Alex Snowden (2017) A2 Advanced Portfolio

American Beauty/ American Psycho is the sixth studio album from American rock band Fall Out Boy released on January 16th 2015. The cover of the album conforms to the the typical conventions of rock album covers as the band is not featured on the cover. This is usually because the band wants the audience to focus on the music and the meanings of the songs rather than the appearance of the band. The imagery on the front cover of the album is a young boy wearing a blue and black vest in front of a house. The dark/ punk face paint on the boys face creates symbolism with his face only being half painted with stars and stripes (similar to that on the American flag) which links to the name of the album 'American Beauty/ American Psycho'. This type of face paint often associated with rock/ punk music.The boys expressionless face and dark clothing also adds to the dark atmosphere of the album as these are often associated with rock music. The text used on the front cover of the alb...

The music video is semi-performance, semi-narrative with the music video following the narrative told by the lyrics of the song. The lyrics and the video tell the story of a young woman being poisoned by her lover. There is no diegetic sound in the music video so the audience has to listen to the lyrics of the song to understand what is going on. The music video is slightly performanc e based as we also see the lead singer singing the song throughout . Each of the members of the band play one of the fict ional characters in the narrative with the lead singer playing the murdered woman. The music video starts with multiple establishing shots to set the scene and to show the audience what is happening and where the story is set. Before the singing starts, we are introduced to two of the characters as we see a man in a suit with the name of the band and the title of the song being shown with the man. We are also introduced to the murdered woman who is laying face down in t...

One Page Pitch Song : Young and Menace – Fall Out Boy Genre : Alternative/ Indie Initial Ideas Half performance/ half narrative Fast editing during the chorus Complex editing during the chorus– lots of distortion 4 people (Singer/ guitarist, bassist, drummer) (MC, 3 other people) Narrative : Main Character (MC) wakes up in apartment at night, then goes outside and walks down the street, walking past people. We see that the MC is hallucinating with the people walking down the street swapping between masked and unmasked faces. MC gets more and more paranoid and runs back to his apartment, finds mask in the bathroom and puts it on and the camera cuts to black. Locations ‘Stage' set up Apartment Street/ Town? Audience The song itself is quite modern and would appeal to a younger demographic, the genre of this song is electronic/ alternative which is more popular with younger people and therefore would mostly appeal to people in the age range 18-24 Compa...