clothing that is seen to be worn by the two in the flashbacks. 

Intertextuality Part 1

Intertextuality 

• The shaping of a text's meaning by other text. 
• The relationship between two texts

Intertextuality is used in media a lot, it is when one form of media text references another.For the aspect we are focusing on which is music videos. It can be used in a number of different ways, music videos can reference to films, fashion, magazines but more recently they can reference to social media such as youtube videos and websites such as facebook and twitter.

The best way in which to understand intextuality is to look at some examples:

1.  The most famous music video for intertexuality is Madonna's Material Girl - This is referencing the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The top three images show Madonna's music video - Material girl and the Bottom shows the film Gentlemen prefer Blonde's starring Marilyn Monroe. 

In this video Madonna is not only referencing the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe in the film Gentlemen prefer Blonde's. But also she is referencing the song Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend and how that is somewhat "materialistic" therefore making Madonna's version slightly like a parody of the original. The underlining intextuality is actually the reference to the way society perceives blonde's. The image of a sexy blonde star and the way she can play men to get what she wants as many young girls who watched this music video back when it was first released wouldn't have been able to see the relationship between the two texts. As the film Gentlemen prefer Blonde's was released in 1953 where as Material Girl was released in 1985. 

2. Another well known music video for intertextuality is Man! I Feel Like A Woman - Shania Twain. It is referencing another music video Addicted To Love by Robert Palmer.

This video is already a form of intertextuality because the idea for the "mannequin" like models came from the fashion prints by Patrick Nagel -  These prints are known for their pale models with heavy black make up and dark hair as well as their provocative nature.

 But Shania Twain is also famous for referencing the music video "Addicted to Love". The music video for Addicted to Love has been parodied a lot due to the mannequin style band it uses. But in Man! I feel like a woman, it has been used as an intertextual reference to the video by making the models in the background male she has copied the format of the original to make it more suited to the song and audience.

Mood Board - I Love It Ideas

The general link I have realised within this mood board is that we want the video to stand out and be bright to match the song's pace and lyrics. The original video includes some of these elements but I believe that with the use of paint dust we are going make our key focus the colour. The makeup and costume used for our key singer should be bright but also reflect the personality she is trying to convey from the song/lyrics. The toy cars, woodland and clothing being thrown out of the window are all separate elements we are keen to include in our video. The toy cars and clothes are connected to lyrics which we want to develop and the woodland is the setting we are thinking about using as the bright paint would contrast the natural colours of the trees.

Location Ideas - Painshill Park

We would like to set at least half of our video in an outside space but know this could be difficult to find somewhere that would not only let us film there but also use paint dust. We also have to think about the time of year we are filming in and what problems could be potentially brought on by weather.

Currently we are thinking about using Painshill Park in Cobham:

http://www.painshill.co.uk/

This location is the visually pleasing setting we want and it would also allow us a range of locations in one park to film it in. It is not to difficult to get to and we would potentially be able to get the amount of people we need to be in the filming to this location. The amount of different outdoor buildings would also be interesting to use even if we couldn't use it for the paint dust. Our biggest issue I believe will be shooting at this time of year, but we have spoken about making the video slightly ironic as the song talks about it being summer but we will be shooting our footage in winter. This will be made clear to the audience by not only our subtle hints to make it ironic but also the colours of the trees and foliage.

We are in the process of trying to get permission to use this location. If we cannot there are similar parks/gardens we could look into.

Lyrics Deconstruction

Here is my deconstruction of the lyrics to our chosen song, these are ideas we came up with how to link the lyrics to the visuals as well as how people can interpret the words. This can is a vague interpretation of the lyrics as we don't want it to link too much to the lyrics we want to include specific aspects like the age difference being mentioned. But we want to really avoid making it narrative based. 

Analysis of a Music Video Presentation

Audience Research

Here is a mind map of idea on what we should ask whilst doing audience research, we will carry out our research on teenagers aged 16-18 as this is the key audience that listen to pop music. We are drawing up a questionnaire that will cover the main questions and not be too long as we know from last year if the questionnaire is too long people are less likely to fill it in correctly or want to fill it in at all. We hope to be able to get an idea of what viewers enjoy in a music video as well as being able to get a general idea of what music people listen too. There will also be an aspect of the questionnaire that will link directly to our ideas to see if the audience think that it is a good idea for the genre and song we have pick as well as getting to know if they believe it will capture viewer attention and be unique. 

Videos that influenced our ideas

There are several videos that influenced our ideas for our music videos.

1. 

The Underdog - Wallpaper ( The Nerdist - Animal Fighting Championships)

This video is a personal favourite of mine and when we discussed using paint dust and doing slow motion this was the first thing I showed the group. The idea is very different to what we want to do, but the use of slow motion frames and the abstract/fragmented narrative is something I think we want to convey in our own video.  I like the creative element that has been linked in with a fragmented narrative and I believe as a group we would also like to have a fragmented narrative. The idea within this video is slightly over the top with the sheer amount of paint dust, confetti, streamers and actual paint used. Although it looks amazing and we want to try and recreate the slow motion shots we don't want to do something that would make our video look overcrowded.We want it to be inter cut and slightly more seamless between the narrative and abstract parts of the video.

2.


KickthePJ - Colour Bandits

This is a youtube video created by the channel KickthePJ, we have looked at this as a base of what we would like to create. Although this is not a music video it has been very influential to our group. It basically embodies what we would like to do design wise with the paint dust but possibly ours will be  a little less extreme as we don't want to cover the artists face. This video has been influencial but purely for the creative ideas as it doesnt link to a song. We love the way it looks  against a white backdrop and how bright and vivid it makes the colour and  is definitely we have thought about using ourselves.

3.

Owl City - Fireflies

Unlike the other videos, this has no use of paint or bright/vivid colour. The main idea that comes from this video is the toys. We have an idea that links in with the lyrics about crashing a toy car, this video proves that the use of toys can look creative and effective in a music video.  This doesn't really reflect the music video that we want to create it is more for that one specific idea/element. There is close up shot used on the "robot" toy whilst it flashes and comes to life, I particularly love that shot and how we could recreate something like that. Of course making sure it fits in with our theme.

4.



Icona Pop - I Love It

Finally the original video to the song we have chosen has been an inspiration to our ideas. We dont want to create a replica of the original we want to make it our own. The original video focuses on the party beat from the song as a base. But we want to focus more on the lyrics and ideas that we can take from the lyrics. But the idea of the colours being so vivid and central to the party theme of the video has been influential. We are keeping the kind of party idea for our video but our key theme will be from within the lyrics.

Music Genre - Pop

Initial Ideas

Here are some of our intial ideas for the song we have chosen - I Love it By Icona Pop. Now that we have chosen the song we need to deconstruct the lyrics, look more in detail to the genre and look at the artist to gain a greater insight to what we could sort of music video we could create. But these are the initial ideas we have to the song. 

This is the orginal music video - I Love It by Icona Pop

Ingredients of a music video

Every genre of music will have a different style of music video. The style will reflect that genre, but that doesn't mean that there aren't common factors which all music video follow.

The key ingredients of a music video are:

• Performance - The way the artist or actor performs in the video is so important. If the performance is dull it wont keep the viewer attention and if the video isn't intrigued by the video they wont continue watching. This could mean they wont continue watching that particular video or they wont continue watching the rest of the artists videos. 

• Narrative - A narrative isn't always essential especially with artists that like to experiment with the weird and wonderful. But when music video use narrative is can be  eally done really well and create a greater meaning from the music. But less narrative is more exciting. 

• Editing - The fast paced editing used in music video is key as helps to keep the pace of the video go with the pace of the music. Also the use of fragmented shots and jump cuts look really good when used in a music video. 

• Unique - The music video should be different to other music videos. To interest the viewer it needs to be something new and fresh that doesnt just look like a copy of another video.