A2

1. Music Video Style
Technical Codes
Camerawork
Editing

2. “Nice video; shame about the song…”
Music videos can be so memorable that upon
hearing some songs, we immediately think of the video or
its iconography or feel.
Some memorable videos have really help to sell
songs which are in themselves really forgettable.
Some Madonna fans even admit to having forgotten
some of her songs as there were not associated promo
videos for them; other songs would have been best
forgotten but for their corresponding video!
Can you think of mediocre songs which have a great music video?

3. Technical Codes
When analysing pop video it is important
to consider the technical codes which
are used to construct both the video
itself and the representations inherent
within it.

6. Camerawork
 As with any moving image text, how the camera
is used and how images are sequenced will
have a significant impact upon meaning.
 Camera movement, angle and shot distance all
need to be analysed.
 Camera movement may accompany movement
of performers (walking, dancing, etc) but it may
also be used to create a more dynamic feel to
stage performance by, for instance, constantly
circling the band as they perform on stage.

7. Livin’ On A Prayer
See Dead or Alive

8. The Close Up Predominates
 As in most TV, this is partly because of the size of the screen
and
 Also because of the desire to create a sense of intimacy for
the viewer.
 It also emphasises half of the commodity on sale (not just the
song / single / album, but the artist, and particularly the
voice).
 John Stewart of Oil Factory states that he sees the music
video as essentially having the aesthetics of the TV
commercial, with lots of close ups and lighting being used
most prominently for the star’s face.

9. Take a Bow, Madonna, 1994

10. Carol Vernallis (see Required Reading pack)
 “A video must provide a flattering depiction of the singer
lip-synching the song.”
 Unlike the grammar of cinema camerawork, music
videos “make us as aware of the edge of the frame (and
of what we cannot see) as of the figure itself.”
 “Music videos (often) frame the body inappropriately.”

12. Untitled (How does it feel),
D’Angelo
1999 Virgin Records America
Director: Paul Hunter

13. Editing
 The most common form of editing associated with the music promo
is fast cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to
grasp on first viewing thus ensuring multiple viewing.
 There are videos which use slow pace and gentler transitions to
establish mood.
 This is particularly apparent for the work of many female solo artists
with a broad audience appeal, such as Dido.
 Watch the video’s for Coldplay - ‘Violet Hill’ (dir. Mat Whitecross)
and Radiohead - ‘No Surprises’ (dir. Grant Gee). Consider how
pace has been used to establish mood.
Violet Hill
Dancing
Poloticians Radiohead

14. On February 11, 2007, OK Go and Trish Sie took home a Grammy
award for "Best Short-Form Music Video" for their music video "Here It
Goes Again".
In 2008, Damian Kulash said that the band had not produced the
YouTube videos as part of any overt Machiavellian marketing
campaign. "In neither case did we think, 'A-ha, this will get people to
buy our records.' It has always been our position that the reason you
wind up in a rock band is you want to make stuff. You want to do
creative things for a living."

15. Editing and Digital Effects
 Often enhancing the editing are digital
effects which play with the original images
to offer different kinds of pleasure for the
audience. This might take the form of split
screens, colourisation, slow motion and of
course blockbuster film style CGI.
 Watch the video for Radiohead ‘Street
Spirit’ (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1996).
Street Spirit

16. Jonathan Glazer on Radiohead's Street Spirit (1996)
"With Radiohead, it's very much about convincing Thom Yorke
of your ideas. But once he's chosen you there's not any interference
- he wants you to go off and be experimental. I'd had this idea for
ages that I'd seen in nature programmes, where they'd film an eagle
flying at 1,200 frames per second then cut frames out to slow it
down. It's a technique you see in every second ice-cream
commercial nowadays but back then it was new. …..
In the end, I'd spent so much time filming shots of breaking glass
and nuns jumping off trampolines that I hadn't got the right
performance out of Thom. I had to cut the video together with black
windows inserted where he should have been. But the record
company liked what they saw enough to arrange for me to go to
Germany a few weeks later to film Thom singing. In the end it
worked out. That was the film that, creatively, got me up and
running."

17. "Work It" is a hip hop song written by
Missy Elliott and her producer Tim
"Timbaland" Mosley for Elliott's
critically acclaimed fourth studio album
Under Construction (2002). The song's
musical style, and production by
Timbaland, were heavily inspired by
Old school hip hop from the 1980s,
and includes a portion which samples
Run-D.M.C.'s "Peter Piper".
Video directed by David Myers
Look again at ‘Dark of the Matinee’
by Franz Ferdinand for more post-production
effects.
The video features the band dressed as
schoolboys, dancing in an automatic, almost
possessed, fashion and miming along to the main
vocal track. It was inspired by Dennis Potter's
television play Blue Remembered Hills (1979).
The finale of the video also takes several visual
cues from the "Dry Bones" sequence in Singing
Detective (intertextuality)

18. Black and White Vs. Colour
 Some videos are shot in black and white or
monochrome with tinted tones for effect:
 To create a certain mood or ambience and an ‘arty’ feel (see
Herb Ritts’ videos such as Madonna’s Cherish or Janet
Jackson's Love Will Never Do – He was a fashion
photographer initially)
 To create ‘authenticity’ for the artist / band – serious act or to
show they come from the ‘street’ and have limited budget
(even when it’s not the case) to help with audience
identification.
 Some videos use both, the change within the video
often carrying meaning but for diverse reasons, some
narrative-bound (See use of colour in Michael Jackson’s
Captain Eo)

19. Can you think of other
videos in which a
change of colour helps
to propel the narrative?
Short film by George Lucas which can be seen at Disney Land (still?)
Shot in 3-D, it “features Michael Jackson as a renegade commander in
outer space who is eventually able to liberate his evil enemy with
music. Significantly, Jackson's singing and dancing work to colorize his
foes, so that the arrival of his music transforms them from monochrome
badness to Technicolor goodness – a feature of Captain Eo that may
not be lost on the show’s sponsor, Kodak”.
From Goodwin’s Dancing in the Distraction Industry

20. Can you explain why
monochrome (sometimes tinted)
has been used in these videos?

21. Black and White Vs. Colour
 Mix of saturated and distressed colours and black and white combined with a
“damaged tape” look.
 "Stupid Girl" is a song by Garbage, released as a single in 1996, taken from
their 1995 self-titled debut album. It became Garbage's highest charting
single in many territories, including in the US Billboard Hot 100 and in the UK
Singles Chart, where it peaked at #4. Its success was driven by an innovative
music video and cutting-edge remixes which gained massive airplay across
the world.
 The video for "Stupid Girl" is a performance piece, inspired by the title
sequence from David Fincher's 1995 movie Se7en. The clip was shot in just
four hours entirely within a warehouse. Bayer cut the film into pieces, and
soaked it in his bath, applying deliberate fingerprints and abrasions to the
footage before putting it back together by hand.
(from Wikipedia)