Madonna's song "Frozen" was produced in 1997 and shows a different and darker side to the usually happy pop star. This music video is one of the most diverse video's Madonna has ever recorded as it included connotations of death from her dark and heavy use of make up and costume. Madonna is wearing a floaty black dress which is constantly moving around in the wind and her thick black hair is covering the majority of her face. This makes her look almost witch like and along with the low key lighting throughout adds to the concept of the video. By having a concept based video it makes it difficult for Madonna to build a relationship with the audience.
Madonna is singing about her heartbreak from a relationship, however the visuals do not link to the lyrics. She sings and confronts this person through the use of the second person 'you', this therefore makes it seem like she is confronting and engaging us as an audience but appears unclear as there is no focus on this person. There is no narrative in the video and no common use of flashbacks. Most videos which relate to relationships and heartbreak include flashbacks to show the breakdown of the relationship. The use of the black crows connote her anger and sadness. None of these factors relates to the conventions of the pop genre.
This music video falls under a sub genre which is completely different to the mainstream. However as Madonna's videos and music is usually mainstream this relates to the CCCS theory. As the video is so original and diverse it may fail to engage the audience which can cause the song to become less popular.
- Shows different sides of the artist and how they can be versatile
- Makes an iconic and memorable video
- Conveys emotions using concepts and metaphors
Disadvantages of being Diverse
- Can cause the audience confusion
- The audience can lose interest
- It is hard to connect to the audience
- It limits the target audience
White Stripes - Gondry
The music video for "Seven Nation Army" was released in May 2003 on the album Elephant, by The White Stripes. The music video follows the conventions of the rock genre. It is very repetitive throughout the entire video. The background is constant black and white triangles with different shots of the artist standing underneath them. As the chorus comes in and the beat picks up the pace of the editing speeds up as well. The visuals in this video have no relation to the lyrics and it is all a concept. The shots of the artists become closer and closer in order to become the focal point for the audience, however this proves difficult due to the pace of the editing. There are points throughout the video when the artist points forward which touches on Goodwin's theory as it is connecting with the audience. However the audience's attention is distracted by the repetitive warriors marching which adds to the aggression of this video. This video fails to engage with the audience and keep their attention due to its repetitive nature.
Consider if Gondry’s or Cunningham’s style of video production would suit your chosen genre. You may identify some elements that would work well and some that wouldn't?
As our video is mainstream our artist wouldn't comply to the conventions of such diversity. However there is one scene in our video where the artist is acting as a puppet dressed in black being pulled around. This concept links to Cunningham's style of production. For the majority of our video the diverse style wouldn't appeal to our target audience and we don't feel it would suit our artist in the way we want to portray her.
This post demonstrates a basic understanding of how music videos are diverse and this is because you have not included enough points from the music videos to support the points that you have made on the videos being diverse.
ReplyDeleteRead over your notes from the lesson to support you with writing this post.