Literal Music Video

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. 

Lip Sync Task

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: 

Andrew Goodwin & John Stewart - Convention of Music Videos

Andrew Goodwin - Convention of Music Videos: 

He believed that:

• 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. 

Example of both: 

Album Cover

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.

Star's Image changing over time

Different styles of music videos

Styles of music videos: 

Narrative - A narrative is a music video that tells a story throughout the video and describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. Narrative music videos are normally very popular as it engages the audience in the story and the story can often relate to the audiences experiences for example, a breakup, death in the family ect. A large range of artists now include narratives into their music videos as its different to usual music videos and the story that the artists has chosen to project, may be a special topic for them or something they feel strongly for.

Performance - This is a music video that features a live performance or footage from a live performance.

Abstract - It's main purpose is to create a feeling or mood in an artistic way. An exclusively abstract music video would have no performance or story within it. However, some abstract music videos include a story and/or performance although it is more common to be a performance. Usually require a lot of editing.

The Purpose Of a Music Video

Purpose of Music Videos:

The purpose of a music video is to obviously sell the song, and invoke a reaction so it leaves you remembering the song.To entertain audiences by creating a memorable visual for the song, which also increases its chances to sell marketing for the purposes of exposure and expansion of the artist's profile. The music video is a promotional tool for the artist. It sometimes serves as a conduit to attention from a label. 

Whilst some artists make videos to promote a single song or album launch. A band may write a song that they truely believe could be a hit and want to promote it as much as possible.  So they choose to accompanied the song with a clever or memorable music video.  PSY is a South Korean singer and his song Gangnam Style is a perfect example of how a video can promote a song through a music video because the video have achieved over 2,600,000,000  hits on YouTube.