Choosing the artist...

Before thinking about ideas of the visual aspect of the music video, of course; you have to have music. Choosing the music is primarily the most important thing to get right as without music that inspires the senses, how are you to fashion ideas and visualise them as a video? So before i even thought about performance value and ideas for the video, i chose my song. To narrow the choice down i though about bands that personally inspire my own music, and bands that music makes me feel alive. The shortlist of bands that i thought of creating a video for were:

• Coheed & Cambria (songs such as 'Welcome Home' and 'Feathers')


• Red Hot Chili Peppers (songs such as 'Zephyr Song' and 'Scar Tissue'


• Breaking Benjamin (songs such as 'Breath' and 'Evil Angel')


• Fightstar (songs such as 'Paint Your Target' and Paliniuks Laughter')


• Linkin Park (songs such as 'Shadow of the Day' and 'Faint')


• Muse (songs such as 'Hysteria' and 'United States of Eurasia')


• Pendulum (songs such as 'Hold Your Colour' and 'Granite')


• System of a Down (songs such as 'Lost in Hollywood' and 'Question!')

After looking through and listening to various songs made by each group, i narrowed down my search and began to look through the videos that the bands had already produced professionally. After painstakingly searching for videos of the bands that inspired my most i felt that System of a Down were the most interesting to produce a music video before. They have such a varied amount of video styles, from the surreal to the sublime; and it was this that made me want to create a video for them. System have always been one of my favourite bands and i am a huge fan of front man Serj Tankian, who's political rants on stage matched with his fearless representation of today's society through his lyrics; make him a real focal point of the band and an inspiration for many. After i was sure that i was to make a video of one of System of a Down's songs i searched through their back catalogue of songs, from the first album to the last, attempting to find a song that most encapsulated their tyrannical brilliance. The song that really stood out to me (and did when i first heard it) was 'Question!'. The reason for this was that it was such a fantastic mix of technical acoustic guitar and epically heavy riffs, that's pace changed constantly; keeping the song alive and fresh throughout. These reasons, atop the fact i adore the song, helped me reach my decision over which song to use for my music video.

Kerrang! Magazine

As part of our coursework we had to create a different form of media other than our music video. For the first part of this i decided to create a magazine article from rock magazine 'Kerrang!' from the point of view of a reporter who went to see our video being shot. The Kerrang! article includes a front cover for the magazine, the main article and a page of pictures that a photographer took at the shoot of the band making the video. Before I started writing the article and producing the layout I researched the conventions of the modern day music magazine, amongst which include Kerrang! and NME. They used a lot of black, white and red; colours of power and dominance, so i decided to stick to these 3 colours myself to make the articles realistic. I decided to go along with the Kerrang! Article style as it is the most likely to publish something involving System of a Down:

The front cover:






















The Article:

As it is too hard to read from this view, below is the text from the article:

Is this the freakiest of System’s videos yet? Three rubber ducks, a piñata head and a “deserted forest”...our survey says yes

Wandering onto a System of a Down video set is like walking into a parallel universe; you never know what to expect. It could be gas mask clad soldiers invading a wedding party; it could be a bizarre child drifting aimlessly through a tent...but in this case, it was even stranger. As I brushed the branches apart, peering onto the set of the highly anticipated video for ‘Question!’ my first reaction was somewhat of a disappointment. That was until I saw System’s front man Serj, deep in conversation with a severed piñata head.
“The video is like looking deep into the bottomless pit that is your own mind” revealed Tankian
“But instead of blocking out all the weirdness, the tribulations of the complexities of life today, we embrace them in this video.”
He pauses to let me soak in this philosophical quotation before continuing.
“This video is all those mad dreams you have rolled into one. The fear of falling, the fear of being alone, the fear of failure. But in questioning these things you have to except them as reality. Question! Is what you want it to be, it’s insanity, its unusual and more importantly...it’s us.”
I left Serj at this point to mooch around the set and in doing so, got lost in the wood. It wasn’t so much a set, as a few guys and a camera in a cold wet forest, but what it signified was System’s return to their roots. Not so much big money, big gigs and huge record deals, but those moments of true brilliant insanity that bought the band to the main stage in the first place.
“It’s calculated stupidity.” Quipped Daron knowingly.
“It’s just one of those videos where we can really get involved and really have fun with it. It doesn’t really make much sense unless you just let yourself go and flow with the strangeness of it all. It’s just a dream world.”
From what I can tell the video has the potential to be the strangest video yet from System. The freaky zombie like makeup of the band, the three omniscient ever present ducks and the oppressive atmosphere of the eerie setting in the forest; make this a true rollercoaster of emotions. From watching it live in production I didn’t know how to feel. Should I have laughed at the strangeness, or should I have felt disturbed at the strangeness? In the end I did both and I think this is what the band has tried to do with this video. It’s as Serj so poetically put it, “its insanity, it’s unusual and most importantly...it’s us” System are back to their best.

My first attempt at a music video.

The video below was my first attempt at a music video. I produced this in September of this year with my good friend Ryan Lawler. The song is our own cover of 'Shadow of the Day' by Linkin Park, in which Ryan and I play the song to our own style. The video was shot in one day on my (awful) digital camera and depicts a story of loss and trying to connect back the thing you lost. In this case, Ryan is portrayed as loosing someone close, close up shots of him thinking in sorrow and writing a note to his lost loved one are crossed with a "live preformance" of Ryan on the piano and myself on bass guitar. This trait of dual narratives is often used in modern videos, a story crossed with a live performance; i tried to incorporate this style into the video as i feel it works well.

Introduction to the Conventions of Popular Music Videos

In today’s modern age, it’s all about image. The look of something has to be right for it to sell, whether this is furniture, clothes or album covers, the look of the product is intrinsic to its selling value; and music videos are no different. The way in which we consume media has changed greatly over the last few years, from the introduction of portable media in the formats of cassette and CD, too MP3 digital downloads, the latter of which is the preferred medium for sale in today’s impulsive fast food society.

However, music cannot be bought before it is heard, and the main way of hearing new music nowadays is by both the extensive choice of music channels on television and the visual heaven that is YouTube. As a species that thrives on visual stimulation, we are attracted to songs that have videos that appeal to us and conform to the conventions of the genre we are interested in. The conventions as stated above change depending on the genre of music; of which the list is widespread to the point of endlessness.

Throughout this blog I will look at several videos, and how they tie into conventions for the specific genre that they represent, and the effects these conventions have on the audience.

Introduction to Music Videos

A music video is in theory a short film that compliments and is attached to a piece of music. Modern day music videos are primarily made for the purpose of marketing, promoting both the band and the sale of their music records. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came to the public eye at a more advanced and available level in the 1980s, when MTV based their televised format around the medium of the music video. In China, music videos are simply known as MTV's because the network was responsible for bringing music videos to popularity in that country. Music videos are nowadays one of the most important aspects when attempting to become a successful band, if the image and the video are right then the rest will follow. Because of this, bands are now spending huge amounts on their videos, paying in famous actors and well known directors to help push their band to the next level in visual format. In this blog, I will look to discuss the conventions and forms of a music video in today’s age, analyze successful existing music videos by a variety of different bands across different genres, and ultimately create my own music video for a popular song of my choosing.

I hope you find to blog an interest and that you can enjoy my finished product.
Thank you for visiting.
Noah Platts