White Rabbit Rough Edit With Commentery Task 2.6

Assignment Introduction

I have been commisioned to create a Blog to show the understanding the purpose of music videos and the styles, conventions and techniques of music videos.

Up to now i know what the three types of music videos are:

Performance which is where the video shows the band/singer(s) peforming the song as it is being sung.

an example is time is running out by muse:

Narrative based is a video that is connected to the lyrics of the song and is essentially a short film with music.

An example is how to love by lil wayne :

And finally a concept based video can be anything, could be totally random and unrelated to the lyrics of the song,

An example is Breathe by the prodigy

Conventions Of A Music Video

Conventions of a music video

Music videos tend to have alot of long shots mid shots and close-ups to create emphasis on the artist, location or emotion alot of times a close-up is used to show the artists lips saying the lyrics to song as there being played.

Camera Shots

Camera shots are usually used to follow the artist or band moving around the location, popular camera shots are: Crane shot, tracking, tilts and pans.

Close ups in music videos can be used for a bunch of reasons the main one being to create importance and focus on a certain object or person, this shot can be used to create emotion also for example if in a sad music video you may get a close up of someone crying etc.

A Crane Shot is when a camera is mounted on a crane and can be used to get aerial shots and zooming in and out from far away an interesting shot that can build tension and get alot of the scenery and whats happening in one shot.

Mise en scene

Mise en scene is basically enviroment, the arrangement of the performers involved and the props that have been used in the video, Mise en scene puts importance on the representation of something in the music video, an example of this is Roll Up by Wiz Kalifa where someone in the video is using a certain type of phone using a certain website this has been done on purpose and is called product placement which can be seen in alot of music videos nowadays as it is a way of getting extra money off the companies who own the product in the video for advertising it.

Techniques

A narrative based music video is essentially a music video that uses filmmed footage to tell a story, usually using actors and having a connection from the video to the lyrics.

Sometimes if a song was made for a film it will show clips of the film in the music video an example of this is New Divide by Linkin Park

A peromance based video will sometimes feature the band performing the song live in a concert but with the studio version over the audio an example of this is Closer to the edge by 30 seconds to mars.

A concept based video is mainly just random clips of footage lightly or not at all connected to the lyrics of the song but can also have diffrent messages some songs have referance to things such as polictics or war an example of this is BYOB by system of a down.

Goodwins Theory

Goodwins Theory:
Goodwins theory consits of 6 points to how a music video should be the first of them is:

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.
In the video ive analyised (I gotta feeling - The Black Eyes Peas) its fairly clear that the genre of the music video is dance, this is shown by the actions of the artists the bright flashing lights and the dancing.
The creator of the music video may have made this video to convey happiness and has shown this with the people in the video enjoying them selfs which is a major selling point because seeing a happy music video most times makes the viewer happy aswell.

2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals

In nearly all music videos the lyrics must relate to what is happening on screen in on way or another, for example the song 'Teenage Dirtbag' by 'Wheetus' has the lyrics "Shes walking over to me this must fake" and the video shows a girl walking over to our main character and at the end of the video he was just dreaming.

3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals

In nearly all music videos fast paced music videos will have a more fast cutting rate and whereas a slow song will have a complete opposite rate of cutting, two example of this are: 'Seek Bromance' by 'Tim Berg' a very faced paced dance song which shows alot of fast cutting and fast paced actions such as alot of dancing and bright flashing lights. and 'Scar Tissue' by 'The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' a more slow chilled out song which dosnt have many cuts and is basically a continous shot through out the video which fits with the music.

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and artist may need to develop which recur across their work. 

In the music video 'Sexy Chick' by 'David Guetta ft Akon'

There are alot of Close ups of the women in bikini's which in this video are depicted as sexual objects, throughout the song alot of close ups of womens bodys and fast cutting makes it a very watchable video for most male viewers.

5. Voyeristic treatment of the female body

In the video 'Call On Me' by 'Eric Prydz'

Women are portayed as sexual objects and nothing else which is the videos one and only strong point, in this video women in tight skimpy outfits are doing gymnastics bending there bodys into tough positions which obviously has a large sexual referance

6. Intertextual Referance

Intertextual referances in music videos are a good technique because the viewer will feel inteligant for understanding the origin of the referance, intertextual referances are also a good technique because the referance can make people laugh or interested etc which makes the video more entertaining to watch.

My example is 'The Kill' By '30 Seconds To Mars' which has a large referance to the Stanley Kubric film 'The Shining'

Purposes Of A Music Video

The purpose of music videos is in short to make money but can be to put across a message to the viewers or to promote something.

Diffrent music videos get diffrent feedback for example, Friday by Rebecca Black has got her bullied from school and had numerous death threats from the viewers where as videos like Thriller by Micheal Jackson got him world ride reknown and fame and was considerd the 'king of pop' other videos such as smells like teen spirit by Nirvana also recieved world wide recognition for being amazing.

All these videos have made alot of money but not all of them for the right reasons.

Music Videos have mulitple extensions of income the main ones being royalties from things like radio stations, royalties are where if a radio station or a music channel play songs they must pay the artist money for using there song to make money from.

Another source of income for music videos is downloads from the internet, the majority of music video downloading is unfortunatly illegal where the video is obtained without paying anything but the legal side of downloading are from websites such as I Tunes where people have to pay a short amount to have the song straight to there I Pod, phone or there computer.

Another source of income is DVD sales, music videos nowadays can go straight to DVD for people to buy and watch aswell as the purchasing of the DVD the company producing the DVD must also pay the artist for publishing there song.