According to Gunther Kress genre is defined as ‘a kind of text that derives its form from the structure of a frequently repeated social occasion’ this creates a comfort zone for audiences, this is why audiences have a favoured genre and bands or artists have conventions that refer to this social occasion that genre is derived from. When audiences have a similar favoured genre it creates a sense of identity and each genre creates its own audience base where the audience form a collective identity that follows its own sense of fashion and lifestyle. Katie Wales on the other hand believes that genre is ‘an intertextual concept’ which means that audience uses other texts to extract meanings from the text they are watching. This means that every genre has its own conventions, my song ‘Price of Glory’ is in the metal genre style because of the fast rhythm and loud aggressive-sounding lyrics as well as the use of guitars and drums. As my song falls within the metal genre there are concepts that can be used and developed. However post-modernism of music means that genre is increasingly challenged, and because of the proliferation of genre, developing genre creates a niche audience.
Goodwin’s theory on music videos has principles that most music videos hold to or reference, I looked at Goodwin’s theory to see the basics of how music videos are made. The first principle that Goodwin states is following genre characteristics, this refers to the theories made by theorists such as Kress and Wales as well as Hartley and Thwaites. Hartley and Thwaites both have similar theories: ‘we need to understand genre as a property of the relations between texts’ and ‘each text is influenced by the generic rules in the way it is put together; the generic rules are reinforced by each text’. These both talk about how genre is created and refers to other similar texts to strengthen their particular genre. This means that music videos will use conventions of their genre in order to strengthen it and create an intertextual reference to similar videos within the genre. Goodwin’s second principle states that there is a link between the lyrics and the visuals, while his third principle says there is also a link between music and visuals, in this case the visuals may contradict or compliment the music in order to create and interesting music video for the audience. The fourth principles states that there are intertextual references within the music video which again agrees with many of the genre theorists, however in Goodwin’s theory the music video may reference more than genre, for example a Pop genre love song may reference a book such as Pride and Prejudice. The fifth principle references voyeurism and notions of looking, the artist may look in mirrors or at TV screens or reflective glass, and some artists look at the camera while others don’t which create a sense of voyeurism for the audience. The final principle is that the artist needs to be seen for the purpose of sales, so there is a need for close ups of the artist. Goodwin also stated that videos fall into a category of narrative based, performance based or a mix of both. Goodwin’s theory holds for many of the music videos I researched. I looked into metal songs in particular and found that they follow this theory and have their own characteristics within Goodwin’s theory.
Metal video are normally performance based, although some of the new metal bands have developed the genre by including a narrative to their videos. The videos also feature aspects of voyeurism, such as having a crowd watching their performance and looking at the camera. While many metal videos are performance based, those that include a narrative link the lyrics and visuals as well as the music and visuals, they normally do this in a complimentary manner. As metal songs generally have aggressive lyrics the visuals are normally aggressive and sometimes disturbing. I believe that it has become a convention of metal to be angry and rebellious and very obvious about it. So it is these generic characteristics that I needed to follow in order to be considered a metal, however developing the genre is part of the post-modernism of media so new bands develop the genre they are classed as in order to create an audience base and evolve the genre, sometimes creating a subgenre in the process such as death metal or thrash metal.
My music video follows some of the basic metal themes such as a performance, although I have included a narrative base as some new metal bands do. I decided on this because the lyrics created a very powerful image that I believe could only be properly portrayed through a narrative. However I decided to mix narrative and performance because that is how similar metal bands make music videos. I have notions of looking within both the narrative and performance; in the narrative the ghost soldier is watching a memory of himself and he also looks at the camera many times to include the audience, in the performance the band are playing but an audience is not seen, however the band do occasionally look at the camera. My music and lyrics are complimentary, and there are a few times when the lyrics and visuals are the same, for example when the lyrics say ‘The dead are lying all around’ and the performers are jumping over a camera that is on the floor looking straight up at the sky. I also included close ups of the band when they were performing and when they were in the narrative.
The main location was in a forest, which has many negative connotations, especially when used in horror films, which is why I used that location for my filming. The use of the forest creates intertextual references to music videos such as Paramore’s video ‘Decode’. The video has clips of dramatic scenes from twilight so it also links to twilight as well as the references to the classic horror books that twilight is based off such as Dracula.
The use of generic metal colour schemes (black, white and red) along with the addition of green from the anti-war and forest imagery helps emphasize the band’s genre in all three products which also helps the creation of the audience base through intertextual references. In the print production, the 4 panels of my album referenced the music video, my front cover didn’t have an image that related to the music video or performers, but it did refer to the ideology of the band. In the magazine advert the band are sitting together looking at the camera, the position is common in metal bands so I followed generic conventions for the image. Fading images in the background was an idea similar to Scar Symmetry’s poster where the album is faded; I decided to fade still shots from my music video into the background.
Metal genre is normally targeted at young adults of 16-30, my music video is targeted to 16-28 year olds, while metal used to be targeted mainly to males, it has developed into a wider audience that includes females. My music video is targeted to females as well as males. I have included a female into the main band as well as having three females in the narrative which highlights the fact that females are allowed to join the army, although they are still a minority, the same holds true for the genre and its audience. I researched into my target audience using a site called UK Tribes, while looking at the metal genre audience (named Mosher’s on this site) I found out some phrases that metal audience seem to follow such as: ‘Passionate about music’, ‘Vaguely rebellious’ and ‘Determined to be different –together’. Metal audience have a certain sense of dress, most fans wear a band T-shirt and dark trousers, many of the males have long hair so they can ‘Head bang’, while females were a minority and are only just being catered to in the metal genre the dress style is similar, long hair and band T-shirts. Females tend to have brightly coloured hair like the female, Julia, in my band who played bass guitar. The most common form of communication is through magazines, internet and TV. This is why metal bands usually have an official website to cater to the preferences of their audience; Metal audiences also prefer gigs more than any other genre audience which means that many bands prefer gigs to music videos, although due to online sites such as Youtube and Itunes audience members can download music and music videos which makes them more accessible.
The lyrics and music video of my band touches on the subject of alienation of soldiers within their own mind and how war affects young soldiers. It also talks about the horror of war and huge numbers of deaths involved. It is an issue that is very important in the world at the moment due to the conflicts of the Middle East and some of the latest news stories including the soldier who became mentally unstable and killed 16 civilians, this highlights the damage war does to soldiers and civilians in war-zones.
My magazine advert follows genre conventions, the band are altogether on a dark background, the most striking part of the image is Julia’s red hair and the pale skin of the two male band members, which makes them stand out. This is quite common for metal magazine adverts and posters; the advert also has an image of the album front cover. While researching magazine adverts I found that no metal bands included reviews and so I did not included them in mine. My digipak follows many of the conventions of metal, although the anti-war ideology my band follows develops the genre. It does not challenge the genre because many metal bands are against the government and higher authorities so anti-war would be an acceptable rebellion against the government for a metal band. My music video however does challenge the genre; the narrative follows the anti-war theme but it is a story which is uncommon for metal videos, metal videos that have a narrative are fairly short in comparison to the performance. The narrative in my music video is much longer and more in depth than many other music videos and it creates a whole story around the lyrics that enhances them. The lyrics in most metal genre songs are very emotive and passionate against institutions and the bands normally let the lyrics stand alone because they are strong enough to, however I believe that the mix of lyrics with the narrative creates a much stronger overall performance that develops metal genre and gives it a wider audience niche of audience by proliferation on sites like Youtube rather than just gigs alone.
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