Task 1.10: Essay on Meaning Conveyed in Music Videos
Many music videos produced represent some form of meaning or message, 2 examples of these types of music video are Christiana Perri’s “Jar of Hearts” (2011) and Linkin Park’s “In the end” (2000). The intended audiences and messages portrayed in both videos are vastly different, for example: The cinematography in both videos consists of a mix of shots, including close ups to emphasise the lyrics of the song, and mid shots and long shots to emphasise the performance. The videos also use a mix of tracking shots and, occasionally, zooms. The mise-en-scene and themes for each video contrast almost completely, for example, in “jar of hearts” the main actress can be seen wearing a dirty white dress (white typically representing purity, however the dirt is used to represent impurity), and work boots, which is used to represent aggression and female empowerment, whereas, in ”in the end” the lead performer is wearing a black jacket and switches between acting in aggression and sorrow. The location for “jar of hearts” is barely visible as it is shrouded with mist so as to make the audience focus more on the actors and their performance to show the story, rather than being distracted by the location and background, whereas the location for “in the end” is completely visible throughout the majority of the video and shows a wasteland styled world that appears to be completely dry and arid, with few events occurring in the background to show that the world has been ruined. The lighting is “jar of hearts” isn’t particularly high key, but isn’t low key either, the lighting seems to have been achieved through a dim studio light as oppose to a regular lighting setup, this adds to the misted background effect as it seems to make the fog harder to see through and appear thicker, this is likely done to deter the viewer from focusing on the background and instead focus on the story being told by the performance in the video. The lighting in “in the end” changes between high key lighting, during the scenes where the background is being emphasised, which adds to the effect of the location being arid, and low key lighting near the end of the video where the weather changes to a storm, which helps to emphasise the ending of the song. The main actress in “jar of hearts” wears a dirty white dress. White usually represents purity, however the dirt is used to represent impurity, as well as work boots, which are used to represent aggression and female empowerment. The lead performer in “in the end” wears a black jacket and switches between acting in aggression and sorrow. The sound in both videos is completely non-digetic and consists only of the soundtrack added in post. Both videos are edited by cutting to the beat and are cut at a fairly slow pace. Both videos use some form of narrative structure. “Jar of hearts” shows a story of revenge against a cheat, but “in the end” uses a far more indirect method of telling its story, as it hides the story in the background of the video, over which the band is performing, this makes the viewer have to really look for the story in the video to find its meaning. In conclusion, both videos show some form of relationship between the lyrics, the onscreen visuals and the locations used in the videos. The performance shown in both videos also contrasts as in “jar of hearts” the actress is shown portraying upset and aggression to the camera while in “in the end” the main actor is shown portraying aggression and regret to the camera.
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