Where Music Videos and Movies Meet

Another common purpose of music videos is to help sell a film that the song appears in. Here are some of my annoying, exciting and downright depressing examples:

Armageddon and Aerosmith: I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing

Love how this one takes on some special significance as lead singer Steven Tyler is effectively singing it to his daughter Liv Tyler who appears in the movie Armageddon. I also love the way the clips from the film are used with Aerosmith appearing on all the screens being watched by the characters. And the use of the rocket blast as an excuse to have the band having their hair blown dramatically around is cheesy genius! Liv Tyler crying over her father in the film played by Bruce Willis but actually replaced by her real father on the screen is the icing on the cake!



Ill Manors and Plan B: Ill Manors

This one is interesting not just because it is a bleak, violent and sensationalist look at modern British youth culture but also because although it is the title track from the film of the same name, it does not actually feature any footage from the film. Instead some of the actors/characters pop up in the music video and it is set in the same kind of locations as the film. It also deals with the same themes as the film with its look at disaffected youth running riot.



Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It For You

This one stayed at number one in the pop charts for sixteen consecutive weeks back in 1991 which was a record. It no doubt helped that Robin Hood was also doing well at the box office, showing that a song and a film can help each other towards greater sales. I always enjoyed the video just for getting to see the little clips of the film but wasn't so much of a fan of the bits of Bryan Adams all dressed in denim with his own band of merry men playing in the woods.



Titanic and Celine Dion: My Heart will Go On

You can't keep a good ballad down and certainly not if it's featured in one of the biggest films in history. Not a big fan of the song or the video but it's great to see clips from the film. Celine Dion croons from the bow of the Titanic and beneath the stars but for me this video is just an opportunity to see Jack and Rose again!



Men In Black and Will Smith: Men in Black

A great example of synergy at work. Will Smith sings the song, stars in the movie and Sony produce both the film and the soundtrack meaning that one helps sell the other. Sony's music making division helps promote its film production and vice versa, meaning Sony get very rich from using different parts of their business to promote other parts. Simples! The music video uses the cast, locations, special effects, costumes and clips of the film, making it probably relatively cheap to produce.



TV does this too with The Rembrandts' music video for I'll Be There for You being a perfect example that helped to sell Friends as a brand new sit-com by featuring the stars of the show pratting about in a studio with the band.



There's many more examples. What are your best and worst?

Blu-Ray Review – Ill Manors

Ill Manors is full of ting dat’ll make you sick blud. The characters are ripped from the streets of London, as are many of the non-professional actors. Debut director Ben Drew (a.k.a. British rapper Plan B) attempts to dig beneath the blazing front page pictures of looters to reveal the reasons behind the madness. Drew doesn’t like the media calling these kids ‘chavs’ and he makes it his mission to offer some context and explanation for the actions of what so many have called “out-of-control” youth.

The film takes a multi-stranded narrative approach (similar to Pulp Fiction but with far less humour and far more grit) with a range of characters mixing in circles that lead to frequent confrontations. A missing phone, a missing gun and a missing baby propel the characters like pin balls bouncing back and forth around the East End streets. Riz Ahmed (Four Lions, Shifty) stars as Aaron, one of the rare truly sympathetic characters who is a bit too smart, and a bit too empathetic to be mixing with the kind of low-lives his social circle keeps him bonded with...

Read the rest of my Ill Manors Blu-Ray review at Filmoria.

When Singers Become Actors

The late Whitney Houston returns to the big screen today in Sparkle - the film that would become her last acting role. The musical drama sees Houston play the part of Emma, mother to three young ladies seeking fame as a girl group, while she warns them of the perils of the life they so desperately crave.

Singers turning to acting is not a new phenomenon – singers from Barbra Streisand to Eminem have been turning their talents to the big screen for decades and though not all have done it well, some have shone in their attempts.

Head over to Filmoria to find out who the team have chosen as their standout performances by singers who have truly become actors.

Featuring Will Smith, Plan B, Frank Sinatra and more.

Test Screenings

Touchy subject in the film industry this. Test screenings are happening more and more these days with producers insisting that filmmakers get feedback from audiences before releasing their films commercially.

Some filmmakers refuse. Terry Gilliam for example. Put some of his old films in front of an average audience and they may not have ever seen the light of day. Spielberg doesn't do them. His films always make money. The distributors of Paranormal Activity used footage of test screenings in the trailer for the film. They also changed the ending due to audience feedback.

What's the point? Audience research. Producers want to ensure the film appeals to the widest possible audience. So they screen the film early, get the audience to fill in a questionnaire and then they make changes. Maybe the film needs to be shortened to a more manageable length. Maybe some scenes are not working, some sub-plots are unnecessary or some effects look shabby.

But is this fair on filmmakers who shed blood, sweat and tears for the film? Has their soveriegnty been taken away unfairly? Does the film belong to a director or the investors? It's understandable that producers, financers, investors want to see a film make money and I'm sure most directors want everyone to get paid. But isn't the money being put into the filmmaker as much as the film? Isn't their some trust in the filmmaker's creativity and vision?

Are audiences really experts on film anyway? I'm sure many would argue that audiences are the perfect people to be giving the filmmakers feedback. After all we are the ones that are going to pay to watch the film. We watch films. We know what we like and what we don't like.

But looking at the questionnaire after attending a test screening on Tuesday (04/10/11), I started to wonder about the range of responses Revolver Entertainment would be getting from us. As a media teacher I like to think I know a fair bit about film, narrative, scriptwriting, production etc. I tried to make my responses reflect this. But I'm not sure that I'm even the target audience for this film so are my responses valid? And I found it very hard to fill out the form thoughtfully and carefully. I wonder if others had more or less trouble.

Anyway I signed a non-disclosure form without reading it so I'm assuming I'm not allowed to say anything about the film. I don't know if I can even mention that the film is being test screened. However the film in question will be released in February and I was told that that they are trying to cut the length of it down by around 40 minutes. I can't imagine what this is like for the filmmakers. I could only identify a couple of scenes that I felt were unnecessary. So I can't say much because the film will change.

All I will say is the music is unsurprisingly outstanding and the opening credits blew me away. So I hope they stay as they were. It's a grim, gritty film and an extremely promising directorial debut. The narrative structure and many of the stylistic techniques of the film were excellent in this early cut. The writer/director just added another talent to his already glowing career.

In completely unrelated news:

Ben Drew a.k.a. Rap/Soul artist Plan B says:

"there’ll also be my first full-length film, which I’m titling ‘Ill Manors’”, he adds: “Which is a hip hop, music-based feature film which has six short stories that all kinda mix together to make one BIG story - and each mini-story will be represented by a different hip hop track. It’ll all be narrated by me, and it’ll actually be the reverse of ‘The Defamation Of Strickland Banks’ - in that with ‘Ill Manors’ the film will come out first and the soundtrack will come afterwards. And again the soundtrack will be a film for the blind, in that you’ll be able to listen to it and it’ll tell you the story of the film…" (http://www.bluesandsoul.com/feature/522/plan_b_from_a_to_b)

The Development of the Techniques and Styles of Stop-Motion Animation

You may find this useful if you are studying stop motion animation at college; particularly if you are doing the BTEC in Media Production.
 

Animation has developed a huge amount in the last century from its beginnings as cartoon animation such as ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ through to stop-motion animation as pioneered by George Pal and now onto digital animation as in the films of Pixar. In this report I will discuss the development of animation from the origins of the moving image such as Joseph Plateau’s Phenakitoscope through to contemporary examples of stop-motion animation such as the feature films of Aardman animations (e.g. Chicken Run) and various modern music videos (e.g. Plan B, No Good) and adverts.

Wikipedia defines animation as ‘the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation) Persistence of vision is the phenomenon that means when a series of images is flashed up in front of someone’s eyes, the image is retained on the retina for at least a tenth of a second. Therefore if a series of images are flashed quick enough (at least 12 images a second) the subject of the images appears to move. This is why frame rates are important in the discussion of stop-motion animation. Frame rates are measured in frames per second and are literally the amount of frames the viewer sees on screen every second. Cinema is generally 24 fps and video is generally 30 fps. For animation to appear smooth and not jerky the subject of the individual images will need to be moved around 10 or twelve times for every second of the finished film. This is stop-frame animation; the process of taking a still photo of an object, then moving the object slightly and taking another photo and so on and therefore making the object appear to move all by itself. Camera movements such as pans and tilts can also be created by moving the camera a very small amount each frame.

Some of the pioneers of the moving image were Joseph Plateau, William Horner, Emile Reynaud, Edward Muybridge, Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers. Their inventions lead to the development of cinema itself, cartoon animation and then stop-motion animation by early pioneer George Pal. Plateau invented the Phenakitoscope which first used the persistence of vision principle to create moving images. It was a simple device that involved two discs that were span together in the same direction, one with successive images drawn on it which would appear to move. Later in the 1800’s William Horner developed the Zoetrope which improved on the former because it did not require a mirror to be viewed. A drum is spun with successive images on the inside of it and the audience looked through slits in the side of the drum to see a ‘moving image’. Emile Reynaud next invented the Praxinoscope which was the first device to show cartoons on a public screen. Like the Phenakitoscope it involved a mirror and successive images being revolved in order to create a ‘moving image’. These inventions all displayed drawn images or cartoon images and therefore are not as related to stop-motion animation as some of the next devices I will discuss.

Edward Muybridge, a biologist interested in movement of humans and animals, later developed the zoopraxiscope which was similar to the zoetrope except for two things. Firstly, the images could be projected onto a public screen and secondly, Muybridge was using photographic stills of humans and animals moving to create moving images. A famous example of his work is the film of the horse galloping. In order to achieve this, Muybridge had to line up a bank of cameras to capture the movement of humans and animals. As the subject moved past the line of cameras successive photos were taken and these could then be put into a zoetrope-like device and screened for the public to see a ‘moving image’. Thomas Edison later developed the Kinetoscope which introduced the basic approach to cinematic projection that is still used today. A strip of perforated film with successive images on it is pulled over a light source to create the illusion of motion. This is where frame rates really began as Edison’s device screened films at 48 fps. Films could only be viewed by individuals as opposed to public screenings and the camera, or Kinetograph, was very heavy. The Lumiere brothers then developed the Cinematographe which was smaller, lighter and less noisy than the Kinetograph. It also meant films could be screened to a big audience. The frame rate was 16fps which meant less film was used which would be cheaper.

Cartoon animation soon followed and early examples of this include Winsor McCay’s and Walt Disney’s films. However stop-motion animation was not at first common and was pioneered later by George Pal. Instead of cartoons, Pal began using inanimate objects such as cigarettes in one advert and wooden puppets in a series of short films which became known as ‘Puppetoons’. These were made in the 1940’s with many different wooden puppets or puppet parts to create the illusion of movement. These puppets or parts were in various different positions and could therefore be replaced between frames in order to create movement. This foreshadowed various other techniques used in stop-motion animation such as using models, puppets, people and cut-out pictures. Ray Harryhausen became famous for his work with stop-motion animated models in live action films such as ‘Jason and the Argonauts’. The original ‘King Kong’ also used stop-motion animation very effectively.

Contemporary examples of stop-motion animation can be broadly divided into five categories; music videos, adverts, feature films, television programmes and digital exhibitions. An example of a music video that uses stop-motion animation is Plan B’s song No Good. The video was made by Daniel Levi and features the artist himself being animated as well as a huge amount of inanimate objects around his house. Objects such as kitchen appliances and food are made to appear as if they are moving by themselves and objects even move in time with the beat of the tune. Other techniques include a pile of clothes covering Plan B and then when the clothes move away again, Plan B is no longer there. Also the video contains lip synching which means that it would have had to be extremely well planned as in every single individual shot, Plan B’s mouth would have had to be in the right position for that moment in the song. Some digital exhibitions are very similar to music videos in that they are just a piece of film set to music with no dialogue and often very little narrative. Other music videos that feature stop-motion animation include ‘Fell in Love with a Girl’ by The White Stripes and also ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel. Some mix live action with stop-motion and some mix digital animation with stop-motion. These are usually aimed at teenagers and adults and therefore often do not use cartoon animation or claymation techniques, but animate real people instead.

 

An example of a modern advert to use stop-motion animation is the Doritos Tribe advert made by Matt Bowron and John Addis. It cost under ten pounds to make and demonstrates why stop-motion techniques can be so popular with companies that wish to make cheap adverts. It consists of very few camera set-ups and simply has a bag of Doritos open itself and Dorito crisps doing a little sacrificial dance and one crisp sacrifices itself to a pot of dip. It is very simple and very effectively sells the product. The ‘Creature Comforts’ adverts made by Aardman animations were also hugely successful for the Electricity Board and featured clay animals talking about various things (voiced by the British public). Like music videos these are short products, often set to music but adverts differ from music videos in that they can also feature dialogue. Adverts are aimed at all ages but mainly adults in these examples. The claymation technique used in the Creature Comforts ads is a juxtaposition with the boring normality of the voices used. This creates humour that would appeal to adults and children.

An example of a television programme that uses stop-motion animation is ‘Robot Chicken’ created by Seth Green. This is aimed at adults and teenagers and is different to the majority of television shows that use stop-motion which are aimed at children. Examples of this are ‘Bob the Builder’ and ‘Shaun the Sheep’. However ‘Robot Chicken’ and ‘Celebrity Death Match’ are two examples that are primarily aimed at teenagers and adults. They feature swearing, violence and coarse humour mixed with claymation in the case of ‘Celebrity Death Match’ and 1980’s toys quite often in ‘Robot Chicken’ such as ‘Transformers’ and ‘Star Wars’ toys. They are both using stop-motion animation to increase the comedy value of their products.

Feature films have generally been made by Aardman animations such as ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit’. These are feature length films made from animating very detailed clay models, elaborate sets and featuring huge numbers of camera set-ups and camera ‘movements’. Aardman are a huge company with massive amounts of animators and recently collaborated with Dreamworks on a digitally animated film. Aardman’s films are aimed generally at children with talking chickens and innocent, action packed stories. On the other hand Tim Burton has produced some darker animations such as ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ and ‘The Corpse Bride’. These are aimed at children and adults with their darker themes and animation style.

 

Finally there are also digital exhibitions. These are stop-motion animations that have been made purely to be shown on the internet. A great example of this is ‘Tony vs Paul’ made by Paul Cummings and Tony Fiandaca. This features two friends who seem to have telekinetic powers because they can move objects just by waving their hands. They can also ‘fly’ and go through walls by using stop-motion techniques. This film is very like a music video as it is around five minutes and set to a piece of music. There are thousands of examples of these on YouTube and there are often competitions and festivals to celebrate these films.

Stop-motion has come a long way since its beginnings. It has been threatened by digital animation but has had a resurgence due to the internet and also budgets in music videos and adverts being cut dramatically in recent years.