Editing Update 3

Editing Update 3:

This particular scene shows me playing the guitar for a few sections of the song, this shot was previously Alanta, a member of our media project but we had to change the shot as the guitar playing did not look realistic enough to fit the music. And because of this we would of got marked down otherwise so we changed the shot to me playing the guitar because it looks a lot more accurate and therefore better without damaging the continuity editing of the video too much.

Blog 13 - Sexism in Pop Videos

There have been many many pop videos that have recently been released that have somewhat "Sparked" controversy within the media and more specifically sexuality and sexism within the media and how certain people are portrayed in new days pop videos. Some of these include, for example, "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke and "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus. 

This video in particular is incredibly sexist as the nature of the video as well as its synopsis consists of the main character in this somewhat "Story" is seen as a huge misogynist, who is portrayed in this video as someone who uses women and thinks himself higher than they are. All of the women in this video are wearing next to nothing and some of them are even wearing nothing!! while he walks about in a suit and sunglasses looking like the source of their power. 

In short, these women are reflected as mere sexual objects made for nothing but his desire. In terms of Goodwins characteristics of pop videos, this is heavily correlating with that of the women being the point of erotic desire, as that is practically all the women are used for in this video. 

If we were to consider this as the base of all pop videos then yes pop videos are extremely sexist, however this is not the case because however the case may be that yes most pop videos are similar to this one and because of this, sexist. There are still some that fight that image.

-

This pop video in particular cause a massive outrage in controversy for many different reasons but with all the same issue. The main reason that most people had an issue with this video is because before this video was released the only thing Miley Cyrus was known for was being the lovable pop star Hannah Montana and then sh randomly cuts off all of her hair and goes from being the little goody two shoes pop star that little girls idolize to this rampaging harlot on construction equipment. Miley Cyrus apparently made this video to showcase the fact that she apparently was "Not a girl anymore" she wanted to tell her audience that she is all grown up and is now a woman. 

This video does not get any close to the idea of the Male Gaze. however their is one main difference betwen this video and that of Robin Thickes video, being that Miley is choosing to exploit herself in this video, it was her choice to make the video and the idea behind as well as what she wanted to do with it. She chose to take on this new image and therefore she is not being exploited but instead she is choosing to exploit herself. 

-

Most people think this is a video from a "Feminists" point of view, however i would like to start off by saying that i disagree with this statement. Although the main point of the video may be to "Mock" the new age pop videos hat objectify women, the video still does so itself, it has countless scenes of women showing their posterior to the camera as well as the lyrics being very crude. This video contains some of Goodwins famous characteristics, for example, the girl group with a dance routine , Goodwins 1st characteristic of pop videos is used frequently throughout this video as very revealing dance moves are amplified over and over again throughout the video o help express the videos main point. Because of this Allen original objective of exposing the new style of pop video and all the nastiness that comes with it has not worked out and it instead looks like she herself is being a bit of a hypocrite by defeating her own objective. 

Laura Mulveys Male Gaze:

Laura Mulveys theory of the male gaze suggests that the male gaze through media consumption, i.e music videos or films etc, disallow women to have anything close to a human identity, they are only objects through this gaze. The theory also suggests that more often than not, women can only watch a film from a secondary perspective as the male gaze is what is used as the "Visual" in which we see the film. 

A female character in a film is more often

than not seen as a "sidekick" to the main male protagonist and because of this they have n real importance within the film other than to be seen as eye candy by the main character and the audience who are watching the text through the "Male Gaze".

Laura mulvey states that women in media texts will ONLY have one of two functions or in some cases both: 

1. As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view.
2. As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinemas to view. 

The term scopophilia means "Love of watching" and was frequently used throughout Laura Mulveys explanations of gender roles within films and general media text.

Female objectification is related and very similar to that of the male gaze, as the person who is being gazed at, is known as objectified as they are simply being treated as an object and nothing more. Just like Laura Mulveys previous views, objectified characters have their identity and humanity removed from them. 

Laura mulveys representation of how she thinks women are seen through movies and media texts looks something like this abomination *Pre warning.....it isn't pretty*

Filming and Editing Status

Today we went out to London to film the remaining sections of our music video and fill in the gaps that we were missing from the clips that we already had. The only thing we have left to do is edit all of these clips together and make sure that there are no errors in terms of the clips continuity throughout the music video. I believe we have achieved a good portion of the remainder of our music video today, and the entire of the filming progress is complete because of this.

Editing Update 2

Editing Update 2:

This image shows probably the best editing we have ever done throughout this video as this is an incredibly fast paced edited section of the video that follows the musics tempo in the bridge. Each clip starts directly on the beat and because of how fast the music is the clips are no more than half a second long each. This took a long time to achieve and an even longer time to render and watch through properly.

Blog 12 - Case Study 3 - Alex Southam

Blog 12 - Case Study 3 - Alex Southam

General Notes on Alex Southam:

He has previously worked for Agile films, who are quite a major film company that hired him as their all round video producer and director. They described him as an "Exciting new talent". Alex Southam has worked with many big name artists such as Walkmen, Alt+J, and Lianne La Havas. 

When Southam began making music videos and producing them as he liked he was the one that organised and carried out every task at hand, he had no help, he did everything from the Camera, Lighting, and editing all by himself. Although now that he is seen as a more recognized and famous music video producer he has some help with him. Southam enjoys creating music videos as he says he like the format that they have because it allows you to "Try new techniques and have real artistic freedom" Because of the same format he is less keen of media products such as commercials as these do not have as much from for freedom as they have to be filled with commercialism and other factors such as product placement. Southam uses a program known as Vimeo to showcase his videos and media texts that he producers and/or directs himself as he describes it as having a "Higher status" than that of youtube. His first major breakthrough onto the music video scene was with that of Alt+J's music video for Tesselate, that he produced himself. It was shot in one day and had a budget of only £10,000. This particular video uses a lt of "Aftereffects" in order to make the video look more interesting and more appealing to certain viewers that prefer this style of music video. 

His Work:

This is quite an unusual music video and it is definitely something that we have never really seen before in terms of music video production and all the general characteristics that come with it. It is a very disjunctive music video as the music video itself does not follow the genre or the relationship to the lyrics in anyway whatsoever, in fact in many ways it just goes off and does its own thing and it only relates to certain lines of the lyrics and only at rare certain points during the video for example the line "You're a shark and i'm swimming". As well as this, this particular music video does not follow any of Goodwin's characteristics of music videos like almost every other music video does, this shows just how much this is pushing the limits of a questionable way to film a music video. 

-

As for his other music videos that he produced, he did a very iconic music video for that Chase & Status's song - "Lost and Not Found". This particular music video was filmed with a £50,000 budget and was filmed in only 3 different shots from start to end with the use of a Steadicam It was originally filmed at 36 frames per second and was no longer than a minute and a half but it was all slowed down to give the full effect of what was happening at every point during the music video. 

Just like Southams other music video that we looked at earlier on in this post there are again little to no characteristics that we stated by Goodwin throughout this music video, in fact the only characteristic that we can say even slightly relates to this music video is that of the notion of looking which is used a lot throughout this music video when TV screens and news headlines are shown as the only thing on the screen, It is even shown straight from the beginning of he music video when we see the boy on the bikes eyes directed at the "missing" poster. The way this is filmed being in only 3 whole shots throughout the entirety of the music video is a very risky technique t take on and not only that it is barely ever used by video producers because of this factor. If something to do with the video is messed up right at the end of the last take you will have to do the entirety of the video (or at least that very very long shot) again. 

Unlike the other video by Alt+j this video does follow the relationship of the lyrics and more specifically the story line that the lyrics play out through the song. In many ways this music video instead amplifies set images that are used frequently throughout the course of this musivc video for example the repetitive

use of the "missing" poster with the girl that we see either through TV screens or street posters throughout the video.