Bastille are defined as an "english rock-band" , however are most commonly referred to as part of the more modern genre of "Indie-pop".
Please view my artist profile on Bastille:LINK HERE for a more in depth view into their artist image.
Their fan base has often been closely linked to the "hipster phenomenon" , where fans were extremely protective over the band , and liked to be part of the "exclusive group" that was a fan of the group before they became "mainstream" with their largest hit "Pompeii" that saw floods of new fans embracing the band. Many people felt these new fans were purely hopping on the bandwagon and only knew their most popular release.
I have evidence of this element of their fan base below in the form of screenshots off Twitter :
The above tweet by "Gary Cassidy" shows that hipsters are often related to the need to like things that aren't yet cool , so they can boast about this afterwards.
Nowadays "hipster" is often seen as an insult, and there are also some tweets that half mock the hipster ethos , whilst at the same time admitting it is still relevant:
The bottom tweet shown above by "brooks Hanson" shows the outside perspective on hipsters and the fan base of indie/rock bands like Bastille. They are associated with a certain image; graphic tees with rolled up sleeves, black skinny jeans , and converse high tops. The tweet shows that this has become a stereotype for the genre and fans.
Following on from my genre research post, where I mentioned the "laura Palmer " music video and others of bastilles being perfect examples of complex and enthralling videos which provide a completely unique experience to just listening to the song. After searching Twitter it becomes apparent that their fans are very invested in their unique videos , and are often seen as providing that extra experience making them worth watching::
This tweet shows a fan excited about the news of a new album, and even already about the music video releases that will follow.
The above tweet by "gentle monster" shows that this listener couldn't find the meaning in the song , as the title is a reference to a 90's to series which would only be fully grasped after watching the music video, which we can assume they have done before making the realisation of the titles "relevance"
Being a band that falls under the bracket/genre we were leaning towards, I felt it would be a good idea to take a look at one of Don Broco's Videos for a micro element that they always utilise for effect heavily : Mise en scene. In all of their videos there is obvious evidence of the setting ,costuming, lighting, scenery, props and much more to create the desired effect to match the song. I have chosen to focus specifically on "Money Power Fame" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHcEFB7D6WU
For starters, the song is one of the bands "heavier" ventures, opting for a more metal feel in some elements however at the same time keeping to the bands routes and staying relatively Indie/rock throughout the majority of the song. The song fits onto their newest release "Automatic" which itself was said to aim to a more "diverse and refined don broco sound" to their fans. Upon listening to the samples from their album: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/automatic-deluxe/id985952418 , it is easy to come to the conclusion this song and "what you do to me" are designed to be the songs blared out through fans speakers to release pent up anger and frustration, which can cater towards the darker side of rock as a genre, and more of a nod to older sounds of green day etc, instead of more modern "rock" bands who go for softer sounds. From this we could expect the video for the song to be darker, grittier, and more "in your face" than the slicker "Automatic" which has a more contempary "pop/rock" feel. Right from the start, the mise en scene sets up this darker, grittier feel, as we see shots of a lone car, in a run down parking lot, with dark, wet weather as the backdrop. Already this sets the tone serious and moody to go along with the strong heavy opening of the song.
Just as the songs main riff comes in right at the start, we see the main actress in the video's eyes shown close up with dark full on eyeliner, fitting the image of what fans of this heavier sound, would possibly be attracted to, or aim to look like themselves. we come back and see her in the rest of the video, with over the top make up and hair, which is typical of the rock genre to almost objectify females, and the band have been critisized before for purely using women as "sex symbols" in their videos. Which could be suggested coming from "hold on" , and "whole truth" 's respective videos. That also use heavy make up, underdressed, and raunchy representations of women. As the video transitions into the main riff of the song and then throughout the video, we see shots of the band performing, one by one, in what is presumably the parking lot shown at the start. There is heavy use of smoke, and the ground is visibly soaking wet and covered in grit. All of which fits the songs image of being a more hardcore track on the release. The band are all wearing dark clothing, again to fit in with the image of the song, and the setting ; as being in summery clothes with the same backdrop would be a completely different message and feel for the video.
Throughout scenes of the video we see the girl in the car being showered with money, this can be seen as referencing the title of the song and the lyrics, being about societies need and craving for money, power and fame, and the darker elements such as the use of alcohol, explosions, and fire (exploding the car) hinting at the corruption and things people will do to obtain these things. However some people could again refer to the use of the money shower referencing prostitution/ strip clubs linking into the objectification of women through this genre. Combined with her outfit (large fur coat etc) it is hard not to make the connection, which could also tie into my aforementioned point on how the themes are to do with the corruption and dark things people will do to obtain "money, power, and fame" which could be heavily linked to prostitution, human trafficking, sex slavery and even worse, darker parts of the world we live in. There is always huge controversy when it is discovered that now famous celebrities and figures, have in the past been involved in darker, shadier, and sometimes illegal activities on their rise to fame; take for example a high profile actress' like Marylyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta Jones and many more have all been tied to prostitution and hollywood casting scandals. This look can be reflected by the main actress in the video, and could be even mocking the criticism of the bands use of females as sex symbols, by hinting to an argument as to why the media today is riddled with these accusations; mostly to do with the pre 20th century hollywood's shady history of women and how they were landing top roles as actresses.
As the song moves to more of a bridge element, where the heavy guitar lulls, we see a change in the setting, now to sunset, this mirrors the change in sound and welcomes the more soothing part of the track nicely. It would be odd to flip the settings round , as the sounds would completely not match, and would give off a different meaning. As the song moves towards the end, we see the actress rolling out what looks like a "det cord" , and then eventually detonating the car,
which transitions the setting into a nighttime scene, where pyrotechnics and more fire is used to continue the new elements of fire and explosions to contrast against the darkness. This provides a traditional , "rock" element, where in the final scenes the band or the set they are performing on often is seen to burst into flames, linking back to original themes behind the rock genre, such effect has before been seen by green day and a host of other bands.
After countless arguments, tantrums, and much deliberation. We finally came together as a group and agreed on a song . At first we had been looking at "Rome" By Phoenix, we liked the sound behind it, and also the song allowed for lots of opportunity with he narrative. However our only problem would be that the song would require a band performance, due to the nature of the artist, and the indie/rock band conventions, of performance in the videos. We were open to this idea, however also we wanted to avoid it if possible as it would be very difficult to arrange a band/ performance shots.
We looked at an artist suggested by a group member, called "Sticky Fingers" and the song in question is "these girls". When we listened to the song we took to the sound, as it lends itself perfectly to the genre, as well as having a good tempo to explore a narrative without the footage looking out of place. We also liked the fact that the artist identity is a single person, so there is no need to include a whole band for the performance element. The lyrics also hand themselves to a narrative, that we could explore as a base, but we mainly intend to do something unexpected and confusing, to follow suit with other videos in the genre. After Deciding that these two songs were what we had to decide between, we finalised our decision by drawing up a comparison on the whiteboard to see the length of ideas we each had for the songs, and keep note of any brainstorming we had done.
After exploring potential song choices, and deciding on our target genre ( indie /rock), we felt that we should firstly explore our genre and the popular and well known bands/songs within our genre, to start to obtain an idea of the conventions their videos follow.
We started by creating a mind map, branching out all of the most well known bands for our genre:
After looking at the results of our mind map, we started looking at existing videos for the artists, and started to look for common elements in the videos.
A large element we came across, was the idea of using a narrative that is either complex, or very obscure and confusing/weird, but at the same time with deeper meaning hinted at, and often pop culture references that not everyone will get. This is a large element of the indie genre ; the idea of being able to understand something normal fans can't, makes the audience part of a more exclusive group, almost similar to the "hipster" phenomenon, which revolved around "i liked it before it was famous", making them part of an exclusive group.
An example of a video that conforms to this, is Bastilles Laura Palmer :
the video is so confusing you find yourself having to watch it a couple of times, and even then the true meaning doesn't always come. It also is based on a popular series and film from the 90s "insert title here", which not many audience members will get the reference of , again making these fans part of a exclusive "club" that get the reference.
Screenshot from the "Laura Palmer" music video
we then moved onto looking at other indie bands, and noticed another general theme, was that in the videos, very weird things would be happening, either to the artists, or just in the narrative in general, laura palmer again is a good example, as well as "bad blood". The consensus is that the events are normally very odd and many times unlikely but not always unrealistic. We also looked at "kids" by MGMT which at first glance is a very odd video but again has further meaning behind it and refers to the imagination of kids. We decided to further look into micro elements of these videos, and the other popular artists to further get a better idea of the conventions used inside the micro elements, as separate posts and go further in depth with the analysis.
Yesterday, our group got together and progressed our search for a song choice for our final production...with 4 vastly unique music tastes, it was likely to be a long process. At the Start, many ideas were put on the table to do with genre, as obviously this plays a huge role in the kind of video you are going to create, and extensive research will go into finding out the key elements of the genre, and the many rules that these sub-divisions of music culture abide by . For example, if we chose rap, we would certainly not get away with producing a blindingly bright pink ballet sequence for "0 to 100"...without some serious justification to back it up. The music video has to follow the genre's guidelines, and fit into the artists image; again...drake in a Tutu might make for a viral sensation, but not a powerful music video, or one that would fit how he portrays himself as an artist in the music industry. As a group we very quickly came to the consensus that choosing 'Grime' as our genre, would very swiftly lead to failure, as it would be staggeringly difficult to create a meaningful representation of songs mostly about gang violence and crime, in rural essex, with a group of teenagers. In the words of our teacher... 'sadly you do not come from "the Ghetto" '.
We also Quickly dismissed Pop, country, and metal, as these were all not the representation , or sound that we were looking for. By this point we had a fair idea that we wanted to find a song that would allow us to create a powerful and complex narrative, that would tell one or a series of stories, possibly with parallel narratives , whilst still fitting the artists image, and sending a deeper message to the audience. We eventually found ourselves veering towards the indie/hipster scene, and started off looking at bands like "Two Door Cinema Club", however we felt that the artist image here was not dark enough for the kind of video we would be looking to create, with their songs having less deeper meaning that the audience can relate to that we would like. Another band we looked at was 'Phoenix' and at first coming from the "TDCC" area , started by looking at the song- Armistice{ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfTDdqhMocU }, , then moved onto "Rome", which was our favourite out of the songs we looked at. We liked the sound behind it and felt that it had a very wide scope in terms of what we could do with the narrative. We ended on this note , feeling we had a potential choice of song, and also a better idea of the sound we were looking for.
The task set was to recreate a 30 second section of a Music Video, shot for shot, taking into account the camera and composition used, and less focus on the mise en scene, or the props. However also the editing would have to match up as in the video to fully recreate the chosen section.
To film the shots, we used a Nikon DSLR with the microphone muted(no sound required) and then filmed our actor actually singing along to the song being played out loud through a speaker. This allowed the actors lips to be in time with the music, and all we would need to do in post-production would be to sync the song with the footage instead of having to speed up/slow down the footage. We made sure to film extra at the start and end of each clip, with the actor signing a few lines before and after the ones we needed for that shot, this way we could easily cut the footage down to size instead of not having enough in the first place, and ensured that we captured every word needed for the shot.
We filmed similar shots at the same time and not in chronological order, which was easier as it meant we didnt keep having to move the set back and forth where shots are returned to later in the section. This saved valuable time that could be better used in post. The manual focus lens on the DSLR allowed us to capture a out of focus shot that otherwise would have been very difficult to take, or would have meant SFX blurs having to be used to recreate the effect in post.
In post production we used final cut express to put our clips together and sync to the mp3 track that was overlayed,we also had to use techniques such as SFX Zooms, and flipping the footage to match what had been done for the original video. The rest of the editing was mostly straightforward and did not take a great deal of time. We also decided to go with a cinematic widescreen aspect ratio , to match the one used in the real video, and to keep our preliminary as authentic as possible.
First off "Passenger" was the name of The
Band he was the main vocalist and songwriter for. When the band dissolved in
2009 he opted to keep the bands name to pursue Solo work, where he eventually
found fame with his chart topping single "let her go"; which was
nominated for the "british single of the year" in 2014.
Mikes american father came from a jewish heritage
originally from Vineland, New Jersey. Mike learnt classical guitar at age 14
and started to write songs whilst working in brighton & hove as a chef. He
left school at 16 to follow a career in the music industry and travelled england
and australia busking. This is an integral part of his image and a huge part of
his ethos as an artist; to stay true to his busking routes, the idea he is
humble and made it on his own.
His busking led him to Australia in 2009 in
October, and he supported small acts and
also larger cult artists in Australia, where he gained a large following and
found himself selling out 500- seat venues. His debut solo album released 2009 ‘wild
eyes blind love’ . The follow up album ‘flight of the crow, was released in
2010 and was recorded in Australia, where he was aided in production by some of
the acts he supported the previous year ( Lior, Boy & Bear ).
Following suit he recorded his most recognized
album “ all the little lights”in Sydney.
During the summer of 2012 he toured the UK , where he played opening acts for
artists like Jools Holland , and Ed sheeran (who he had known since he was 15
through busking, as they both have very similar artist identities, the idea
that they have gone out into the world and started off with nothing, slowly
building up a following without the help of “the man”.
How does the artist want to be represented in their texts?--
Passenger's main ethos is the emphasis on live performance and the idea that his songs are mainly just him, the guitar , and the audience. This comes through in his music videos, as even now that he has attained relative popularity/fame over his chart success and more recently his following growing substantially due to involvement/ association with artist Ed Sheeran, a childhood friend of Mikes.
Passenger most recently opened for Sheeran on the final night of his 3 night sold out stint at wembley.
This is a huge deal as the arena hosts 90,000 people, performing to such a large crowd is an astronomical step compared to performing to 500 people at a time back when he was considered "popular" in australia. Through this he still strives to stick to his ethos, only performing with his guitar , to create the feel of it being a much smaller "private" busking performance. Many of mikes music videos actually use footage from impromptu busking passenger does, to help emphasise how much he sticks to his routes, still performing to fans for free instead of "selling out" and becoming a mainstream "clone".
MUSIC VIDEO IN DEPTH ELEMENT ANALYSIS:
I Have chosen to highlight his Official music video for his song "Holes", originally released as part of his aforementioned album "all the little lights" recorded in Sydney (2012). This song had become a fan favourite through his busking performances; with many posting videos of these secret impromptu free gigs on youtube. So it makes sense that he would use the song as a scapegoat to promote his image of gigging and being close to fans.
Camera:
Right at the start of the video, we see a out of focus mid shot of a busy street, with passenger sitting and playing guitar, the shot is handheld which gives a more personal feel like we're there in person on the street, which brings the audience closer to passenger.
There are then mid shots face on tracking passenger walking through the street, again filmed handheld, these show him as he smiles at people as he walks past; conforming to his image of being an artist that is in touch with his routes, knowing lots of people in this town implies it could be brighton, (hometown) and that again he is staying close to his routes and where he came from.
we also see similar mid shots of him walking through a park, however now the camera is focusing on the lower half of his body, showing him carrying the guitar case, again conforming to another one of his main parts of his image: Live performance / singer/songwriter persona; where a lot of the focus in his music is in the fact it is mainly just him and his guitar, performing to fans.
the next shots include, mid shots of him meeting and taking pictures with fans, taken handheld and behind other members of the crowd, to give the audience the impression that they are there meeting him as well. All the shots include lots of the fans smiling and enjoying themselves. The fact that passenger is standing around with them without the need for security or any members of his "team" in the way/ controlling the meet and greet; shows that he is again sticking to his morals/ roots and being humble.
Another large part of passengers artist image, is the fact he is a 'Singer/Songwriter' , many people who fit this genre are single artists who play alone with an instrument. They like to 'big up' the fact that they are talented and write their own music , and also fit into the busking/gigging category. The focus on the 'talented' element often comes through in music videos, here we see close ups of passengers equipment to show he is setting up the live performance himself, and then a close up of him tuning his guitar, which implies he is skilled and talented with the instrument.
Throughout the video, the handheld mid shots taken from the crowd continue, highlighting the fact that the viewer can feel like they are part of the live performance. As well as more of the close ups of his guitar, keeping along the theme of live performance and him being talented.
we also see establishing shots of brighton , for example the beach shot , and of the ferris wheel. These help set the scene, and highlight how he has 'returned to his routes'.
we also get some long shots of the crowd, and one that tracks upwards to show the size of the crowd, again returning to the performance aspect.
