Advanced Portfolio - Artist Research - Will Collier

Image and Genre


In some of some of bloc party's earliest videos they have music which is very individual to help the audience identitfy that it is blco party. They didnt really have anything special in terms of music video, just the band performing with some flashing lights and fast change in camera shots. However there is one aspect of this video that makes it different, there is a narrative forming, we see people asleep.

Bloc party are rock-pop they have characteristics of rock. eg guitar, bass and drums but they also have characteristics of the genre pop, e.g synth. This gives a very individual, unique style of music. Other bands that are similar to bloc  party are bands like pendulum.

Over time they have found their niche. They have devloped their stlye of music so it is individual and unique to most other bands. They have kept their image the same, simple and relaxed.

Advanced Portfolio 1: Image and Genre - Connor Robson

This was the earliest video from bloc party, this just simply shows the band plainly performing, with some quirky camera movement and a conceptual idea with the coloured circled lighting.

They usually like this individual stylistic approach to music videos, but also keeping a cool "normal" natural image at the same time.

The genre of Bloc Party is individual/independent, they compare to other artists by the quirky guitar riffs and lyrics  the music video style and conventions are also somewhat of the conventions, mainly performance based with a twist on the performance as a conceptual element is added.

Bloc Part haven't really changed too much over time, they have kept the same authentic organic image throughout their sparkling career, the only thing that can be said is different is their music videos change as their music progresses, early Bloc party showed black and white visuals with deeper meaning to the lyrics,as the band grew and got more commercial and reputable their music videos became allot more conceptual with faster cuts, shorter duration of shots and allot more bright colours.

Pitch-Will Collier

On friday we pitched our idea to the rest of the class. we recieved some good feedback and are planning to use the feedback to develop our idea further. In the pitch we showed several videos; these videos included:

• Helicopter-Bloc party
• One More Chance-Bloc Party
• This house is a Circus- Arctic Monkeys

We used this video to show a previous example of the style of Bloc Party's videos. We talked about the conventions of the vidoes and of bloc partys music. We also said how we were going to take inspiration from this video. In our video we plan to have the band playing in random locations in a house/building.



We also showed this video by bloc party. We showed this video because it also gives us some ideas that we want to intergrate into our video. We liked how the band were intergrated into the narrative of the story, however it is like the band members are invisible or looking back on their past memories.

Our song is Luno by Bloc Party, the lyrics are about a girl who cheated on her boyfriend and now regrets what she did to him. Having said this we plan to have a girl walking through a house and every room she goes into we see a past memory of when she was either arguing, fighting or cheating on her boyfriend. We are thinking of having the memories in colour and the 'now' in black and white. We would do this to make the memories seem like a good past time but this will make what she has done seem worse. Also we were thinking of having the band playing in a grungy looking basement, but we also had the idea of having the band in the rooms of where the memories where. They wouldn't play a role in the narrative but it would fit with the conventions of previous bloc party videos.      

PITCH

Pitch Feedback

This is the feedback for our pitch. The group thought that we presented the pitch well and generally they thought that we had a good idea for our video. The comments thats we recieved included:

• taking into account The lead singers, Kelly's, sexuality.
• whether we had a suitable location e.g a mostly clear/open house, and a empty basement for the band to play in
• we had to think about lighting in the basement
• they also suggested we watch white stripes- dead leaves

This video is similar to what we are planning to do because the male walks around his house and sees memories of the past. the memories and greyed out. They did this by using a projector.

Editing style

The editing style of this music video is what we are going to try in our music video. Fast pace with lots of jump cuts. We think it will suit our video because of the up-beat drums and bass that are present in this song. It also involves conceptual conventions which we are also planning to incorporate in our music video (e.g. The Stop motion effect).