The video I am analysing is Beyonce If I Were A Boy, it is directed by Jake Nava who has done quite a few music videos for Beyonce. The genre of the song is R&B.
There is relationship between the lyrics and the visuals and there are plenty of examples throughout the song. For example, the lyrics are “if I were a boy, even just for a day” and in the video her boyfriend/husband is making breakfast for Beyonce, so therefore it's like they have switched roles and he’s the one caring. Another example could be “and turn off my phone, tell everyone its broken so they think that I was sleeping alone” Beyonce is out with her colleagues and she is flirting with another man, then it cuts onto her husband/boyfriend who is ringing her. The song is basically about how men treat women like rubbish and get away with everything and Beyonce is saying If she were a boy, things would be so different. Near the end the music stops and there is a bit of dialogue, Beyonce says “why you so jealous it ain’t like I’m sleeping with the guy” and then her boyfriend/husband says “what” then Beyonce says “what” and it gets switched around and her husband/boyfriend says “why you so jealous it ain’t like I’m sleeping with the girl”, after that the song also switches around and the lyrics are “but your just a boy, you don’t understand” and the video is of Beyonce making the breakfast and caring for him and he just picks up some food and walks straight out without saying bye.
There is also relationship between the music and the visuals. For example it is quite slow at the beginning so there are not many cuts at all, but when they are in a car chase the tempo speeds up. The video doesn’t really cut to the beat, in some places it does but in others it just cuts randomly, I think it would look better if it cut to the beat though. According to Pete Fraser (Teaching Music Video 2004) there are videos which use slow pace and gentler transitions to establish mood. This is particularly apparent for the work of many female solo artists with a broad audience appeal, such as Dido. Beyonce is another artist who has broad audience appeal and it shows it, in this video she has the most screen time and long takes are used regularly.
If I Were A Boy is from Beyonce’s new album I Am Sasha Fierce. She likes to think she has two sides to her, Sasha Fierce is the more crazy side of her and the songs tend to be more dancy, whereas the other side to her the songs tend to be ballads. In this song the image that Beyonce is going for is the more romantic side, more about love than anything else. As Richard Dyer noted “a star is an image created by a range of materials” so therefore the two sides to Beyonce is a unique and different thing and therefore people will probably be interested in it more. This video is similar to other ones she has done for example, Listen. They are both ballads and about love and how men don’t listen to how your feeling, its just about them.
Although this song is not a sexy one and nowhere in the lyrics does it reference to anything sexual, there is still a bit in the video of Beyonce in her bra. I think this is because voyeurism has become a big thing in music promos. Mulvey came up with the term “male gaze” which is when the males just get so drawn in because of the objectified female on display. Goodwin argues that the female performer will frequently be objectified in this fashion, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star.
I think the music video is narrative and performance based. Pete Fraser says “Narrative in songs is rarely complete, more often fragmentary, as in poetry. The same is true of music promos, which more often suggest storylines or offer complex fragments of them in non-linear order. In doing this the music video leaves the viewer with the desire to see it again if only to catch the bits missed on first viewing” also "the video allows the audience access to the performer in a much greater range of ways than a stage performance could. Eye contact and facial gestures via the close up, role playing through the narrative and mise-en-scene will present the artist in a number of ways which would not be possible in a live concert", so therefore in Beyonce’s video, on the close ups it makes you feel more intimate and it is more true to life than it would be if you were sat 20 rows back at a concert.
Negus has two ideologies of creativity, one is the organic ideology and the other is the synthetic ideology. I think Beyonce fits the organic ideology of creativity because her image is enhanced by the record company and she became famous in the ‘naturalistic’ way, she wasn’t constructed like people off the X factor or similar T.V reality shows, she became famous because she is good at what she does.
Keri Hilson Feat. Neyo and Kanye West- Knock You Down
The next video I am analyzing is Keri Hilson Feat. Kanye West and Neyo-Knock You Down. It was shot in Los Angeles with director Chris Robinson. The genre again is R&B. A broad characteristic of the genre would be that in the video there is rapping.
Knock you down is the name of the song and it also appears a lot in the chorus, at the beginning of the video Keri Hilson is free falling, so its like someone has knocked her down. The next scene follows her life with her love interest which is Kanye, after which Neyo takes over playing another love interest during his verses. Neyo sings “until I met this pretty little missile who shot me out the sky” in which Keri is on the screen smiling and looking pretty. Before Neyo sings Kanye West is shown free falling so its like he has been knocked down by Neyo. The final part of the video features a split screen which on the left shows what is happening in the present when West sees Hilson talking with NeYo while the right side of the screen relays the first part of the video in black and white. This is to show that it was in the past and Kanye is retelling it in his words.
There is relationship between the music and the visuals. For example the video cuts to the beat, when Kanye West is rapping at the beginning it does straight fast cuts in time with the music. The video changes pace to fit in with the music for example, when there is singing there are more long takes and its at a slow pace, but when there is rapping the cuts get faster. According to Steve Archer music videos can illustrate the meaning of lyrics and genre, providing a sometimes over literal set of images. Here, then, is the most straightforward technique and the classic example of visualisation, with everything in the music video based on the source of the pop song. With this song, everything is based on one thing and that’s love hurts but you have to get over it. The lyrics say “sometimes love comes around, and it knocks you down, just get back up when it knocks you down”.
With 3 very famous R&B artists being in one song, it is obviously going to be appealing to their target audience so therefore will make them want to watch the video and listen to the song. Keri Hilson always collaborates with big R&B stars and most of her songs are about love or sex or a euphemism for them for example, Return The Favour with Timbaland.
The video has been known for its sex appeal due to the fact that Hilson is lying down in bed wearing nothing more than her underwear and an extremely thin see through undershirt. The idea of voyeurism comes from Mulvey, and has been much used in Media Studies, particularly in explaining the gendered pleasures of cinema. Broadly it refers to the idea of looking in order to gain sexual pleasure. In every music video, there has to be some sort of sexual inuendo or euphemism to make it appealing to your target audience.
There are 2 intertextual references in the song, Neyo has a song called Miss Independent and in Knock You Down he sings it in his verse, he even does it in the same tune as his actual song. Another is when Kanye raps “This is bad real bad Michael Jackson” Hilson is shown mouthing the lyrics and grabbing her crotch in a Jackson-esque manner. Pete Fraser says "the music video is often described as ‘postmodern’, a slippery term which is sometimes used as a substitute for intertextuality. Broadly, if we see music promos as frequently drawing upon existing texts in order to spark recognition in the audience, we have a working definition of ‘intertextuality’. Not all audiences will necessarily spot the reference and this need not massively detract from their pleasure in the text itself, but it is often argued that greater pleasure will be derived by those who know the reference and are somehow flattered by this." It basically means that if you understand and know the reference made, it will make the video more appealing to you whereas if you don’t even recognise its there it doesn’t really matter.
The music video is narrative and performance based. Steve Archer says "often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Additionally, a carefully choreographed dance might be a part of the artist’s performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the ‘repeatability’ factor. Sometimes, the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same time. But it is the lip-sync close-up and the mimed playing of instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it."
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