Euro gamer advert with Theresa

Computer Game Story Development pictures

Task 2 Music Video Convention Definitions.

SECTION A

Lyric Interpretation- Lyric interpretation is when the music video represents the lyrics.

Kanye West and T-Pain's "Good Life" does exactly these. In the music video, the same lyrics they speak also appear on the screen.

Extending or Consolidating song's meaning- This is when the artist wants to extend the meaning of the song by showing it in the music video. In my opinion, Michael Jackson's "Ben" is the right example for this type of music video technique.

Focus on performer- This is a typical convention for music videos. The reason why this a typical music convention is because the artists, most of the time, feature in their music videos. Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" is the perfect example. In this music video Michael wears a white suit while the other wear black suits. This clearly makes him stand out from the rest of the other dancers, and if that wasn't enough, he has lighting on him throughout the whole video.

Lighting for mood- This when the type of colours in the music video affect the theme of the song.

Pace of cuts- This means the amount of times the video cuts and how often. The pace of cuts depend on the genre of the song. For example Boyz 2 Men's I'll make love to you. this is a slow R'n'B song, so the scenes are much longer so the pace of the cuts is much much slower.




SECTION B

Example of a music video which uses special effects such as Chroma Key (green screen)

Bruno Mars' Treasure

Bruno Mars' "Treasure" is a disco song, with funk, post and nu-disco (Nu-disco is a 21st century dance music genre associated with a renewed interest in 1970s and early 1980s disco). The video uses a green screen to conform to the genre of not only the music but to the album as well.

Example of a music video which uses Multi-mage (Multiple images on the screen)

Michael jackson's "Man in the Mirror"

Example of a music video which uses Cutting to a beat

Justin Timberlake's  "Cry me a River"

Example of a music video which uses miming or lip synching 

Michael Jackson's 1983 Billie Jean Motown 25th Anniversary

Example of a music video which uses Animation

Kanye West's Good Morning

Kanye makes the whole of this video in animation.

Example of a music video that uses "in-concert" footage

Justin Timberlake's Take Back the Night

"As-Live" Performer

an illusion or reference to another music artist

Section C

Narrative- A spoken or written account of connected events; a story

Impressionist About mood and atmosphere than meaning

Interpretative directly Interprets the lyrics of a song in a visual way

Surrealist weird imagery, seems unconnected with song, often used in videos for instrumental song and dance tracks

Pastiche/homage an affectionate or positive copy of or tribute to another artist's work, a media genre or product like TV programme, film etc.

Parody a mocking or critical copy of another artist's work, or another media genre.

Task 1: E-Magazine Article

Computer Story Telling Forms

Ever since the dawn of civilisation, man has told stories by painting on caves or sitting around a fire. As man evolved, so did their forms of storytelling. From the original form that is cave paintings, to oral forms of storytelling, to fable, myth and many more. In this article I will be explaining how different computer game genres use different forms of storytelling, when telling the story of the game.

Text/Cave Painting games

Doom (1993)

Doom is a 1993 science-fiction horror themed first-person shooter video game. It is considered one of the most significant and influential titles in the video game industry, for having ushered in the popularity of the first-person shooter genre. This is storytelling at it's most basic level. At the start of the game, or before missions, the player is presented with a block of text to read through (often to skip them) It does the job of communicating the story but it doesn't actually involve the player at all, and often leaves a big gap between the story and "actual" game. This was most common in early games, Doom (1993) for example, but mostly died out in the early 2000s and for a good reason too. Games are an interactive medium, so reading large block of text breaks the flow of playing the game and will easily bore players.

 

The Game play for DOOM

Blazblue Continuum Shift

Another example of text storytelling is the 'Blazblue' series. Although it is a modern anime 2D game, it uses text block storytelling. The reason it uses this form is because it is an anime type game, so it has to use anime conventions of storytelling. 

Prior to the events of BlazBlue, humanity was on the verge of extinction from a creature called "Black Beast". The world was saved by six heroes who wielded magic. They helped humanity create "Armaqus", a fusion of magic and science, to defeat the Beast. This event would be later known as the First War of Ars Magus. After the war, the Novus Orbis Librarium  was created to govern the world with the use of Ars Magus. A great deal to dissent was caused by the Librarium, partly due to Armagus' use in nearly every facet of society, and the widening socioeconomic gap between those who could and could not use Armagus. This dissent would eventually form years later into the Second War of Ars Magus, when the city of Ikaruga openly rebelled against the NOL. Upon winning war, the NOL imposed a harsher rule on the world, pushing any rebellion against the NOL. In December A.D. 2199, several years after the Second War of Ars Magus, a branch of the NOL was utterly destroyed by an SS-class rebel named "Ragna" also known as the "Grim Reaper", in an attempt to destroy the Librarium. The NOL, hoping to stop him, immediately announced the largest bounty ever, available to anyone who could capture him. Interestingly, Ragna possesses a powerful form of Armagus known as the "Azure Grimoire". This led the NOL, as well as the other fighters, to hunt Ragna not just for the bounty, but also for his Azure Grimoire.

 GAMEPLAY

This is how the story mode pretty much looks like, except when you play the actual battles

Although it uses text block, it's main form of storytelling is comic book style. This is in a way resembles cave painting, as it keeps the principle of a static drawings which tell a story.



Myth Games

God of War

God OF War

God of War is a video game released for the PlayStation 2. It is an action adventure game heavily influenced by the Greek mythology.Kratos is a warrior who serves the Greek Gods of Olympus. Flashbacks ( which is another form of storytelling) reveal that he was once a successful captain in the Spartan army and led his men to several victories before being defeated by a barbarian king. Facing deth, Kratos called on the God of War, Ares, whom he promised to serve if the god would spare his men and provide the power to destroy their enemies. Ares agreed and bonded the Blades of Chaos, a pair of chained blades forged in the depths of Tartarus, to his new servant. Kratos equipped with blades, then decapitated the barbarian king. Kratos waged war at the behest of Ares, eventually leading an attack on a village occupied by worshippers of Athena. 

The first God of War gameplay

Ares had secretly transported Kratos' wife and child to village; during his frenzied attack on its temple, Kratos accidentally killed them. Although Ares believed this act would free Kratos to become the perfect warrior, the Spartan instead renounced his pledge of servitude to the god. The oracle  of the destroyed village cursed Kratos by bonding the ashes of his dead family to his skin, turning is ash-white and earnig him the nickname, "Ghost of Spartar". Plagued by nightmare of his horrible deed, Kratos vowed to serve the other Gods in hope of ridding himself of the visions. The game starts, Kratos has been serving the gods for ten years. The game uses a lot of cut scenes because besides playing the game tos unveil the story, it uses cut scenes to reveal the story. Action games tend to use a lot of cut scenes to make the game even more appealing. 



Legend

Another genre of computer gaming is legend. These games focus on the historical events which happened or are happening throughout the world. For example the battle of 'Thermoplylae', which was a battle fought between an alliance of Greek-city states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta , and the Persian Empire of Xerxes. This was made into a movie called '300' and also made into a game called '300 March to Glory'.

This game in the genre of legend because it's a game about the story of King Leonidas and his bravery, strength and courage to lead his army of 300 men against the Persian Empire. The definition of a legend is a historical story that is told to show human characteristics such as bravery (which is conveyed in the '300' game), courage, honesty etc. Stories such as King Arthur and Robin Hood are legends that show a historical figure that represents such characteristics, the said Legend showing human characteristics such as power, bravery and betrayal.  These stories are based on real people who have lived through history and fabricated.

Radio Advert

Before doing the actual radio advert, we first had to make the script for it. It was kinda hard trying to make the scripts because we had no idea how to even start making it. We eventually came up with the basic concept of it and we started to produce and eventually developed the script. After coming up with the script, we then used the voice recorder. This wasn't hard at all because i had previously used it last year, so it did not take long. We finished recording and had to edit it on a program called Reaper. This is the only bit which was rather more difficult than coming up with the script because the program was hard to use. Editing the recording was difficult because me and my partner had no idea how to use it, so we asked the teacher to show us the basic, and from there we learned how to do the rest by figuring out for ourselves.

Task 1: Report into Music Video Purposes

Promotion of a particular song

-Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'

 The main purpose of a music video is to sell the song, to entertain (show off other talents the artist may have, for example dancing or acting), to sell CD's and DVD's to viewers. Creating a memorable visual for the song increases it's chance to sell. Despite all of these being factors of why a music video is important, the end result still has to serve one purpose: promotion. This is exactly what Michael Jackson's Thriller does.Thriller is a single on Michael Jackson's sixth solo album. It was released to promote not only the album from which it came from, but to promote it's self. The 14 minute long video was listed by Guinness World Records was listed as "the most successful music video" in 2006. The video did more than promote the 'Thriller' album, but it also helped other black music artists to gain mainstream recognition.

Promotion of the artist's album

Justin Timberlake's Suit and Tie video promoting the album                                                                            

A secondary purpose of a music video is to promote the album that the single is taken from. Companies are aware that many consumers are more likely to share a video than an audio file, and spread the song's influence by word of mouth or even people looking over their shoulders. For example Justin Timberlake released the single 'Suit and Tie' two months before releasing the album 'The 20/20 Experience'. 'Suit and Tie' was so loved by the fan that they couldn't wait until the album was released. So most of the fans pre-ordered the album.

Promotion of the artist themselves
Jessie J's 'Dude it like a Dude'

Creating a music video is great way to introduce yourself if you are a new artist and no one has heard of you. When a video accompanies a song, the exposure of the single will double-while the song can only be played on the radio and audio-only Internet services, such as iTunes, having an accompany video means the song will also be played on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, as well as music television. For example Jessie J introduce herself with the music video 'Do It Like A Dude'. This helped promote the song, the album and it put her on the map as an artist.


Increasing the income for the record company.

With music videos, one of the main purposes of it is to promote the record company. For example in Jason Derulo's videos, the record labels company name is said at the beginning. The more popular the artist is, the more popular the record company gets. For example Michael Jackson was signed with Motown records. Although Motown was known, Michael Jackson made it well known.

Increasing the range of media an artist.

When an artist makes a music video, it can increase the chance of them being offered a media role, such as film. For example Justin Timberlake, has now gone into acting as well as making music. Directors saw how popular he is, how talented he is and have offered him  lead roles in movies such as "In Time",  "Friends with Benefit" and "Runner Runner".

Justin in music video 'Mirror'

 Justin in movie 'Runner Runner' playing the        lead role.

There are many other artists who have progressed from music to acting in film or even directing their own film. For example, Michael Jackson acting in various movie such as 'Captain EO' 'Moonwalker' and many others. This shows that the artist has proved to have so much talent that directors would want to make a movie with them, but also, producing a movie with a well known artist benefits the director in the sense that working with one will increase one's stats.

Music Video Workshop 1

Tarrus Riley's Stay with you. This was the music video which we based our shot on.

Shot 1:American shot.

Reason why we chose the shot: We wanted to show the location and relationship between the man (Damilola) and (Christal). The intention was to take the shot with Damilola and VChristal to be laying down side by side, but then we changed it to just them sitting on the bench. We did this as it was easier to film and also this was we captured the surrounding area.

This is shot is the same but we just shot it again so that if there was any problems with the first, we could use the second one.

Shot 2: close-up shot.

Reason: The reason why we chose to use a close-up shot was to capture the sadness, strain and emotion on Christal's face through her facial expressions. We tried to show as much emotion as we could so that the audience would understand the narrative of the video.

Shot 3: Extreme close-up shot.

The reason why we used an extreme close-up shot is because, we wanted to focus on the eyes to show the confusion of what's going on in her relationship. 

Shot 4: Panning

The reason why we used this is because we wanted to show the couple having a conversation and enjoying each other's company. We started the shot from the same location where Christal was pondering about the relationship, as this was the the location where she would usually meet up with her partner and start walking together.

Shot 5: Medium Shot/Long Distance Shot
For this shot we returned to the original location of the first shot. The shot starts off as a medium shot and then switches to a long shot to show the couple walking together in the distance. The reason we chose to make it a long distance shot is to show that the story has ended.

I've been playing the series since Tekken 1, and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has just blown me away. It just feels like a much better version of Tekken 6. The customization is a little bit lacking, i think, and it's missing a feature or two, but really these are minor complaints of a fantastic fighting game. The whole thing is just really polished, and the roster is amazing. Easily my favourite Tekken since Tekken Tag 1, overall this is one of the best.

Michael Jackson is well lit throughout the music video. This is due to the fact that he is the artist and has to stand out according to the conventions of a music video. The background in contrast is dimly lit so that it helps audience understand the narrative of the story, which is that Michael has come into the underground. In terms of the costume, Michael is wearing a white suit while the rest wear black. His costume makes him the main focus of the video.

Chillin!