NEA Checklist - Ben Metcalfe

NEA Checklist - Ben Metcalfe

Test Video

1 Minute in length
2 different locations
2 social groups
Lip syncing
Use of an appropriate rock song

Rock Genre

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country and western.

The British Invasion, by the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers and the Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast, and particularly those from London like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in the early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts.

By the late 1960s, a number of identifiable rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, and jazz-rock fusion, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock influenced by the counter-cultural psychedelic scene. New genres that emerged from this scene included progressive rock, which extended the artistic elements; glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style; and the diverse and enduring major subgenre of heavy metal, which emphasized volume, power, and speed. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock both intensified and reacted against some of these trends to produce a raw, energetic form of music characterized by overt political and social critiques. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of other subgenres, including new wave, post-punk and eventually the alternative rock movement. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history.

Artists:

The Beatles
Muse
Rage Against the Machine
Kasabian
Arctic  Monkeys
Blur
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Liam Gallagher
Weezer
Metallica
Paul McCartney
John Lennon
George Harrison
Ringo Starr
Wings
Queen
Guns 'N Roses
Foo Fighters
Nirvana
The Cure
The Killers
AC/DC
Engelbert Humperdinck
Aerosmith
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Avenged Sevenfold
Black Sabbath
KISS
Bon Jovi
The Cranberries
David Bowie
Elton John
Green Day
Sex Pistols
Limp Bizkit
Queens of the Stone Age
Led Zeppelin

Oasis

Music video ideas

Basket Case

The lyrics for this song are as follows.

Do you have the time to listen to me whine

About nothing and everything all at once?
I am one of those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone
No doubt about it

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Or am I just stoned?

I went to a shrink
To analyze my dreams
She says it's lack of sex that's bringing me down
I went to a whore
He said my life's a bore
So quit my whining 'cause it's bringing her down

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Huh yeah, yeah, yeah
(Ooh, ooh)

Grasping to control
So I better hold on

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Or am I just stoned?

Lyrics in bold are lyrics which I have an idea to make scenes / shots about.

Scenes / Shots

Melodramatic fools - This lyric has a lot of potential, and I intend to create a scene about it where I (the main actor) is shown to be standing with the other members of the band. In this case, the band name for my music video will be the Melodramatic fools.

Sometimes I give myself the creeps, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me, am I just paranoid: All of these lyrics can be connotated to signs of a mental breakdown, or onsets of conditions such as schizophrenia. As such, a shot can be made in which I (the main actor) appear to have a continuous breakdown all throughout the video, to represent my condition getting worse, to link it back to the lyrics.    

Test Project

Reflecting on the test project, I conclude that it went well because we were able to establish a coherent narrative which is receivable by the audience, which they are then able to follow along with and possibly relate to. In terms of improvement, a few things that could be improved could be the placement and framing of shots, in which things such as the skyline should be horizontal, and the rule of thirds must be followed. For my real NEA project, I would use better costumes to able to enhance the narrative, and I would also make sure each character has a form of relevancy within the narrative. What's more, I will also take more time to edit the music video in order to make the final product as good as possible.

Statement of intent

Music video

One, three-minute music video

Distribution channel

Content must be age appropriate for young adults from the age of 16

Number of web pages

One homepage and one linked page

Cross-media production

A primarily 16-25 year old middle market audience that likes to be entertained