Blind Melon - No Rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYlAwvz8uwc&ob=av2e (No Embed)

Blind Melon are a neo-psychedelic American ‘rock’ band that started up in 1989, they’re best known for their hit ‘no rain’ released in 1993. The group enjoyed critical and commercial success in the early 90’s from their neo-psychedelic take on alternative rock. The music video no rain uses conventions such as band performance throughout the video, we see the band play on an open sunny grass video giving a sort of live performance but yet on the side is a narrative structure telling a story of a girl that isn’t accepted for her dream and instead is mocked and laughed at.

Within the mise-en-scene we have two concepts, one of a dark narrative structure of this girl running around the city trying to find somewhere to escape and the other of her dream world with blind melon performing. This video is much more different to Black Moth Super Rainbow as the lyrics seem to connate more towards the music video. At the start it begins off with the lead singer saying “All I can say is that my life is pretty plain, I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain.” He’s trying to say that there isn’t much to his life and this connate towards the young girl life, her life is simple and all she wants is to be a tap-dancing bee. Yet her simple dream seems to be a reality of laughing and mocking.

The band itself seemed to be represented as this kind of ‘light’ they’re welcoming in open arms and are happy and accept the girl for who she is and her dream without mocking her. The target audience for this kind of video may be the sort of hippy trippy crowd or people that have an open mind and can understand and relate to the young girl.

Lyrics

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain,
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two,
and speak my point of view,
But it's not sane, It's not sane,
I just want some one to say to me,
I'll always be there when you wake,
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today,
So stay with me and I'll have it made,
And I don't understand why I sleep all day,
And I start to complain that there's no rain,
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake,
And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape,
escape......escape......escape......
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
ya don't like my point of view,
ya think I'm insane,
Its not sane......it's not sane.

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise

We are using the East Anglian Film archive as a location for our filming, the main reason behind using this specified location is we want one of our characters to come across an old film reel to where they then play on a projector and the story of Al Hubbard begins to make its appearance.

The reason I have chosen Black Moth Super Rainbow is not only because of the psychedelic genre and similarity with concepts but the video itself. Throughout the video the mise-en-scene of the video is a sort of de-saturated, slightly blurred out appearance which is exactly what I want to demonstrate when editing my music video. One technique I could use to achieve this style of editing is to reduce the frame rate which would then cause a sort of flicker throughout the video giving of a sort of old fashion, rustic affect.

This music video has a slight ‘goth’ effect to it, with its use of knives and blood, its not exactly what we’re aiming for in our video but the whole visual and bizarre twist to it, is what we want to identify when producing our video. The target audience are slightly been represented by the cast itself in the video, we’re looking for a sort of hippy trippy audience or maybe a goth scene that would be interesting in the video.

Lyrics

Born on a day the sun didn't rise
Born in a world without sunshine
You, you're the apple of my eye
Born on a day the sun didn't rise

Born on a day the sun didn't rise
Born in a world without sunshine
You, you're the apple of my eye
Born on a day the sun didn't rise

Born on a day the sun didn't rise
Born in a world without sunshine
You, you're the apple of my eye
Born on a day the sun didn't rise

Mood Board

Posted above is my mood board for my target audience, here I have identified everything my target audience enjoy and their values and morals. I have designed a spider-diagram to show the sort of music they would listen to and festivals they might enjoy going to.

To produce my music video I need to gain an understanding of my target audience so I can capture their attention and keep them glued to the screen. Target audience plays a vital role when producing a music video, I need to do my research so I know what to place into my video that they can relate to as well as enjoy.

My mood board is only a step into my target audience research I need to find out more background information so I can gather more ideas and concept that I can contribute towards my music video. Other methods of research I can do would be to carry out a questionnaire to gain an understanding of what my target audience like and find out more about their interests/hobbies. Websites such as ‘Find my Tribe’ can help me with this as their primary source of information would prove useful and the concept of the website has diverse my ideas into how I can research my target audience.

Explain what find your Tribes implies about the concept of identity in today’s world.

Explain what find your Tribes implies about the concept of identity in today’s world.

Youth Culture is always changing, throughout generations we have seen the youth slowly rebel, slowly become into their own unique person and new waves and revolutions such as the punk explosion have taken over.

Find your tribe is simply implying a certain concept of identity that each individual holds to their own. This identity underlying who they are and what ‘category’ they come under, e.g. mods and rockers. Some say that youth culture and trends have spiralled out of control to where we are changing social and cultural circumstances to mirror Britain’s youth.

Find your tribe is simply implying this concept of identity through a series of questions such as “what’s your favourite magazine” or “what TV shows do you watch” then from the answers you give it works out what tribe your part of. Testing out this site for myself, it said I was a mosher, so from the site there our some problems with it, but the concept of it is excellent.

Maffesoli said that “Today, social existence is conducted through fragmented tribal groupings, organized around the catchwords, brand-names and sound-bites of consumer culture”. Through this statement, Maffesoli is implying that people are what they are and who they are through the figure of speech they use, or the brands of clothes they put on, some people wear skinny jeans, others wear trackies. He also said “Modern tribes are not permanent groups, but shifting and always changing. Membership of these tribes is not permanent”. We’re in an age of where youth culture is constantly training, people are looking for the latest trends, music artists and are constantly back and forth in and out of new tribes, e.g. shifting.

The idea of Pick n’ mix is meaning that people have a choice. Although you are more likely to fall into a certain tribe through your background, how you’ve been bought up, raised and what sort of social friends you have. You still have the choice to decide what tribe you’d want to be in. The concept of Pick n mix is the idea you can be whoever you want but then change your mind and join another tribe. In away its freedom of choice.

This concept of identity differs from the modernist concept of identity as find your tribe finds out who you are instead of your beliefs and moral views. The modernist concept of identity is in away you receiving your identity through the background you come from maybe the social class has an impact on the tribes you fall into. Other ways people may receive their identity would just be through their parents and how the child is raised, they maybe raised with certain morals and rules that make the person who they are. The concept of identity find your tribe offers is more along the lines of trying to find out who you are, what you like, what films you like etc.

Tribes are always shifting and changing, some are stable and others are fixed. We choose who we want to be and others are forced into a category of tribes. We all have multiple identities some of which are fragmented into sub categories. This notion of pick n mix lets us choose who we want to be and yet gives us the option to change are mind, our identity is our own, we’re all individual and the concept of identity in today’s world is not necessarily decided through brand clothing and taste in music but more to the personality of the individual and who they are and their background.

Captain Al Hubbard (History behind the track)

Alfred Matthew Hubbard

August 31st 1901 - 1982

Alfred Matthew Hubbard otherwise known as ‘Captain Al Hubbard’ didn’t leave too much of a trace, most people in fact have probably never heard of Hubbard, he cannot be found in past history books, neither did he leave a diary but, Alfred Matthew Hubbard has quite a story behind his name.

He never had much of an educational background as a youth, he never even made it passed third grade. He told people, that one day he was visited, visited by ‘angels’ who told Hubbard, that he was to build something. According to the director of the institute of Noetic Science, he apparently learnt to trust these visions although Hubbard had absolutely no training in building.

In 1919 guided by these angels, Alfred Matthew Hubbard invented the Hubbard Energy Transformer this was a radioactive battery that could not be explained by any technology. This technology was hidden in an 11” by 4” box, which had powered a ferry for 3 days. Afterwards Hubbard sold out 50% of his patent for £75,000 and nothing more was heard of from the Hubbard Energy Transformer.

After his success from the early 20’s Hubbard moved onto other tasks, he took a job as a Seattle taxi driver and with ship to shore communications in his trunk he would help smuggle in rum smugglers. He eventually got caught by the FBI and was sent to prison for 18 months. After his release he gained awareness by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) for his natural talent in electronics communications. He was pardon for any wrongdoing under the presidential pardon #2676 and became an agent for OSS.

His job at the OSS was considerably dangerous, involving shipping heavy armaments from San Diego to Canada within night time, during the waning hours of World War 2. He escaped this federal trapped and became a Canadian Citizen. Al Hubbard ambition in life was to become a millionaire, he eventually became scientific director of Uranium Corporation of Vancouver, and he owned a 100ft yacht, a fleet of aircrafts and his own Canadian island. Yet he was still miserable, according to resources Matthew Alfred Hubbard was looking for “The meaning of Life”.

In 1968 after Hubbard had tried the psychedelic drug acid he found himself wanting more in life and so came to do more with his life. Hubbard worked for a diversity of institutes, from the Canadian Special Services to the US Justice Department, he was even rumoured to be part of a mind–control project known as MK-ULTRA, but from orders of the CIA all paper documents must be destroyed.

Al Hubbard lived out his life and went travelling all over the world, sharing his experience, through in and out of these adventures he was caught, arrested many times. He would share his visions of the future with other people. Towards the end of his life he found himself broke, realising he couldn’t find the answers to any of his secrets. Al Hubbard eventually died at the age of 81.

“To fathom hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic.”

Source: http://www.rense.com/general28/dshwo.htm

Treatment

Treatment

We want to excel the psychedelia genre, using abstract visual imagery. Creating a storyline unlike any other music video, by this we want to provoke to our audience what psychedelia is. Whether it’s the idea of stopping time or creating an Alice in Wonderland style video, something along the ideas of Mad Hatters Tea Party perhaps. All this will link with the story of Captain Al Hubbard. This is one that should be told in a different perspective, we’ll replicate Al Hubbard’s history in our video by demonstrating what he did in his life.

To achieve this psychedelic concept we need to use costumes and props to create the mise-en-scene for our music video. We have resources such as local head shop “head in the clouds” they sell a range of gypsy like beads and Egyptian cotton clothing, ideal for our video and to dress up our very own Captain Al Hubbard. To achieve this style of filming we need a storyline that glues the video together but adds a sense of mix and mash to it so we can show our audience what psychedelia really is. Most psychedelic music videos often tends to make no sense to the audience or have very in depth questions that cannot be answered, all though we want to carry out this style we want our video to have more reality to it. We’re opening up our music video in the East Anglian Archive, where one of the employees stumble upon a film reel telling the story of Captain Al Hubbard which will then lead on to our own version of Alice In Wonderland – Mad Hatters Tea party.

Our music video is based on a true story; we’ll be using new codes and conventions elaborated from similar ideas. We aim to use a similar technique to Black Moth Super Rainbow. They use a saturated historical filter throughout their video which provides an old fashion image. In doing this our video will hopefully stand out and capture our target audience attentions, bring out a more appealing factor to our concepts.

Locations

During our many adventures of finding locations to shoot out music video, we came accross this mass opened field, where all there is, is just grass and the hot sun beaming down. This location was found just a few miles of the out skirts of norwich, near Roman Village.