Portrayal of 'Rivers - Kankouran'

The brief for this task was to find a British unsigned band who would allow us to use their song in a music video created by us the students. I became interested in the song Rivers when watching a Skins Series 6 trailer on the TV. The dramatic sound of the song attracted me to look into it further and download the track. This automatically gives Kankouran (the band) a target audience of the demographic who watch Skins, 16-25 year olds, the golden group. In a way Skins has had a slight influence over our music video, in terms of making it about young people and their relationships with each other, which is what we have planned to create. There is also a common theme of death in series 6, as a character Grace dies in a car crash, similarly Ava in our music video, attempts to kill herself, there is a low key link.

Ultimately the portrayal of Kankouran in this trailer is about youg people having fun and being mischevious, it's about love and friendship also.

“Rivers for me personally is about life and death. growing up, things changing. nothing stays the same. life is always changing, there is no certainty from day to day. that kinda vibe... its also about sharing that with somebody. that whole experience...its really a dark song, but its been done in a uplifting way.”

-Tarek Musa -Kankouran

However a slightly different portrayal comes from their live official video for the song 'Rivers', they come accross as calm, relaxed and passioante, which is slightly unlike the Skins implications. Their live video is a one take vidoe (during the performance section) and the camera still manages to make it an interesting video, often all in one takes can drag on and become boring, but this is an exception. This makes them appear interetsing and something really special. I think we can expect big things from Kankouran.

Editing

After editing about 1 minute of a 3.5 minutes music video, we showed it to people from our target audience (16-25 year olds) and asked them if they understood the story line so far. To some it was slightly confusing, although the shots were well transitioned, we had not introduced the storyline quick enough, which for only a short video, needed to be changed.
We swapped some shots about to make the story be introduced quicker, then showed it to the same people and some other people who hadn't seen it before. We got them to tell us what they thought had happened and what they replied with was the story plan, which was positive feedback.
We got carried away with putting in shots that we didn't ned yet, giving them no significance in the place they were irginally in, whereas if we moved them, they held great significance. This just highlights the importance of editing and recieving feedback.

Montage

Montage is featured in a variety of different films/music videos/TV programmes. It is an effective way of getting messages to audiences, setting the atmosphere/tone of the proceedings/good opening sequence.

For example, in the opening sequence of 'This Is England' there is a montage of clips from the 1980's, setting the tone of the film, it has political, popular, influencing and urban aspects of the introduction. Layered over the top of the montage is a song by Toots and the Maytals called "54-56 was my number". In an interview Shane Meadows said that they picked the music before they planned the shots. So using this song was decided before they even thought about using montage.

This is effective as the film has not started yet, but you get a feel for what is to come and what to expect. It is a foreshadowing method. It is also a very specific way to target audiences. For example, people with an interest in Politics, music, war, dancing etc, will take interest in this montage.

Another example is in 'The Killing' and 'Homeland', 2 TV dramas, they both use montage as a way of introducing charters and setting the tone of the rest of the hour of the show. This is an effective way of opening what is going to happen because it manages to show you enough of what has happened and what is going to happen in the montage.
The Killing's montage is edited in a slightly more edgy way than Homeland's, it is a little more distorted and the music that lays over the top is more mysterious and concerning also. It does not reveal as much information as for example Homeland does, it is more suggestive rather than just showing the audience.

 

Recently in a music video by Sub Focus ft. Alpines called 'Tidal Wave' it features patches of montage which has inspired us to use montage in our music video because of the effectiveness of 'Tidal Wave'.
This music video is similar to ours due to the fact that a majority is filmed either at a beach, or on cliffs over-looking the beach. Montage in this video is edited to the beat of the song, enhancing the effectiveness of the continuous beat in the song. It also sets a scene for the video, almost like a title sequence. It introduces the surroundings by flashing shots of the location.

In our music video we plan to create a montage on the instrumental section about half way through the song. It will be edited to the beat, but as it is a fast-paced song, maybe every other beat as we are going to use some iconic shots linking in with our inter-textual references. (The French Lieutenants Woman) This links in with Goodwin's theory - There is often intertextual refernces.This is the element we are trying to highlight. The use of montage in our video will (hopefully) be effective, and the end result will fit with the rest of the video.