MUSIC VIDEO - NASTY QUESTIONS 01 - GENRE

Compare the way that music videos use genre conventions to promote their artists.

Refer to BOTH the music videos you have studied in your answer [15]

Music Video producers employ a variety of codes and conventions to promote artists to their target audience. Often they represent the artist as a skilled/compelling performer; frequently, they represent the artist as an aspirational figure; often they attempt to promote connection with the target audience; and at times, they suggest that the artist values other artforms beyond music.

Stop Where You Are (SWYA) and Titanium are very different music videos. While SWYA is not a performance video, it does contain elements of performance that are interspersed with vignette’s of narrative. Titanium presents an extended narrative, but does so without featuring the artist. Given their difference it is not surprising that they include the features of music video conventions in very different ways.

One generic convention used in music videos is promoting the artist as a passionate and skilled performer: e.g. choreographed dance routines, performance with a band, concert footage and direct mode of address. In SWYA the producers represent the artist in a series of low angle close ups and mid shots, which are back lit to give a halo like quality to her appearance and employ direct audience address. Her facial expression (mise en scene) constructs the representation of her passion as a performer. The connotation of this representation is of a passionate and spiritual musical artist, which positions the target audience to want to see her perform live. Titanium entirely misses this element from the music video, but artist David Guetta is not known as performer in the same style as Bailey Rae, rather he is a D.J. and producer, so the video functions more like an extended advert, capturing the audience with interesting visuals and ideas rather than implying performance prowess.

I WOULD OMIT THIS PARAGRAPH, BUT IF YOU HAD TIME YOU COULD INCLUDE IT

Another generic convention is to represent the artist as an aspirational figure. e.g. constructing a representation of their lavish lifestyle or of them as a fashion icon for their target audience. Of course, we can already say that this doesn’t happen in Titanium, but it is also not obviously present in SWYA. We could argue that Bailey Rae is being represented as a fashion icon; shot two is a close up at ground level, showing her expensive shoes (mise en scene). She is also featured wearing a designer dress, a possible signifier of her wealth. However, it seems unlikely that the producers intend this to be aspirational in a capitalist sense because the socio-political theme of the video is not about aspiring to wealth, but rather aspiring to spiritual contentment.

Another generic convention is to create connection between artist and audience: e.g. interacting with idealised representations of the target audience, or by promoting value alignment with their socio-political perspectives. In one sequence of SWYA, Bailey Rae is represented walking through a dark alleyway; the forbidding mise en scene is emphasised by the low-key lighting. She is confronted by a stereotypical representation of a young black thug, and in a shot reverse shot sequence the narrative implies that he is going to pursue her. However, a series of shots establishes that he is a breakdancer who goes on to perform for and with the artist. This vignette, typifies the progressive value transfer between Bailey-Rae and her audience as it challenges stereotypes about race by establishing a counter typical representation of a young black man.

 THIS PARAGRAPH IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE PREVIOUS ONE

Another generic convention is to create connection between artist and audience: e.g. interacting with idealised representations of the target audience, or by promoting value alignment with their socio-political perspectives. One set piece features a homeless woman seemingly being ignored by a white collar worker. The framing of the shot using low key lighting and deep shadow to create a frame within a frame, positions the audience to focus on the anger of her facial expression. After a cut to Bailey Rae performing, the sequences cuts back to a high key lit shot of the white-collar worker returning with a hot drink before sitting down in a two shot medium close up that emphasises their equality by developing a matching eyeline. This narrative promotes Bailey Rae’s progressive moral perspective on homelessness by constructing a narrative that features a counter typical relationship between homeless people and the middle classes, which appeal to a younger, left-wing target audience.

We might argue that the entire narrative of Titanium forms a socio-political message about the way that young people are misunderstood by society and treated as outsiders. The intertextual references to the science fiction genre construct a diegesis that features a shadowy government body that are persecuting a teen boy who is coming into his powers. This trope is a common device in science fiction and symbolises the dangerous nature of adolescents becoming capable and rebellious and of the way that the adult world rejects the possibilities that they entail. Here then the video is arguably promoting value alignment, either with the young adolescent audience who feel supressed by the adult world, or with older listeners familiar with that feeling having experienced it themselves.

Another generic convention is to imply that artists share their audience’s appreciation of other artforms, most commonly involving sophisticated filmic narratives or high production values.  There is little filmic narrative on display in “Stop Where You Are” and no use of intertextuality or similarly sophisticated story telling techniques. However, the video does imply that she has an appreciation of two urban artforms, Parkour and Breakdancing. Extreme slow motion is used in wide shots to emphasise the artistic prowess of the traceur, and in one wide shot, she is shown interacting with the breakdancer; he has his legs in the air forming a Y shape and her facial expression shows elation as she mirrors his body shape with her own raised hands. This promotes the idea that Bailey Rae is connected to the urban art scene, indicating that she is intending to appeal to a younger, left-wing target audience, who value urban artforms over what may be considered elitist artforms like film. Titanium is very obviously using this generic convention by intertextually referencing the sci-fi genre as a whole, but also acknowledging the then growing nostalgia for 1980s science fiction. The video implies shared experience and shared enjoyment of artforms with which the target audience would be familiar.