Analysing Music Videos

Here I am choosing four music videos to analyse.



Here is Lana Del Rey's 'National Anthem'. The music video is narrative and includes intertextuality as it references Marilyn Monroe singing to John F Kennedy and the shooting of him, it is also set in the 1960s during his presidency in which she portrays Marilyn Monroe for part of it and Jacqueline Kennedy throughout.

In the video there is evident condoning of alcohol, sex, drugs, money and scandal which is often characteristics within her videos and similarly she has a leading male who plays her love interest and in this case her husband and shows their idyllic life during his presidency. The video also includes non-singing narration as still in character she talks about JFK. She is clearly being shown as 'the star' as she has the most camera time and has her unique appearance which appeals to her audience which I would say was late teens.

With many of her videos, Lana Del Rey often wants to take her audience to a different time or era in order to show an event or tell a story this is often why she includes her own narration and speaks to the audience to voice her opinion sometimes in character and sometimes without which helps her fans feel more apart of her world.



Here is Gorillaz 'Feel Good Inc.'. Within the music video it shows a story from their fictional 'universe'. As far as 'star image' goes Gorillaz are known to pretty much never appear in their own music videos and hardly on stage which is their USP for the music industry like DeadMau5 and Daft Punk. Within the music video the absence of real people is unnoticeable as their audience are used to never seeing the real artists and their career has still managed to be successful anyway due to the marketing of the fictional characters.



Here is Arctic Monkeys 'Why'd You only Call Me When You're High?'. During this music video we see the whole band in the beginning at the pub with their other songs playing in the background. The video only starts after 1:40 and I think this is so the audience is more interested and has been introduced to the context before the music as it helps us get a better understanding of the story being portrayed.

The video continues as a narrative from the lead singers night and describes being drunk and shows him walking on the streets back to an ex-lovers house all without singing. Within the performance his looks are very rock n' roll wearing black and leather appealing to their known target audience. There is clear sexuality references as well as alcohol and cigarettes, but the video does also have some humorous elements. As we know the Arctic Monkeys like to party quite a lot due to the publicity they receive I think some fans like this music video in particular as it gives them a 'real insight' into their life.



Here is the song 'Wonderwall' by Oasis. The music video has been edited in black and white and shows the band performing and also 'messing around' on set and singing to the camera, bringing forth the idea of simplistically  that their band is . This video is quite a simple idea but also fits the songs tone. Their performance enhances their known personality's of been 'relaxed' and not wanting lots of attention. Their is no evidence of drugs, sex or alcohol as they are just performing as a band. It also does include other characters in order to make it more interesting and the star image is being subtly shown in the band as there is not too much interest on them.

Richard Dyer Theories

 

A2

We made it! I have finished the AS course as I did the exam last week and I NAILED IT. Here will be the start of my A2 blog for this year and I'm very excited to explore the different aspects that A2 media will bring forth and enter the new challenge of learning about the media industry and creating an epic music video.

Audience Feedback

One of the things that my group and I thought would be helpful would be to get a group of people, let them watch our thriller and then give us feedback on what was good/ what to improve.

Some of criticisms we received and one of the most popular view was that they didn't get our intended reading, as they thought the actor killed himself afterwards, not getting the view of him threatening the police with the gun. However, they all did agree that if it was a full film, they would of understand the next scene and realised what our actor was doing.

A lot of positive feedback was related to mise en scene as everybody commented on how well our room looked like a motel room and little details were noticed like the fire safety sign at the back of the door. They also commented on the lighting and how they thought it looked very realistic but could of had another colour to add to the street lamp.

Another positive was towards our overall editing and sound as they thought the sound effects used were useful in telling the story and really built up the tension whilst the editing was slick and quick.

Evaluation Task 7 - Looking back at your preliminary taski, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

 



Evaluation Task 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

My group and I have added annotations to our sequence as we feel that best represents answering the question.

Evaluation Task 5 - How did you adress/ attract your audience?

Within our opening sequence we have purposely done things so that we appeal to our target audience which is ages between 15-50.

 

In order to do this we used a rugged looking male as our main character as we think it will attract our audience as he is a 'standard guy' who then has superior status over the forces. For age purposes we didn't want our main character to look to young as we feel our older audiences would not want this so we thought a character in his late 20s would suit.

 

Within our film we have planned to use lots of music to create the feeling of suspense through out and at the ending of our opening sequence has lots of tension building music including the sounds of helicopters and police sirens. We feel that this will interest our audience especially the people that focus highly on soundtracks and big names within the sound of a film.

 

Our thriller is mostly targeted at men as our film is a political-spy-on the run thriller with some violence but from my research into audiences I did find that there was a female audience as the idea of a female heroin (played by Megan Lee) was very attracting to them.

 

Another thing that we think will appeal to our audience (especially teenage boys) is the idea of our main character standing up to the police forces and playing a game with them (as they would see in the next scene, he only threatens to shoot himself and it's then revealed that he has power over them and manages to escape unharmed).

 

We also know that many British people like watching typical American films which may not be the greatest  movie or the most original storyline with the most realistic factors but still deliver being a good, watchable film. The incorporation within our film, I think, will appeal to our audience as it has a mixture of moderate violence and action sequences.