Music Videos

Music videos make an excellent focus for your case study because they are featured on both the broadcast and emedia platforms. By creating videos to go with their songs, artists are able to further establish themselves as a 'brand' and promote their music across a wider range of platforms like music channels on TV , and sites like YouTube and Vevo online.

You should have analysed at least three different videos before the exam - you will need to be able to talk about them in detail. In class, we found that the videos we studied:

• often objectified women (especially hip-hop videos)
• featured elements which were overtly sexual (desensitisation of young audience members)
• promoted patriarchal ideologies - men in positions of power
  
• have become more controversial in content (Katy Perry compared to the Spice Girls)
• use codes and conventions specific to the genre of music
• can be narrative, surreal or performance based

The videos we studied are below - but now you need to make your research independent by looking at another video for yourselves - this is required to get the top grades.

Notice how both videos come from the artists' official 'Vevo' channels.

Finally, thanks to Lottie for reminding me about literal music videos! As well as being funny, I like the way these videos break the images down into individual shots. They help you to consider the target audience and the way the artist wants to be represented. Check out Enrique's Hero video too (the literal version!).



Remember you should be bringing in your Twitter results next Tuesday!