Question 1 (Draft)

Transcript

(Opening Titles)


Reporter: "So Tom In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"


Director: "I personally believe in the statement made by Dave Buckingham that genre is not simply given by the culture it is a constant process of negotiation and change. I feel that I had to change the context of song to something more symbolic within it's narrative. I feel that I needed to develop the forms and conventions of Experimental Rock into something more sinister that will create discussion in the audiences asking questions such as; what does this video say about our society? What does it say about the treatment of women in todays society?


Reporter: "Okay, what other media texts did you use as inspiration?"


Director: " The Music video for Earl Sweatshirt's song Hive challenged the conventions of the Hip-hop genre greatly with the use of disturbing monsters following the main artist everywhere. Thanks to my otherworldly research I discovered that this type of mise en scene has never been used in this way in the Experimental Rock genre before and the genre would be completely newborn to the concept. I specifically noted the way the lead singer Gilly does not look at the camera and not look at the audience as it adds to the sense of isolation that she is in during the narrative of the video. I particularly took inspiration from the St. Vincent video for 'Cheerleader' where the artist never looks at the camera despite the video following Dyer's star image theory with plenty of close ups in the video. That technique is very evident in my video and it challenges the conventions of the majority of media texts. Canavarlar try to keep a very disconnected public image and I wanted to emphasise this in their music video. You see the lead singers always look into the camera to let the audience feel involved in the video. I deliberately tried to disconnect the audience from the lead singer as she is meant to be completely alone during the video and I wanted to emphasise this. The black and white effect on the video was specifically inspired by the Horror film Night of the Living Dead with the antagonists of my video and the film following similar behaviour patterns. The back and white filter was my way of paying tribute to my fifth favourite film of all time."


Reporter: "On to the narrative aspect of your video. How did you come up with the concept and do you feel it challenges the conventions of experimental rock videos and music videos in general?"


Director: "The narrative aspect of the music video for me was the most important aspect. During my research on theorists I studied Sven Carlsson's idea of videos being split into conceptual and performance. My narrative is mainly a conceptual one which follows the themes of isolation and imprisonment. The pigs are almost symbolic for our fears of what will happen to us when we are alone. These almost emotional demons take us over and turn us into 'Pigs.' It shows what happens to us when become almost trapped by our loneliness as e stop acing like ourselves. We are more paranoid, scared and unstable when we spend too much time on our own and the pigs in the video are a metaphor of what comes for you when we are alone. I wanted to challenge the viewers of the video with these themes and yes, this could cause a lot of oppositional reading from audiences as said by Stuart Hall. It is also possible that the video for some audience member creates a negotiated meaning. It can have an intentional meaning to some audiences about the treatment of women in society.
The video could give the impression that women may never be able to achieve their goals and independence. This is because in the video the lead singer falls into the literary cultural stereotype as a woman who is cute but essentially helpless. Specifically in literature stereotypes like this serve a not so subtle purpose: the continued social and cultural domination of males. Another potential reading that could come out of the video is Marxism. Marxism often proclaims the idea that minds aren't free at all which could be seen in the video as the lead singer ends up having a 'mind' like the antagonists. The antagonists could be perceived to be symbolic for communism as they all act the same and look distinctively similar.
Certain literary books have also discussed how labourers alienated from themselves due to capitalism seeing them in terms of production- as production units. rather than human beings. The narrative converges with the isolating and disillusioning themes that are present throughout the song in itself which helps the narrative have more meaning and purpose. I would say that the narrative of the video challenges of the genre as their many potential different meanings to what is presented in the video which is tough to say for other videos within this genre. A video that can create discussion over its meaning between friends and family to me shows a sign of how successful and influential the video has been for Canavarlar.   
Symbolic and rhetorical themes and content are a convention of experimental rock so I would say the narrative follows conventions of the genre. However I chose not to include any band/studio shots within the video. I felt that it would take away from the narrative to have shots that are set in a different location in such an involving narrative. I would say that in this case I have challenged the conventions of the genre by deciding to not include band shots all together.


Reporter: "The mise en scene in the video has been debated greatly. Do you have anything to say about it?


Director: The location of the forest in itself was mainly inspired by the forest in James Blake's Overgrown Video. However Blake uses the forest in a fantasy style rather than in a sinister home for creatures like in my video. I decided to use the monsters in the forest because of my love for the concept within the children's story Where the Wild Things are. Obviously my video does not replicate the themes presented in the children's book but I have always been inspired by the idea of scary monsters hiding in the forest.  
Most music videos apply Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory and invoke voyeurism when presenting women. I chose to deliberately ignore this as it wasn't the main aim of my concept and it was really cold outside when it was filming so I don't think it would be appropriate to use clothes that invoked voyeurism as it would distract from the main themes that were in play within the music video. It could have potentially raised some questions of identity within the brand.

I used very dark and formal clothes for the most part for all of the characters within the narrative to help create this idea that every single character with the narrative is connected with each other. The formal clothing idea linked with an original idea I had for another artist which was never put into production. In the original production, I had a character who wore an animal mask in formal clothing. I decided to adapt this character into Canavarlar's music video as I found them to have a very disturbing design that could get underneath the viewers skin. I chose the location of the forest as it could give of a great visualisation of those childlike tales of the monsters in the forest. Which is completely suitable for the band's identity as Canavarlar means monsters in Azerbaijani.


Reporter: " So what was going through your mind when you were in the editing suite?"



Director: "During the post-production, I decided I wanted to follow the theory of Goodwin's thought beats by cutting the video to the beat of the song. A video that does this particularly is Earl Sweatshirt's 'Chum' music video which cuts to the beat of the piano and bass occurring at the same time within the song. well This would keep the pace of the song more clean and merging the editing with the beat of the song to give it a professional coating to the cinematography within the video. I also added some opacity effects to make the footage slightly distorted when a shot is shown from the point of view of the pigs in the music video. This would add to the idea that the antagonists within the music video was of a supernatural origin. The idea of the point of view shots in a distorted vision came into fruition through me watching the distorted imagery presented to the viewer in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I would say this technique is a challenging convention within the context of the music video medium. However this is a common technique used in films such as Predator, where his point of view is a thermal image of the area. I would also add in text with the band's name and title of the song into the beginning of the video to create a sense of brand identity for the genre as it is a common convention in all genres. In post-production I had to stabilise almost all of the footage from the shoot as the location was not ideal for tracking dollies to give a smooth tracking shot. I felt if I didn't follow the genre conventions of the types of shots that were used in experimental rock videos such as Sigur Rós - Ekki múkk music video that my video would lose credibility. Other than that I didn't want to go overboard with special effects within my music video. I wanted it to have a very organic feeling to it whereas some music videos look incredibly manufactured if they are filmed entirely against a blue screen or in a studio for example.