Video Research

When planning our music video, we found it very helpful to analyse existing music videos to inspire and influence us. The music video above, "Let you go" by Chase&Status highly influenced our music video and simularities between the two are very apparent. The first noticable thing is that the song for this video and our video are the same music genre, drum & bass. This is very significant because it is important for our music video to follow conventions. This will attract the target audience as they expect to see conventions. Both songs start slow paced and all of the sudden the beat drops, fastening the pace. The story for "Let you go" is about a TV presenter that lives two seperate lives. The side that he is portrayed by the public is a respected man that has a wife and children. The other, secret side is a man that indulges in drugs, alcohol and prostitutes. This story is interesting and unique which therefore makes it memorable. The twist is exciting and appealing but it is still easy to follow the story. The band Chase&Status do not appear in the music video which is a common convention that most drum&bass songs follow. Our music video is similar in the way that it also involves a story and the band doesn't appear in the song. Another simularity is that in both music videos there is a major focus on the main character and all of the other characters have a minor part and are not very significant. The idea of both music videos is to follow the main character. Another convention of this music genre is to have a lot of consecutive short shots. This makes the scene exciting and fits the fast pace of the song. As the song fastens up, editing fastens up. It creates hecticness and drama which relates to the story of the music videos. "Let you go" includes the use of alcohol and drugs. Stereotypically the young target audience for this music genre is associated with drinking alcohol and taking drugs which is why it is classified as a convention. Therefore the target audience understand and can relate to it. This is why we also used alcohol and drugs in our music video. It is not being promoted in our music video, it is shown as a sign of desperation and distraught. When analysing "Let you go" we really liked the camera angle of the sequence starting at 2.41. It isn't exactly a point of view shot as you actually see the character but the camera does follow him and therefore it is very shakey. This portrays him on drugs and out of control. We wanted to recapture this is in our music video to make it obvious that the main character is on drugs. We involved a lot of shakey, handheld sequences and point of view shots because it makes the audience feel involved with the character and it suits the fast pace of the song. Our music video reflects depression, despair and lonliness which is why we found it very important to make it appear dull, gloomy and dark colours. It would look unusual if it was bright and jolly. The music video for "Let you go" cleverly has bright lighting for the part where the TV presenter is seen as a moral, high thought of, family man and then as soon as the contrast side to him is revealed, the colours are dull and grey. At the end of the music video, the photo of his family is used again to reinforce the story and it was one of the first things we saw. This is similar to our music video as it starts with a text and ends with the same message being text back. The text message at the start leads to the events in the video and therefore is the reason why the same text is sent back. The text at the start makes it clear that the main character has been dumped and therefore the story is made apparent right from the start. The story for "Let you go" is not apparent at that start but that makes you keep watching. However we didn't want to make the story complex as a lot of the target audience wouldn't understand it.