Amplification - Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus

Amplification is another one of Andrew another Goodwin identified conventions of a music video’s. This is when the visuals are used to enhance the meaning and effects of a song by constantly reinforcing the lyrics or message of the song. By amplifying a music video the artist is taking the lyrics and making them even stronger by creating visuals that not only support the song but it a, so enhamces the ovrrall message thus making it more powerful. Amplification is often used within music videos if an artist is trying to get across a new star image to their audience or if they want to make a weaker song more successful. An example of how amplification can be used within music videos to echo a artist’s star image can be found within “Wrecking Ball" by pop star Miley Cyrus, who uses amplification in many of her videos as, like many srtists, she as well as her type of music has changed and matured with her, resulting in her image constantly changing.  Amplification enables the director to become an artistic force in the construction of the music video as the direction doesn't have to be as literal and naturalistic as it does in an illustrative video.

"All I wanted was to break your walls" this line is clearly amplified by the use of visuals, below are screenshots demonsrstrating this.

The visuals shown here therefore help amplify the song meanings of emotional destruction by providing the audience with a strong visual image, of a metaphorical broken girl, literally destroying and wrecking walls as a result of the pain that the person she's singing too caused.

"I came in like a wrecking ball"  this is another example of aplification in this video as MIiley is literally coming into scene on a wrecking ball.

Illustration - Take a Bow by Rihanna

Andrew Goodwin identifies illustration as visuals that are used to represent the lyrics or message of the song. By illustrating a music video you are essentially showing the audience what the song is literally about. Illustration is often the most used method of linking lyrics with visuals used within music videos as it is the most basic and ensures the meaning of the song is not missed through a distracting music video. An example of how illustration can be used within music videos to represent lyrics can be found within Rihanna's Take a Bow.

"You look so dumb right now, standing outside my house"
this line is clearly illustrated by the fact that the male character aka the artists boyfriend is standing outside her house

Talking 'bout, Girl, I love you," "You're the one"

Intertextuality - Pink "Raise Your Glass"

Goodwin showed intertextual references to be a major theme within music videos. References that can be retrieved from other music videos, films, TV texts and even public figures. They provide the audience with further gratification and pleasure, as if they're able to work out the intertextual links they will feel a stronger connection with the artist feeling they are in on some sort of private joke or secret. Artist’s can also use intertextuality to help compare themselves to an event or public figure that will help them emulate the star image they want their audience to see them as. A great example of intertextual references being used within music videos to help star develop their star image is Pink's "Raise Your Glass."

Here it shows Pink paying homage to the renown "We Can Do It" poster of "Rosie the Riveter" by doing the action, the feminists salute.

Iggy Azlea- Fancy ft Charlie Xcx

Here are screenshots illustrating the intertextual reference of Iggy's video as she is holding a similar pink fluffy pencil as the character from Clueless.

Iggy Azalea is another example of a pop star that has used intertextuality within their video. The chosen text that has inspired this video is the hit 90's movie Clueless, below is a list of some similar qualities within this video that replicate the film such as:

• Costumes-  both Iggy and the main character from Clueless have the outfit decider machine that chooses the yellow plaided skirt suit.
• Scene location e.g. classroom and sports ground
• The way her name is introduced is in the same format as the movies title.
• Actors within the video resemble the actors in the film

The artists main audience are young people, teenagers till young adults therefore choosing to base her video around an iconic 90's film, from which the era most if not all her target audience were born in, was genius as it is something that links them together, as they would all know this film. Therefore, she has targeted a piece of pop culture that her fans would be familiar with and has possible expanded her audience to people who are just fans of the film, which makes this a very clever marketing technique.

Conventions of a Music Video

The music video often tells a story either that features in the lyrics or is suggested in the lyrics eg boy leaves girl. This type of narrative is often directed like a short film, with a beginning, middle and end.

Mise en Scene-

• Visually stylish – ‘artistic’ mise-en-scene 

•  Unusual costumes

• Unusual props

• Cars

• Hair

• Multiple locations- linked to the genre

• Expressive lighting

Camera angles and shots-

• Experimental use of camera/editing (hand held camera, distortion of colours) 

• Close Ups of instruments

• Long shots of the band

• Extreme Close Ups of mouths and eyes

Editing-

•  Can use lots of jump cuts 

• Lots of use of digital effects

•  Cutting related to the rhythm of the music 

• Intercutting between performance and images or story 

• Cut to the beat

• Montage editing

Camera movements-

• Panning shot

• Rapid movement

• tracking shot

• Crane shots

• Tilts

• Illusion of speed being created

Sound-

• Song mainly foregrounds the video

• Occasional diegetic sound

Other Elements-

• Incongruous elements

• Iconography

• Intertextuality

• Voyeurism

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Evaluation of Call Me Maybe Lip Sync task

This is the preliminary music video that I shot and edited. The chosen song was Carly Rae Jepson's Call Me Maybe as this was a song that we all felt comfortable with miming to as we all were familiar with the lyrics. Due to this being a task set in lesson, we were unable to plan the execution of our video, which resulted in us just making it up and going into the video with no clear vision or understanding. This is definitely something that I've learned from and will change when I shoot my final music video.


This task proved to be a lot harder to shoot and edit then I initially thought it would be as I realised how accurate you have to be as the slightest inaccuracy can completely ruin the look of the music video.


Considering this was only a practice exercise, I am happy with the overall result I achieved. I think the lip syncing is successful the majority of the time however there are a few moments that
are slightly out of sync with the track which obviously wouldn't be acceptable for my final project.

As Carly Rae Jepson's song is quite a fun, young and up beat song, my main brief for the video was for the actors to have fun and enjoy themselves, hence why i used a lot of scenes from out takes in the video to harbour the youthful fun vibe of my actors.








This is a screenshot demonstrating the editing process, the little pink blobs are markers which helped me to edit to the beat. I also used the markers to match when the singer on the track sang certain lines so I could match it up with my actresses lip sync.

Call Me Maybe preliminary task

CD Cover Collage

Below is a collage of CD covers from artists that I like and covers that I found intriguing and interesting.

From looking at these covers I've noticed a few similarities and generic conventions:

• Most of the covers just have the artist on the cover
• Most of the covers just show the artists face
• The use of Close Up's show the stars as quite vulnerable- to connect with their audience
• Hints of colour are used to make titles or themes of the album stand out.