Music Video analysis

In  3-4 minutes a typical music video combines  a mix of live performance, narrative, and other visual imagery including computer graphics and animation.

•It does this to advertise the band/artist and song

–Promotes a single and, normally, an album

– Promotes the  artist or band

– Creates, adapts or feeds into a ‘star image’

– Entertains the audience

– Sets the ‘meanings’ of a song  by the use of images

Often contains a number of different elements:

– Performance

– Narrative

– Thematic

– Symbolic  

Often contain shots of the artists performing

•Can be a live stage performance, with shots of artists and audience

•Can be the artists in “real life” situations eg warming up, talking, fooling around

•Often includes lots of close ups of the artist and there can be a particular visual style that goes with the artist (a motif) eg particular clothing, actions, props, type of images.

•Often the artist can appear to perform in an unusual place - all lip-synched  eg a field, a rooftop 

• Features images of the band interacting with their audience
• Everyday setting of a street/barber shop 
• direct address 
• No clear narrative 

  

Music Videos may be considered to be examples of 'spectacle'.

•In this the performers are performing, often looking directly at the viewer.  This is called “direct address” -where they are directly interacting with the viewer.  

• This video unlike the Miley Cyrus video is not overtly sexual 
• includes direct address 
• close ups shots show emotion 

Often the video tells a story either that features in the lyrics or is suggested in the lyrics eg girl dumps boy

•This narrative can be like a Mini film, with a beginning, middle and end

•Or it can suggest some links to a story

•It can promote a film with clips from the film included telling a story 

 

There are lots of common themes in music videos

•Depends on the genre of music

•e.g. Heavy metal bands go for performance dominated clips

  Rap has lots of “street” images

  dance routines are common for  many female artist performances 

Use of lots of symbols to build up meaning e.g. graveyard…death

•Lots of use of montage -lots of images to create meaning sometimes often contradictory

•Lighting often used to suggest mood

•Fast paced - often only a few seconds per shot to build up meanings

Use of lots of symbols to build up meaning e.g. graveyard…death Lots of use of montage -lots of images to create meaning sometimes often contradictory Lighting often used to suggest mood Fast paced - often only a few seconds per shot to build up meanings Pictures can support or contradict the lyrics

•Pictures can support or contradict the lyrics

Film trailer ideas

1.A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with two of the following three options:

–a website homepage for the film

–a film magazine front cover, featuring the film

–a poster for the film. 

Film trailer ideas from ryangriffiths1999

I have chosen to not pursue the idea of a film trailer within my coursework for A2 as within AS I have looked at producing my own film opening/trailer for a film of the horror genre. Therefore I feel as if I am comfortable with this format of creating a video and therefore I would like to step outside of this comfort zone and experiment with other fields such as advertising and/or music videos.

Music video ideas

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

–a website homepage for the band

–a digipak for the album’s release

–a magazine advertisement for the digipak. 

This media text was particularly good due to its use of cinematography and synchronous sound which ensured that the editing of the video matched the rhythm of the song that was being used for non-diegetic sound. This video also had the use of specialist props such as smoke bombs and other special effects including colour treatment which has allowed this video to appear to be cinematic and have smooth camera work so the video appears to have been produced by a studio 

This media text was effective due to its editing being synced with the beat of the song. This video also used multiple locations and actors who all contributed to the continuity of this video by wearing similar costumes. This video also has an open narrative as the audience does not know what could possibly happen within the next frame of the video. This video also conforms to Ann Gould;s representation of youth by showing this group of young people being a part of an artificial tribe and being nihilistic as they are shown to be consuming alcohol and tobacco. Within the video we see tracking shots used to show the movement of the characters throughout the video. We also saw jump cuts being used to show the characters moving from one place to another.

Ann Gould - The characters are shown to be self destructive throughout by the consumption of alcohol and tobacco
Philo- The characters who are young adults are shown to be being antisocial within a space that is designed for young children and becoming nuisances
J Butler- Gender norms are challenged by including a kiss between two females and the presence of an LGBT+ pride flag
Youth are also represented within the two extremes of either being fun or troublesome and there being no in-between







I have decided to pursue the idea of music videos because I feel as if they are very broad and have lots of different sub genres and conventions that these texts can either conform to or subvert. I am particulary attracted to the idea of symbolic and thematic videos as I am a very analytical person and like to find deeper meanings within things and therefore would hope to use barthes enigma codes within my final video.
we have not chosen to do either a advertisement or film trailer because we have previously filmed a film trailer/ opening for our AS practical task and we did not want to be repeating this as we felt as if the final product may come out as too similar to this piece of work. We did not choose an advertisement because we felt that it is too short for us to include everything in regards to cinematography and other aspects of mise-en-scene within the 30 second to one minute time span of an advertisement, it also limits us as we cannot present a larger symbol or idea as most adverts have to be concise in what they are advertising, meanwhile music videos are more ambitious and are able to show our creativity and use of cinematography across the entire narrative of the video.


FINAL IDEAS