Introduction to Practical Task

Within the first lessons we were introduced to the practical task of creating a music video with an existing song we could get the rights to and create an original video around it. To begin with we watched previous years music videos and examined the strengths and weaknesses of the videos. The main weakness the group identified was that the majority of music videos did not feel authentic enough or believeable enough to be an actual music video due to the takes being too long meaning there were not lots of different shots in quick sucession like in a real music video. Often in fifteen seconds of existing music video there can be up to twenty different shots whereas in some of the projects there would only be ten or less. Therefore making it feel like a film with music where the shots are not solely driven by the influence of the music. We then looked at some of the group's favourite music videos as well as Geri Halliwell's 'It's Raining Men' video taking note of certain conventions used. Such as in the Geri video the use of a pre- song material is common in many pop videos to set up a narrative before the song plays which will be maintained throughout the music video. The video also uses intertextuality where the opening audition sequence is drawn heavily from 'Flash Dance'. The recreation of this sequence includes the costumes, characters and mise- en- scene from the actual sequence and cleverly generates interest as people will immediately recognise and relate to the sequence and its reference to pop and film culture. Another noticable convention from the video is the use of Geri in different sets and situations as if playing different characters (with their own outfits), this is used in almost every female artist's music video to create not only sex appeal but to make the artist appear as different people and create interesting narratives and other meanings for the song.