Podcast 2: Joy Division - Disorder

Group Production Companies

For this project we are creating new companies indents, I intend on creating two indents with new logos, because it is not normal for a animated logo to appear before a music video, and it is normal for a logo to appear on a Digi-pak, we are going to stick with still images for production titles.

Record Label


 A record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. So we decided that it was vital that we created a record label, A example of a record label is "Factory Records". 
            The record label would be responsible for piecing together the bands new album, the individual elements may be completed by a range of other companies and this would be the case with us because our company is only a indie company. As well as promoting the band and the new album
            We decided to name our record label in relation to Joy Division because our record label is simply to market JD. We instantly thought of Transmission Records after the JD song "Transmission" and the relevance between radio transmissions which is spreading music and sound and this is something a record label would want to be doing, Transmission (Records). We didn't let this stop us though so we changed our idea to New Transmission Records which isn't taken.


For the logo we decided that simplicity is best so we opted for a simple black and white logo with a line drawing of a radio mast with radio transmissions coming out of it. Using Adobe Photoshop we created a few logos.

This is the main logo, we added text at the bottom to help spread the record labels name.
We also created a version with the two colours inverted, this version was created to be placed on a advert/ digi-pak if it had a white background.
We lastly also created a round logo without text.

Graphics Company

The graphics company would be responsible for creating the Digi-pak, they logo would also go onto the digi-pak. We followed the idea for the record label in trying to create a name using a Joy Division song but we struggled to find a idea that would not just fit but also work well, we tried "Atmosphere Graphics" as well as "Shadowplay Graphics" but neither worked.
        In the end we decided to recycle one of our AS ideas which worked well and from this "Limited Edition Graphics" was born.

We used photoshop again and again decided to create a logo with a simple idea and this time decided to opt for a text only approach. We used gold text (to symbolize limited edition) on a black background.

Evidence of Song Licensing

Post Punk & Codes and Conventions of Post Punk

Post Punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental. Post-punk laid the groundwork for alternative rock by broadening the range of punk and underground music, incorporating elements of Krautrock (particularly the use of synthesizers and extensive repetition), Jamaican dub music (specifically in bass guitar), American funk, studio experimentation, and even punk's traditional polar opposite, disco, into the genre.



I will look a range of Post Punk band's music videos and look at the different codes and conventions.

Fellow group member Jonny has also looked at a few other videos on his C+C post 

Joy Divison - Love Will Tear Us Apart



Performance Video

• Starts off with a POV shot of someone walking up some stairs. Some cutting of footage on the beat.
• Once in the room the rest of the video is your average performance video with close ups on equipment and that.

Echo & The Bunnyman - Under The Killing Moon

• Performance video with hints of concept
• Imagery of moons and stars and different planets
• Recurring shot of cloth blowing in the wind.
• Performance mainly focus on lead singer for most of song of him performing, framing of just his face with a constant swinging light bulb lighting up his face.
• Dark mood and setting

The Human League - Don't You Want Me?

• Narrative / Performance
• Story follows a male and female character who are starring in a film, preferred reading i believe is that the male character likes the female character but not visa vera and he is singing "Don't you want me baby"
• Shots at start make you think that the music video is the film being filmed in the video (thet's being filmed in the music video) Confusing? Yeah i know. But after a while it zooms out to reveal that its just a film set.
• All set at night to create a atmosphere.

New Model Army - 51st State

• Performance video
• Shots of singer with guitar playing and singing
• Then shots from a concert of a audience dancing around.
• Simples

Sonic Youth - The Empty Page

• A variety of shots from around a gig, such as the audience, band meeting fans, signing goods and playing at the show
• Some shots recorded away from show and added
• Some titles flash up of the name of the song at parts of the song.

ConclusionHaving looked at videos of the post-punk genre, I can begin to suggest certain codes and conventions that most of the videos include. So far I have found:
- A lot of the videos are performance or concept based. Many combine the two in some manner.
- There is a lot of use of flashing imagery.
- Multi-layering is also used very often as is cross-fade transitions.
- Whilst the videos often use slow paced imagery, quick cutaways to close ups are used to keep the video flowing.
- Locations used are generally run-down or urban.
- Use of colour filters, especially black and white.
- Lots of camera movement to help keep the visuals interesting.
- Some sort of motif or theme is repeated through the video. This can sometimes link to the lyrics.
- An emphasise on the cold and dark to signify the mood of the band. Characters often seem very deadpan.

Censorship

Censorship is a big issue in Music Video. 

Quoted from Wikiepedia "As the concept and medium of a music video is a form of artistic expression, artists have been on many occasions censored if their content is deemed offensive. What may be considered offensive will differ in countries due to censorship laws and local customs and ethics. In most cases, the record label will provide and distribute videos edited or provide both censored and uncensored videos for an artist. In some cases, it has been known for music videos to be banned in their entirety as they have been deemed far too offensive to be broadcast."



They has been a lot of controversy over the censorship of music videos with people asking questions such as "Is that really necessary?". Blurring out a image of a naked person may be needed on day time TV but is it needed to bleep out words such as Gun?

 Videos that need censoring can be changed in a few ways.


1. Quite often a video that is too explicit to be show on day time TV may just be moved to be shown on a late night TV slot. This happened with Cher's If I Could Turn Back Time which was banned due to her performing wearing very revealing clothes on a ship full of sailors.




2. Quite often a video and song is changed so it can be shown. Sometimes words are changed such as the song "We are all on drugs" By Weezer where the song was changed to "We are all in love". And sometimes videos are re filmed but a version that won't be censored. Below is the rerecorded version of the song with the original video. If you look closely you can notice that the singing is all out of time with the track.

Weezer




3. Sometimes the videos are banned all together and the Artist doesn't attempt to re release a video.

• Before when MTV was the only place to watch music videos, if a video you wanted to see was banned they you wouldn't get to see it. These days through the Internet and such websites such as YouTube anyone can watch banned material.

The band i am producing a music video for do not have any censored music videos.

Joy Division - History, Genre and Music Videos

History                                         


Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis (vocals and occasional guitar), Bernard Sumner (guitar and keyboards), Peter Hook (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Stephen Morris (drums and percussion).


The bands history is a long and interesting one.

• On the 21st of July 1976 Terry Manson, Sumner and Hook started a bank and placed a ad for a vocalist, Ian responded and was hired without audition.
• They played their first gig under the name Warsaw on the 29th May 1977 in support of Buzzcocks, which The band received national exposure due to reviews of the gig in the NME.
• After going through another two drummers in August 1977 they placed a ad in a local newsagent looking for a new drummer in which Stephen Morris responded, With this addition Warsaw become a "complete family" and decided to change their name to avoid confusion with London punk band Warsaw Pakt and renamed themselves Joy Division.
• Billed as Warsaw to ensure an audience, the band played their first gig as Joy Division on 25 January 1978 at Pip's Disco in Manchester.

• From here Joy Division went from strength to strength touring and writing two albums "Unknown Pleasures (1979 through Factory Records)" and Closer (1980 also through Factory Records at first) though this was released after a major event in Joy Division's short life span. In this time they also released some major singles such as "Love Will Tear Us Apart" which was named NME's top single of all time in 2002.

• From here things started to go downhill, During January 1980 during touring Curtis found out that touring was becoming a problem and he suffered two breakdowns and was diagnoses as having epilepsy. He then managed to recorded Closer but lack of sleep and long hours destabilised Curtis's epilepsy and his seizures became almost uncontrollable.
• The band tried to continue with touring but Ian's illness was uncrontroable and he often had seizures during shows which left him depressed and ashamed. This led to Ian attempting suicide by overdose on the 7th April.
• Joy Division were due to begin their first American tour in May 1980. Ian feigned excitement about the tour around the band because he did not want to disappoint his band mates or Factory Records
•  At the time, Curtis's relationship with his wife, Deborah Curtis was collapsing. Contributing factors were his ill health, her being mostly excluded from his life with the band, and his relationship with a young Belgian woman named Annik Honoré whom he had met on a European tour.
•  The evening before Joy Division were to embark on the American tour, Curtis returned to his home in Macclesfield in order to talk to his estranged wife. He asked her to drop the divorce suit she had filed; later, he told her to leave him alone in the house until he caught his train to Manchester the next morning. Early on the morning of 18 May 1980, Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen.

• The aftermath of Ian's death had its ups and downs, Factory Records released their single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" which hit 13 of the Uk singles charts and "Closer" which peaked at 6th on the UK albums chart.
• The members of Joy Division had made a pact long before Curtis's death that, should any member leave, the remaining members would change the name of the group and with that, started a new band "New Order" which went on to achieve commercial success.

Genre

• Joy Division managed to progress their sound throughout their career. At the start when they were still named Warsaw they were classified as "fairly undistinguished punk-inflected hard-rock".
• Critic Simon Reynolds asserted that "Joy Division's originality really became apparent as the songs got slower." The group's music took on a "sparse" quality.
• Sumner described the band's characteristic sound in 1994: "It came out naturally: I'm more rhythm and chords, and Hooky was melody. He used to play high lead bass because I liked my guitar to sound distorted, and the amplifier I had would only work when it was at full volume. When Hooky played low, he couldn't hear himself. Steve has his own style which is different to other drummers. To me, a drummer in the band is the clock, but Steve wouldn't be the clock, because he's passive: he would follow the rhythm of the band, which gave us our own edge."^[Over time, Ian Curtis began to sing in a low, baritone voice, which often drew comparisons to Jim Morrison of The Doors (one of Curtis's favourite bands). - Quoted from Wikipedia.
• During the recording sessions for Closer, Sumner began using self-built synthesizers and Hook used a six-string bass for more melody.
• Producer Martin Hannett "dedicated himself to capturing and intensifying Joy Division's eerie spatiality.
• In the end they were classified as Post Punk but people argue that they really had their own musical style.

- Similar bands in terms of style and sound are Human League, when they still had band members Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory and The Sound also New Order though New Order is all the members of JD except from Ian Curtis.

Below is a song by The Sound.



Music Videos

Joy Division were around during the early wave of music videos, Only two official music videos were produced by the band and their record label with a lot of fan videos and live performance videos released on a series of formats such as live DVD's and Youtube videos.





So far JD has only released a video for their songs "Atmosphere" which was directed by Anton Corbijn and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" which was directed by the band themselves.

These are link's to the video for Love Will Tear Us Apart  embedding is disabled for the video.






Both these videos are quite different as one is a performance video and the other is a concept video.

• Love Will Tear Us Apart - This video features a opening of a POV shot of someone walking up some stairs to a door, a hand opens the door from the other side and the door jumps between opening and closing as well as the colour changes from red to white. After this the rest of the video is a simple performance video focusing mainly on the different band members with close ups of instruments. They is a part in the video where the colour go brown, though the band released that this wasn't intentional and was a problem with the footage.
• Atmosphere - This video i shot entirely in black and white and is a concept video. It is a series of shots of different events that don't seem to relate to the lyrics at all. It follows a group of monds with robes coloured black and white, at some points it looks like they are children in the robes. They are a few shots of the band but are only stills and at some points these stills are embossed on black objects carried by people. 
• This is a extract from the book "Money for Nothing" by Saul Austerlitz. "Corbijn's mystical side found a fitting client in the mournful posthumous video he shot for Joy Division's "Atmosphere" in 1988. In a landscape of dead trees and heavy shadows, the remaining members of the group watch as diminutive monks trudge through the desert, marching in packs while bearing their burdens through the still wilderness. the monks carry large-then-life photographs of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis (Who committed suicide in 1980). "Atmosphere" is a belated funeral procession, its medieval religious feeling a fitting tribute to the austerity and high moral purpose of post punk heroes Joy Division. Curtis is designated a monk of pain himself there, trudging through the desert of whos own aching psyche, and the relative disparity in size between Curtis and those who honor him is no accident; by "Atmosphere's" dint, Curtis was a giant among midgets"

Second Idea - Joy Division - Disorder - Brainstorming

From the band Joy Division, they were two different songs we looked at.

Disorder  
New Dawn Fades 


We wanted to create a concept idea and after listening to both songs and thinking of ideas we decided to work on Disorder.

Our first idea for the song

The idea is based on someone recovering from a drug addiction using the cold turkey method.

• A person stumbles out of his house and walks down a street, receiving weird looks from passing people who give him a wide berth. 
• During him walking down the street, the camera will cut to isolated locations such as Ilkley Moor, Bluebell woods and Malham Cove.
• They will be uses of extreme closes up of the character showing him sweating and shaking because of him recovering from the addiction, as well as extreme long shots at the isolated locations to further the sense of isolation.
• Uses of POV Shots
• Constant fast jumpy footage
• Possible use Fish eye lens shots, Grey Scale and Colour filters.
• A idea for the end of the video is the camera cutting to Malham Cove because its extremely desolate and after this shot cutting back to the character who is collapsed on a bench.

More Ideas

• Diegetic opening without music, of character getting up with close ups of him sweating to show his health problems

Films to watch for inspiration, 

• Cold Turkey scene from Trainspotting
• Requiem for a dream

Below are the lyrics to the song.

The lyrics are about a man with epilepsy.

Joy Division