TASK 2
Ed Sheeran - The A Team
This music video only features a narrative and does not include any performances at all. The audience does see Sheeran but only as a character in the narrative and not singing or playing along to the song. The music video tells the story of a young girl who appears to be homeless and begging for money but is also a prostitute and addicted to drugs. This narrative fits the song because Sheeran sings about angels not being able to fly because of how cold the outside world is and selling love to another man. This combined with the visual narrative makes the audience make the connection between the two young women.
Shinedown - Bully
Bully is a combination of narrative and performance. For some of the time, the video is showing the narrative of people being manipulated and bullied into being fearful, warned or to forget. The other portion of the music video is showing the band members performing the song and the lead singer showing a lot of emotion which implies that he doesn't agree with bullies, the theme of the song.
Fat Boy Slim - Weapon of Choice
Fat Boy Slim's Weapon of Choice is a performance based video only because it features Christopher Walken dancing to the song. We know that this is performance based because the things that Walken performs do not relate to the lyrics of the song. The song talks about having a weapon of choice but during the video there is not a single weapon in sight. The way that Fat Boy Slim conveys that this is a performance is by getting Walken to use each hand to the lyrics "a little bit of this, a little bit of that".
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony
This music video is a performance based narrative. The way that this is done is that it has the lead singer of the band walking down the street whilst still singing along to the song. This means that the video is performance based but also has elements of a narrative because he is walking down a street instead of in a studio or gig.
Emma Blackery - The Promise
This music video features Emma Blackery performing on a guitar and singing the song in the video whilst a girl, who gets bullied at school, watches her family fall apart. This video is also presented in a mixture greyscale and colour adds emotional weight to some of the lyrics when its needed.
TASK 3
Disturbed - The Light
During the music video, we see the band members from Disturbed. They are all wearing black clothes with silver studs or buttons on them. This follows the stereotype of heavy metal bands because they are usually seen as people who wear dark colours. We can also see that the leader of the band, the singer, also has lip piercings and ear piercings. Stereotypes of this particular genre also say that they wear leather jackets, either have long hair or no hair at all, and heavy, black boots. Although, we can't see the last stereotype in this video, the band, Disturbed, does adhere to the rest of the stereotypes.
All the band members are male and all get their own camera shot at least once. Not one of them is cut out or displayed less than the other. However, the lead singer is shown a bit more often than the other band members and, sometimes, also in a different location to the others. As shown in the image below, he is frequently seen in a low angle camera shot which implies that he is powerful. Although, in this shot, he is not the only person in it which could mean that the music video didn't want to convey a big gap between the lead singer's importance and the other band members'.
Avril Lavigne - Bad Girl
This pop music video is very different from the stereotypical videos. Usually, pop music videos feature bright colours such as pinks and yellows but this video features a black and white film grain on it which completely eliminates all colour except for the red of the lips. Other stereotypes for pop music includes the lead singer acting a bit unintelligent, girly and giggly. In this music video, Avril Lavigne doesn't act at all what people would think that she would from those stereotypes. The video actually represents her in a very sexualised and an objectified way. This is due to the fact that the entire video is either a close-up of her face or an extreme close-up of her lips. In the image below, it also shows her flicking her hair in a flirtatious way, further enforcing my point about the way that the video is presenting her.
TASK 4
This task taught me;
- Genre stereotypes in music videos
- Common and uncommon micro-elements in music video
- The narrative doesn't necessarily have to be related to the song
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