Essay on Media Music Video Report

Submitted By Molly-Montgomerie
Words: 1420
Pages: 6

Media Music Video Report
The genre featured in my music video/storyboard was pop/soul. In order to construct my storyboard and music video I had to analyse cd covers, music videos and generic conventions within the genre. First of all I studied music videos by John Newman and Sam Smith as they use similar narratives and generic conventions. I looked at John Newman’s Love Me Again video which is a story of a man and a woman at a nightclub whose love builds throughout the song, the narrative is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet the star cross’d lovers. As this is the key theme we see the couple being in love as a struggle and a challenge to overcome. Throughout the video the love theme continues but just as we see the struggle disappearing, the couple run out the club (holding hands) and both get hit by a truck this is presenting the surprise twist element, again this relates to the whole Romeo and Juliet convention. I also analysed and studied Sam Smith’s I’m not the only one video where again we see a couple but this time a married couple , the relationship shown in this video is based on heartache , cheating and lies. The first character we meet is a traditional 1950’s devoted housewife who does all the work, makes her husband breakfast, and cleans the house. The second character we meet is her husband who is very unappreciative and ignorant to everything his wife does for him. As a traditional 1950’s male he goes off “supposedly” to work this could suggest a patriarchal society. Throughout the video we are shown two sides of a relationship, the woman who does everything and the male who goes off and cheats. As well as narrative codes I also looked at the visual and technical codes. In both of the music videos both artists used similar technical codes, when watching the videos I noticed that many different camera shots were used: extreme close ups, medium shots, close ups and long shots which I interpreted into when filming my own video. I also noticed that some shots matched the narrative which matched the lyrics of the song, again I have tried to use this convention in my own music video. Although slow motion only slightly featured in the music videos I studied, I did use this effect to slow down pivotal scenes.
To further my research I also analysed Sam Smiths In the lonely hour CD cover, which shows similar conventions to his music videos. On the front cover we see Sam Smith being thoughtful and reflective connoting possibly heartache, the colours used are quite dark which also connotes loneliness and heartache which is represented in his music and music videos. The cover of the album is quite stripped down, with no distractions of fancy artwork, which makes us focus on the portrait photograph of the solo artist. This suggest that the material on the album is straight from the heart of this male singer. In direct contrast to the album cover, the single artwork is brightly coloured abstract brushstrokes which gives no hint to who the artist is and what the song is actually about, which runs through in a similar vein on all of the single covers from the album. I also decide to look at John Newman’s Tribute album which partly helped with constructing the story board
From all of my research I can see that these two artists have similar narrative, technical and visual codes that I have chosen to include in my own music video. The two songs I looked at are based on love stories which was the subject matter I chose for my storyboard.
The song I chose for my video features the lyrics
“Why are you looking down all the wrong roads? When mine is the heart and the salt of the soul, There may be lovers who hold out their hands