Alexis Jordan - Good Girl

Whilst watching music channels, I noticed Alexis Jordan's latest single 'Good girl' is similar to our music video in the way that it fades to black quickly to the beat of the song, this can first be seen at 0.45 seconds into her video, but it is also used after this point as well.

Aha - Take On Me

This video for me is one of the most iconic music videos and definitely one of the best. The video was directed by Steve Barron. The video features a pencil-sketch animation and a live action combination which is called rotoscoping. The live action footage is traced over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Around 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, taking 16 weeks to complete.

The theme of the video is a romantic fantasy narrative. The girl featured in the video, played by Bunty Bailey, is reading a comic book. As the girl reads the hero of the comic winks at the girl and his animated hand reached out of the comic book inviting the girl into it. She gets taken inside into the comic book and she appears animated too. There is then a fight with two thugs and the hero tears a hole in the wall for the girl to escape. She's then found outside a dustbin where the waitress from the cafe placed her comic. The hero is then shown seeming lifeless and she begins to cry. But he wakes up and attempts to break out of his comic book frames. At the same time his image then appears in the girls hallway, torn between real and comic form as he is trying to break his barriers. He manages to escape the comic book by becoming human. The final scene is based on the 1980 film, 'Altered States'.

The music video won six awards at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards. The awards it won were:
Best New Artist in a Video
Best Concept Video
Most Experimental Video
Best Direction
Best Special Effects
Viewer's Choice

The video was also nominated for two others which were Best Group Video and Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Favourite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th American Music Awards, 1986.

Ben Newman

I really like this music video as I think the content involved with the skipping ropes goes really well to the beat of the song. I think the video captures the neighbourhood feel as all the people are gathered together. The video is directed by Ben Newman who has also directed some other videos I am quite fond of for artists such as Wiley, Bombay Bicycle Club and Example.

Here is an example of a video he directed for Example:



This video was nominated at last year’s MVAs in one of the Best Budget Video categories for 2009. His music videos from the past year have shown the promising talent he offers as a director working with music videos.

Justice - Stress

Here is the music video for Justice's song 'Stress'. The video has caused a lot of controversy due to the violent content it involves.



The video was first posted on May 1st by Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay (Justice) on rap artists Kanye West website. The video is around 7 minutes long and it displays a group of French adolescents in jackets with the Justice logo on the back. There was an uproar as many people thought it was just youths of African descent shown in the video, but it is clearly youths of all different descents shown in the video. The youths cause havoc in the video and it goes to the electro beat of the music. It is filmed in a documentary type style as if they are being followed by a camera crew. They harass women, break a bottle over a cafe owners head, fight with the police and steal a car. The video ends with the car being set alight and the cameraman apparently beaten unconscious. The screen goes black and then a voice screams in French, "Does filming this get you off, you S.O.B?".

In France the video caused much uproar, and the police saw the video without knowing it was an official music video. This raised huge concern and a hunt began for the people shown in the footage. Two of the actors were found and remained in custody until they were proven innocent for the crimes committed in the video by Justice.

There was a parody made of the video which has also been a big hit in France, here is the parody:

OMD

I went to see 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the dark' with my family a few days ago and they were brilliant. I've had a strong interest in them for a while now as my family quite enjoy their music. I decided to look at some of their music videos because they would have been made in the 1980's to see how they would look

Here is their hit, 'Walking on the Milky Way'.



and here is a hit from their forthcoming album, "If you want it'.



It is obvious from these two videos how far music videos have come in the past 20 years due to technology. It can be seen quite clearly how camera's have advanced due to the quality these are shown in.

Let you go - Chase & Status

I saw this music video a while ago, and thought it was really good. It is purely narrative and has no performance aspects in it. The camera shots are often changed to the beat of the music which I think is very effective in the story that the video portrays.



It is based on 'Patrick Chase', a character with his own reality talk show, similar to the likes of 'The Jeremy Kyle Show'. It puts him across as being a good man, yet the second half of the video contradicts this. There is a point where he brands one of his guests 'disgusting and pathetic' for his useage of drugs. As the music video continues it begins to show his true personality, which is very different to the liked man 'Patrick Chase' seems to be as he receives standing innovation from his audience. The personality it begins to reveal shows him as a drug-user, a cheating man on his family and having a generally wild lifestyle in comparison to his showbiz personality. The beat of the song goes well to the hidden life he leads and I think it's very effective.

Narrative and Performance music videos used together

In most music videos, there tends to be a mix of both narrative and performance techniques. It's very effective because it is good to see a band/artist performing though too much performing could become a bit boring and repetitive for the viewer. So by having a storyline it makes the video more interesting but not too complicated as the performing splits it up a little.

Here are some examples:

The Cribs: I'm A Realist



The Coral: 1000 Years



Deneice Williams - Let's Hear It For The Boy

Lady Gaga - Alejandro

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, more known as 'Lady Gaga' is an American artist who has become huge in the UK. She began performing music in New York city. She signed with Streamline Records and worked as a songwriter for other label artists. She attracted attention from singer, Akon, who recognised her potential and got her signed to his own label, Kon Live Distribution. Lady Gaga released her debut album reached number 1 in UK charts and success immediately started for Lady Gaga. She never fails to amaze people with her music and videos. Comparisons can be made between Lady Gaga and Madonna, as like Madonna, Lady Gaga is so different to anyone else in the music scene.

Lady Gaga's most recent video release 'Alejandro' as proved controversial to some people. It is seen as controversial for religious reasons, just like Madonna's. Here's the video:

The music video, directed by photographer Steven Klein, was inspired by Gaga's love for gay people and her admiration for gay love. The video shows Gaga with a group of soldiers in a cabaret all dancing to the song. It also features scenes of Gaga as a nun swallowing rosary beads, being with near naked man and holding machine guns. The videos recieved mixed reviews, positively because of its dark nature, and negatively by Catholics who have attacked Gaga on her use of blasphemy. The answer director Klein gave to Gaga swallowing rosary beads is Gaga's "desire to take in the Holy". There are a lot of crosses in the background of the video which relates to christianity, and the behaviour she has does not reflect the catholic faith, her expressing for gay love also doesn't fit in with christian beliefs as they are against homosexuality.

Lady gaga and Madonna can be compared hugely in my opinion, as they are were both so different in the time they hit the music scene to anyone else at the time. The style of this video can be compared Madonna's "like a prayer" as it has many aspects involved that are controversial to religion.

Madonna - Like A Prayer

Madonna is recognised as one of the biggest-selling artists in music history and a huge icon of the 80's. Throughout her career she has had many number one's such as "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes". When Madonna hit the scene of music she was very different to what anyone had seen before and this caused attraction to the general public as they wanted to find out more about her. She has sold more than 250 million records within 20 years of her career.

Her video "Like a prayer" caused a lot of controversy because of the religious references used throughout, here is the video:



The video features Madonna as a witness of the murder of a white girl by three white men, and the arrest of a black man who attempted to save the victim, but ends up being accused of the crime. Following his arrest, Madonna goes to the chapel for safety and at the end testifies the black man's innocence.

The video attracted so much criticism because there is a black man being percieved as Christ. This goes against the typical stereotype people have of Jesus Christ. In the chapel Madonna visits there are black statues of Jesus Christ which is rare as he is often percieved as a white man.

There is use of Catholic iconography in the video, and there is a scene including Madonna developing stigmata. There are also burning crosses in the background which attracted a lot of criticism. She also seduces the man acting as Jesus which obviously caused a lot of commotion amongst viewers.

Madonna knew that she was going to shock viewers with the 'like a prayer' video. Madonna stated "When I think of controversy, I never really think people are going to be half as shocked as they are at what I do." So it seems that she perhaps didn't realise quite how controversial her video would be.

It reached number 1 on MTV's "100 Videos That Broke The Rules".