The camera is used to represent a male audience and therefore encourages objectification of women.
This includes close-ups of body parts, tracking shots, slow motion, zoom ins and tilting up from low angle.
The audience is encouraged to identify with the male characters and how they treat women.
Mulvey argued that the male gaze reinforced gender different in society.
Instantly we are shown sexual imagery that the eats has used to help sell the song with the phallic milk bottle and the provocative way the bush is being trimmed which can represent body parts. The frequent shots throughout of the singer virtually wearing no clothing reinforces that she is selling herself through sex which is symbolised through the song title 'Milf'.
This high angle looking down focuses on her cleavage to eventuate her body parts which emphasises Laura Mulvey point that women are seen as sexualised images rather than real people and camera is focused on body parts.
Equilibrium: At the beginning Robert Chase is living his normal life with his job trying to help people with their own problems and sorting their lives out.
Example: Medium close up of him presenting his own show, demonstrating his importance.
Disruption:The disruption we see is when Robert is drinking and taking all these drugs which highlights he life isn't normal at all and is having his own problems.
Example: Wide shot of Robert in the car buying some drugs off a dealer.
Acknowledgement:When he is drinking in the bar alone he realises how lonely he is and how life is empty. However, he tries to run away from this by hiring another prostitute.
Example: Quick cuts of him continuously drinking alcohol at the bar on his own. Attempt to Restore:The way he tries to restore is by hiring another prostitute, buying more alcohol and drugs. While he is drunk and drugged up he is having sex with the prostitute he watches his own show of him to try and make him feel better.
Example: Eye line match of him watching himself on TV, then we see the close-up of him sweating.
New Equilibrium: He hasn't confronted his problems and his life is in disarray by carrying on taking drugs and drinking.
Example: Birds eye view shot of him in the street dancing while he is on drugs which demonstrates how he is certainly not normal.
He sings as he is acting therefore he is integrated into the narrative.
Extensive use of close-ups to sell the star image.
Cut to the beat of the music.
The lyrics match the visuals on screen (e.g 'You can't take my breathe away' is sung as he lays dying).
John Stewart discusses the way music videos use the language of films and techniques such as montage and cross-cutting to tell their story.
Andrew Goodwin discusses the way music videos have inter sexual relationships to films and 'Hero' is based on a film called 'The Gateway'.
Narrative Structures:
Todorov said Narratives have 5 structures to them:
Equilibrium - Normality at the beginning : Enrique and Jennifer Love Hewitt are happy together in love.
Disruption - Disruption from the normality : We see the money in the back of the car and understand that something is wrong and they must be escaping from something.
Acknowledgement - An understanding that a problems has occurred : Acknowledgement comes when we see the group of gangsters hiding out which infers that they are after our heroes.
Attempt to restore - The characters try to resolve their problems and move on : Enrique stands up for his girlfriend and rather than continue hiding faces the gangsters head on in a fight for her love.
New Equilibrium - Everything is resolved but the characters world is a slightly different place : Enrique dies, but Jennifer is free from the gangsters to continue her life without her lover.
Vladirmir Propp said theres always different characters types:
A literal music video is a video which is recorded to match the visuals. I used Bruno Mars, Grenade as an idea of what to do. I think that it is very funny.
We chose this song because as a group we like listening to it due to its mix of the funk buzz and the hardcore rap. Furthermore we find it more entertaining in the music video to have a group of people dancing and having a good time.
Due to high popularity off the song it was easy to gather a number of people o be in the video.
However, it was harder for people to lip syncing because of the fast aced lyrics only a small amount of people were able to pronounce the lyrics correctly and at the time of the beat. We overcame this by splitting up the lyrics into smaller sections so more people could have a go at lip syncing.
As the song has a very distinguishable beat, it was easy to cut it at particular beats meaning there were less mistakes to be made and everything was in perfect timing.
In our music video, we tried to keep it to the original so we only really used one camera shot being a wide angle to get all the people involved in. We also decided to shoot the video all in one location as we found this more effective, simple and straightforward. An example of another music video shot just in one place:
A relationship between the lyrics and visuals (illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics).
A relationship between music and visuals.
Particular genres may have their own video style and iconography.
A demand from the record company for lots of close-ups of the main artist.
Artist develops their own star iconography in and out of there videos.
Reference to voyeurism (screen within screen, binoculars, cameras...).
Intertextual references.
John Stewart - Convention of Music Videos:
He believed that:
Music video has the aesthetics of a TV commercial, with lots of close-ups and lighting being used to focus on the star's face.
He sees visual reference in music video as coming from a range of sources, although the three most frequent are perhaps cinema, fashion and art photography.
Stewart's description of the music video as 'incorporating, raiding and reconstructing' is essentially the essence of intertextuality, using something with which the audience may be familiar, to generate both nostalgic associations and new meanings.
The video allows more access to the performer than a stage performance can. The mise-en-scene, in particular, can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle.
This album cover of NWA has the group all having serious expressions suggesting that they are serious about what they are trying to put across which is about there old lifestyle. They are dressed in streetwear which relates back to their old lifestyle. This is done because it helps the audience understand more what they used to be like.
The low angle shot gives the group power and symbolises how they are looking down on something e.g a dead body as this will refer to the lyrics which are about people dying. As the NWA font is red it represents blood which is one of the gangs in central Los Angeles. Spidery style font helps people understand this is appealing to a younger audience and the parental advisory enhances this because it makes the younger audience want to find out more.
The use of a gun shows that they are a rough group and involve violence in their songs and they see it as a positive by showing it to the camera. This was during the times of the LA riots and in which African Americans were treated badly in America in the 1980s. N.W.A tried to fight this lack of equality through their lyrics including the song 'Fu** The Police', in which they highlight how black people were discriminated.
