Music Video Analysis

Comment on the following aspects in relation to your music video choice. How will these techniques appeal to the target audience needs? Performance Based:

Target Audience & Needs

We first see the music video being in black and white indicating how old and style of the video is. Hearing the start of the video we hear drums going really fast making the genre really clear. The target audience for rock music typically tend to be in the above 18 ages demographic but this song in particular became wide success become popular for anybody. Bon jovi who sang and wrote living on a prayer are an American rock band in the hard rock genre. The song is most liked in north America and Europe I say that their main target audience people who understand the language and the song. But people all around the world like this song as well but not as much as the people in those regions. So it’s older males and teenage females who listen to this song more than anyone else. Also, it seems that this song is more popular in America, due to the lyrical themes and music style. I found that mainly males view this song than females because of the overall concept of the music video but even today as the song is still popular females have viewed this song as much as the males. Social demographically most of the listeners were either students or middle aged people. The song was based on two skilled working social class people so most people in the low social class enjoy this song more as it relates to their lives more but also upper social classes can also relate to them with people they have known so they can enjoy the song too.

Lyrics (Meaning Implied?)

Lyrically the song has two characters tommy and Gina a couple about these two people who are in love, but they both are struggling in the life financially but its ok as long as they still have each other. Tommy is a dockworker but apparently temporarily unemployed due the union strike. Gina is being employed as a waitress. She's smart enough to remind restless Tommy

Music Video Analysis

that having each other's love is much more important than their current financial distress. That’s why you have Lyrics like “We got each other/ And that's a lot for love. The song opens by both lyrically and musically a bleak environment in which the fictional Tommy and Gina's love must somehow endure. The start of the song is ominous; a lone, prolonged note lends the "Livin' On A Prayer" an eerie feeling from the very start, a feeling only heightened by the guitar solo. Dark-sounding minor chords as the drums and bassline kick in to give the song a propulsive metal-driven momentum. And the lyrics begin telling the story of Tommy of Gina, young lovers struggling to "hold on to what they've got" in the face of economic hard times. Through its intro and first verse, "Livin' On A Prayer" is a pretty grim song.” Also the main characters most likely believed in god as the chorus and title is called “livin on a prayer”. So the overall meaning is as long as you have each other you will be fine whatever struggle you’re in in this case its financial problems but the couple had each other so they know that they would be fine no matter what happens.

Tempo The tempo of livin on prayer is quite fast but not too fast like metal rock. Song is catchy and very easy to follow and that’s why pretty much anyone can listen to it freely. Tempo means timing of music, or the speed at which a piece of music is played. For example, a soothing song would be described as a slow tempo song. Tempo of the music often dictates the rate of the editing and it does. The tempo is a little fast so there a lot of fast cuts and quick medium shots of the singers as it follow the speed of the actual music. The fast cuts really go in well with the tempo and makes you feel hyped about the song while listening to it.

Music Video Analysis

Genre The theme of the song livin on a prayer is hard rock and glam metal and you can see that reflected on the music video with the song being fast paste and the instruments they use like electric guitar and drums shows the genre of music and the way they play them. Also you can see it in the style of clothing and setting, the clothes they wear are 80’s leather jackets with loose parts hanging off like tassels. Wearing heavy boots with each band member having very long frizzy hair which tells us the age and genre of music. We see a lot of things happening during the scenes as its set in a stage with lots of light moving about and jumping with wires. The song starts off in black and white but towards the end of the music video we see it turn into colour. Even though this is a happy rock song with all the characters being happy and dancing around the song itself is still a bit sad. But the overall moral of the song is upbeat and not sad, so you’re having little sub genres in the story of the music. We see common themes in music like love, life, escape and such. These themes are I the song representing the story and points made from the music. The theme of rock is also presented in the style of performance by the singers doing actions visually extravagant like dancing with a lot of lights and fireworks. Also in the camera shots and the way it has been edited you can see different types of shot and scenes that you don’t usually see in other videos. We see a lot of cuts to other things happening as it is keeping up with the paste of the song and most of the camera shots are angled un straight with a lot POV shots spinning with singers.

Camera Technique Most of the camera shots are dominated by close ups showing the singers and what expression they have on their face showing us its performed based more than anything. We see a few unusual camera shot and angles like a spinning POV shots and the camera tilted and moving shakily creates movement of the music video. Which makes sense as it is rock music with lots fast paste music and upbeat tune to hype you up. We see a lot of wide shots as well of the band singing and having fun with song with a giant crowd which shows us the whole moral of the song which is as long as you have people you love

Music Video Analysis

nothing can stop you. There is no story video to this it just fully based on performance we see a lot of the environment from wide shot and POV shots like if you were there with them. They’re in a stage singing to the audience who are with them showing us the band performing like if it were any other concert they sing.

Editing The editing on this music video is well sustained. The whole video is fully performed so there isn’t any CGI throughout the whole video but the music video starts with the band member walking up slowly with simple slow fade in shots. We only see a few cuts and camera shots because the music stars off slow then started to build up making the tempo faster and faster. As it go’s faster we see the shot and cuts starts to be more frequent in every second as its keeping up with music. This shows the theme and genre of the music video straight away like the rush of rock and telling us a story with specific themes.

Use of Digital Effects There aren’t a lot of digital effects on this music video as the whole video is live action and mainly relies on its performance more than the edits. The digital effects are used to enhance the editing technique to give a better and stronger experience when watching it. One of the part of the music video that could have been digitally enhanced is the fireworks, most of the fireworks going off in the background are most likely real but when they are flying using their harnesses they flew though the sparks. With few edits maybe they added few of the sparks being pretty close to the singers to get the explosion effect because of health and safety reason they could get caught on fire from clothes and hair.