Despite my ideas about a music video, we decided that our song of choice for the music video would be ‘Oblivion’ by Grimes. My group and I chose this song in particular because of its unique and harmonic tone. However, we knew that because of the nature of the song that it would be harder for our star to lip sync it so we thought that we could create a mainly narrative based music video, with only some lip syncing in order to break it up.
Another thing we had to consider when choosing our final song, was that it wasn’t too lengthy because the longer the music video the harder it is to keep an an audience entertained. Our song lasts 4:11, and whilst this does sound considerably long we felt confident that we had already come up with enough ideas together to work with that length. Later on if we do not feel we have enough footage we can also cut the audio because the end of the song is very repetitive and it would not be noticeable if we cut it down a little.
Above is my mini pitch, which is a slideshow of my initial ideas for my music video. Creating this slide has allowed to me think about all of the different elements I would like to incorporate into my music video. I now know that I want to edit to the beat of this indie, psychedelic rock tune .This has been helpful because it has allowed me to create my star image, mise en scene, and think about the locations that I think would work well, which will all help me to convey the narrative.
Castle on the Hill features both Ed Sheeran himself and an actor who plays a younger version of him during his teenage years . The video includes a younger actor who plays Ed and features clips of ‘young Ed’ having his first kiss and smoking a cigarette whilst the lyrics talk about this and ‘Ed’ acts it out. While Ed is joined by his friends throughout the music video he is also distant from them which shows his maturity and future stardom. Towards the end of the music video the actors that are used to play young ‘Ed’s’ friends have their own clips which I assume are flash-forwards because the lyrics in the background talk about what happened after they all grew up. This music video is an illustration because the lyrics line up with the acting and the structure of it, however it is not linear because the narrative is not shown in the order it happens, therefore the structure of this is anachronic.
Born to die by Lana Del Rey, features the singer herself as the main character. During this video we see Lana sat on a throne wearing a flower crown, whilst two tigers layer either side of her. Throughout the video there are many different scenes, for example various shots of Lana and a man in the car jumping to Lana sat on the throne to her then walking through a corridor. However none of these scenes relate to the lyrics in any way, therefore it is a nonlinear music video. The narrative of this a disjunctive because the lyrics do not line up with the acting. The music video also has two storylines within it, the first one consisting of just Lana on the throne and walking down the corridor and the second one shows a turbulent relationship between Lana and her man. Due to the storylines not being clear it is hard to make sense of whether there is an ending or not and what it means.
Disclosure by Magnets ft Lorde is a great example of an amplified music video. This is because the music video focuses on one lyric, for example the lyrics ‘you and that girl’ , whilst the video shows the man Lorde is interested in with another girl, presumably his girlfriend. This music video is episodic because there is a clear beginning and ending, however in between there is a section of Lorde dancing which doesn’t have much relation to the narrative. The ending of the video shows Lorde pushing the man into the pool and lighting him on fire, which expresses her angry feelings towards him. This makes me feel as though the man got what he deserved for cheating on his girlfriend, whilst leading on another girl.
3 quirky narratives-
DITCHED BEFORE DATE- A girl begins messaging a mysterious boy and they start to like each other. They agree to a date and we follow her as she excitedly gets ready to meet him. When she turns up at the date he is not there, so she waits. He never shows up.
DESTINED FOR FAILURE- We watch a young girl grow up, she loves ballet and is very passionate however as she gets older she discovers she doesn’t like it but her mother pressures her to keep going. She is working towards biggest dance competition and suddenly becomes injured and cant ever dance again.
GROWING OUT OF LOVE- We watch a couple fall madly in love as teens and see them grow up into adults and start a family. However, their love fades and they argue all the time, having multiple affairs.
While watching music videos of famous stars is helpful, it isn’t very realistic to what I will be producing because obviously it is much more professional. Therefore, to gain a better understating of what I will make I watched music videos produced by students in the sixth form from previous years. This was good because it allowed me to decode and deconstruct their videos so I could learn the technical conventions. The most essential technical conventions include:
the narrative
the performance
lip syncing
editing to the beat
framing and range of shots
star image
After watching a variety of different music videos performed by students the video I chose to analyse was ‘Love Club’. It was my favourite because I found bright pink colour scheme which co-ordinated with Mes, the costume, makeup and props to be very effective.
Why was it my favourite music video?
The variety of different shots and video cuts to close ups in performance and narrative sections is very effective. As you can see in the table above I assessed this area of the music video as excellent because I really enjoyed the camera angles and positions that were used, for example the drone that was used to record a birds eye shot of the star image because the flip between that and the shots filmed on a tripod helped to represent the actress as powerful and reinforces her star image.
Mise-en-scene clearly reflects a genre and represents clear meaning in the narrative. Throughout the entire music video I was impressed by the mise-en-scene as I noticed that it met the success criteria and conveyed a heartbroken image the group was trying to portray. In particular I liked the makeup, which included love hearts and lots of pinks which matched the title of the song ‘love club’. I found the high-key lightening which consisted of red and pink tones to be effective as well because it created an innocent feel to the video which juxtaposes to the narrative of the creepy girl. The props that included a lollipop, cake and teddy bears also helped to convey the sense of innocence and playfulness.
The lip syncing throughout the music video was good however I am not sure the editing reflects the rhythm of the music. I found that despite the lip syncing being accurate and suiting the actress that the cutting pace was a little bit too fast too match the slow beat to the song, therefore I chose to mark it as proficient.
To create a good music video I needed to check out popular music videos and learn the conventions that they used to convey the narrative. I looked at a variety of different videos from many genres to gain a better understanding of the star image. I learnt about the three main narrative conventions that are used to portray the desired message, these include illustration, amplification and disjuncture. Illustration occurs when the video very closely echoes the lyrics and music, Amplification is when the narrative is inspired by the song but a new element is added to complement the song and Disjuncture is when the narrative seems to hold very little relationship to the song and appears quite random.
In order to do this I made a table where I analysed the videos that I watched and described the narrative conventions. This task was really helpful because it helped me to recognise the differences in the narratives. For example, Beyoncé’s music video ‘single ladies’ may have appeared boring at first because it was just a video of three ladies dancing, however after studying it and acknowledging the MES, star image and the structure of the narrative I learnt that these techniques had been used on purpose as Beyoncé is so iconic that she doesn’t need a storyline to be appealing to the audience.
Focusing forward, this task will help me when I come to create my own music video because it has shaped my ideas and I know that I want to make a video that has disjuncture narrative.
