Andrew Goodwin writing in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (Routledge 1992) states that there are 6 points to make a video effective.
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
(E.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band)
The genre of out video is punk; according to wikepedia Punk rock is caturised by the “fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics"
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals
(Illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
The lyrics of our song are very metaphorical, we believed that every word represented something bigger, for example 'raindrops' which is used numerously in the chorus represents the protagonists feelings of sadness or estrangement for her homely surroundings and her line of 'feels like home', which related to the idea we have of her revisiting her home or place of important and no longer feelings the warmth she used to feel and ends up leaving, the idea of leaving came to us because of her line 'you get to free them' we believed that lyrics was representing her need to be free from her old home so we wonted to visually show her leaving the house.
Also with the many uses of pronouns like 'you' and 'we' used in the lyrics we wonted to demonstrate the she is bringing in the audience into her world as she’s talking directly towards them, to visually link this we added numerous voyeuristic shots to make the audience feel like they are watching her.
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals
(Illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
The first thing you hear is what we described as almost a futuristic sound of something progressing in movement. The music's begins slower with the beat controlled and smoother with only sounds of the piano being played and piano cords, the middle the music intensity is increased with more instruments and a more 'rock' feel, then towards the end it slows down and it resorts back to the futuristic sound you first heard in the beginning. With the sound that lasts for 8-13 seconds we added interlinking cutaways from the toy house and the actual house, as this sound is quite sci-fi we believed the sound would link to the audience that we are combining the dream/toy/fake world with the 'real' world.
Then there is 4 piano cords that play, in which we added images on the exact cord and for the right interval then we moved on to the next cords in time. Then the last 5th cord its longer almost double the size of the rest so we added a very important scene of a swing moving with no one on it , as its more important than the rest of the images we added it to the long interval as it gives the audience more time to take in the detail. Throughout the music video we have used the decisive beats it aid our changes from one scene to the next or an added transition. We also used this idea to contradict between the music and visuals, as when our artist is in the bed you hear a 'ending' beat which when asked people to watch it and they all expected us to move on to another scene but we added a quick fade to white transition and we carry one the same scene, this makes the audience more aware of the scene and also amplifies it. In out music you hear the same beginning and ending sound and to visually link the visuals to that we made the camera coming into the house for the beginning and coming away for the ending which both concludes and gives the audience a jog in their memory and they remember the sound and the story concludes.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
We have added many close-ups, and even extreme close-ups of the face of our artists, so the audience can clearly see what she looks like. As we haven’t added extravagant make up or used a mask of some sort even out of the video you can easily reconnect her. And the motif e think that would recur across her work is her talent in playing the piano, a similar artist Alicia keys, is shown playing her piano curious times in the first videos when she was becoming a rising star then as she became more popular she did not need to play the piano as its already established she has talent in that area. I believe this would be the similar route for this artist as she would have many of her starting out videos of her playing the piano to establing to the audience that doesn’t know her enough, that she is talented.
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
In out video we use voyeuristic techniques numerously, as the solo singer talks a lot about 'we' and 'you'. We have many shots when the camera is looking at her but she is looking away as if she doesn’t know anyone is there. E.g. on the piano she is playing but she does not one look towards it, only until the middle we allowed her to look at the camera, and there she talking directly towards the camera as if the 'we' and 'you' is the audience. There is a scene when the camera trails over her body when she is laying down on a pool's side, and also there is a scene when her arms are stretched out and the camera followed her arms to her face.
6. There is often interstitial reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos etc).
Our main intertextual referent is from the film 'atonement' where in the beginning scene it shows the house and a toy house which is similar in appearance. Also music videos which we got inspiration from and are an intertextual reference is: marina and the diamond- shrimpain, ne-yo - mad....
We consider out music video as concept rather than a performance video, as it’s based on the story of what is happening rather than the movement on a stage or a dance routine.
By Evette Anderson-Sampah
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