Cultural appropriation in video is something which is important as producers would wish for videos to appeal to as many people as possible worldwide and to avoid offense at all costs. An example of a music video with accusations of cultural offense is Miley Cyrus: We Cant Stop (below)
Many of the scenes in this video caused controversy, however in terms of culture, Miley caused offense with her references to lower-class black americans. Miley has been criticized for picking certain aspects of black american culture and using them for a mock-style by playing them as a wealthy white female. It is suggested that in her attempt to achieve a certain image she has indeed caused offence, an example of this is her use of a gold grill for her teeth alone with her gan-style hand gestures. She has allegedly used a way of life for some people with much less than her and an oppositional lifestyle, as a stylish and somewhat admirable way of life which in fact contradicts her entire image and past career. Those whom have been supposedly offended by the video are NYC upcoming rappers whom lived a lifestyle similar to what Miley is proposing, but as a struggle with others alike themselves rather than her idea of fashion or success.
In my own music video is will be important for me to make no links or references to other cultures of life styles if they will cause effect, the plan for my video does not in fact have many if at all any references to other races therefore it should be safe to assume i shall not cause offense; however when filming i should ensure that even if non-deliberate, no gestures which may relate to other cultures should be used in case they are negatively interpreted.
I will also be sure not to glorify the actors in comparison to any of other cultures, for example i will not make my white actors appear superior to any others nor inferior.
So far using Blogger, i have found it easy to use and beneficial within my work.
It is simple to edit any essay or analysis work so that it is presented in the fonts and format in which i would prefer, as well as this, the design of the blogs are appealing and i can make it a relevant design to my work if i wished to, such as images of characters for the background.
Adding pictures and videos is also simple on Blogger, i upload all of my photos firstly to Photo-bucket so that they are saved on the internet rather than the school computers which hold a risk of being misplaced. I can then add them using the icon at the top of the blog entry page from a simple link and Blogger will insert the image and give me options of what size or placement i would prefer.
This is also beneficial for adding videos, i use blogger and YouTube for any videos i upload, as they are both products of Google, i can upload a video to YouTube whether it be the main production, a preliminary video or voice recording and link it immediately to my blog. It is also easy to use as i am able to search for YouTube videos within the Blogger page and add them to any relevant post.
My aim is to make my blog as interactive as possible therefore this is why i have added features such as voice recordings, final cut pro videos and word-collages. Blogger is a positive site to use for such things as well as being very easy to navigate and for others to read.
It will be important to consider how people are going to respond to my music video, feminism is often relevant through the release of music videos and i should consider how a feminist may respond to my production.
A recent music video which caused a mass of feminist responses was Robin Thicke: Blurred Lines (shown below)
This video has been claimed to over-sexualize women, remove their personality and also their intelligence. In this video the men are free to roam around the women, touch and stare at them in ways in which are considered both perverted and inappropriate. This undermines women and suggests that males are superior as they seem in control of the women in the video.
As well as this, feminists and Thicke himself have argued that the intention of this video was to degrade women as much as possible. This is also suggested by the songs lack of relevance to comedy, society or any current issues. Each women in the video walk around with vacant expressions as if they were dolls whom are there for the sole purpose of amusement for the men. They are celebrated only as sexual objects as they have no clothes, no script and no part in the video other than to be objectified.
In my own music video, it is important that none of our shots are degrading nor are they focused on either sex being superior to the other. I believe that we have succeeded in this in our planning as both the male and female characters have the upper hand in the music video. Although the male may seem more powerful and the girl may be more vulnerable, she is seen as more of the positive character whilst he plays more of a villainous role.
We have however, intended on using shots which are in use of the male gaze, although this may be argued to be against feministic views, it is used to be clear within the story-line so the audience have a good understanding of what is going on rather than to degrade the female character.
The male gaze is a concept initially created by Laura Mulvey (shown below) this is where the camera often lingers on the sexual or attractive features (usually body) of a female and is often presented in the contexts of a mans reactions to such shots. This often objectifies women and the women experiences the naritive by firstly identifying with how the male is seeing the women.
We made this video detailing a time line of the most important events we thought contributed to music videos as we know them today.
This is important research as it enabled us to find out the key aspects of a music video and how they developed. This would therefore indicate what features of a music video are most important and also it gives us a background knowledge to the subject we are working with which is important to making a successful music video.
make voice recording of research and make into a video
finish video
complete all storyboard drafts
create a shot-list
The last two points here are the most important as they are necessary to have before we begin to film, we wills tart making the shot-list and storyboard specific to each second in the film to make it accurate and be as prepared as possible.
The original version of the track we are using is almost 5 and a half minutes long and a lot of the lyrics and beats within this are very repetitious, due to this we have decided it would be best to cut some of the song in the middle sections whether the song is repeated, this not only will reduce the song to be less boring but it would also allow us a smaller time frame to shoot within.
As the middle section of the song is the part in which is meant to be the non-scripted in our video, it would be very repetitive and off-script if we were to have over 2 minutes worth of this kind of footage within the video. For this reason also we have decided to cut the song, we did so on final cut pro and cut approximately 50 seconds from the song.
