Music Video Analysis

Pressure - Muse

When looking at music videos within this unit I analyzed Pressure by Muse. The music video opens up with an establishing shot of a high school at dusk, this quickly sets up the setting for the music video, following statements that Carol Vernallis made in her published theory that due to the short nature of music videos they must quickly establish the setting and the world in which it is set in, therefore in creating this establishing shot it gets the audience accustomed to their setting in only a short few seconds shot. The next shot is a panning long shot of the school hall, revealing more information about this world to the audience, this shot does a multiple of things such as introducing a colour palette within the mise en scene that the rest of the music video follows, while also establishing another key element of the music video, a narrative through the actors speaking and the song not playing yet. The audience (in this case the literal audience and the audience being spoken to in the music video) then get introduced to the high school band, who are being played by the members of Muse, This is when the song begins. At this point, the audience jumps up in joy and begin dancing as the band plays their song, this can reflect the audience's reaction to the beginning of the song as well due to the long introduction before the music began being very unconventional could lead to the literal audience becoming uninterested or at least impatient. Following this the shots begin to pan around the audience as they are now dancing, cutting at regular times and keeping a steady pace with the song itself, which is another element of Carol Vernallises' theory as the video begins to get edited to the pace and beat of the song itself. Following this series of shots is when Andrew Goodwin's theory on music video comes into play as two of the members of the audience begin to ride away together into the empty dimly lit school. This is when the music video begins to establish a contradiction style going against the lyrics and following its own narrative rather than being tied down to following the mood of the lyrics. As a few shots pass and the students find a classroom to sneak into they nock into a computer activating a science experiment, this then turns a class hamster into a small monster including intertextuality as the monster establishes some resemblance to gremlins from the movie Gremlins. The next few shots completely change the mood of the music video as it turns into an 80's horror style with the students that were in the classroom now running away from the monsters. The dance is then interrupted with these monsters attacking all the students within sight as the band still perform their song. Following a few more shots of this, the headteacher who introduced us to the band at the beginning played b Terry Crews (an element of star power within the music video)  runs and equips himself with what looks like equipment from the movie GhostBusters (Another Intertextual element within this video) and returns to the hall to fight the monsters with the song finishing with a final shot of Terry Crews and the band grouped at the front of the hall ready to fight off the rest of the monsters. Overall this music video includes elements of both Andrew Goodwins theory in being a contradiction style video following a narrative while also including elements of Carol Vernallises' theory in the editing towards a beat and in establishing a world in which the audience cares about, as I have explained throughout the analysis while also including other memorable elements such as intertextual elements and the long introduction to help set up a narrative for the audience to follow.

Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen
When analyzing music videos I looked at Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen as an example of narrative and a performance style music video. The video opens up with a shot of the singer looking out of a window, as the shot pans in it become clear she is looking at man gardening, this first shot of the music video establishes the world in which it is set as the audience can now see what the singer's motives are within the first two seconds, this is an element of carol vernalizes theory in which she states that due to the short nature of music videos the audience has to be introduced into the world relatively quickly to help them understand what's happening, this is especially important in narrative-driven music videos like this one. Within the next few shots the director uses a shot-reverse-shot between the singer and the man in the garden, this reinforces my previous statement of the singer's motivations as this technique is used her to show interest from the singer and what she is looking at. It is at this time that the performance element of the music video comes into play as the singer is shown performing the lyrics casually as she is watching this man from afar. The next few shots in this music video follow a basic narrative of the singer watching this man while avoiding being detected. After these shots and this narrative is introduced towards the audience the video cuts towards the singer and her band in a garage performing her song to what appears to be the camera at this time. This performance and narrative style that this video blends together is briefly mentioned by Andrew Goodwin in his theory, this states that music videos follow the same few styles and can sometimes even blend together, in this case, it being performance and narrative. In between the next few shots of the band playing out of their garage the narrative continues with the singer trying to grab the mans attention through seductively washing a car, this can be seen as a spoof on Mulvey's Male Gaze theory as the singer is trying to show off her body to win over the attention of the man but its set out in a more comical way than other forms of media as she is shown in this shot falling off the car and knocking herself unconscious. When she awakens the narrative continues with her finally grabbing this man's attention and it is revealed that she as been performing to him in the garage the entire time and we are sort of watching it from his perspective. The video ends with the performance finishing and the singer going to finally write and gives him his number, with this being quite literal towards the lyrics as a part of Andrew Goodwin's theory, however, the man reveals himself as gay and the narrative ends.

Firework - Katy Perry
The song opens up with an establishing shot of a big city at night, once again setting a colour palette and mood of the song while also following Carols' theory with introducing the audience to the world the video is set in. As the music picks up the singer is shown walking out onto a balcony with a close-up shot of her dress revealing it to be very fancy, therefore informing it to be a very professional style music video. After this shot, there is a close up of the singer's face as she is singing, this shows the style of the music video to be quiet performance-based and the close up shows that the director wanted all of the attention to be on the singer, this with the dress mentioned earlier can link together to create this idea that she is the only thing the director wants you to focus on, supporting the performance-based style with the attention being on the singer and the singer only. Within the next sequence of shots, multiple narratives are revealed to the audience in a brief few second shots, this can be seen as exaggerative to the lyrics as when the singer begins to mention feeling down and under the narratives appear showing people in bad situations who are feeling this way, This style of the music video is mentioned within Andrew Goodwin's theory as an exaggerative type, in which in the video exaggerates the lyrics maybe portraying them in visuals or through narrative. The next few shots also conform to this idea as fireworks begin coming out of the singer's chest. As the video continues the narratives relive this same experience in some way, with one shot of a man being mugged revealing to have doves under his coat. This exaggerative form of a music video is shown throughout every narrative of this video. Later in this video we see a small example of editing towards a beat, as the masses of people gather on a roof you can see them all jumping towards the beat of the song with their fireworks matching, this is an element of Carol Vernallises' theory coming into play as the video gets edited around the beats of the song.