Textual analysis essay

For inspiration and ideas for our music video we have done eight textual analyses of recent music videos. We have found similarities and differences between each of these. We found that in all of the music videos we looked at the artist was made to look aesthetically pleasing using, close-ups and extreme close-ups of certain body features. This could make the artist look sexually appealing. The lighting and the costume also helps to enhance this.

However the style of each music video varies, for example, Heartless by Kanye West is the most individual out of the eight we have looked at. Heartless is all in cartoon animation style throughout the video, whereas most music videos are real life footage and sometimes have elements of animation. Although this video is a cartoon style it still focuses on the artist himself performing to the song. A lot of music videos also include scenes for the males gaze, and even though this video is animation it does still include ladies behaving in a sexual manner, but the whole video does not focus on this where as Lady Gaga’s whole video paparazzi she is wearing revealing costume to attract the male gaze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co0tTeuUVhU

There are similarities between heartless and slide because both the artists are performing. Kanye West is dancing to perform and The Goo Goo Dolls are performing there song as a band playing the instruments. This is a direct contrast between the two. The Goo Goo Dolls music video is very simple but yet effective. There is only one scene in the video where the band is performing but you see this from lots of different shots. In the shots there are a lot of different angles and movement from the camera. There are mostly straight cuts from shot to shot to keep it simple. If this music video was one shot it would make it very dull, and loose the audiences interest in the video no matter how interesting the background scene. The different angles of the shots are filmed as close ups, mid shots and long shots this create more of a variety in the video, and makes the viewers focus on the band themselves. From this we have learnt that we would like to use a variety of different shots and angles when filming our music video to keep our audience interested and make our music video more exciting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=topxQ5lud-0

Although slide uses lots of different shots and angles there is not much to watch so your paying attention more to the song itself, where as heartless has a lot to watch so you are interested in the video itself not just the song and you have something to follow as you don’t know what is going to happen. For our music video we would like to give our audience something to follow so they are interested it what we have produced, not like slide where you know what’s coming next. This could allow us to surprise our audience with our own interpretation of our song choice.

A music video that we have looked at, that gets the audience interested in the video as well as the song is, haven’t met you yet by Michel Buble. This is interesting from the start as hand held camera is used on close ups of the starting shots to set the scene of the supermarket. There are lots of different angles and types of shots in the music video which makes it more interesting. Such as the high angle shots looking up at him sitting on top of the supermarket shelves. The mise en-scene is interesting, because the people in the video are all wearing everyday clothes apart from the people who work there. This makes the situation all the more interesting because at first you don’t expect the video to change from an everyday scene into what seems to be his daydream, wich is similar to a performance music video. When he first enters his daydream, the viewer can tell that this is a dream because of the editing when the lights flash as soon as he sees the girl. As the people are all wearing normal everyday clothes in the video it makes it all the more surprising when the band come out all dress in the smart bright blue costumes with all there instruments. This is very different to ‘Fall Out Boys’ music video for the song ‘Dance Dance’ because it is set at a school disco and the band is playing right the way through. It is a narrative based music video but as the scene is set the only surprise is the dancing of the ‘nerd’. Therefore it is similar to Buble’s video because there is an element of surprise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AJmKkU5POA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6MOKXm8x50

As with all the other videos we have looked at ‘Dance Dance’ also focuses on the artists them selves close up and of them playing their instruments. Another similarity of this music video to the others we have looked at is the editing it has a lot of straight cuts, this makes the videos more interesting. This is something that we would like to do in our music video because it makes it more exciting for the viewer to watch. This style of editing goes well with this song because it is upbeat but if the editing were fast for a slower song such as ‘Slide’ then it would not look right because the song is slower. So this is an important factor to consider when we come to editing our own music video. ‘Dance Dance’ also creates and contrast in social class within school life because there is a contrast between the ‘geek’ and the ‘cool’ guys dancing. The straight cuts make this more obvious as they go from one to the other. This makes the video humousous for the viewer. You can also pick out the two main characters in the audience because they have focused on them before. There are a lot of people dancing to the bands performance. Evern though the song is the sound that you hear right the way through the video there are also moments where the song fades down a bit and you can hear the cheers of the audience. This emphasizes the party atmosphere.

The kings of leon music video ‘Use Somebody’ is based around the artists themselves and there performances on a tour. The establishing shot is a pan over the city lights, We think this works really well for the music video because there performances are different places around the city so it sets the scene well. There are a lot of close ups of the artists face when he is singing but you can only see his eyes and mouth. As the song is slow the edits are smoother such as cross dissolves rather than quicker straight cuts. Within the editing there are some short shots of the traffic that have been sped up creating light trails, as these shots are quick and short the bursts of colour are interesting in contrast to the lower lighting of the artist singing. The song is the sound that is played throughout the whole video and there are no fades in the song or overlays of other digetic sound. ‘Use Somebody’ has a lot of different colours in such as the traffic, the lights of the city and bright stage lights. All of these really bright lights and colours are really nice in contrast to the few shots in black and white. The artist mimes the lyrics right the way through the song which is similar to ‘Nickleback’s’ music video for the song ‘Rocksatr’ because there are people miming the lyrics to the song right the way through but it a lot of random everyday people who are miming ‘Nickleback’s’ song ‘Rockstar’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWhairF_DS8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmeUuoxyt_E

This is a very different style to the other videos we have looked at because most of the videos focus on the star as a way of selling the video. This video is interesting because of the lyrics ‘I wanna be a rockstar’ apply to a lot of people as it is dream or ambition for people of a lot of ages. There are people of all different ages, ethnicity’s, gender and social class which makes this more apparent. The whole way through the video is edited with straight cut. The video is also filmed in many different locations and most of the shots with women in are for the make gaze such as on the beaches in bikinis. The people in the music video are all doing there own thinkg which makes the video more interesting for the viewer because some people are acting out the lyrics and some are just dancing. As well as just having people on there own there are also people in groups and pairs singing to the music. Quite a lot of the people in the video are repeated a few times for some of the same or similar lyrics that they sang before. Altough there are many different people in this video part of the song where there is the deep voice, different to the singing, it is the same man sitting in the same chair as a mid shot. Most of the shots in the video are mid shots and close ups of people on there own but when people are in groups they are between and mid and long shot to fit there whole bodies in. At the end of the video the muic dies down and you see the actual band just finished a concert this shot is similar to some of the shots of ‘Kings of Leon’s’ performance shots as it is natural and focused on the band.

The music video for ‘Oopsy Daisy’ by ‘Chipmonk’ fits well with the lyrics of the editing because he is miming the lyrics and acting them out. There are a lot of point of view and long shots of the artist in the video because the video is about his feelings so you see his body language, as “chipmonk’ is also wearing everyday clothes this makes it more personal. The video is a montage through different times of the day going with his different feelings. The editing of the fire ring in a circle goes well with the lyrics as he is singing ‘round and round we go’ he is standing in a ring of fire and the shot then changes using a graphic match, to the reflection of fire in his eyes which represents the emotion of anger and sadness. There are some low angle shots in this music video which I think makes it all the more interesting as we are watching the artist perform from different angles similar to the Goo Goo Dolls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHPC2sgs04E

Overall from these textual analyses of music videos we have learnt that, different genres of music use different types of editing, for example the faster more upbeat sots use mostly quick edits or straight cuts, whereas the slower songs have longer shots and slower edits such as cross dissolve. We think that it is really interesting when the actual song of the music video fades out and other digetic sound it brought in, such as the croud cheering in the ‘Dance Dance’ music video, therefore we would like to include this within our music video. Another thing that we would like to make sure we do in our music video is add camera movement, such as panning through the shot, as well as using just still shots. We would also like to include a variety of hand held shots and also use a tripod so make it more interesting for the viewer. All of the music videos we have looked at use a variety of different angles, close ups, mid shots and long shots and if they didn’t the music video would probably be very boring because there is no variety so this is something we need to make sure we include. Like the ‘Kings Of Leon’ music video I think it would be effective to speed up, slow down and brighten colours in our shots to make it more aesthetically pleasing for the audience.