Music Videos

Here is a list of videos I have looked at to draw inspiration from.

Whitesnake - Ready To Rock

Rainbow - Difficult To Cure (live)

Deep Purple - Black Knight (live)

Airbourne - Runnin' Wild

Whitesnake - Slow An' Easy

Ac Dc - Shake Your Foundations

Ac Dc - Fly On The Wall

Motorhead - Whorehouse Blues

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Superstition

Airbourne - Heartbreaker (live)

Def Leppard - Armageddon It (live)

Iron Maiden - Wrathchild (live)

Ac Dc - Thunderstruck

Santana - She's Not There (live)

Motorhead - Rock Out

Saxon - Ride Like The Wind

Updates

I have begun work on my music video and as of now am currently up to the start of the second verse. I am thoroughly impressed with what I have done, and I have already gotten plenty of positive feedback so far. I shall continue to edit my video after I have gotten my shots of the band in their rehearsal space this Saturday.

Slow An Easy by Whitesnake

Analysis of Slow An Easy by Whitesnake

Analysis of Whitesnake ‘Slow An’ Easy’

The song opens with a shot of a dirt road, which then smoothly fades into a close up of the lead singer, David Coverdale. Examples of thought beats are shown throughout the video. The smooth transitions and superimpositions match the slow and smooth start of the song. When the bass comes in the camera displays an extreme close up of his fretboard as he plays. A similar shot is used to highlight the guitarist’s slide guitar intro. The main focus of the camera is on David’s eyes when he sings the line “I can’t see you baby, I can’t see you anymore”

The lights then flash to the beats of the drums when the song properly kicks in. During the breakdown, the band claps their hands to match the track.

As for narrative, the narrative of the video doesn’t match the lyrics. The song is in all senses a love song about making love to a woman, typical of the style of music. The video on the other hand, has a narrative of its own. The storyline is revealed gradually in small chunks through the video. The first hint of it is a shot of a car accident at the start. From what we can gather as we watch the video is that the narrative involves a woman, her car and a mysterious pearl necklace. The necklace is also wrapped around David’s hand during the shots of the band’s performance. It is then revealed later in the video that David is the one seen putting the pearls around her neck, just after a shot of him trashing her dressing room in anger. At the end of the video we see him discovering the car crash and her necklace near the wreckage. Just after he picks it up, a car that looks exactly like the one in the accident pulls up next to him and he discovers her behind the wheel without her necklace on. She then drives away very quickly leaving him behind.

Performance is used throughout the video and it is made up mainly of the shots of the band on stage. They are seen on a fully functioning stage with a full light show, monitor speakers and even the drums with microphones placed near them as if they are about to capture the sound through a PA system, as if they are playing at a real live concert. The guitarist points his guitar in the air and David does the same with the mic stand on a number of occasions, like you would expect to see at a real rock concert. Even the band mimes to the backing vocals as though it is a real show, and the camera’s attention is then brought to them.

Star image is important in this video. The first minute of the video is made up mainly of extreme close up shots of David Coverdale’s mouth or eyes, and whole face. During the guitar fills, the camera brings its attention to the lead guitarist in low angle shots to highlight his skills and bring focus to his facial expressions. The same can be said for the drummer when he does his little drum fills. During the guitar solo, the camera focuses on the guitarist and shows close up shots of his guitar.

Visuals occasionally relate to the song in this video. Examples of this includes tracking shots of the word ‘Slow’ written on the road when David sings ‘Take me down slow an’ easy’. Also, all the instruments are played perfectly in synch as though they performed it live.

Lyric breakdown

time in the song - words - length of shot

0.36 - What can I do, when the morning breaks? ]

0.41 - Didn’t sleep too much, now my head aches ] 14 secs

0.45 - I’m living in the red house, there’s not much to do ]

0.50 - So I pull out a 45, and listen to the blessed blues 5 secs

0.55 - How could I live without you? 5 secs

1.01 - Just how could I survive? 5 secs

1.06 - I’ve got a soft spot for the blues 4 secs

1.11 - Cause it makes me feel alive 4 secs

1.25 - I’m sitting here, in my easy chair 4 secs

1.30 - Don’t feel no fingers, running through my hair 5 secs

1.35 - I just have to stay here, and try to relax ] [6 secs]

1.40 - So I pull out a bottle,] and talk to Jack. 3 secs

1.46 - How could I live without you? 5 secs

1.51 - Just how could I ]survive? [2 secs ] 2 secs

1.55 - I’ve got a soft spot for the blues 4 secs

2.01 - Cause it makes me feel alive 3 secs

2.15 - [Guitar Solo]

2.40 - [Bass Solo]

2.56 - How could I live without you? 4 secs

3.01 - Just how could I survive? 4 secs

3.06 - I’ve got a soft spot for the blues] 8 secs

3.11 - Cause it makes me feel alive]

Evaluation of ancillary tasks

I have used stylistic quality of the hard rock genre, in particular the blues aspect of it to influence my design for the digipak and the magazine advert. I modeled the front cover on the design for Stevie Ray Vaughn's album 'SRV', which depicts his trademark guitar in black and white. In this genre, signature guitars are just as important to the band's identity as the members themselves. Hand of Aces have their own trademark guitars by which they are well known for - Danny Dixon has his Zakk Wylde Gibson Les Paul, James Pattison had his tobacco-burst Fender Stratocaster and Lloyd Tudor has his blue Fender P' Bass. As James was the frontman of this band I decided to use an image of a Fender Strat for the front cover. I came to the conclusion that this would be perfect to represent the band, especially if I incorporated their 'fistful of aces' band logo. I also decided upon this choice as the Fender Strat is the most commonly used guitar and a key image in electric blues. Even the signature guitar of SRV was a custom designed Fender Strat. I found a perfect, artistic, black and white photo of the guitar on Google, and this became the feature cover of the digipak. The back cover, I modeled on the back cover of '...And Justice For All' by Metallica, in terms of layout and organisation of information. The inside cover, was designed to be simplistic yet still representative of the band, so I came to the decision of a black background with the four suits of a pack of playing cards, diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades, laid out. The inlay was designed to be the band logo represented in realistic terms, so I found an image of a human hand holding the four aces, and I used the magic wand tool to cut out the band name in the flesh of the hand. For the magazine advert, I took inspiration from magazines such as NME, Kerrang and Classic Rock. The design was supposed to appeal to the younger teenage audiences and to be the style that would appear in Kerrang and Classic Rock. I wanted it to stand out from the album cover, but still incorporate it into the design. I decided to use the Fender Strat image on the front cover but I inverted the colours so that the black would become white and the white would become black. I blew the image up to a size large enough to cover most of an A4 page, decided to use a military stenciled style font to appeal to the teenage culture of rockers, and included the band logo in the top left of the page large enough to be recognised. I decided to include incentive information about the album as a marketing tool, including information of what sort of music is on the CD, and the fact there is an official music video included, and I stated the date the album would be due to be released. Overall, I am very much pleased with my eventual outcome and as a matter of fact, so are the band themselves!

Updates

Today, I have finished my magazine advert.

I will be filming the lead guitarist, Danny Dixon, playing the song on his own in his bedroom on Thursday. I will be using the footage to introduce the video, and I will interweave the shots into the rest of the video and I may possibly end with a similar shot.

I will be filming their shows at the Rovers Rugby Club on the 3rd of April and at The Studio on the 26th of February. These will make up the shots of a pub gig and a large scale rock show.

I will soon have a copy of the song as the January exams are almost over and finished with. I am already aware that the drummer has finished his exams, I am just waiting for confirmation from the rest of the band so I can book them in the Red Dreams studio to record the song to be used in this music video.

In the meantime, I will research similar videos set in a bar setting as well as those filmed at live shows. I will edit my footage as I go, and I will evaluate my work so far as it develops too.

If all goes according to plan, it is highly possible I will have this entire project finished long before my deadline in May.

Magazine advert