WEBSITE Sly Antics Leeds, UK Indie band

IN THIS POST: Analysis of an obscure UK Indie band's website (for comparison with the major acts The Doors and Lady Gaga already blogged on), discussion of how relevant or not band websites are given the role of social media today, and points on why you might want to go for a local/student band rather than international stars... I also reviewed their debut video, making this more of a look at an all-round promo package. The band have tweeted me since I did this post; you can check out Sly Antics' updated website here!

WHY PICK A SMALL-TIME LOCAL (or even student) ACT?
You might be tempted to produce a promo package for a (currently!) small-time, local act rather than for a major existing/heritage artist. The closest I've seen to this thus far has been a group who entered the recording studio with their own metalcore band, Sunburnt in December, to produce the broadcast-quality audio required. Two of the group were Media students. This meant they had their cast sorted and a keen, engaged cast at that! They had to be ... they set up for performance footage in a snow-covered Yorkshire moors setting in what remains one of my favourite students videos (even if there were opportunities to improve it...). This video also came to mind given the main website image Sly Antics use (they also use it for other social media logos)

NB: the video contains FLASHING LIGHTS and scenes of horror

The advantages of local or student bands are evident:

Multiple videos for 1 track: U2 One eg

You can find many articles on this example, eg The Inspiration Room.

I've mentioned this several times in past posts, but just realised I've never actually linked them...

Its fairly common for bands to reject a video, or simply to want to see an alternative version, perhaps to boost the chances of airtime.

For U2's global hit single One there were indeed three videos released!

DailyMotion blogger Vampira Maila Nurmi writes:

Three music videos were created for "One". The first, directed by Anton Corbijn, was filmed in Berlin and features the band members performing at Hansa Studios interspersed with footage of Trabants (an East German automobile they became fond of as a symbol for a changing Europe) and shots of them dressed in drag. Bono explained that the idea to crossdress "had been based on the idea that if U2 can't do this, we've got to do it!", and it was fostered by the group's experiences dressing in drag for the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. However, the band pulled the video, fearing the single's status as an AIDS benefit would result in critics finding AIDS-related interpretations of the video. The Edge explained, "We didn't want to be involved in putting back the AIDS issue into the realm of sexuality... It wasn't worth the risk of people imagining we were saying something about the AIDS issue through the drag footage, which was totally not what we were trying to say."

Martin Gore drags up in Depeche Mode's Suffer Well

Use my playlist to explore the world of DMode vids!

DANCE EG: 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor (1996)

(Click pic to enlarge) These screenshots provide a sense of this act's approach

2 Brothers on the 4^th Floor -

Come Take My Hand.

Dir: Arcade Creative, 1996.

Eurodance/Happy hardcore (Dutch).

Lyrics. Wiki. Videography (eurokdj.com), YT Channel.

NB: Dance music is a genre I have some familiarity with, but lack a broad enough knowledge to be picking up on intertextual links with other dance vids; if you spot any, let me know via a comment below. At the end of this post I've also added a couple of pointers on how to go about blogging on a single track.

SUMMARY OF KEY FEATURES: 

1ST SHOT contains many key characteristics of the vid

• CGI is very evident; very sophisticated at points, fairly simplistic (intentionally low-tech/non-realism?) at others.
• Playful, surreal and offbeat (visual at times) humour, with characters that could be in a David Lynch movie; there is no coherent narrative (beyond getting off a bus, walking, and re-boarding). Pomo playfulness, aka deconstructionism, is evident, eg revealing the daft fake moustache.
• Interesting gender countertypes with the male a mostly decorative, passive presence; also notable that overt sexuality (clothing, framing/shot selection, dance moves) largely absent.
• Cinematography has an Anton Corbijn feel: monochrome with occasionally oblique angles and framing. Panning and tracking are common, but vertical movement is limited, with smooth, steadicam action (and no zooms). Also signifiers of Soviet realism through lighting, framing, angle, subject choice and facial expression?
• Editing pace isn’t frantic but still zips along, with no take more than a few seconds, and increased pace/cutting to the beat for only short periods in the track. Cross-fades are common.
• Diegetic intro and outro.
• Lipsynched MCU 2-shots are dominant, but there is considerable cross-cutting between these and non-lipsynched 2-shots, plus other characters and even CGI creatures and a vortex; successful in shot variety terms despite the simplicity of the setup.

1ST SHOT (see screenshot above):

Diegetic intro: ELS of bus, rapid editing (ellipsis to ensure this isn’t a slow start) + good shot variety; beach setting; narrative enigma: where is this/who’s getting off bus?; surrealism – bus on beach!; monochrome/B+W

Lists of Best/Worst Videos Ever Made

Lady Gaga features in both worst + best lists...

If seeking inspiration, why not learn from the best, or apply the lessons from the worst?
Here's a few lists, mainly subjective of course, and reflecting the audience of the site/publication, which may help you identify some useful vids to investigate further - or simply to browse and to come up with a list of what features make for a truly popular/great/awful music video.
If you look closely, you'll find certain directors appear repeatedly: Spike Jonze, Anton Corbijn, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry prominent amongst these.
If you've any lists you can recommend (or have made your own), add a link as a comment.

Director's Cut/Anniversary as promo tool: Nirvana

Picked this up from the Mojo website: Nirvana are issuing the 'director's cut' of Heart Shaped Box, borrowing a standard tool from the film toolkit to promote back catalogue sales:

An extended version of the Anton Corbijn-directed video for Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box has appeared online ahead of the release of the 20th Anniversary edition of In Utero (due out on September 24).
We’ve called on MOJO’s forensic unit to compare this Director’s Cut with the original film. Their analysis suggests three key areas where this new version differs, namely, more appearances from the small girl in the robe, more of the fleshy-body-suit woman and more Nirvana at their visceral best. 

[source: http://www.mojo4music.com/5909/nirvana-heart-shaped-box-directors-cut/]

The magazine is running its own tie-in, using the 20th anniversary of its release as a hook too:

And if that’s not enough of a Nirvana rarity for you, you can always check out the band’s original 1988 recording contract with Sub Pop. As the label says, “Six hundred bucks well spent. Not that we had it at the time.”
And don’t forget – you can read Jon Savage’s mammoth 1993 interview with Kurt Cobain in the current issue of MOJO magazine – on sale now. 

[ibid.]

THE POINT IS...
Good example of another strategy used by record co's/bands to promote back catalogue, but also a good idea for you to consider making a vid for a track released 10/20/25 (etc) years ago, as there is likely to be increased media attention and possibly a re-release/re-packaging/compilation to go with it.
You can look for inspiration by viewing past charts (eg at http://www.officialcharts.com/archive/music/). Another great site, which features all the vids (with iTunes purchase links) for top 20s of each year in the 70s/80s/90s (US charts) is http://www.songs-old.com/Top-20-Songs-Billboard-Charts.html.

Here's the vid cited:

Concept/Perf Vid featured on multiple YT channels

Longish post title: interesting example of a lyric-free rock vid blending concept (with a suggested narrative; concepts tend to have some narrative glue - narrative vids are those which directly tie into the lyrics) and performance. Comes close to getting sleazy (your reading may be that it falls over that line), and though the editing's generally sharp there are some obvious points where cutting to the beat, or simply greater shot variation would be good.

To my eyes there's a strong Anton Corbijn influence here (and it reminds me of the 2012 IGS vid for The Swing Movement in some regards, especially the use of focus-pulling and switching), with (to these eyes) an evident nod to Nirvana when the upbeat section kicks in with a splash (tho' you could also take this as a horror note in what could be alternatively read as a David Lynchian, filmic text).
What I also found noteworthy was the promotional strategy: they've either set up multiple YT channels or just got fans who've opted to put their vid as their channel's autoplaying featured vid. I came across it via another promotional strategy: adding other YT users/channels as contacts. Simple psychology: the suitably burnished ego of most YT users will coax them to add every contact to boost their numbers (I always click through to suss out who/what has requested this ... thus still making the strategy a winner!).

As well as the official CQ channel, Feeeppe, and mary1982next had CQ as their set vid at 20.11.12 and had all added me as a contact within a couple of days in Sept 2012.

Layering in Vids: DMode egs

See also: http://musividz.blogspot.com/2012/02/digipakmag-ad-layering-is-key.html

I've mentioned this quite a few times - and would welcome any egs you come across yourselves as a comment to this post (including URL of any posts on this). I'll mainly ref DMode vids which you can watch from the DVD - there's also a DVD of Corbijn's vids for U2 for you to borrow.

Anton Corbijn is a notable example of a director who makes extensive use of the creative possibilities of the use of multi-layering, as the pics below from various DMode vids [see Wiki] show. However, he often diegetically projects on location rather than edits in afterwards.

A good example of

M.LANG: Deconstructionism, pomo, DMode eg

Here's a term that will pop up frequently when analysing vids (and is linked to pomo): DECONSTRUCTIONISM
I'm going to use an eg of a Depeche Mode vid for No Good...


ACT: Depeche Mode
TRACK: It's No Good 
YEAR: 1997
DIRECTOR: Anton Corbijn
GENRE: Electro-Pop/Dance
MAIN AUDIENCE: M/F 15-34+ (both fe/male gaze, 2ndary 35-44 aud from 80s + aspirational tweens + younger teens [10-14])

Gahan ironically dressed as a 70s lounge lizard

META-NARRATIVE + INTERTEXTUALITY
Now, postmodernists argue there is no essential reality, everything is clouded as we view the world through symbols which represent symbols ... There is no such thing as quality; a Kylie Minogue lyric and a Shakespeare are of equal merit - there is simply no objectivity from which we can make such judgements. That poses issues for standard concepts such as genre. Being postmodern, some postmodernists would of course disagree with this depiction, as nothing can be truly defined!
As for this song and video, its difficult to pin down what we're referring to when we say the text:

The music video for "It's No Good" was directed by Anton Corbijn, depicting the

Joy Division's Control via S.Africa

Interesting vid; cheaply made, the vid relies on getting the most from the monochrome/B+W look, with a strange concept approach fitting the detuned dance track. The track itself is Joy Division filtered through Depeche Mode, which may partially explain the loudhailer (a common leitmotif in DMode vids and covers, both shot by Corbijn, whose influence on this vid is stark and strong), though described here as 'darkwave township house', adding a specifically S.African touch to two widely known genres within this hybrid. I'd read it as a play on race, with the white suit and whitening flour (black liquid is also applied) key signifiers, but could be entirely wrong!
The track, and vid, are featured on the website for the achingly hip mag Dazed and Confused.