Music Video Analysis

Pop

Iggy Azalea- Fancy

The target audience of this music is for teens and young people. The setting of the video being in a school/ at a party scene is relevant to the target audience. I have recognised certain components of videos that are common in pop videos. These include:
Bright colours
Dance sequences
Confident females being the main focus, usually the singer of the song.

Iggy Azalea

 Here in Iggy Azalea's 'fancy', she is strutting down the hall ways of a 'typical' American high school, being the main focus as she mouths out the words of her own song. Her clothes portray confidence and draw a lot of attention to her. The video follows the theme of a high school which has been used a lot in pop. The video imitates the iconic film 'clueless'. The reinactment is suggesting a typical theme that has been done many times before but with a twist.

Katy Perry 'This is how we do'

                   

Here in Katy Perry's 'This is how we do' the singer herself is the main focus. Her character is conveyed as bold, confident and a bit 'out there.'  Contrasting colours make her stand out, which compliment the punchy, repetitive lyrics.

Another good example in in Taylor swift's 'shake it off'. Again, it is base don stereotypes of teenage character roles using eccentric colours and dramatic make up. The choreography is to suit the theme that the track is about - dancing.

As an overview, pop music videos include

• Singers, dressed in colourful,mainstream and dramatic outfits
• A happy, enthusiastic attitude to match pop music theme
• Partying,dancing, enjoying youthful life as many of the target audience of teens do
• Technology graphics bald and attention-grabbing
• coreography montages
• Fast, or jump shots and editing.

Evaluating these pop videos, I found that the themes that are consistent like graphics and dramatic dance coregoraphies would be hard to replicate for my own video. This is because professional looking graphics require quality software, as well as a lot of experise in graphic design skills. In order to create a pop video with these conventions, the end product may not look as closely related to other pop videos around, as if we haven't quite captured the essence of them. We also have limited resources when it comes to people and budget. Another thing to consider is that our target audience of younger people as a majority listen to the mainstream music which is pop, hense popular music. This means if we choose another genre our audience may be more limited or more specific, and may have to go to extra measures to accommodate this.

Indie

I researched the top charts for specifically indie genre tracks.



Arctic Monkeys are a very popular band having released their album 'Do I wanna know' over a year ago and their tracks are still highly ranked in today's charts. This is a screen grab from their video 'Arabella'. A lot of the videos are in a  black and white filter, which insinuates dark themes. This suits the music because the instruments build up in an edgy way that creates suspense.  Another theme is a lot of focus being on the band playing the music: indie includes a lot of variation in guitar riffs, drums and singers. The lead singers are usually in a montage of singing and playing an instrument as well as being involved in another scene or storyline which may or may not link to the lyrics.

Arctic Monkeys Arabella

Kings of Leon Notion

Another highly popular indie band are Kings of leon. Their video focuses on a lot of instrumental camera time focusing on the artists actually producing the music as if it were live.This video among many others of theirs is consistent in dark colours.
Technological effects are a lot more subtle such as fade ins of sound, digetic sound, etc. Editing is soft and slow, like fade ins and slow cuts to other shots, slow motions. The effect of not having noticeable, dramatic effects is that the video looks low budget and therefore suits the theme of a live, alternative band. Low budget means less action. This is relatable to us and means we need to be creative with our limited resources.

Conventions

• Live music
• Montage storyline
• Sound effects
• Graphic effects are slow and subtle like fades, slow mos
• Groups dress similarly; usually dark, grunge clothing
• explicit themes: drugs, alcohol, sexual 

These indie, alternative videos all have a theme of a home-made, low budget video to suit the theme of indie having garage-band feel to them. Camera skill work is subtly professional, in a way that does not go noticed by audience but overall creates a feel to the music that it is happening live, so highly professional and attention-grabbing effects would destroy this illusion. This would be beneficial to us as we can concentrate on aspects like camera work and putting together a video with a storyline and creatively linking it together.

Acoustic

Acoustic music is notorious for acoustic guitar structure and riffs as well as its relaxed sound. A common setting associated with acoustic music is a countryside, rural area, because of its focus on the instrument itself, editing and choreographing is unneeded and will often ruin the natural effect of the guitar work.

In the video  Old Pine by Ben Howard, a popular acoustic artist, known for his connection with nature which is common in his videos, many conventions of acoustic music are portrayed.

The filming could be done on minimal budget as it shows scenery of settings from woodlands to the beach. The singer is involved a lot in the video itself, singing into the camera so that the viewer is connected personally to him.  In contrast to in Katy Perrys video where she is singing into the camera, the audience does not feel the same personal connection to Katy as all the visual effects are in place and looks more set up.

Typical acoustic music video conventions

• Variation between positive/negative/ often nostalgic 'vibe' or attitude
• minimal/subtle effects graphically and editing
• Location
• Close ups
• 
  

Would an acoustic video be a good idea?

Pros: Acoustic videos tick a few boxes that are preferable to us like budget, easily accessible settings living in a rural area. We can use various camera shots and editing.