Music Videos: Week One

Music Videos: Week One

Music Video: Video representation of a song

Media Language:
Modes
Language
Polysemy
Meaning
Conventions
Intertextuality
Audience responce
Ideologies

Key Theories:
Barthes
Levi-Strauss


Representation:
Construction
Processes
Stereotypes
Social and cultural context
Audience response
Ideologies

Key Theories:
Hall
Gauntlet
Van Zoonen
Hooks
Gilroy

Rebecca - Vanity Angel
Women, men represented (Men and women in shape etc)
Bright colours
Quick shots/fast paced, cut to the beat
Lots of editing
Japanese representation of America in the 80s.
Mise-en-scene matches with the style of the song.

Pulp - Babies 1994
Teenagers represented
Set where they are singing is plain and white (conventional) - adds more focus and contrast towards the narrative of the girls in their room.
Clothing/haircuts stereotypical of the time.
Video deconstructs the video telling us the conventions of a music video with the text.
Overall the video is unconventional.

Daft Punk- Da Funk
No lip-syncing/ lyrics (unconventional)
Could represent a group of people.
Shots/editing stye is more like a movie
Narrative - follows a story
Deliberately challenging
Polysemic meanings

Aphex Twin - Window Licker
Deliberately controversial
Video doesn't match the song
surreal senario
Hyper stereotypes

Convergence:
When two separate industries come together/combine to create a new concept.

Synergy:
Where the interconnectedness of media products leads to a result of more than the sum of its parts.
This is beneficial because it appeals to wider audiences. Two seperate audiences can simultaneously targeted.
E.g In the 1980s men in their late 20s+  were most likely to buy records but least likely to watch TV.

Music videos a more of an advertisement to the song. They don't always have to be relevant to the song.

Important key theories for the music industry:
Binary Oppositions (Levi Strauss): Two opposites that come together in a form of conflict. He argued that we all make sense of the world through binary oppositions. This is to say that we can only understand something through what it is not.
Binary oppositions make things easy for the audience. We know who the nerd is in most teen movies because the cheerleaders laugh at them.
they can be funny for the audiences.
They makes things easy for the producer.
They make things more intense.

Semiotics: Structuralism focusses on the underlying meanings in the signs and symbols. It is closely related to language and how we use language to perceive the world.

Vance Joy - Riptide 

Micro element	Examples	Analysis- why is it used?	Effect on audience
Camera angles	Low angle long shot of someone standing in a bush focusing on a woman on a balcony.	Could have been used to show the objectification of women in music videos.	Audience would originally be shocked as most people would agree that spying on someone from a bush is wrong, however, the shot is demonstrating that most media shows women in a similar way to this and people think it's okay.
Editing	The video has been edited so that the lyrics match up with the shot e.g: Lyric: "Taken away to the dark side" is played whilst the woman is being dragged into darkness.	This could have been used to demonstrate the collapse of their relationship because it once was happy and light but now it has been moved into darkness.	Again, the audience reaction would be shock because of the fact that the music seems so upbeat the scenes depicted the woman being dragged away is unexpected and created hermeneutic codes as the audience begins to ask questions.
Mise-en-scene: lighting	Lyric: "Taken away to the dark side" is played whilst the woman is being dragged into darkness. There is also contrast to the dark scenes and the brightness of people in the beach.	The lighting accompanies the lyrics. This could have been used to demonstrate the collapse of their relationship because it once was happy and light but now it has been moved into darkness. The reason for the contrast in lighting could have been used to show how there are is light in the darkness and there are often good times amongst the bad times.
Mise-en-scene : props and costume/Performance	The costumes in the video help to depict the deteriorating relationship. This is because the woman singing on the mic's costume is deteriorating throughout the video as her make-up is getting increasingly more smeared.	The reason for this could be to show the deterioration the relationship visually rather than verbally because most people don't voice their feelings in a relationship because they often feel trapped.
Semiotics	The video is polysemic because of the fact that there are multiple meanings reflected in it. For example,
Binary oppositions	Song sounds upbeat but the video is dark. E.g the video shows women being dragged across the floor while an upbeat song is playing.	This could have been used to show that some relationships could seem okay and fine but underneath there could be some issues.	The audience would be confused as the video doesn't appear to match the tone of the song which is effective because this links to how people would be confused to find out someone had a bad relationship that appeared good on the outside.

Consider how the combination of elements of media language influences meaning and intertextuality. (Exam question)

Montage editing: Used in an overt way - a wide range of contrasting shots juxtaposed (often through hard jump cuts) to convey a large amount of information. Close up of various props and objects are throughout.

The editing together of seemingly disparate images invites audience interpretation - we are given the opportunity to make our own judgements and infer a variety of meanings (Polysemic, hermeneutic codes etc).

The music video mostly rejects a clearly defined narrative. There are some short coherent narrative sequences )such as the scene where the girl goes missing in the graveyard) but for the most part the sequences deliberately lack narrative coherence (non-linear).

Mise-en-scene shows the contrast between the summer themed costumes that people are wearing in contrast the the violence and darkness that occurs as the video progresses.

Horror iconography heavily referencing the horror genre subverting music video convention.