Research for Music Video: Previous Student Video

      

The song that accompanies this music video is from a Dubstep genre and the convention of most Dubstep songs is that it has either a very colourful, or dark video. Thus this video follows the convention in both senses because it uses not only black and white, and desaturation filters, but also very sinister images. These images also coincide with the lyrics of the song, which adds elements of illustration.

PROPS

The footage of the bird in the cage particularly stood out to me. This is because the stop motion blur has been used to enhance the effect of the birds movement, as well as the clip being sped up. This makes the bird's movement more erratic, almost as though it is trying to escape from the cage. It's a powerful image that symbolises feelings of fear, and it's almost as though the bird is going crazy because it is trapped. This goes well with the lyrics "I'm going crazy, your love has got me so blind." Another reason why this is a powerful image is because the bird looks like a Canary, and it is said that when Canary's are scared or trapped, they sing for their freedom. As the artist has wings as well, it is as though they are linked because she is singing for her freedom as well.

  Examples of illustration and Target Audiences

Andrew Goodwin says that in videos with elements of illustration, dance is often used to express emotions. In this video, the dancers move in time with the music and strike poses and movements on the beat to convey the themes of sadness and darkness that are evident throughout the entire video.  

This video is aimed at teenagers, as Dubstep is genre that is relatively new and appreciated more by the younger generations. Therefore the addition of the expressive street dance also makes this video more appealing to their target audience, as it adds an "urban" effect. The age of the artist is another feature of this video that appeals to the target audience. She is young herself and featured heavily as both the narrator and participant.

COSTUME and LOCATION

The artist changes her costume twice during the music video when she is featured in the two different locations. In the mid shot of her against the darker wallpapered background, we see she is wearing a black vest with the wings, whereas in the shots in the park and outdoors setting, she has added a hooded jumper (Hoodie). This could be to show the contrast of the two locations and that she is dressed appropriately for each location. However, the video is also centred around a theme of a fallen angel, and thus the 'hoodie' outdoors could show that she is just an average person now. The black t-shirt against the darker background may have been chosen to make a bigger contrast in colours when adding the post-production editing effects.  

The camerawork compliments all the different aspects of the video, by using a range of close-ups to draw attention to the action on screen, such as the pieces of paper with key words from the lyrics written down, such as "darkness." There is also a range of extreme and medium close-ups on the artist's face to show her emotional response to what she is singing, for example when she closes her eyes and grabs her chest in pain. There is a large use of jump cuts, but we see manipulation of the speed of many clips which adds to the convention of 'obvious edits' referred to by Carol Vernallis.