These aren't perfect as they are designed to show you what you may write under pressure
Taking A-Ha’s Take on Me as an example
Barthes argues that media texts consist of signs that are there for the audience to interpret using their own experience. In the case of music video, signs are necessary to direct the audience towards the genre of the music, for example within our chosen genre of synth-pop, there is an expectation of electronica instruments such as a keyboard which are often signs of the genre. Therefore to prove our artists as ‘genuine musicians’ we cut between close ups of artists playing instruments and during the instrumental section used a close-up canted angle on the keyboard player’s fingers playing in time with the music. Equally as synth-pop is a products of the 80s, we needed to deliberately included signs of that era in the video such as the “drink milk” sign and the blazers with rolled up sleeves on the band which are all clichés of the 80s genre. Therefore our audience could identify the genre.
Lady Ga-Ga’s Telephone
The language of music video relies heavily on intertextuality and signs to create several levels of reading (Hall). From our psychographic audience research and our conventions research, single female artists are frequently portrayed as powerful therefore we wanted to communicate this. Therefore, we deliberately included features from Quentin Tarantino films that are renowned for powerful female roles such as: the addition of comedic sound effects to the song such as the ‘whoosh’ sound when our artist moves, cartoon-font style text and stop-motion footage during the sung verse. This then created the two readings: a negotiated reading in that the artist is portrayed as comedic – it also gave the second preferred reading of recognising the similarities with Tarantino which created audience appeal.
Florence and the Machine’s Rabbit Heart (Raise it up)
Richard Dyer argues that a way of communication is through ‘star theory’ in that the artist is constructed from audience expectations and a mixture of meanings and messages. In our own video we wanted to portray this through the standard close-ups on physical features and costume to conform to audience expectations, however we also wanted to construct our artist as a serious musical artist who is not there to be physically attractive therefore we created a ‘ceremony’ narrative to communicate the idea of admiration for the artist. artist is portrayed in a classical floating costume, with cuts to singers and dancers, along with a soft focus and ambient lighting throughout which plays on the audience’s idea of poetic and natural – portraying our artist as someone who was passionate about music.
