Within this brief, a promotion package has to be created for the release of an album including a music promotion video; with a similar structure to the short film brief as the duration can’t be longer than five minutes. Also two of the following can be chosen such as:
- a magazine advertisement for the album release and/or
- a website homepage and/or
- a digipack cover (CD package)
The most meaningful music video to me, would have to be One Direction’s “Little Things” for the reason that the production makes the video touching and leaves the audience emotional afterwards. In particular the idea of recreating the old pictures links to the words and thus meaning conveyed in the song itself; an element I find is significant in the success of a music promo video.
Therefore, A2 media student’s Chris Brown “Crawl” music video reinforces this idea as it demonstrates:
- Montage editing creates a story which links to the meaning conveyed in the song; as a result the audience begin to pay close attention to the lyrics whilst still watching what’s displayed onscreen.
- Despite each shot being in different locations they still link together to generate a well-structured narrative the audience can follow easily.
Other elements I had picked up on which can stand as a reflection of what to potentially expect in a music promotion video:
- The lip-sync, term used to describe how the character is synchronised with the pre-recorded soundtrack is consistent throughout.
- The editing is most significant in this example of a music video because the flashbacks can be denoted as all the shots are in black and white, whereas the rest of the footage is in colour indicating the character’s present state.
However, successful music videos don’t always have to have a strong connection through the message portrayed in the song, since it depends on the genre of music.
For instance the A2 media student’s “Walking with the elephants” music video is classified as a hip-hop song, but the visuals created are more associated with the grime music genre. This is mainly because I can compare the video to SL’s “Gentleman” song as the:
- Fast pace editing with short shot duration used.
- Mise-en-scene including tracksuits and hoodies are stereotyped to the young people in the video; now commonly associated with the grime genre of music.
- Glitch edits which mirror the sounds of the music.
- Slow motion in a variety of shots.
- Hand held camera throughout to add a sense of realism.
Taryn Connor 