MUSIC VIDEOS

Key Codes & Conventions

My sources for music videos:

• MTV

• Directors Label

• Music videos are products designed to sell albums

• Performance based:

• Narrative based: The video for this song was inspired by works of Austrian artist Erwin Wurm called "One Minute Sculptures." which are a series of sculptures made in a very creative way, using the human body as a part of the composition.

• Concept based: http://vimeo.com/27948543

Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics:

• Dance routines in girl/boy bands: Pussy Cat Dolls (Buttons)

• Stage performance, extravagant light shows, outlandish behaviour in metal video like:

You Me At SixLive at Reading Festival 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0JtmGssrZw

• Lyrics and visuals are related:

• Illustrative: is the simplest and easiest concept to base a music video around as it is just a literal meaning to the song’s lyrics in visual form. Owl City have used illustrative ideas in their videos before, for example in ‘Fireflies’ when Adam (The artist behind Owl City, Adam Young) is singing and as he says ‘fireflies’ the word fireflies comes up on the screen to a little toy gadget.

• Amplifying: is closely related to disjuncture, but amplification is just the enhancement of a concept while still retaining a link to it, this technique works brilliantly in marketing and advertising the band in question. http://www.vevo.com/watch/christina-aguilera/beautiful/USRV80400020

‘Beautiful’ music video Christina Aguilera

Music and visuals are related:• Cutting to the beat: ‘You Make Me’, Avcii http://music.yahoo.com/video/official-203159607.html • Chorus & repetition: ‘Bang’, Will.i.am Bang, bang, Got him with a bang, Love him down, down I shot my baby with a bang, bang, Got him with a bang, Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, Got him with a bang, Love him down, down I shot my baby with a bang, bang, Got him with a bang, Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

• Vocals with close-ups of singer: ‘Wrecking Ball’, Miley Cyrus

• Instrumental with close-ups of performance:

• ‘Skinny Love’, Birdy

• The record label needs to sell the artist close-ups of the artist:

• ‘Daddy’, Emile Sande

• The artist may have a distinctive visual style: Lady Gaga

• Maryiln Manson

• Labels use artwork & video imagery to connect video to album

Goodwin identifies ‘notions of looking’

• Screens within screens, cameras, telescopes

• Voyeuristic treatment of the female body

• Camerawork, costume, dance, framing imply sexualized display (Rihanna, Beyonce)

Intertextual references • To films: Ashanti and

Ja Rule album borrowed its name from a line of Tupac Shakur poetry…the music video was a parody of a scene from the film Grease.

• To other genres (Bjork Human Behaviour)