Research into chosen artist - Miss Georgiou

Research into chosen artist 

As a group we decided that we would pick the song "It feels like were only going backwards" by Tame Impala. We decided to pick this artist as we like the type of music that the artist makes and the genre of psychedelic rock is one that interests us as it is unusual compared to other genres. Furthermore as the song is very unusual our group felt that we could make a good video for the video and that it is very open to interpretation which will make it easier for us to make a video about.

Tame Impala is an Australian psychedelic rock band from Perth, who are made up of Kevin Parker, Jay Watson, Dominic Simper,Cam Avery and Julien Barbagallo. The band was started in 2007 and its first single Sundown Syndrome was released in 2009 to much critical acclaim. The bands most recent album Lonerism was released in October 2012, it won the 2012 J Award for Australian Album of the year and was nominated for  grammy for best alternative album. Furthermore in 2012 they headlined festivals such as Coachella festival and Sasquatch festival in America. The band Tame Impala are currently signed to modular records recording company which was started in 1998 and is also based in Australia the same as the band.


Half Full Glass of Wine - Tame Impala

This video does follow Goodwins theory to some extent in different ways. For example the video does follow the conventions of the genre of psychedelic rock using bold colours such as pink and green. They also have surreal editing going on constantly in the video, things such as  band members playing even though we can only see the outline of them in the scene and they are coloured in with colours such as green or blue. However we can not see them very well or the instruments so it could be seen that it is unconventional to the rock part pf the genre. There is nearly no connections between the lyrics and visuals as the visuals are nearly random and have little to no meaning with the songs lyrics. On the other hand there is a link between the music and visuals for example when the tempo of the song increases the editing of the visuals also increases in turn.

The video is mainly made up of narrative with a small amount of performance included,  but the narrative  in the video is very confusing and open to interpretation by the audience. The performance is very short and we can only see cartoon edited versions of the man singing whilst the music is playing. The target audience age for this video would be from 15 to 30 as any younger and the video would simply be too confusing for them as there are many complex parts to the video. The artists is not seen through most of the video however when we do see him we can tell he is the artist as he is central in the screen. He is presented as a mystery as we cannot actually see his face however we can see the emotions on his face of being relaxed and calm. This can make him more relatable to the audience as he seems to be normal when compared to other music stars, one pint in which we can see him is in the picture below in the form of a carton.

Mise en scene is used in different ways during this video, however there is no setting as it is nearly all based around editing and changes so frequently there is no definite location. This is a big contrast to other music videos which often use exotic locations such as mansions or beaches. This could be part of the genre in that they are trying to be conventional and different when compared to the mainstream videos,  or that he is pointing towards constantly changing in the music video. For example in the scenes below the change has happened in under a second to a completely different scene which is unrelated.

 Furthermore there is very little in the way iconography as there is only a guitar and drum sticks, so it does not contain much in the video. The camera angles used are a close up , mid shot and a long shot although with the amount of editing used it is hard to see the change between them in that the change happens in under a second and the new scene will only lats for three seconds. The lighting that is used in the video is high key which helps keep the bright colors seen and makes the editing easier to see and then suddenly goes dark. This could be seen ass a theme of the psychedelic drugs which are a key concept of the genre or simple reflecting on the change in mood of the song and the tempo. For example in the picture below we can see the colour changes over a very short amount of time going from low key to high.

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Tame Impala- Expectations

In the video Expectations Goodwins theory is use throughout the video in various ways. The video does follow the conventions of psychedelic rock in many ways. One way is the editing used which makes the screen blur into itself which makes it very confusing to watch. Another is the way that is uses flares to show the bright and bold colours, both of these things are extremely conventional to the genre and make the video fit the genre. However there are way in which they do not conform in that there are no colour tints used through editing which are synonymous with the genre. Again there is little connection between the lyrics and the visuals with the location being a forest , however there is a small amount of connection between the music and visuals which match the beat of each other in the video. 

The video is exclusively made up with performance with them playing all the way through , and having no concept or narrative within the video.  This conforms to the rock part of the genre where performance based videos are very common and have little of any other type. The artists is again represented in the video as very relaxed as he stands in a slouched way and wears casual clothing. Also his facial expression is one that makes him seem as he does not care and cannot be fazed by his situation.  This makes him seem more relatable to the audience as he shares common things with them, this may not always happen in other videos with artists wearing expensive brands. We can see the artist in the picture below playing in the forest with a distorted background. 

The target audience age would be the same again at 15 to 30 as it may not appeal to an older audience however it maybe confusing for younger audiences that cannot understand the situation. This age range could be lowered with this video as there is not much unusual editing used in this video. With this video the Mise en scene is used frequently , the location being in a forest which gets darker and darker over time. The iconography used is just the bands equipment and later in the video two flares which are used to change the visuals of the scene. The lighting changes through the video such as at the start the video has high key lighting and as the video goes on the lighting gets lower until its nearly completely black. The camera angles used are a mid shot, long shot, close up and a low angle. Throughout the video the artist is always central which focuses the audiences attention in them. 

This research will help the planning of my own video in many ways as I can see what other videos the artist has and what style they have used for them. This will be able to make my video better as we can follow the conventions of the genre closer and please the audience with the conventions from the genre. However we could also make it  unconventional which would please a larger audience which would make it more mainstream. One of the micro elements I would like to include is the constant changing editing , however this would be very hard to do and very time consuming. Other inspirations I would like to take is having a running theme throughout such as the doves as it tells a story whilst having other scenes which make it interesting for the audience. Overall this has helped me greatly in deciding if I will be conventional or unconventional to the genre and what inspiration I can take from these videos.