Final Music Video

Andrew Goodwin- James Egan

Illustritive- Chase and Status- Flashing lights-
In this video we see a woman go out to a gallery, in which she meets another female and they progress to go out for a night clubbing and drinking. The lyrics seem to have no correspondence with the song, without the video the song has no meaning. The viewer understands the song in a different sense as at the end of the video we see the woman is drugged, she dies and becomes the next exhibition at the art gallery, along with lots of previous victims who we soon realize met the same fate. Combining the lyrics "I see my whole life flashing right before me" with the video we begin to realize the song is much more sinister than it lets on. At this point the protagonist has been drugged as we also see the music come to a faint end.

Amplifying- Faithless- Insomnia-

 The lyrics to this song are fairly dark and indicate that the singer is going through tough times as he is unable to sleep and "fights dark forces in the night", through hearing the lyrics to the song we get a vague understanding of the emotion in the song, but when combined with the video it give a darker meaning to the lyrics we hear. The singer is frequently shown, looking deprived of sleep and physically drained. The video is also in noir showing the black and white emotions the signer is undergoing. At points we also see a child shouting or screaming, but with no sound or context to the lyrics. This suggested to me that the singer is "under attack" by actual night terrors that are plaguing him. In this screen shot I am showing what we mainly see, a simple noir shot of the singer lip syncing.

Disjunctive- Arctic Monkeys- Florescent Adolescent-

As we can see from this video the lyrics and context of the song have absolutely nothing to do with the video. The video also cuts off beat and has no sort of undertone you could link the music to. The music seems to be about a woman's life when she was younger, yet the video show a group of clowns, fighting a group of men for almost no apparent reason.In this screen shot from the end of the video as the music becomes to draw to a close, a clown sets an oil trail alight killing a man inside a car. This is in no way related to the song and has no way of making the lyrics seem different from a viewer of the videos perspective.

Andrew Goodwin's theory:

Goodwin's theory stated there were 5 things that make a music video, a music video. These things were; Thought through beat (seeing what the lyrics mean in correspondence to the video), the relationship between the song and visuals seen on screen, the relation between the music and visuals, technical aspects of the video, and footage of the star of the video being made the center of attention.

Thought through beat- This can be broken down into 3 separate steps, the first being to analyze the song and see what the chorus and individual verse's mean. The second step is seeing if the main singer has an individual thing about of them, weather its voice or style it is needed to maintain a star image. The final aspect of this part would be the story the artist is telling to the viewer.

Relation between song and visuals- There are also 3 ways the song relates to the song and the visuals, these are; Illustrative, meaning the video uses certain shots and images to help explain their song and genre. The second style is Amplification, this is when the images and camera shots are shown frequently and link to the song to and video to make us really think about the video and lyrics. The final style is disjuncture, this is when the song and lyrics have absolutely no relevance to the video.

Relation between the music and visuals- Supposedly by making a character act out or do what the lyrics are saying, it makes the video much more well received to people as it is promoting itself. This could be seen from the song "Rari workout" as the stars of the video are all working out and driving Ferrari's as the song is playing.

Technical aspects- By including a narrative into songs, as the viewer sees the video it makes them much more likely to watch the video if it is telling a story, this then increases the chance of the viewer liking the song. By having a narrative it allows for the viewer to feel connected with the song, as if it is taking them on a journey, this can be seen in the song "Handlebars" by Flobots.

The star- By making the star the center of attention, dressing them stylishly, and having them act cool or in a particular way makes viewers like them. By having everyone think you are very cool or stylish, generally makes people like you, so in this sense, being displayed as the center of attention in the video, makes the star look better to the public.

Analysis of a pop video- Justin Bieber Baby. James Egan

In this post i will look at the video for Justin Biebers, "Baby".

In the video we see Bieber in stylish clothes at the time, with a large group of "friends" at the start. Before the music has even began an image is being painted into the head of mostly female viewers that Bieber is a very cool, stylish and popular individual. We see Bieber with a group of his friends as he approaches a girl and recives "respect" before going to talk to her.

At this point Bieber makes eye contact with a attractive and seemingly popular girl before proceeding to start the first verse of the song. As Bieber is singing we are cutting between him lip syncing and the story of him a the girl. Bieber scores a strike in the bowling alley where the video is set seconds after meeting her, this impresses her, all her friends, and Biebers friends. By now an image is stuck in peoples heads that he is a very cool, popular ladies man who is adept and bowling.

As we are listening to the first verse the female counterpart seems to match Bieber in his popularity, fashion sense and bowling skill. However as Bieber approaches her we hear the chorus for the first time, in witch it repeatedly cuts to him singing the chorus both to the female, and seemingly to the viewer.

We continue to see a process of Bieber chasing the girl around and hearing another verse and chorus before the rapper Ludacris enters the video. Ludacris continues to rap/sing his own verse in the song. This allows for a different target audience as Bieber goes for a young stylish look, yet on the other hand Ludacris looks like a rapper.

We are followed by yet another chorus until the music comes to an end and we see that Justin did manage to get seemingly the girl of his dreams, further leading viewers to believe that he is a true ladies man, full of style, suave and romance at the age of 13.

Analysis of a pop video. James Egan

For my 2nd interpretation i will be looking a much different type of song, this is a mixture of pop and rap as this particular artist has catered for a mass audience by making this sort of song.

As the video starts we see Kendricks name come up in a strange font followed by the song title. The video continues with the backing music but no lyrics, we see our artist falling through darkness flaling at the space around him, yet he does not look worried, he is wearing very stylish clothes and gold chains indicating he is very well off. As the artist falls through darkness it could later have a subtle link to the song.

As we cut from this to a plain background we see a beautiful/sexy woman, this attracts many viewers simply because she is eye catching. Now that we have seen these two people in quick succession, we instantly link them together. After seeing the female and hearing the words "Drank' we see a glass bottle being smashed, since the bottle is upside down this may suggest a feeling of disorientation. This instantly allows for the viewer to gain a understanding that alcohol is involved with whats happening in the video.

We see the artist in an abandoned house looking at pictures and specific items whilst hearing lyrics about his grandfather, this allows us to see that the artist seems troubled, we also see a bottle of drink in his hand, confirming the possibility that the protagonist is an alcoholic. By seeing these things it becomes clear that this video is structured to be very illustrative and literal.

The artist continues to rap/sing about previous party's he had been at, and that he had been drinking frequently, allowing for the lyrics to gain a new meaning when we see our protagonist struggling and/or drinking in sorrow. As the chorus is being sung we go back to the very start of the video, and see the protagonist falling in reverse. This may make the viewer feel as if they are seeing the protagonist beginning a road to recovery almost.

As we return to the basic backing music, the setting changes to a party, we are unsure if this is a flash back or present as the protagonist is slipping in and out of what may be recovery.

As the verse proceeds through this setting we see people partying and the protagonist briefly rapping the the viewer, as the chorus comes back however we see our protagonist in multiple different costumes and he seems intoxicated. By now the viewer is completely enticed in the story and the music seems to further its meaning by being so closely linked to what we are seeing.

The chorus fades out and instead of going into another verse we hear a different type of music, the tempo is lowered significantly and our protagonist is now well dressed and representing himself as people would want to see him. By standing next to the large and expensive car it makes the viewer think that Kendrick is very rich, stylish and cool. In this section he talks about shooting a gun, this adds more context to the video and makes the viewer think of gangsters.

As the video draws to an end we a re-introduced to our original base music. We see a montage of different settings, ranging from Kendrick himself, to the party, then to the woman at the start follwed by Kendrick falling into a swimming pool as the music comes to an end, we see a unidentified person help him out of the pool.

This video was structured as a very easily seen story and allowed for the artist to be seen as a cool gangster. This means that people are going to be more likely to check out other songs as we have the idea in our heads that his music is well woven, has deeper meanings and that the person himself is very cool.