Music Video Ideas

Music Video Ideas

Here are some of my ideas for storylines of songs that have been recently released. I have tried to get across the narrative that I have in my mind and also shed a bit of light when it comes to the style of cinematography. I am certain that I want to pick a topic that picks up on the lives of ‘real’ people in the UK, so have chosen songs that would reflect that. I am also very keen to voice a political opinion. Whether that will make the audience question the views, or just learn something from someone else’s point of view.

The King Blues- Holiday

 Narrative: The narrative of the video will follow the storyline of the song. This is one that describes an old seaside town that used to thrive during the peak of the British holiday. This town is now not what it used to be in today’s world and has become a place that time has forgot. But even though this place is now worthless, socially and economically, it still has the spirit at heart. So the town in crumbling around a couple falling in love.

I would uncover all these things that make the town so much of a great holiday destination and the things that have made it so old fashioned. This will involve many short close up shots on many symbolic objects. To counter this, there will be parts of performance in some world famous places. One of them being the Great Yarmouth Britannia pier, followed by The Great Yarmouth Pleasure beach and Hippodrome circus.

Some inspiration for the style of cinematography would be that seen in the pictures by the photographer Martin Parr. I will also use the video ‘our house is dadless’ from the band, Kid British, as this creates the voyeurism to the real lifestyle up north and the video I want to create will do this with a defunct seaside town.

Labtinth ft. Tinie Tempah – Earthquake

Narrative: the narrative would be based around normal everyday people in London, going out and rioting. Whoever you are, white, black, male, female, old, young, rich or poor. What would be the symbolism bringing these people together are the stereotypical hoodie that is so frequently linked to riots and uncontrollable events led by young people.

The recent summer riots that took over London for three days rocked the country to its core, as the media beam images around the world of the looters who have taken advantage of some peoples very unfortunate situation, means that many have a bad opinion of young people in the UK. What the video would be about is looking at these riots from another point of view and looking at the people who did actually cause this disruption in such a good city.

To adhere to the codes and conventions of Goodwin’s analysis, linking the music and visuals would see that gospel chorus within the song, being sung by a ‘gang’ and their identities hidden. This would symbolise that these people are not people; they don’t have a heart so why should they have a face.

In true hip hop style the artists would sing from the rooftops, literally, in their full swag looking over a city in mass panic.

Kid British – Bookies

Narrative: Coming from an album about the northern stories, about the lives of those living in Manchester, it is important to capture the true spirit of the song with this.

Although we live in a time of the recession, bookmakers and bingo halls are still bursting with people, throwing their money away. But why are they doing this? Who is doing this? Well, the video for this song would get into the lives of the people that spend their Friday nights and their week’s wages on a night in the bingo hall, every week, but still don’t have enough money to feed themselves and their children.

The song states that these people have nothing else, but why has it come to that?

The style of the video will be an old 80’s style of film, of quick shots and pans that reveal the life of real people. Symbolic objects and props will dominate (bingo dabbers and the tiny bookies pens). I think that it is also useful to focus on the life of those that waste away in a pub.

We are spending more money on alcohol and betting than ever before and that isn’t just because of a price increase. This is because we are falling back into the social and political turmoil of the Thatcher days.

One thing that is for certain is that this band uses social commentary within their songs to give the political voice and this is one thing I want to emphasise. 

The King Blues

After putting together three ideas of music videos, I have made the decision to use 'Holiday' by The King Blues as it has the potential to involve everything I wanted. Also, being originally from a town like the one described in the song, I feel passionately about the subject and I feel that the work I do on this video will show that.


Another reason why I decided to use this song is because after analysing the already released marketing material (Below), I feel it wasn't truly reflective of the song and the campaign had some fundamental errors. As I can only do this once, I think it would be good to use something that didn't succeed the first time round, as I can identify mistakes of someone else, because I wont be able to rectify my own finished product at the end of the process. 


Holiday Analysis  

Click on this link to veiw the 'Prezi', bring the information below to life

Advert and digipack 

Before you listen to the song, this advert and digipack starts to paint a picture of the narrative and the themes. This is something that is done very well and is an important part of this campaign. On the flip side to that, this should be spread across all promotional material released. The inconsistency within the campaign means that the target audience will not always know that it is all linked.   

The advert used to promote the single Holiday by The King Blues does not follow any particular style or theme set out in the promotional music video, or any of their previous marketing material. By doing this they do not capitalise on the use of the video being bounded around or the posters being recognized and linked back to the single. This all adds up against the band and it is a possible reason for the record being unsuccessful in the UK charts.

The poster advert is one that does start to capture the narrative of the song with the use of a melting ice cream, symbolising that the seaside town is disintegrating from the amazing thriving place it used to be. The traditional 60s British holiday is represented with the wooden like texture strips on the background, that represent that of a beach hut. The colours of these strips, add to this. These colours were popular in the times when the British holiday and tourist industries were in their peak. This peak is described in the narrative of the song, but again this doesn't link to the video.   

The poster follows convention by including the well recognised band logo that spreads across the top of the advert but, like many indie and rock promotional material, it doesn't feature a picture of the artists. The typography used for the song title is an interesting part of this poster as it is again easy linked backed to the times when the industry was in its peak times. It is typical font used in the adverts in the 50s and 60s.By doing this, the audience start to think about the story that inspired this song to be written.

Promotional Music Video Analysis 

The King Blues are a SKA Punk band from the London Borough of Camden and after a promising first album they released the single, Holiday, and the promotional video to match in 2010. The video is approaching 200,000 views on Youtube but this didn’t lead too much and the lack of success of the single led to it not being included on their new album ‘Punk and Poetry’

The video is mainly performance based with some shots linking it back to the narrative of the song, which is about a deprived, British seaside town and Holidays there. In my opinion the best parts of the video are when they remind us of the narrative using close up shot of certain objects.

The Music and the visuals do mostly link; being a performance video this is the main feature. The band are seen playing the instruments in many shots and Itch (the lead) lip-syncs the lyrics throughout, which is an effective way to have a close up of the artist.

I personally don’t think that the link between the lyrics and visuals are significant enough to say that they adhere to this convention. As I mentioned before there are moments and shots that sometime do link the visuals back to the song but the overall mise en scene lets it down. The video appears to be set in a derelict shopping centre, and the band use a bowling alley, fires, shopping trolleys and escalators, to tell this story. I think they could have done this more effectively by setting the video in the places that create the spine of the song. There is only one scene with a clown that is strong enough to class as a link to visuals and lyrics, but this is still very weak.

What I think the band and director have tried to do is make subtle suggestions of the songs narratives, but a song that has so much passion, they should have capitalised on the story and shown it how it is.

The dark lighting and the clothes worn within the video show that it is genre specific. Sleeveless shirts, tattoos and Dr Martens being synonymous with the Punk scene. Another example of its efforts to show the genre is things like the fire, symbolising defiance and the punk spirit.

Overall I think that although the video so adhere to some of the codes and conventions of a music video and does emphasie the Punk attitude, I think that the narrative in the song should have been championed more which could have made the story more poignant and therefore, talked about and in the long run more successful.

As I have been in this situation, in a small deprived seaside town, I feel I can relate to the song but not to the video. If, as I say they made it more about the narrative, I think they could have created voyeurism into the life of the people that thrive but also suffer in these situations.