Technical Analysis (1)

For my first technical analysis I will be using a simple music video by Calvin Harris, Ready For the Weekend, directed by Ben Ib who has also directed videos for the likes of Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue . This song is in the electro genre and the video has a concept of repetition. Calvin Harris in continually using a magic red portal, this portal cuts from scene to scene as he picks it up and moves it around. The dancing girls wear red leotards tin order to match the red mirror, red shirt, red furniture, etc., until they change into blue and yellow zip-up bathing suits, expanding the palette and multiplying endlessly.  






Camerawork
Throughout the video the director uses handheld camera shots however, to introduce the video he has used  an extreme close-up and then zoomed out to an extreme long shot. This is not commonly used in music videos, however in this case the extreme close-up concentrates on the specific detail of mise-en-scene (the red portal/circle), this prop is used throughout the whole video and a close up is used to show the importance of it .  Zooming out to show an extreme long shot, this emphasises and background and environment the character is against, it is hard to see detail visible in the shot but the red circle can still be seen clearly. This scene then transforms into a moving picture inside the red circle which Calvin Harris then takes off a wall and moves it around. The circle then changes into an object when he puts his head through it instead of it just being a picture. Within the video the main camera movement is a Handheld shot, it is ragged and follows the dancers and the main singer wherever there arms/body moves. This is like a 'fly on the wall' effect which gives the audience a sense of realism, as if they are actually watching it in real life, instead of a frozen postion. 
Many zooms are also used in and out of scenes when the red circle is used again. Using zoom connotes the movement and excitement of the video. Many pans are also used to move the camera form left to right which follow the dancers so that they are kept in the middle of the frame. 

When the camera is using zoom movements this means that many different camera shots are established. For example it zooms from a close-up to a long shot all throughout the video these then can reveal new objects within the scene. The 'Zoom' camera movement is constantly distancing and approaching the subject to always focus on new things withing the scene. Mid-shots, close-up and longs shots are all widley used in the video.  In the second half of the video we see that the colour changes from red to blue and yellow and the girls have had an outfit change. However, calvin Harris is still dressed in red and has red backgrounds.

 

The colour red could connotate a celebration. For example, when people say 'to paint the town red' it means to celebrate. The mise-en-scene is the video is simple, it uses few costume changes and only 8 different scenes, the video uses bright colours to connote happiness and fun.  Towards the end of the video the backgrounds turn yellow and blue, this could represent the excitement that the weekend is coming, yellow and blue together are a high contrast and eye-popping so that the audience are most likely to be concentrating on the dancers.

 

When the background does turn blue and yellow the dancers then seem to duplicate or be mirrored with special effects. This has influenced my video greatly as it is a clever idea and in an electro video you tend to see lots of dancing and bright colours which me and my group will be dapting to our video.

Weekly Update- Week one

In the first week of starting our coursework, me and my group (safia. ali and me) have already decided on a choice of song, we have chosen on the genre of Electro House music , as there is not a lot of Lyrics and we would like to base oour video on dancing rather than a storyline. I have completed my Music Genre research by researching Electro House and finding out about the conventions of it, I have learnt the different fashion styles of dance videos and what this genre of music represents by looking at various artists lyrics. We have also started filming our Vox Pops for our audience research and i have begun my star analysis on Katy Perry.

Music Genre Research

House was established in the 1980s in Chicago and New York in the United States by artists such as Larry Heard, Frankie Knuckles, Loose Joints and Larry Levan. Electro house is designed for the dancefloor and has gained interest from both the indie rock crowd and traditional house fans.  For my music video we have chosen the music genre of Electro House music.

Musical and lyrical conventions:

Electro music uses electronic synthesizers and drum machines to replicate acoustic sounds. Usually at the songs base is a drum pattern, which commonly uses sounds of an electronic drum machine. Lots of electro house music do not use vocals, but a variety of them can do, however, these are usually layered with effects. Sampled voices are very common in ele

House music uses many other sounds including synths, funk, and soul. It is uptempo music for dancing and has a comparatively narrow tempo range, generally falling between 118 and 135   beats per minute. Sample music is common in Electro House music, this is when voices are sampled from movies or other records. For example Barbra Streisand- Duck Sauce uses an actual clip of Barbra Streisand talking about New York, this is used at the beginning of the song. It shows her singing the tune , and we can see that this has been converted into Duck Sauce's own version of this in the song. This is like a tribute to her that is conveyed through dance music.

Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand on MUZU.TV


Iconography;

LMFAO

Types of iconography used in Electro house can be presented by their fashion style. In this case it is retro, and urban-street style. It is bright and colourful, and make-up used is often bright red,pink or orange lipstick. T-shirts usually have print that present their love for dance or music on them and brightly coloured trainers or hi-tops. Women dancers will usuall wear chunky bright, plastic jewellery. For an example of this fashion i have used LMFAO,  a dance music group that has an eccentric sense of fashion with brightly colored clothes and wacky glasses.    

Themes;
Listening to electro house artists music like David Guetta or Benny Benassi most of the lyrics (if there is any) will represent happiness towards life, house music signifies dancing in clubs and a huge love of music. Electro house music can also come across as sexy, as there are usually half naked girl dancers in the video. Calvin Harris usually use lyrics that focus on the positive things in life and that nothing can bring him down.  The image of having fun and getting on with life has the most significance to any electro house artist. They also mention the weekend alot in their lyrics as this is the time where people go out to party and clubs.        

Calvin Harris - Bounce
'When the weekend comes I know I feel  alive, you will be the last thing on my mind No regrets, do you know what that means' 

David Guetta feat Kid Cudi- Memories      

'All the crazy s*** I did tonight ,Those would be the best memories, I just wanna let it go for the night, That would be the best therapy for me'                                                                                            

Audience Research

Me and my group created a Vox Pops in order to emphasize our Audience Research to gain a cleared understanding of what the Audience expect to see in an Electro House video. Different questions were also asked for a variety of answers that would influence our creation.

 The majority of people that we asked were students in college, therefore most of them were 18 years old, apart from our lecturer who is 38 years of age. 

Half of the 18 year olds that we asked what their favorite music genre was related their answer to music that you can dance to , therefore our target audience would appeal more to younger people from the ages of 18-24.

All of the videos that were favorites were found out to be performance videos which included dancing or a storyline which related to the lyrics. And the least favorite were ones that included the band/singer as the main source to the video. 

All of the people that we asked what they would like to see included in an Electro house video wanted to see dancing, quick cuts and in a dimmed area (e.g a club). This could influence our video in a huge way, as we could use these answers in order to appeal to the audience. 

Noone that we asked claimed to like the idea of having a Performance for our music video , and either said that we should have a narrative and performance or just a narrative. Also , nobody said that the album cover influence them on buying the album or not.