Hi, i'm jonny and i'm 16. My life's enjoyments are music, guitaring and sports. I like to watch films and shows such as family guy and red dwarf and also enjoy reading, a mixture of fiction and non-ficction.
Awards - Nominated for 2 BAFTAs (best supporting actress and best British Film), 25 other nominations and one one BAFTA (Most promising new comer) 20 other wins
The film is a biopic of the lead singer of the band joy division, Ian Curtis. It follows his life from his school years up to his suicide when he was 23 years old. Although the film was filmed in colour the director change it to balck and white 'to reflect the atmosphere of Joy Division and the mood of the era'. The director himself put in half of the 4.5 million Euros budget due to him being a huge Joy Division fan, often a photographer for them as well as filming the music video for the release of 'Atmosphere'. The film follows Ian as he grows up struggling against epilepsy and depression. The film starts with a conventional social realist film setting of a Macclesfield block of council flats and follows Ian go to the solitude of his room in which he plays and idealises himself to David Bowie, one of the producers behind the film. For Ian music, the solitude of his room and Poetry, for we see Ian resite Wordsworth, are his passion and serve for his escape from reality throughout the film and become a symbol of his struggle against his depression and his illness. As the film shows music a way in which Ian can escape his Marriage, a job and quite a dull lifestyle. The pressures of his marriage going downhill after marrying young, having a child, his feelings for both his wife and a Annik, and his affair with her, the growing popularity of Joy Division and his failing medication for epilepsy all push Ian too far and force him to commit suicide.
The mise en scene through the film is quite typical of many social realist films with scenes of council flats, terrace houses, pubs and the use of black and white film. The locations used, like that of 'This is England' where mainly Northern industrial like Macclesfield, Manchester and Nottingham.
The film's receiption was generally good guardian saying "the best film of the year: a tender, bleakly funny and superbly acted biopic of Curtis" and Robert Ebert saying "The extraordinary achievement of Control is that it works simultaneously as a musical biopic and the story of a life." Hook, the bassist of Joy Division, remarked that "Control is a hell of a lot more accurate than 24 Hour Party People. You can tell that Anton knew us, and he knew us well".
The film has a lot of visual symbols such as the at the very end when Ian Curtis is cremated the church within the shot and the smoke coming out is supposed to be a symbol and a noticeably referencing to the record company Factory Records that produced many great northern bands, including Joy Division.
The white stripes are renowned for their continuity within their products. This continuity comes within their colour scheme, artwork and fonts. This continuity has been famed throughout all of their work from music videos, to merchandise and live performance but i'm going to focus on their 4th album named 'Elephant'.
The main theme for the album is the colour scheme which is red, white and black. This is the concept that links the otherwise irrelevant photos to each other. Due to the unconsistent theme in the photography, which only seems to link through the grainy old black and white photgraphy, the ablum and the bands image is then rellying on the red, white and black theme. however this has proven to be very successful as the band now uses this image throughout all of their work to the extent that they are now known for this image across the music industry.
The consistent font also links in with the simple style that links each page. This is done through the lyrics that are printed on 6 of the booklet pages. The font once again is in white and red continuing with the red and white theme.
For are audience feedback we brought together a focus group of 10 people that we thought would appreciate Kapok's music. We set them 2 sets of question to answer with the first design to obtain the individuals demographic and the secound questions focused on the music video. We also shot a video of the responses of the video asking the audience question which they collectively discussed. Thus creating both quantitative and qualitive feedback results. The collected data has been predominantly put into graphs. The questionnaire questions were as follows:
Demographic Question
Gender: (Male/Female) Age: (0-15,16-18, 19-25, 26-100) Occupation: (Student, Employed, unemployed, retired) Favourite genre of music (pick 3): Rock, Pop, Hip-hop, R’n’B, punk, house, techno, Drum and Bass, Electronica, Indie, blues, soul, funk, jazz, classical, emo, hard rock, heavy metal. What was the last gig you attended and what genre was it?: What genre would you classify Kapok as being? Who is your favourite artist/band? If you had to classify yourself as part of a subculture which of the following would it be? (Indie kid, Rocker, Emo, Rah, mosher, chav, geek, grunger, punk, trendie, none of these) What is your favourite album? What about a band appeals to you? Do you think music influences your worldly choices?
Questions on the music video
Do you think the video is appropriate to the genre? Do you think the video uses both performance and narrative sections effectively? Did the video keep your attention throughout? If no at what point did you get bored? Do you think the video advertises the band well? Do you think there are any representational issues within the video? What good points do you think there are? What bad points do you thin there are? Do you aspire to be like or identify with any of the characters within the video? Do you think the mise en scene is appropriate? For an amateur production what would you give the video out of ten? Is the narrative clear? If you could improve anything what would it be? Do you think the performance or narrative section was stronger? What aspect do you think was executed the best of the following; choice of mise en scene, performance, editing, camera work or narrative.
For the demographic questions we firstly wanted to obtain there age, gender and occupation of which all were between 16-18, 3 out of 10 were male and all were students. I think the demographic of the focus group is appropriate as this demographic would be the bands potential audience by being the same age group as the band and being students. So by questioning them on the production we can see where we can improve and see if we have targeted are product correctly.
We then wanted to establish what music they enjoyed listening to. One question within this section was asking if they had recently attended a gig and what genre it was. For this we wanted to try to establish if they would enjoy Kapok's performances as they play live regularly. To which we got the following repsonses;
From this response you can see all are lively performing bands with the expection of one. So therefore 90% of the potential graphic enjoyed gigging, and with our video heavily reflecting the bands gigs this was promising for the video and the band from the audience’s perspective. What was the last gig you attended?
(fav. album and artist question)
As you can see the responses were quite varied but all within the indie culture of music as well as albums and bands included which heavily influence kapok, especially the likes of muse, biffy clyro and red hot chili peppers. This shows how we have got the correct demographic for our audience research. Kapok can be interpreted as being part of the indie culture as shown by the next question. We asked what genre of music do you think Kapok are to which the following answer seemed to be as accurate as possible;
For one of the last demographic questions we wanted to establish if they thought music was an important part of their life and influenced any choices they made or their own identity. To which 60% said music influenced there views and choices in their day to day events. This is interesting as it shows that at least 60% of the potential within the focus group would see music as a heavily important aspect of their life and therefore potentially looking out for new bands and styles.
We then went onto ask the group about the video once we had showed them the video for the first time. From the questionaire we got quite a consistent view on the video. One question asking if the music video exploited the genre to it's maximum to which all responded yes. This shows that the video is suitable for the genre also appeals to are target audience, that being the focus group symbolising our potential audience due to their demographic. We also asked if we combined the narrative section and the performance section effectively to which 8 answered yes, one no and another not enough narrative. This shows that we combined the two elements well however the narrative may be unclear to some. We then asked if we sold the band well to which 8 out of 10 answered yes. this shows that we had done the job asked by a music video for a band which is to sell the band. I think we also did this with the heavy performance element in the video reflecting the bands live performances.
After we asked the focus group to answer the questionnaire we went onto filming a couple of the group discussions about the video and the band.
The main critisism the video got for us to work on from the audience research was that of the performance and narrative elements not being balance enough on the narrative side. As within the discussion above the main concern was that of too much of the band but not enough narrative. This then seemed to cause some confusion on the narrative side which the audience seemed to want more of to explain the narrative better. This general I also agree with, that the narrative could have been more clear whoever in terms of a music video one aspect of a music video that is always needed for an audience to keep watching and not just enjoy the video/ switch it off is the need for an enigma. I think we used the technique of enigma very well as throughout the video we always was asking questions of the narrative and the link with performance. This was shown in the feedback by some confusion among the viewers which initially may have seemed bad may actually confirm the use of enigmas and their outcomes. Also a question we asked within the discussion was on representations. To which we got mixed responses as many of the girls argued that the representation of women in the video was bad but the boys seemed to argue that you would not want to be this girl and that she was a protagonist not to be aspired to be like. I mainly agree with the point that the girl is not meant to be looked up to and aspire to be like whoever the points is easily raised and is a representation that questions the demographic of the band and the video that the potential audience may be more male based rather than equal or girl based. This may become a marketing exploit for the band potentially selling a new ‘boyish’ image, such as a ‘rock ‘n’ rolla’ image that goes with the live hard die young persona. In conclusion the discussion and the questionnaire was helpful in what we would need to do to improve the video. The main points being that the narrative needed to be clearer and less performance element within the video.
Throughout all of Muse's albums artwork they have always kept a sci-fi/space theme.
The first album muse release was called showbiz and and the artwork depicts a woman striding over a baron and strange world with two moons in the background. The glow of the woman draws attention to her and also blurs out the expression on her face so the audienc doesn't know what she may be feeling but with the baron landscape and her being the only being within the picture it connotes a feeling of loneliness and . The mise en scene is the essential visual signifier to the space and sci-fi theme. The secound album, 'Origin of Symmetry' and again is a simple landscape that only consists of a seemingly nevere ending rows of strange antena that connotes paranoid conspiracies of alien activity and spying on space. The third album named 'Hulabaloo' seems to be the only album that does not have any aspects of the mise en scene that depict views of space and also the only to sell the image of the band themselves. The next album once again picks up the space theme and once again thems of paranoia. The cover shows a man with a gas mark looking up to the sky with shadows on the ground. The shadows looking much like that of a human like figure onto the ground that looks much like that of the moon. The paranoia shown with the gas mark and the enigma of what the man is looking up at. The convntion of using an enigma, which is unanswered, is again used in 'Black holes and revelations' which shows 4 men sitting in spacesuit like suits on a landscape that could easily be that of the planet Mars. Their next album 'HAARP' imidietly shows that of the theme with satelites within a black background perhaps depicting space. Their most recent album uses a geometric like hexagonal artwork with a man on a path in space that is leading to Earth. Perhaps a turning back to society and away from the lonely themes that dominated the early album covers due to Muse's change in musical direction to become more mainstream.
For the album 'Black holes and revelations', which in it's title already suggests space themes, all the singles capture a similar style in artwork that mimics that of clusters of stars and galaxies turned into artwork of the band, 'Map of Problematique', a horse in 'Knights of cydonia and a couple about to kiss in 'Invincible'.
The themes of space and sci-fi themes may be due to the band wanting to target their niche potential audience who maybe a demograpahic that are interested in alternative films/TV programmes such as that of the sci-fi and space genre. But also the theme of space is a symbol of loneliness that many of their songs reflect and their potential audience may be able to reflect such feelings of loneliness.
