Media A level research and planning

1. THE GREATEST – SIA (2016)

2. CAMERA SHOTS AND EDITING TECHNIQUES
The music video starts with a pan in/establishing shot, a couple of cuts in we see a
close-up shot of the featured dancer Maddie Ziegler. Throughout zoom in and
zoom out is used a lot following the actions of all the children dancers involved in
the music video. All the different length shots are used throughout for example the
long shot, mid-shot and close-up shot. The most commonly used camera shot in
this video is the zoom in and zoom out. The editing skills here are minimal only at
the beginning and the end are cuts and pans used; as throughout the rest of the
video the dancers featured are followed with a camera, this could be either hand
held or ………..
This is an example of a long shot. The young children
featured are all youthful and vary between male and
female. This makes the video unconventional for the type
in which I am supposed to be analysing however it has
certain features that I would like to use in my video.

3. Close-up shot Mid-shot Long shot

4. LIGHTING
The lighting in this particular video is
extremely unconventional; the lighting is
extremely dark and dreary. Its not natural
lighting at all, seems to maybe be dark outside
which follows through to the building or this
could portray the fact that the location is in
either a basement or low part in a building
(dungeon). This is very unconventional in
terms of general R&B/pop song videos.

5. REPRESENTATION
Like many high end music videos belonging to A list celebrities such as Sia, this one takes a particular
unorthodox approach to the style and characteristics of its music video. Sia is known globally for her weird
and wonderful techniques when coming to her own appearance as well as her songs and music videos. The
stereotypical characteristics of youth nowadays are those such as troublesome, noisy, a disturbance; this is a
perfect stereotype and this music video completely conforms to this type of conception of 'youths' in this day
and age. In the video it seems like they are escaping and the uniqueness of the moves they do shows
confidence as well as troublesome (looking mainly at the odd faces they pull frequently.)

6. NARRATIVES
The way that Sia has addressed her audience
through the narrative of the song and the
music video is through the stereotypical
characteristics of the children; kids this age
will probably look up too these performing in
the video and aspire to be like them. Also
stimulating global recognition from her video
was easy due to the unique quality that it has
in comparison with other artists videos; this
gave the video a lot of views because people
were interested at the style of dancing and
performance given from the children
featured.

7. MEDIA THEORY
The theory provided by Gill in 2008 argued that the media can portray women as being active
and independent; this theory can also be related to this video with Maddie Ziegler who is now
seen as an aspirational figure to all teenage dancers around the world. Although there are small
sections of the video where older teenage males are involved there seems to be no sign of male
dominance or empowerment shining Maddie in a relatively independent light.
It is unusual for a young child to be used a the main protagonist.