Music video question~
Explain how representation in music videos are chosen to promote the artist(s).
The music videos I have chosen to study are Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack and Burn the Witch by Radiohead. Both of which contrast massively in different ways as each music video contains a different context. They both convey artists in different perspectives, for example the unfinished sympathy as directed to display ordinary life with a woman walk down the street which allows the audience to relate to the video more as is it portrays reality. However, in the video to the accompaniment of Radiohead, the main singer is not visible as the video shows an interesting yet different story and is based on the 1960's children's animated 'Trumpton' programmes.
Firstly, Massive Attack use the opportunity of this song to create a music video which inspires and celebrates diversity as they film povertised areas and use the traditional style of making the lead singer the front person of the video. During the video, each band member is presented in the real streets of American with ordinary people going about there life in there routinely ways. In order, 'Daddy G' and his son appear, then from the phone box we see '3D' and 'Mushroom' comes our from the side. Throughout the whole video the audience can engage with the main star attraction, Shara Nelson as she is dressed in informal clothing with minimum amounts of makeup. Considering this is a music video, it is unusual for the female to presented in such a way that is so reserved, whereas today most female singer are viewed visual sex icons. Furthermore, this style of music video grabs the attention of a young (18-29 years) audience who are into genres of music such as: tip hop, hip hop, dance and electronic.
On the other hand, Radiohead use a weird and unusual approach of representing a band. The video uses stop motion and contains an alternative perspective. The video is about an old-video, 'Burn the Witch' and is presented in an animated format therefore there is no centre stage star as Those Yorke does not feature. The song is about demonisation of 'something'/ demonising a belief, this creates a thematic video. Additionally, from observing then video, there is juxtaposition between a horror film and a children's TV show.
To conclude with, as on overall judgement the Massive Attack video promotes their artist in a much more efficient and positive way in comparison to how Radiohead's artist. The artist is promoted more in Massive Attack due to the audience being able to visually see the main artist and be able to connect with them and demonstrate a much clearer understanding of the music video. Due to the fact that the main artist isn't promoted in Radiohead, it is clear the the band have taken and chosen a much more indirect and sort of negative approach in promoting the artist. Therefore as a whole, it is clear to see that each and every band use different attitudes and ways of promoting the artist(s).
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