Music Video Essay
For my Music Video Essay I will be evaluating the work of Hype Williams. He is mainly known for his Music Video work with artists such as Usher, Nelly and Busta Rhymes. Hype Williams started making music videos in 1991 and is still to this day making music videos for some of the biggest stars in the world at the moment, he is also known to be a film director. Hype Williams started his directing career in 1998 with his first feature film and his only feature film to date, which was released by Artisan Entertainment. Hype worked on many films throughout his directing career but unfortunately, he had only 1 released due to either the project not being completed or Hype dropping out of the process. Some of the biggest musicians that Hype Williams worked with include 2Pac, Kanye West, Boyz II Men, R.Kelly, Jay-Z, Coldplay, Beyonce and many more.
The main artists that I will be focusing on are Kanye West, Coldplay and Ne-Yo.
The first music video that I will be exploring by Hype Williams will be Viva La Vida by Coldplay. In this music video, we see a lot of dark and dull colours such as dark orange, red, grey and black. With these colours we get the impression that the scene is either evil, dark or upsetting. Throughout this music video, we see the singer and the rest of the band separately as close-ups and medium shots. The camera is always on a tripod and focuses mainly on the movement and emotion of all the people in the band, we also get a lot of close-up shots of the instruments throughout the video, mainly looking down the instruments or across the face. We get the impression, using the colours, that the theme and subject matter are sad, depressing or dull. We can also see this due to the overlapping texture of the whole video. On top of the video clips, we can see that the effect of creased/cracked material has been added to show something broken or old, this is another thing that gives us a sense of sadness or depression. The whole video is very quickly cut but the actions in the video are not very quick. This gives a sense of contrast due to the slow and fast elements.
The next music video that I will be exploring by Hype Williams will be Ne-Yo - Go on Girl. This music video is mainly black and white but has some other bright colours, which stand out a lot when contrasting with the black and white. The theme of this song and the music video is playful. We can tell this because none of the actions in the video stand out as being serious and professional and we see a lot of playful scenes. The camera is still throughout the video and stays mainly at medium shots and close-ups to show emotion. The editing is fairly quick in this music video and shows an excitable, fun scene that is easy on the eye whilst being quite fast paced. The music video is mainly concept based and is also slightly performance based in a way that it does not have a storyline and is random but the artist does appear throughout. There are no clear intertextual references in this music video.
The final music video that I will be exploring by Hype Williams will be Kanye West - Homecoming. Throughout this music video we get the impression that the scene is dark and serious due to the things we see such as people cleaning the streets. The music video uses a lot of black and white as well as a lot of low-angle shots to show power or leadership in the main performer. The lighting is a mixture of dark and light, the difference is sometimes hard to spot due to the black and white scene. This music video has a couple of quick cuts but it includes mainly long cuts to help show the story being told. When the cuts get slower, we see that the story get sadder and has more meaning but when the cuts get quicker, we see that the atmosphere is not as deep and meaningful. The camera is mainly either still or moving very slightly and slowly towards the direction that the main person in the video is moving. This music video is performance based in a way that there is some shots of instruments being played and the singer/performer is shown singing throughout. The video is also slightly narrative based in a way that it shows some sort of story between the clips as they look like they are in the same environment.
Throughout the music videos that I have analysed, we see a few things that are similar. The main thing that we notice is the use of dark colours and black and white. This gives us the impression that the video director has a very dark and meaningful personality that he portrays in his music videos. Another similar thing in these music videos is the shots of certain instruments being played throughout in mainly Viva la Vida and Homecoming. In Viva la Vida we see a lot of instruments getting played and also the band performing but in Homecoming we only get a few short shots of a keyboard being played and Kanye West performing. The camera in all of these music videos does not move much or at all. We see slight movement in Homecoming but we see no camera movement in Viva la Vida or Go on Girl. The camera angles used show a lot of similar shots such as low-angle shots in some of the videos, close-ups of the performer and medium shots of the performer. In all of the music videos that I have explored, I noticed that they all had a dark and meaningful feel due to the colour schemes used and due to the slow cuts. The slow cuts used in all of these videos show the dark and meaningful feel. The only thing that isn't very similar in these music videos is whether they are performance, concept or narrative based. The last thing that is very similar in these music videos is that there is no obvious intertextuality or repetition of images, there is only repetition of types of image such as the same type of shot of an instrument being player but with a different instrument.
The purpose of music videos is that they promote the song and make the people listening to the song feel that there is a story behind the song, not just random words. When somebody watches a music video, it should make them feel more involved with the lyrics because the storyline is better explained to them using visuals but when somebody hasn't watched the music video, they do not have much of an idea of the storyline behind it.
We get the impression that there are no certain target audiences for Viva la Vida but for the other 2 music videos that I have explored would have a more mature target audience such as young adults due to the use of mildly explicit visuals that would not be suitable for younger audiences. Homecoming and Go on Girl should also be aimed more at an older audience due to the message put across in the lyrics.
The music videos appeal to the target audience in a clear way. Viva la Vida is very performance based and has no clear storyline for people to understand therefore it is suitable for all audiences. Homecoming and Go on Girl show a lot of scenes that may not be suitable for younger audiences but would appeal to older audiences such as women dancing around not fully clothed (in Go on Girl) and strong storylines that only older audiences would understand (in Homecoming).
In conclusion, I have noticed that the music videos that I have explored by Hype Williams all include the same sort of style, colours and camera shots and in my opinion this makes his music videos very entertaining. The style also makes all of the videos seem very dark and meaningful. These music videos fit the tracks well in pace and style and are successful in the way that they promote the song/band.
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