Music videos are used to help a musician or band promote a song or album. Think of a music video as an advertisement for the musician. Thanks to cheap digital video equipment and YouTube, there is no excuse for a musician to not have a music video out for the world to see. With so many music videos out there, it is worth exploring the idea of analysing a music video.
Something to consider, first and foremost, is that music videos are more than just music.
The video part of a music video is what truly sets it apart from a song by itself. The video contains messages that the musician wants to convey to the audience. The music video director has chosen to show a story or lifestyle about the musician that will appeal to the audience.
The artist is selling more than just a song... they're selling you a lifestyle, presumably the lifestyle the artist lives him or herself.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to begin understanding music videos:
- Is the music video based in real life, or does this take place in a fantasy world?
- Is the way the artist is portrayed in the video really how that person dresses and acts in real life?
- Consider how the musician is dressed - is that how regular people dress?
- Consider the actions taken by the artist in the video - would they really do these things in real life?
- What is the benefit for the musician to portray him or herself this way?
- Does the video portray people in stereotypical ways? Are these reflections of real people or are they just one-sided characters?
- Consider the editing - how does the frequency of cuts from shot to shot affect how you feel about the video?
- Consider the setting - why did the director choose this location or setting?
These are just some questions to start you thinking about how music videos are created and how they affect you. Take a look at the videos below and try analyzing them using the questions laid out above.
In textual analysis you are looking for the meaning in the text.
This isn't always easy.
Sometimes meaning is obvious. Sometimes it's not.
Explicit Meaning
Explicit means fully and clearly expressed, leaving nothing implied. For example; a woman is shown running down the road.
Implicit Meaning
Implicit means implied or understood though not directly expressed. This is more subtle and can have multiple meanings. For example the woman is crying and pushing people as she is running, there could be a few reasons why she's crying and our decisions are influenced by our own personal experience and context.
Subtextual Meaning
Subtexts are part of the wider discussion of the text. For example the crying woman could be seen as a symbol for woman's struggle for equality.
Implicit and subtextual meanings often rely on connotations, the associations that are made with certain images.
No comments:
Post a Comment