Who Is Iann Dior?

Formation/History: 

Iann Dior, Michael Ian Olmo, is a Puerto Rico-born emo-rap artist with over 16 million monthly listeners on Spotify, as of 2nd March. Dior is signed to TenThousand Records and has released 4 albums under this label: "nothings ever good enough" (2019), "Industry Plan" (2019), "I'm Gone" (2020) and "On To Better Things" (2022). Some of his hit songs include "Emotions", with 276 million streams on Spotify, and "gone girl", with 238 million streams on Spotify, (Spotify, 2022). He also features in "Mood" by 24kgoldn which has 1.3 billion streams on Spotify (Spotify, 2022). From what I know, he began releasing music in 2017 under Olmo and then the stage name Lil Rock. Sadly, much of Dior's rise to fame has been blurred after signing to Internet Money Records, before signing with TenThousand Records in April 2019 (Genius, n.d.).

Exclusive Trait:

Iann Dior's main exclusive trait is his music genre and personal sound. It's very unique with the rap lyrics and trap drums which have allowed him to gain a lot of attention from big names very quickly, collaborating with big names such as Travis Barker, Lil Uzi Vert and Machine Gun Kelly.

Music Focus:

Ian Dior mainly focuses on relationship issues, anxiety and obtrusive thoughts. I can't really place him fully in 1 genre as he is very talented with not staying in one genre as he has proven with songs like "Mood" and "Fake Love don't last", fitting more into hip-hop and pop-punk genres respectively. I would say that his music sounds similar to The Kid Laroi as well as the late Juice WRLD. In an interview with NME, he even said "I would say I'm picking up where Juice Wrld left off".

Music Focus: Example Song - "Let You":

"Let You" was the first single to be released off of Dior's newest Album "On To Better Things", formerly known as "Nothings ever good enough 2". The song is upbeat and is about a troubling relationship he is struggling to leave in the past. I'd put this song as a combination of genres as it doesn't necessarily fit in just one with them being alt-rock and hip-hop. The first verse is very powerful to me "They say a girl has a gun, but don't tempt me, 'Cause I'm taking a chance, put the gun in my hands, Playing Russian Roulette 'til she's empty, No, no, I don't wanna die young, Don't wanna die young and hopeless" and when I listen to this I interpret it as the Iann Dior is saying that the relationship is toxic and that it's almost like suicide, he wants to stay but for his own good he can't. I found this song just after a break-up dealing with stuff like this so the song has a special place in my heart as I have been in this situation.

Music Video Analysis

iann dior - emotions

For my first music video analysis, I have chosen to analyse "emotions' by iann dior as I thought it would be a good idea to look at his most popular music video. The song is about a broken relationship and the outcome of that. It is a performance-based video with no narrative, but it is also slightly an interpretive video with the car. This is because it links to the lyric "I drove her away with my emotions". The music video uses a mixture of live-action and animation, in the second verse, which makes it quite unique, at least to me as I haven't seen a music video like that before. It also uses an effect like the neon lights that I have tried before and does foreshadow the animation part, in a way.

One of the main things I was looking at in this video was the camera angles and the way it was shot. I noticed very few shots were static and all included some movement from the camera, when in the live-action parts of the video. For tracking shots, there was a combination of dolly, pan and truck shots. I also really like the small neon light animations, that I mentioned previously, used in some movements and I think it is a really cool idea that I would like to explore for my music video. The location used looks like a flat savanna at sunset and looks really nice and calm which fits the tone of the song. The green and black clothing work really well to contrast with the background and makes them both stand out. Logan Meis, the music video's director, has used the ultra-wide, 21:9, aspect ratio which allows for very cinematic shots.

State Champs - Everybody But You ft Ben Barlow

For my second analysis, I have chosen to do "Everybody But You" by State Champs, featuring Ben Barlow, as it is a breakup song too. What makes it even more relevant is the fact it's from the guy's perspective and cuts between the narrative and performance-based part of the music video. The main idea of the video is that the couple breaks up at the start and they throw your typical high school party with everyone invited but her.

The music video uses a 3:4 aspect ratio along with a slightly washed-out colour palette to give a vintage VHS effect, while keeping the high quality of 1080p, to music video, possibly to make the viewer reminisce of the "gold old days" of the 90's when the pop-punk genre was at its initial peak. This washed-out effect really works to make bold colours stand out even more, like the party flyers they hand out and a lot of the clothing. The parallel editing for this video worked really well, mixing the singing in the printer shop, to the mall scenes to the house party. I really liked the use of handheld shots and speeding some less important shots up. I think they really work to include the viewer and feel more like a video someone might take at the party rather than a static shot from a tripod. For the verse that featured Ben Barlow, they uses a phone with him on FaceTime which I thought was really cool and different. I'm guessing he had other commitments during the time of recording so they did this to keep him in the video but it was unique, at least to me as I haven't seen this be done before. Another thing I noticed was that there was no external audio other than the dialogue at the start

Avril Lavigne - Bite Me

"Bite Me" is Avril Lavigne's hit single off her newest album "Love Sux" with this music video being directed by Hannah Lux Davis. I have chosen to look at this music video because it is also a breakup song which is a performance and narrative-based mixture. Coincidentally it also has Travis Barker in, who drums in a few of the songs in Iann Dior's newest album. 

The song and video are about Avril breaking into her ex-boyfriend's house and giving him a piece of her mind, as she says in her breakdown video of the song. The song is about female empowerment, self-worth and standing up for yourself. 

What I think is really cool about this music video is that it combines slow-motion shots with fast-paced cuts to piece it all together. The video goes for a retro/homemade feel and one of the ways this was created was with the static shots. I believe this would've been filmed on a tripod and they have moved it around and zoomed in and out at points throughout the music video, which works really well, to be honest. Also, the music video was shot on film to enhance its visual look and tone. The performance-based parts of the video use mainly close and mid shots of Avril whereas the more narrative-based parts use wider and longer shots, in comparison. The narrative-based parts also contain multiple slow-motion shots, unlike the performance-based parts which are all at normal speed.

Olivia Rodrigo - drivers license

Drivers license was Olivia's first single and third track off of her first album "Sour" with the music video being directed by Matthew Dillion Cohen. The song and music video are about moving on from a past relationship and the girl is doing the last thing she promised to her ex, getting her driver's license. This links well to my song as it also deals with relationships but the main reason I have chosen to analyse this video was the same mixture of performance as well as narrative. I was actually recommended this song by a friend at work after telling them my idea and suggested I look at this video, hence why this is being analysed a month after the other 3 videos. 

Cohen uses a mixture of static and moving shots, with the main 3 being pan, dolly and ariel drone shots. This combination works really well and I will try and do the same in my video, especially with the new addition of the gimbal at college which I will hopefully be able to use. The shots are very stylistic with prominent use of lights and projectors in the music video, as well as the colour purple, being heavily used too.

In the "behind the scenes" video, Olivia Rodrigo says the idea for the video was "Teenage heartbreak in the suburbs". I think this is a good way to describe what they achieved with the video and this is mainly due to the locations used with the outside shots on the road to the suburban house used in some shots too it works really well. This is one of the main elements I also plan to do and I will take some inspiration from what they did.

Inspiration for Behind The Scenes With Sam

What is a Music Video

A music video is generally a 2-4 minute film that integrates visual elements and a song to create a promotional video for a song or album. Other purposes of a music video are to build up a positive reputation for the artist, to tie in with a film, or for the filmmaker to create a piece of art. Some unique music videos I like are Take on Me by A-ha (for using mixed media), Mars by Yungblud (promotes strong messages about transgender rights) and Home by Machine Gun Kelly, Ambassadors and Bebe Rexha (this ties into the Netflix film Bright).

The history of music videos

Bands like The Beetles created short films to accompany their songs which started the idea of music videos before coming more popular in the late 70s when TVs became more common. TV shows like Top of the Pops and channels like MTV were quite popular for showcasing music videos back in the day. Bands were also often on tour and couldn't always appear in the studio to perform so it became an alternative method to advertise the song. They used to be more of an afterthought with a more DIY approach just as an extra way to promote a song but since the rise of MTV, the videos gained larger production budgets. There has also been a rise in directors that specialise in filming music videos like Spike Jonze (Adam Spiegel) who directed one of my favourite music videos Sabotage by Beastie Boys in the mid-'90s. During the 2000s, MTV transitioned into reality tv but due to the rise in YouTube and other social media platforms, music videos have become the norm for all musicians with the most popular music video on the platform being Despacito by Luis Fonsi ft Daddy Yankee with over 7 billion views.

Styles of music videos

Performance-based

These videos usually show the band performing the song with no narrative. It's normally filmed while on tour or in an isolated location. It normally uses a couple of different angles and cutaways. This will be one of the main styles of influence within my music video where Sam will lip sync to the song in different locations

Narrative-based

This is the opposite of a performance video and generally tells a storyline normally a short story with 3 act structure. The band would likely appear as characters performing at some point within the video. I will also take heavy influence from narrative-based music videos with the breakup story line that I want to implement in my video.

Interpretive

An interpretive style music video uses the lyrics from the song and portrays the visually. It makes the videos quite interesting as well as being quite literal, with less deep meanings as the visuals are telling the viewer what to think. I would also link my video style to take influence from this as the visuals are about a breakup and the lyrics even say "I let you".

Animated

This style uses a different media to create a video compared to the others it allows the creator more freedom as they aren't limited in the same ways as a live-action video is. The video has 2 main methods of creation with the first being stop motion (where the animation is created one frame at a time using photos) and the other being CGI (computer-generated imagery).

Surrealist

Surrealism was an artistic movement most popular after the first world war which focuses on warped proportions. It's a really creative art style which embraced chaos and unobtainable desires. Salvador Dali and Picasso were the most popular artist to use this style back in the 1920s. For music videos the same idea is applied to create an unsettling and strange work different to ours.

Pastiche

A pastiche video is where the film maker has decided to imitate another form of media but in a light-hearted and respectful manner. An example of this is the use of scenes from Falling Down being recreated in the Foo Fighters music video for their song Walk. 

Parody

Parodies are used to make fun of its source material and doesn't take itself too seriously. One of my favourite spoofs is All the small things by Blink 182 which pokes fun at boybands and their music videos.

Homage

An homage is very similar to a pastiche as it also imitates another piece of work however, it is used to pay respect or tribute to the original piece of media. I struggled to find an example that relates to music that I like but I found this. When Twenty One Pilots first started releasing music they were known for wearing balaclavas but over the years it was faded out other than for sections of their live shows until they reappeared in their recent single Shy Away and it shows them paying respect to their original route and success.

Editing Styles in Music Videos

Fast Paced & Slow Paced

This is the speed that video is paced at with fast paced using lots of shots and slow paced using fewer shots. It works well with music videos to link the amount of shots to the speed of the song. A good example of this in use is The Pretender where it mixed longer shots at the start and then when to drums start and the song speeds up the shots become a lot shorter. 

Jump Cuts

Jump cutting is an editing style which is where a section of the shot is cut out and the shot 'jumps" between the two sections when played.

Parallel Editing

This editing technique is where 2 or more different narratives are cut between each other. The different narratives generally take place in different locations at the same time. For example, "Happy" by Pharrell Williams which uses the same shot of people walking down a road with them singing the lyrics. 

Camera Movement

Camera movement is quite important within music videos as it can look a bit boring with too many static shots. Here is an image below with all the different types of movements with the most common being dolly, pan, and truck. You can also use the lens to zoom in or out, this could also be created digitally as well. The music video for "Flames" by Mod Sun ft Avril Lavigne uses a lot of these camera movements, for example, from 0:00 to 0:35 there is a dolly shot that goes back and forth and from 0:41 and 0:46 there is a truck shot. This helps to show both artists during the duet while also keeping the video visually interesting with the unique movements. My one problem with this video is that it almost feels like the is too much movement and some shots could have been static for more variety.

Diegetic & Non-Diegetic Sound

Diegetic sound is everything in the music video's world that can be heard by the characters for example dialogue, gunshots, and cars. Non-diegetic sound is the opposite so it can only be heard by the viewer watching the music video, for example, a narration. Depending on the type of music video the song could be either. In performance-based videos, the song would generally be diegetic. Whereas, in a narrative-based video, the music would likely be non-diegetic as the music would be like a narration.

Colour theory and its use within music videos

Colour theory is the idea that certain colours work better together than others. This uses the colour wheel which uses the primary colours, secondary colours and tertiary colours. There are different combinations that work well together:

- Monochromatic is the use of one colour and the variation of the saturation and value. This is good as they are always going to match.

- Analogous is when two colours that are next to each other are used for example red and orange or blue and green

- Complementary colours are two colours that are opposite each other on the wheel like red and green or orange and blue.

- Split Complementary colours is the use of three colours in a triangle like red blue and green. I like this as it gives more colours to use with the same amount of contrast and potentially more unique results.

- The triadic formula is using three colours, again, but they are all evenly spaced apart, for example, orange, green and purple. However, these combinations can be very bold and don't always give the same results as the others do.

- Tetradic colours uses two complementary colour pairs together like blue, yellow, orange and purple. This group works best if there is the main colour and the other three are used as accent colours.

These are just supposed to be starting points and not strict rules to follow. And most colour pallets work well together if you use the best hues and values to give a contrast.

I have used shutter stock to find a colour palette and I matched it with the music video for Saturday by Twenty One Pilots. It uses a blue colour palette which makes it feel calm and cold. It also uses brighter colours like pink and yellow which work really well as accents and feel really vibrant when it contrasts to the cool blues used.

Marketing for music videos on social media

One of the parts of my project will be promoting my music video on social media. I will look at 3 artists on how they have promoted their music videos and will create a plan for how I will market mine.

iann dior

I thought the first artist to look at for music video promotion should be the artist that I'm creating a music video for. This was quite hard as he has deleted all of his social media posts before the start of the "On To Better Things" era. This has meant I can only look at 2 music video promotions "Complicate it" and "Let You". These posts seem very professional and straight to the point. We get one behind the scenes post on the YouTube community tab, which no one really uses, and just "Out now!" posts. I don't really like this promotion style and I would definitely try to connect to the fans more with my promotion but I do like the "BTS" post and I will do that too.

Machine Gun Kelly

I looked at Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for how MGK promotes his music videos and to me, it seems very personal, like he controls it. I really like this as a lot of promotional posts can feel very corporate whereas his posts seem to be like he is talking to us, the fans. Some of the posts feel random rather than strategically planned. I'm sure he does have a team that manages his social media but to me, it feels like him posting rather than a random social media manager, which is good. Obviously, he does put posts out saying "go check this out" as well as he has done for all his videos, at least for his new album "Mainstream Sellout" which is where I focused my research, but there isn't a massive campaign to promote his videos.

Mod Sun

Mod Sun's promotional content is probably the best out of the 3 artists I have researched as he is the most active on social media. He is constantly posting video stories with updates on his upcoming projects as well as his life. On top of this he replies to nearly every comment which builds the artist to fan connection. He feels like the most genuine out of the 3 with him saying in multiple interviews that I have seen in the past (sorry no source) saying that he runs the social media pages. When it comes to music video promotions he is constantly promoting it with sneak peeks and previewing sections of the video on his social pages. 

Filmmaker Research

 Cole Baker

Cole Bennett is an American music video director, editor and founder of Lyrical Lemonade, a multi-media company that focuses on interviews and music videos. Under Lyrical Lemonade, he released 20 music videos in 2021 (www.youtube.com, n.d.). The 25-year-old started by directing music videos for local Chicago rappers, Vic Mensa and Taylor Bennett before his major success with directing "Lucid Dreams" by the late Juice WRLD in 2018, which reached number 2 in the Billboard Hot 10 and it earned 793 million views on YouTube. Following this, he also worked with artists such as Eminem, Machine gun Kelly and The Kid LAROI.

One of the coolest things I like about him is the fact he directs and edits all of his music videos. He is known for his "run and gun" production style, which basically means the team is smaller than normal and they're on a tight schedule and they all have to do multiple roles. I think that it's one of the main things that inspire me with my production as I don't have the time to spend weeks filming or a large crew so it will be the same as his stuff, just on a smaller scale. The fact he uses this style and has gained a large following and reputation helps me to believe I can do well and not think everything has to be perfect. He is also known for his animations and trippy effects which I don't think I will take as inspiration for my video but they do work well for his videos. 

After watching some of his earliest music videos and comparing them to his newest stuff, the main thing that has stayed the same is that he likes to focus on the edits and effects. I'm not a massive fan of the song but the editing and effects used in the song look really cool, obviously he has improved a lot in the 9 years. The main thing that has changed is the budget as he's become more popular and credible he's gained investments that would've been put into new equipment and larger crews for filming. As mentioned these are not the types of videos I want to take inspiration from, these are just the newest and oldest music videos by him that I can find.

Some of the music videos I like and will take small inspiration from are "So Done" and "Tell Me Why" by The Kid LAROI. I like these 2 in particular for the performance-based sections as it uses the same style that I will do, where he's singing out in the open.

Spike Jonze

Adam Speigel, professionally known as Spike Jonze, is a big music video director who worked in the music video industry from 1992 to 2019. He has worked with some really popular '90s bands including The Beastie Boys, Weezer and Fatboy Slim. 3 of his most popular music videos included "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys which was a '70s cop show parody with the band members becoming the "characters", "Buddy Holly" by Weezer where they performed on the "Happy Days' set and used clips from the show and "Praise You" by Fatboy Slim which used a guerilla-style in front of a cinema on a really small budget reported to only be around $800 and won 3 MTV awards in 1999 for "Best Breakthrough", "Best Director" and "Best Choreography".

I think one of the things that stands out to me about Jonze is his portfolio of different mediums. He started off as a photographer for extreme sports magazines as well as documentaries, music videos and feature films. I'm unsure what I want to do in the future within the creative media industry and I'm trying to build a portfolio in different mediums for example the photography that I do in my spare time in addition to the work I do at college. His influence on me isn’t necessarily his style, but more the fact that he was one of the first big music video directors. His talent in the music video industry allowed music videos, in general, to become popular and to a point where all bands create music videos now.

Wez Anderson

Wes Anderson is an American film director who is known for directing films such as Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012). The Grand Budapest Hotel was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 4 including Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, and Best Original Score. He was also nominated for Best Director. 

Anderson has a very distinct style which I loved as it makes his films look like amazing pieces of art, they look like I could take a screenshot of almost any scene and hang it up on my wall. His style includes the use of symmetry, great set design (rather than onsite filming) and an exaggerated colour palette. He also uses a lot of mid shots of characters, which isn't necessarily something that only he does but his use of it works the best with the other parts of his style mentioned before. I will take inspiration from his use of symmetry for my music video as I want to make my shots as visually interesting as possible. As there is no dialogue I have to show everything through the visuals so the acting will be exaggerated as well as the importance of making sure each shot looks great. 

More Influences and Inspiration 

Initially, I was going to use social media as the reason Sam finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him but I can't think of a good way to show it visually so I have chosen to use this text bubble animation instead. It has been used in many shows and films recently including Sex Education, House of Cards and Good Mourning.

In my music video, the performance elements will include Sam holding a mic and an amp. I'm not necessarily trying to take this idea as I thought I was being quite original with this but by coincidence, Lovejoy has also used this concept so I will be using this as inspiration.

As a subtle nod to my original music video in this course, I will be re-using this location for a few shots as Sam reminisces about his relations.

Research Evaluation

Here is the summary of all my research. It was all pretty useful as I have looked into directors and other music videos to gather inspiration and more ideas for me to put into my music video. The least useful information was on a directed by the name Mooch who has previously directed a lot of Juice WRLD and iann dior music videos but there is little to nothing known about him other than the music videos he has directed. I think the most useful information I have learnt about is the styles and conventions of music videos, the Wes Anderson research and the iann dior research. The information learned about music videos has definitely helped to define what I want to create as well as learn what is needed to create a video visually. I will take lots of inspiration visually from Wes Anderson as I love the visuals within his films as they feel very different and distinctive. Finally, it was good to research iann dior to understand more about him as an artist as well as look at his other music videos and how mine can link to his other work.