7.Music Video Analysis (by Justice Timajo)

Trey Songz 'Slow motion'- www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXTBbM21plg
* At the beginning it show lots of fast edited and cut scenes of the artist 'Trey Songs', showing some of his previous music/work which is mostly love songs because of how much ladies he was cuddling on each scene
* White curtains, faded surroundings and two couples making love.
* With the white curtains blurred background and a close up shot to the lady, in which it's highlighting her body and curves, shows that the song is about sex
* Trey Songs- Gold chains, Ferrari, grey suede trench coat and big house, to portray his wealth
* The song is about sex, you can easily tell because of the lyrics
* The women (actress) is wearing a skinny grey dress, to show the curves and the shape of the woman's body in which it portray as soft and beautiful goddes.
* The grey dress and Trey's grey trench coat are matching colour, it shows that the women belongs to trey
* It's a R&B love song
* Trey singing and dancing on the balcony, shows that he is happy that he is with her
* Balcony background, shows that it's a nice place and it was during night time
* The editing, the surroundings is quite dark mainly inside and outside the house
* In every scene each light is not as bright, it's quite dim- both couples are secretive about their relationship and also with the dark surroundings and dim lights shows that no can see them making love

Usher 'Yeah'- www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxBSyx85Kp8
* Usher's diamond chain, already showing his wealth and coolness at the beginning
* Long shot of Usher Dancing, this song is a 'R&B' dance song/fast song
* Usher Dancing in the club with Lil Jon and Ludacris, showing that they like to have fun in the club
* White blazer, white shirt, white shoes and chains, In which he stands out in the crowd and also the colour white back in the day shows that they're rich
* With all the ladies dancing in the club and Usher's choreography, it connotes that he is showing off so that he can stand out and get attention to the ladies
* With chains, ladies seems to be attracted to them, because them shows that they're pretty wealthy
* Usher is attracted to a Girl which stand out to him, because she was flirting and sat down with him and touched him on his leg, shows that the lady is attracted to him
* When the lady stood up she was wearing loose dress, in which air (probably from the vent) blew her skirt up and showing her backside in front of Usher, which he liked it
* It is a dance song, which she made Usher follow her to the dance floor and both dancing
* The dancing was sexual because the lady bent over next to Usher while he was dancing
* Lil Jon holding alcohol and dancing, looking like a fun person to hang and drink with
* Ludacris, white suit and gucci hat he is also wealthy

6.Andrew Goodwin Music Video Theory (by Aaron Toombs)

1.  “Music Videos often tend to include a demonstration of typical characteristics. For example, a stage performance video is usually formed around a metal group. Songs which involve a dance routine usually focus on a boy/girl group or women in bikini’s and flash cars for a rap video. Music videos can also link film genres, this is known as intertextuality. Many heavy rock songs are inspired by horror films”

2. “There are frequent references to the notion of looking and the voyeuristic treatment of the female body. The notion of looking involves men and women being portrayed seductively or if there is eye contact with the camera. The notion of looking can also be referenced by the use of props. Mirrors, television screens, cameras, telescopes, binoculars and magnifying glasses are all references too, these are commonly used. Voyeurism is widely used to sell the artists music through sex appeal, a recent example being Miley Cyrus. Voyeurism is only shown at one angle, you do not see a male doing this, only female.”

3. “There is a succinct relationship between the song and it’s visuals. Either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting.”

4. “The record label which the artist is assigned to tends to have certain demands. They often need multiple close ups of the artist and the artist will have visual style which recurs across their work. An example of visual style is Lady Gaga and her quirky clothing choices. The “4th Wall” is broken when the video is a performance and its as if they are singing it directly to us.”

5. “There is often interstitial references (to films, tv programmes and other music videos etc.). Audiences enjoy being “in on the joke”. For example Destiny Child’s Independent Women referencing Charlies Angels and Will Smith doing Men in Black for the Men in Black film. The Wombats used intertextuality to base a music video around a video game”. 

5.Inspiration Genre Research (by Aaron Toombs)

The Weeknd-The Hills

Album-Beauty Behind The Madness

Rather a depressing song which starts off with quite a deep meaning lyrically and visually. The video starts off with a tipped over car as The Weeknd star knocks the door off and walks out, I think the link here is that the lyrics relate to relationships and visually it’s representing the relationship is like a car crash. As he opens the door to let two women out he walks away in pain and the women push him away, again another deep relation to relationships. He mentions half past 5 in the lyrics, sunset in the background represents this time zone. As he leaves the two women behind street lights become apart of the shots whereas near the car the lights are off, perhaps this could represent that his life will be brighter away from her. Perhaps it relates to guilt, he could be cheating and the crash is his karma as he says “I just saw two * before I saw you”. “Send me off to rehab” like cheating is some kind of addiction, or relationship wise he is addicted to his partner. The car blows up as the woman pushes him again, everything is like an explosion/going wrong, his life is blowing up right now, its destructing all at once. He walks towards an empty mansion which could represent how lonely he now is, what he has lost and that he feels empty himself. Lights in the house flicker as he walks by them, perhaps it represents it’s as if he is haunted, everywhere he goes something goes wrong, it follows him and eats away at his mind. At the end he see’s a woman in a red light and you see a close up of his face as he looks depressed, perhaps this is the realisation as to what he’s lost and what was perhaps his fault, the guilt that follows him. 

This song could have some deep meanings behind it and I don’t know if it would be easy for us 4 as a group to represent them in a different way. I like the use of long shots and establishing shots to show what is happening around him and the main close ups which represent his emotions. There’s also a lot of acting involved, firstly hes injured and has to limp but he has to be depressed and cry at the same time. A ;lot of these scenes would be difficult to complete, location wise we couldn’t use half of the scenes which were in there. We could change up the scenes and create our own way of it, even the fire could be included as one of us has a relative who has regular bonfires in a field he owns. There will need to be multiple health and safety precautions and a lot of these scenes would be too dangerous to do, we cant tip a car over and make it explode especially. However he was driving so we could have a camera on the dash board, film some mirror shots etc just to represent our way of the introduction. 

4.Chosen Genre (by Justice Timajo)

The musical genre that we have chosen is R&B, reason why because that the genre has a wide range of different elements in which that combines rhythm and blues, funk, soul, funk, hip hop, pop and dance.  

The forms and conventions of R&B  

Fashion, Costume and Props 

Men 

• Suits (modern R&B) 
• Jeans  
• Tattoos  
• Topless  

Women 

• Minimal Clothing  
• Hair and Makeup  
• Heels 
• Jewelry  

Iconography  

Men 

• Are usually sexual 
• Looking for love  
• Dance  

• trying to depict their wealth by wearing jewelry  
• R&B star wear jewelry but not as much as hip hop stars  

Women  

• convey their sexuality throughout their clothing  
• emphasis on their sexuality through their makeup  
• usually portrayed as soft goddess  
• females seen as more powerful than the men (modern R&B) 

Music Videos  

Slow songs 

• Usually in grayscale or sepia tone  
• Dark colours evoke emotions  
• very soft which adds to the tone of the song  
• white balance are quite high- it can depict a sense of power instead of showing softness  
• The different types of genre of R&B- love songs, sad songs, breaking up song and sex song 
•  The setting on most of the music videos are mainly in beaches, for breaking up song mainly shot in the studios with a black or white plain background and use a close up shot to concentrate on the artist to show significant figure expressions 
• If the song was a break up song the artist's costume/clothing are in black  
• sad song e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ngEIxopUU 
• love song e.g.www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwctEiWLe84 

Fast songs  

• Male consists of bright colours, jewelry, flashy cars  
• Party scene 
• lots of dancing/choreography  
• Typically men involve dancing in the club 
• Female wearing minimal clothing  
• Men wear sunglasses, convey sense of coolness which female will find very appealing  
• Male artist while dancing in the club, it shows that they're fun and loves to party in the club  
•  Female also consists of wearing  
• Female has total gender switch up, just like the slow song they seem to show more powerful than they do in videos for love songs 
• dance song e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mC2ixOAivA 
• dance love song e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-dvTjK_07c 

Stereotypes  

• In some videos females depict themselves like how males do in their videos, usually convey a message to their audience e.g. Ciara and Beyonce  
• Colour stereotypes e.g. black clothing- to show them as powerful and independent  
• Common ways to do this is through costume, because a change In the way women are dressed can make them seem powerful automatically  

Target Audience 

• A majority of R&B fans are teenagers/ young adults, roughly between the age 13-25 years old. Majority of the fans are mainly females that are attracted to the R&B music because female R&B artist stereotypically make songs about being in love or heartbroken, in which this is something that will also appeal to young adults and teenage girls 
• The target audience for males is made up of men R&B artist because of how men portrayed themselves in a music videos, cool-looking, choreography, gold, chains and expresses their wealth. They also like females R&B artist because they are portrayed in a very sexual way, through their lyrics and nudity.  
• These teenagers and young adults usually comes from black and coloured background because R&B comes from soul in which most of the young adults parents would have listened to.