Thursday 20 December 2012

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.

2 comments:

  1. An interesting post, particularly with regard to the artist's ideological position and your identification of potential audience.

    You could link the artist Tarek Musa's quote to aspects of your music video, particularly with regard to movement (your shots of rushing water, waves crashing and so on and how the leit motif in your music video is the restlessness of water, the dark aspect of the girl falling off The Cobb.). Also your representation of an unstable relationship is also pertinent to his point about life changing.

    I'd suggest you have a go at this, you could even include screen shots from your production in a slide show/prezi to illustrate your points.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your research into similar music videos to your production needs to be developed so that this aspect of your coursework achieves a Level 4. There is a Madonna music video which suggests the gothic - I'll give you the link in the next couple of days as another class has just appeared.

    ReplyDelete