Patricia Music Video Blog

There are various forms and conventions of real R&B music videos and music videos of other genres. Some of these are shown in the diagram below:

Our music video uses and challenges many of the conventions in the diagram.

• Showing off - black and white shots at the beginning of the music video highlighting the clothes, glasses, watch and shoes which is a typical feature in R&B music videos as there is usually a theme of materialism. This also links into the concept of "Focus on appearance of artist and extras"

• Storyline - our music video challenges the concept of storylines in R&B music videos. A lot of R&B tracks are baout love and other life experiences, theefore they tend to have narrative in their music videos; however, more recent music videos focus on performance instead of narrative. Therefore we have developed this convention so that our music video can appeal to more modern audiences.
• Simple concepts - I think we definitely used this convention. We wanted the video to be kept simple with a colour scheme of black ad white and the use of only one extra; the dancer.

• Good-looking people - our music video has both a good-looking male and female so it therefore appeals to both a male and female audience.
• Singer looking directly at camera - this is supposed to be his debut music video and therefore it is very important that the audience relates to him and are engaged. This is achieved by having him sing directly to the camera; directly to the audience.

• "The Look" - R&B music videos almost always have "The Look" where the artist and/or the extras look directly at the camera which engages the audience. Our music video definitely uses the look.

• Relationship between artist and others - the lyrics of the song indicate that he is singing about a girl so the fact that there is only one female in the video leads the audience to believe that he might be talking about her. This is helped by the fact that she is dancing quite provocatively which creates a sense of chemistry between them.
• Performance - our music video definitely uses this concept; it is entirely performance-based which is quite unusual for R&B music videos as they usually have some form of narrative in them.

• Narcissism and sexualised female, scopophilia - we DEFINITELY have used this convention as the styling and performance of the female makes her seem like an object. She appeals to both the male and female audience as males will want to be with her and females will want to be like her.

• Lack of continuity - our music video does not have any narrative therefore it has no continuity at all. Instead of editing shots to make a story 'flow', we used a variety of shots (close-ups, long shots, mid-shots) and two different colour backgrounds (black and white). There are also shots that cut to the beat.

• Designed to be watched again - the use of quick cuts and the dancer has definitely made our music video interesting and makes people want to watch it again.
• Genre characteristics - we definitely used this convention. The focus on the material possessions and the appearance of the artist and dancer is a characteristics of R&B videos. The sexualised female is also a major characteristic of this genre.
• Close-ups and beauty shots of the star - the music video is mostly made up of shots of the star as we wanted to promote him and his music and make him the main focus of the video.

Here are some music videos that we took inspiration from. We used these videos as they are UK artist who started out in the UK underground music scene but have now become very mainstream.

 

To show that our music video stuck to most of the main conventions of real music videos, I have compared it to Andrew Goodwin's theory.

GENRE

The genre was R&B and I feel that this was made very obvious (our audience definitely picked up on it). The simplistic black and white and the sexualised female dancer which creates a sense of a love interest are usually found in R&B videos.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS

There are a few visuals that are used to illustrate the lyrics.

This is something that is found in music videos as it makes it easier for the audience to remember the song if they can link it to certain visuals in the music video.

It helps to make the artist more memorable as the audience may see something in everyday life that will make them relate back to the video.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC AND VISUALS

We cut the video to the beat in some places and tried to keep the pace of the video constant throughout.

The black and white shots at the beginning go to colour when the melody of the song begins which creates an almost introduction to the artist and the dancer.

ARE THERE CLOSE-UPS OF THE ARTIST AND STAR IMAGE MOTIFS?

There are quite a few close-ups in our music video however we had planned there to be many more. However we found that we didn't have enough good footage and therefore couldn't put in as many as we had wanted to.

IS THERE REFERENCE TO THE NOTION OF LOOKING?

In order to have the audience engage with the music video, it was important to have a notion of looking. We have cut the beginning of the music video to look like the artist and the female extra are looking at each-other. There are also shots near the end of the music video that seem like he is looking at her again. We also made sure there were various shots of him and her looking at the camera and therefore looking directly at the audience.

IS THE MUSIC VIDEO PERFORMANCE-BASED, NARRATIVE-BASED OR CONCEPT-BASED?

Our video is definitely performance based but there is some concept of being successful and having a love interest. This is shown by having a dancing female in the video as well as showing off his possessions at the beginning of the video and having him wearing a suit throughout most of the video.

The one concept of Goodwin's theory that we challenge is intertextuality. Our music video doesn't have any references to other media products.

I feel that our music video did follow most of the conventions and did challenge some. It definitely has developed some conventions of early music videos as those videos usually contain some narrative and with little performance. Our music video is entirely performance-based in a completely white setting that gives it an almost "out of this world" look.