Intertextuality and music videos

Intertextuality and music videos

Intertextuality is when aspects of film, television, video games, photography and fashion are incorporated within a music video. Intertextuality is apart of goodwins theory.

• Since cinema was invented it created the ability to bring songs and music to life.


• Advances in technology have transformed the music video into what it is today.


• Surprisingly, music videos have been around since the 1920's (Bessie Smith)


• Many Jazz musicians of the time, such as Bessie smith, made short films to accompany popular songs.
  
• 1970: The record industry discovers TV-Shows as a great opprtunity to promote their artists.


• They focus on producing short "promos", early music videos which started to replace the live performance of the artist on the TV-stage.
  
• 1975:Bohemian Rhapsody a groundbreaking video released by Queen marked the beginning of the video era and set the language for the gay modern music video. The video is considereed one of the first to use advanced visual effect.
  
  

Intertextuality examples:

Films:

-2 pac and Dr Dre's 'califonia love' (Hype williams 1996, drawing on mad max)

- Madonna- 'Material girls' drawing on ('dimonds are a girls bestfriend', Mary Lambert 1985)

Television:

- The beastie boys spoof cop show titles sequence for sabotage (spike Jonze)

- Remsrecent news show parody 'bad day' (Tim hope 2003)

Video games:

- Robbie williams- Let love be your energy.

- The red hot chilli peppers- californication

- Gorillaz- Clint Eastwood

Fashion and photography:

-George michael- father figure

- Robert Palmer- addicted to love (1986)

Goodwins music video analysis

- Andrew Goodwin writing in 'Dancing in the distraction factory (Routledge 1992)

1) Music vidoes demonstrategene characteristics (e.g. stage performance in rock video, dance routine.

2) There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

3) There is a relationship between music and visuals.

4) The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)

5) There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within, telescopes,etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6) There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc.)

Directors who started out making music videos and then directed films.

David Fincher: Madonna vogue and express yourself.

The film seven was directed Madonna -vogue

by David Fincher after making

music videos such as vogue by

madonna.


Spike Jonze: Fatboy slim praise you

Spike Jonze directed music videos such as the Where the wild things are

music video by Fatboy silm called praise you.

Then going on to direct films such as where the

wild things are.

Michael Gondry: Bjork, foo fighters

What makes a good music video?

I analysed three different types of music videos, Narrative based, Performance based and Concept based.

I firstly looked at Narrative based music videos. I looked at two different videos, Bad romance- lady gaga and If we ever meet again- Timbaland and Katy perry.
This performance type music video shows a story a man and a woman who steale objects within different locations such as museums. The shows the artists singing it filps between them singing and the story. Mise-en- scene helps to make it successful as the people shown withi the story are wearing normal, everyday clothes, which contrasts with the artists clothes whuch are different.
Props are shown through the clip which helps in showing the story of slealing.
The camera shots within the video really help to show the story the close-up reaction shots help to show there is something shocking and suspicious happening within the characters.
I noticed there were many fades to blacks within the editing of the video and i found this seperated the artists singing and the chracters telling the story.





When watching a Performance based video I chose to watch the video on call by Kings of leon. I thought at the start of the video it was very clever how the was a clode up of the bands feet walking in to perform. I thought this video showed a performanced based video very well through camera shots as it shows either medium close up or a close up on each member of the band when playing and they were all looking at the camera which wouldnt happen in say a narrative based video, i found it important that no reaction shots were shown as there was no story or no actions for the members to react to. At some points it just goes to a shot when showing the whole band playing also has close ups on instruments this showsa real performance.



When watching a concept based music video I watched This too shall pass by OK GO. This video does not tell a story or show a performance. Props have a big aspect on the viedo as in 'being different'. The idea of the viedo is that different objects are travelling around a room that are connecting with eachother. The camera angles do not show any close-ups throughout it is mostly the camera following the diferent moving objects this show continuitity and has no editing effects. The relationship between the visuals and the lyrics were not relevent. For the lip sycing was not easy to tell as there were no close-ups.